Economic Hangover

I woke up this past Saturday morning with a hangover. I wasn't drunk when I drove home so I couldn't figure out where the headache came from that woke me at 5am. My wife and I had gone out to dinner with another couple that was celebrating their 16th anniversary. I had met Frank at a bar for a couple of beers after work and then we went home to pick up our wives for dinner. We spent three hours laughing through a Fondue dinner. We shared two bottles of wine along with cheese, lobster, fillet mignon, chicken, shrimp, and eight varieties of dipping sauces. At the end of dinner we decided to have one last night cap at a new bar in town.

After being carded (as a courtesy, I think since we're all in our late thirties to fifties) we walked in to a loud, super sheik looking bar with lots of really young people and waitresses wearing go go boots. We surprised the bartender by paying cash and not opening a tab and then we proceeded to a dark corner to casually observe young law students in argyle sweaters on the prowl. More laughter.

We walked back to our cars, headed home, feeling tired but a little bit younger. My wife and I were in bed by 11pm on a Friday night. Whew Hoo!

So why the headache? I had drank a lot of water, paced myself by starting at 4pm, ate food with every drink, and yet I still felt awful. I decided to get up and take some Tylenol and get the coffee going. I brought in the newspaper and saw the morning headline about a 700 Billion bail out agreement in capital hill. It all made sense. It wasn't that I had gotten drunk, but I had consumed for too long. Too much of a good thing will tank you regardless.

Our economic melt down is the result of a long slow drink at the financial troff. It wasn't just a sudden recession, it was the slow greed associated with flipping houses, and trading pieces of paper as a diversion to the war that has no end in sight. We were so happy to see our stock market recover from 9/11 we didn't really notice the phony mechanisms the investment bankers were using to pull off the illusion of economic health.

So now we're left with a 700 billion dose of Tylenol for a national hangover. I don't think I'll be getting drunk again anytime soon, but I'm sure our credit industry will get the party rolling just as soon as it can. After all, isn't a little "hair of the dog" in order?

Will User Generated Content Lead to Independence from Hegemony?

This is an excerpt from an online discussion in the Media Studies Ideas course that was posted 9/25/08.

In response to Grey's comment about the "rapid and recent individualization of media (blogs, youtubes, podcasts,etc.)" and whether or not this will server as a counterforce to hegemony culture production, I would like to offer my opinion that the user generated content is nothing more than a further extension of existing culture with the people who are generating the content representing their cultural status. It is the people of a certain class that are the producers of the dominant ideology.

Afterall, as Richard Sennet points out the divisions between labor, work, and action, we see that it is highly unlikely that the labor class is able to actively produce enough content to make a dent in the dominant culture.

During the early 20th century Modernism was about class struggle and was pursued by members of the Bourgeoisie who participated in “class association” in order to represent the needs of the people. Early Social Documentary photography by Tina Modotti is an example of this. Eventually the art world abandoned the ideology of class struggle and Modernism turned into purity of form and process (with its series of art movements) and was known as the “age of manifestos”. The ruling class swooped in and brought modern art into alignment with capitalist ideals with the growth of the Museum and Gallery economy and the rise of superstar artist status. The establishment made superstars out of artist who turned away from political ideology and retreated to the dogma of craft and aesthetics. I don’t think Jackson Pollock’s work wouldn't have helped the Polish people become liberated from Russia.

A “collision” occurred when Hans Haacke attempted to exhibit photographs of slum apartments and their public records of ownership at the Guggenheim Museum. The show was cancelled out of deference to Museum Trustees who were linked to many of the tenements. It seems that Modernism’s hope for mankind gave way to Postmodernism’s cynicism.

I think a further example of how user generated content reflects dominant culture is the manner in which even large-scale media efforts like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Borat are largely unsuccessful in garnering any real debate or comment outside of the subculture that is already sympathetic with these viewpoints. I know too many conservatives who have simply refused to watch the films. In fact I remember being so moved by Schindlers List (which I had to go to alone because my ex-wife refused to watch it) but I couldn't convince my friends or family to attend the film. I’ve gone astray with that one I know, but the point I’m making is that these films appeal to people who already are of a humanitarian ilk, and are rather ineffective by themselves (I do have optimism for their contributions to overall discourse).

The other aspect I see about the emerging user generated content sphere is that we are not owning or controlling access to the media. Corporate America still owns the real estate. My Space is owned by Rupert Murdoch, Hotmail by Microsoft. Are we anything more than technology serfs working on the corporate cyber estate as a means of driving traffic towards advertising? Yesterday I listened to a report on NPR about how Google wanted to give away their new phone because their business model is about giving the tools to as many people as a means of getting advertisements in the hands of consumer just as television and radio has done for decades. Who cares about the programming as long as the underlying ideology remains the same, sell, sell, sell…

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

An Annotation of “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses“ by Louis Althusser as published in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press 2001)

Louis Althusser was a French-Marxist Philosopher whose essay Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses expanded upon Marxist theory by considering the role of ideology as the means of explaining why citizens of the State are obedient and why there hasn’t been a revolution against Capitalism.

In terms of structural and post-structualism, Althusser explains why ideology is a structure while ideologies are socially and historically specific and can co-exist under a dominant Capitalist ideology. There are religious ideologies, political ideologies and social ideologies such as Christianity, conservatism, and feminism.

Althussers essay sets up the foundation for his descriptive theories by first defining Marxist theories of infrastructure and superstructure and then concentrates on the superstructure, which consist of the political-legal structures of government that he labels Repressive State Apparatuses, and ideology, which he describes in terms of Ideological State Apparatuses. The RSA’s enforce compliance directly through violence. RSA agents include the police and criminal justice system. The ISA’s on the other hand are institutions that generate ideologies and produce culture and the formation of cultural practices designed to preserve the state. Examples include Schools, churches, families, arts, sports, and political parties. Of these examples, Althusser sees schools as exerting the greatest cultural influence towards the maintenance of the existing bourgeoisie power structure because it is the system most responsible for the reproduction of labor and the ideology of career fulfillment.

“Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real condition of existence.” Our inability to accept the unacceptable, which is the reality of our existence, leads us to fabricate our reality. It is like the captive falling in love with our captive. Ideology doesn’t reflect the truth of our situation, but instead reflects our relationship to our existence as an exploited proletariat. Another way of describing ideology is to say it doesn’t describe the relationship of production to us, but rather it describes our relation to production. It helps us invent a feeling of self-importance when we are really expendable commodities with the global labor market.

Althusser describes the system of ideology and how we have come to become subjects within it. First we are born into it. Secondly, we always inhabit an ideology by distinguishing our beliefs from the beliefs of others. It functions similarly to the linguistic theory of the conceptual image map. We have to organize ourselves with a belief system that is defined by distinguishing “the others” illusions from ouir “truths” which is our own place within an ideological structure. The third concept of ideology is that it interpellates. It identifies you and calls out to you. It is the call to action within an advertisement. It is the initial response to a greeting by a friend or the sense of guilt when confronted by a police officer. Interpellation is the action of asking you to join the belief system. Ideology is like the poster of Uncle Sam that simply says “I want you!”

Althusser further diagrams ideology as comprising of the subject with a small s and Subject with a capital S. the small s subject is a member of the capital S Subject. Christians are the small s subjects to the capital S Subject of God. The Subject God provides the justification and rules for the ideology and it interpellates subjects to recognizing the validity of its ideology.

Althusser goes on to describe the evolution of Marxism and class struggle as being:

1. The State is a Repressive State Apparatus
2. State power and state apparatuses are distinct
3. Class struggle is over state power and the control of state apparatuses
4. The proletariat must seize state power and create a proletariat state
5. The proletariat must dismantle the State to liberate it from the commoditization of resources.

Ideological State Apparatuses play a very important role within the class struggle. Unlike Repressive State Apparatus, which are uniform and centralized, ISA’s have a plurality that includes didactic discourse. While ISA’s function within the hegemony of Capitalism, debate can occur here, and can ultimately lead to change. It is critical to recognize the plurality of ideology and the room for debate.

Theories of ideology are relevant to artist and media producers because the process of signification through the translation of experience into any medium is in itself an act of interpellation to our audience. Content producers, art or any mass media cannot consider themselves separate from ideology. All communication participates within the an ISA. Artist that produce and exhibit work are participating within an Art ISA. Even if we remove our own voice from our work, ideology will remain because what we express as being significant is defined by our personal beliefs.

Journalistic Mediation

I just happened to be home on a Saturday night flipping channels when I caught the beginning of a political debate between Washington State Gubernatorial candidates Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi. If I hadn't watched the debate for myself I don't think I would have received very useful information from the front page newspaper story above. What occurred over the course of an hour was distilled into five minutes of reading.

I have often noted that when I view an event in person, the story told in the newspaper is often a very different experience from my own. The media mediates, it selects what to present, serving as a gatekeeper of information. What happened in a day is often whittled down on television broadcasts as the top 10 stories in 10 minutes! I guess today I was particularly surprised in the way the newspaper transmitted a story about this debate.

First of all I was taken back by the photograph that accompanied the text. Photos are so realistic and yet can be manipulated so cunningly. In this case the effect is subtle in that the incumbent, Governor Christine Gregoire is presented in profile and slightly out of focus while the challenger, Dino Rossi is presented in sharp focus with both eyes visible. The tone of the debate I watched was very agonistic and yet the candidates are frozen in time with a smile.

The image, as it turns out, is identical in message as the text. Dino Rossi is brought into sharp focus, while Gregoire is presented vaguely. Statistically I think you can see from the text presented on the front page that almost two-thirds of the text are quotes by Rossi. The article reads like the description of a prize fight with the challenger Rossi being the aggressor and Gregoire up against the ropes trying to cover. In this case the quotes are limited to mostly Rossi's promises of "I will balance the budget and not raise taxes." This is such a great quote because it gives the audience exactly what it wants to hear! It's very inclusive and yet divorced from the reality of our entire country's economic condition which appears to have a lot in common with the great depression.

In effect the newspaper is publishing campaign rhetoric for Rossi while choosing to leave out significant statements I heard during the debate which included Governor Gregoire citing her recent record of investing in early childhood education as a long term strategy for economic growth within the state. Through my wife's work as a researcher I have learned that statistically, for every dollar spent on early child care and education, a community receives $20 in economic benefit including savings through a reduction in subscription to social services programs and the criminal justice system. Gregoire had stressed a prioritization system for budget based upon values and principles but that didn't make it into the article. What made it instead was sound bytes about business climate and entrepreneurship which is the ideology of heritage and patriotism that resonates with the conservative American West values of my home town.

Ted Koppel justifies the editorializing of news information by saying, "All too often, we delude ourselves into believing that by simply focusing a live camera on an event, and dropping in the occasional ad lib, we are committing journalism. We're not. Journalism requires context and prioritizing. It entails separating the wheat from the chaff. What is deliberately left out of a news story is every bit as important as what is left in. Events don't happen in a vacuum. That's why we provide context."

I can accept the idea of mediation of raw information for purposes of telling the story, but I find myself concerned that the mainstream press is doing a disservice by not doing more investigative reporting and fact checking. The paper could have filled its column with information that could substantiate or refute the claims made by the candidates during the debate. The photograph selected could have limited the bias a little through selection of a symmetrical composition with greater depth of field. Another option would have been to publish two separate head shots, cropped tight in a manner that would stress the candidates intelligence rather than beauty. I'm reminded of how much wrangling goes into negotiated the terms for a political debate, right down to fighting over which side of the stage a candidate stands or sits on.

In terms of the text, if the newspaper wanted to offer a balanced approach they could have separated this article into two separate columns that analyzed what each candidate said during the debate issue by issue. This would have visually and literally given the appearance of impartial reporting. After all, aren't editorial columns supposed to be found on the Op-Ed page instead of the front?

What is omitted in this article is more important that what we was left for us to read, which is the same sound bytes that we are bombarded with daily in one of the most expensive and controversial Governor races in the country.

As consumers, we only see what we are looking for, and we only hear what we are open to. We filter out unnecessary data or anything that might cause cognitive dissonance. It is a biological survival instinct. Reporters are no different it seems. Media literacy is so important in order to even be aware of the bias in every message we are exposed to.

Media Studies and My Ontology

I just finished spending over two hours reviewing Shannon Mattern's lecture about the origins of Media Studies. I could relate to her description of Media Studies in the Social Sciences in terms of the "effects studies "of mass communication. My undergrad work was primarily from this school of thought and I still have quite a bit of interests in the ongoing research into the effects of media consumption on executive function within children.

But when she got to the division between Social Science and Humanities and proceeded to cross over and describe the New School's emphasis on the Humanities, I felt a beam of light so to speak open up in my mind. I've spent the past two weeks upon entrance into classes becoming a little frazzled and confused about where I fit in. I new I was interested in Media Studies through my broad interests and personal background with photography, video, and film. But when asked to express myself as to where I'm going to contribute in this vast field of intellectual and artistic talent, the interior began to fill with doubts. Until tonight.

From my earliest interests in photography I have always been subconsciously in pursuit of an understanding of the human condition. I've often thought of making a business card that I could hand out to everyone that stops me when I'm walking through a neighborhood with my camera that reads, Ira Gardner - "Photographing the human condition with empathy and respect".

This image I made of a run down hotel (with an art deco past) in downtown Spokane Washington reminded me of a conversation I had with a book club where one of the members noted a recent fire that destroyed a similar motel. She said, "Good, it was probably filled with drug dealers and prostitutes anyway!" I was bothered by this immensely. I didn't say anything in response, but I was thinking to myself, "Drug dealers are people who need shelter, prostitutes too." My own wayward brother probably crashed into flop houses like this every few weeks somewhere in California when he was younger during the 20 years we lost track of one another. Today these hotels are being closed up and gentrified. What's happening in the Bowery District in New York is happening in Spokane Washington. Real people with basic human needs are being displaced.

I see the world through Maslow's hierarchy of human need and try to find the ways in which we meet those needs, even the ones borne purely out of desire for social status.

The woman's comments about the burned out hotel eventually prompted me to photograph several remaining hotels and motels on the west end of downtown Spokane with ironic names like "The Shangri-La". I don't think paradise was ever envisioned this way.

Walker Evans was probably the first photographer that captivated me with his ability to capture the narrative of a place without the people present.

This is another image of another hotel next door. The Coach Light room used to be filled with "colorful" characters. I used to wander in and buy a cup of coffee and a plate of french fries on a Friday or Saturday night when I was 16 and just watch and listen to the crowd. I learned to get along with anyone and was happy to listen to a good story, whether it was true or not didn't matter, there was an exchange of something real and valuable at that moment.

It can be dangerous to walk the streets with a camera. A film entitled "Stranger with a Camera" by Elizabeth Barrett tells the story of a documentary filmmaker from Canada who was murdered while documenting coal miner families in Kentucky. It's a powerful film that asks the question "Who has the right to tell the story" and "when is representation exploitation instead of advocation?". I think the film comes to the conclusion that the only stories we ought to be making are our own, the intimate stories we know, and the best way to go about advocating for a community is by empowering people to tell their own stories. In a way I have done this through my teaching. Each year my students develop a short personal narrative and build a multimedia piece. Last year I had a Spokane Tribal member do a short documentary about the Midnight Uranium Mine that has poisoned the tribal reservation along with our water drainage. I think it might be the first documentary on the subject that actually has the people affected producing and telling their own story. Another elderly gentleman put together a piece about a Christmas dinner his church and community put together. Real people telling real stories.

I love New York, but I don't think it needs me to tell its story. I have always been fascinated with New York's story and I think New York might need a story about a dusty town East of Seattle with 70 trains a day passing through it with grain, timber, and Boeing plane parts and a history of strategic civil defense during the cold war. I think Sherman Alexie is doing a good job of telling Spokane's story from the contemporary native perspective and that I might add to the patchwork quilt of perspectives. Building identity through multiple impressions. I think the best representations are a collage of stories, not just the single masterpiece.

Regardless of the structures and ideologies at work within any narrative, ultimately it comes down to the human experience and critical thinking that gives us the free will to determine what, how, and why we act in the manner we do, and in this case what we allow media to do for us instead of to us. I think I'm starting to find a path, the one right under my feet...