Response to Mary Ann Doane and Henry Giroux

In this reading, Doane presents multiple illustrations about the word "catastrophe". The reading may me think that it is the way each separate news station presents the event to the world. For example do the new stations present the event to inform the viewer about what happened and ways that they could help or do they just repeat the same thing over and over again. Looking at the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the news stations presented ways to help and sayings such as "all proceeds will go to the victims of Hurricane Katrina".

The news segment in class showed that the news station was talk about housing and insurance, when in reality people just wanted to find families and places to live. They only emphasized pictures of what the hurricanes' damage was, instead of listing relief aid and information to viewers as to how they could help Katrina victims. I vote for finiding family first, then work back up from there in finding out the damage of the home. You can always rebulid a home and in the end the rebuilding of a family is stronger.

Looking at the Giroux reading, he presents the article in an odd way. I do not understand all of his argument fully, which should there be about a Hurricane that took many lives.

Overall, what happened to Hurricane Katrina and any disaster (most recently September 11th and after) should never have to approach it as an argument or present a theory, what happened, happened and the damge is done. Now the news stations should be focusing on helping the victims get back on their feet, if anything the news station may present the event as a "catastrophe" and turn it into something bigger. I vote on helping rebuild families, not rebuild a reputation of a news station that is already known for broadcasting the event every day.

Mary Ann Doane version with 9/11 postscript

Dear all,

Some of you asked to see the copy of Doane's article with the postscript about 9/11. I can't find a file copy of the article, but you can find it in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Old-History-Theory/dp/0415942233/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280342377&sr=8-2

-Pooja

Time is television's basis

Mary Ann Doane argues persuasively in her essay "Information, Crisis, Catastrophe that "Time is television's basis, its principle of structuration as well as its persistent reference. The insistence of the temporal attribute may indeed be a characteristic of all systems of imaging enabled by mechanical or electronic reproduction." (pg.222). How would you interpret this statement?

When she wrote this things were quite different than they are today. Television indeed is constructed around time or constructs time itself. Our lives used to go around tv shows or news hours. There was something called appointment television and that is to be in front of the tv at a certain hour to see the news or anything that is going on. Today I think time has change in television. They are not able to schedule our time anymore, we decide what kind of information and at what time we want to consume it. Not only that, also time is constructed by social networks and everyday events of people we know. We crave twitter updates and facebook feeds as much as important events, or probably more. What does it mean that today we are helping to construct the history of tomorrow? That we are part of the history? We are not only spectators any more. Would anyone be able to organize this mess and make sense of it? To analyze it. I feel more and more we turn to citizen journalisms in crisis and catastrophe we are checking updates of the people in the place. Is a technological revolution and everyone is collaborating, the tv is only a part of it!
dani

note on crisis ... or catastrophe?

The conversation today reminded me of the series of essays 'The Spirit of Terrorism' by Jean Baudrillard. They have been bound into a slim volume and I would recommend it if you ever want to explore the intersections of 9/11, globalization, terrorism, and mass media through the eyes of a French philosopher.

Tying into Doane's argument is his observation on the fall of the twin towers:

"Among the other weapons of the system which they turned round against it, the terrorists exploited 'real time' of images, their instantaneous worldwide transmission, just they exploited stock-mark speculation, electronic information and air traffic. ... The image consumes the event, in the sense that it absorbs it and offers it for consumption." (27)

He also states, "Terrorism invents nothing, inaugurates nothing. It simply carries things to the extreme, to the point of paroxysm. ... Terrorism is unreal and unrealistic? But our virtual reality, our systems of information and communication, have themselves too, and for a long time, been beyond the reality principle. As for terror, we know it is already present everywhere, in institutional violence, both mental and physical, in homeopathic doses. Terrorism merely crystallizes all the ingredients in suspension. It puts the finishing touches on the orgy of power, liberation, flows and calculation which the Twin Towers embodied, while being the violent deconstruction of that extreme form of efficiency and hegemony." (58-59)

He also says, rather provocatively, "There is no 'good' use of media; the media are part of the event, they are part of the terror, and they work in both directions." (31)

Anyhow, it's an interesting read ... I know some people were offended when we read it as undergrads, I think because he can 'read' something like 9/11 almost as if it were a public performance piece; personally, I think it's poetic and vastly brilliant.

QUESTION: WEEK 8 – TELEVISING VULNERABILITY: SURVIVOR VIDEO IN DOCUMENTARY FILM AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA

Mary Ann Doane argues persuasively in her essay "Information, Crisis, Catastrophe that "Time is television's basis, its principle of structuration as well as its persistent reference. The insistence of the temporal attribute may indeed be a characteristic of all systems of imaging enabled by mechanical or electronic reproduction." (pg.222). How would you interpret this statement?

The way I interpreted her stance on the significant and leading role of time as it relates to the production and reproduction of the televisual is that TV centralizes, organizes time, and represents the loss of the body (the audience) to spectacle, which is best captured by the media event. The media event represents the absolute centralization and the near-complete ’binding’ of the media experience: we are all transfixed witnesses at the same moment in time, but our interpretations of the media event(s) and the emotional experiences we bring to our viewing will differ depending on a number and/or a combination of factors such as socio, political, economical, gender, racial…etc. What are some examples of significant media events that come to mind in such a case?

Doane also suggests that television promises us the chance encounter with the ’reality’ of a catastrophe. Television shocks, and then repeatedly assures; a comforting presence in an insecure world. "Televisual catastrophe is thus characterized by everything which it is said not to be .it is expected, predictable, its presence crucial to television’s operation" (pg. 238) She reiterates the idea that technological media produces distance, concealing and containing bodily violence. Do technological media block the shock effects of traumatic events, screening them, allowing them to be viewed from a distance? Give examples.

She concludes in her essay “If information becomes a commodity on the brink of extinction or loss, televisual catastrophe magnifies that death many times over” (pg.238). What does she mean by this?

I believe Technological life or the “logics of Television” to be inherently turbulent, spatially dispersed, contagious and conflictual. But it is precisely these paradoxes that bring about various possible viral strategies of transmission and flow of information and possibly the challenging of our time spent. In short, it is a dreadful and violent time to be alive, but it is also a dynamic, strange and intellectually challenging one.

How does the need of the Television industry to fill airtime with whatever information is at hand shortcut the process of shifting through, evaluating, editing information before it is brought to the public attention?

During the discussion I wish to delve into the documentary Trouble the Water and tie into the readings and in class excerpts by examining the ways in which media texts have reinforced and justified inequitiesv based on difference in gender, race, class, national origin, sexual orientation, and other categories of difference. Below is a utube link for Trouble the Water trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq426VjZD1E

ANIMAL CAPITAL response

In “Animal Capital”, Shukin uses the double-entendre of the word rendering.  The double meaning refers to the representation of animals and the act of processing animals.  This “double edged sword” effectively “signals a tangle of biopolitical relations within which the economic and symbolic capital of animal life can no longer be sorted into binary distinction… Animal memes and animal matter are mutually overdetermined as forms of capital, and its aim is to track what Bourdieu terms the “interconvertibility” of symbolic life and economic forms of capital via the fetishistic currency of animal life”. (p. 7)

In other words the representational or translational act of rendering animals cannot be wholly separated from the historical and current practice of rendering or processing animal flesh.  This is one of the central themes of Shukin’s “Animal Captial” and she includes three case studies that support her “cultural materialist approach” (in the words of T. Sipley) in the chapters “Automobility”, “Telemobiltiy” and “Biomobility”.  While we have read and discussed the concepts behind “Biomobility” in ch. 4, I found that ch. 2, on “Automobility”, traces the fascinating material history of the slaughterhouse, the automobile industry and modern film.  In summary, the Ford assembly line was designed on slaughterhouse rendering or disassembly equipment, and the most important ingredient in the film industry was gelatin made from animal rendering.  The apex of the history of the car, film and the animal is seen when the automobile replaces the animal as the primary mode of transportation.  Advertisements for the automobile begin to represent the car as an animal that is part of the natural landscape.  Overt examples of such advertisements show the car actually morphing into an animal.  When the car is translated as an animal “the destroyer of nature is naturalized”.  

I think this is the commercial in which Shukin refers.

RESPONSE TO SHUKIN READING (Introduction and chapter 4)

In the introduction reading of Shukin I enjoyed the fact that the author highlighted many of the ethnographers that we have been speaking in class. Agabem, Foucalt, Derrida and many other ethnographers were mentioned in this reading. She reexplained their argument as well provided her insight or questioned someone else's theory. What I particularly like about this article is that she speaks about two different aspects about 'animal' and 'capital'. On page 16 she says,

The ring in this book's title intimates, with simultaneously ominous and hopeful repercussions, that animal and capital are increasingly produced as a semiotic and material closed loop, such that the meaning and matter of the one feeds seamlessly back into the meaning and matter of the other.

Looking at the chapter 4 reading, Shukin continues discussing about 'animal' and 'capital' but in terms of biopolitics. For me the reading was a bit confusing, but she did not fail to address her arguments further. She is trying to focus on the life of the animal and again refers to the ethnographers listed above.

Looking at the films from Wednesday class, I enjoyed the Parenthesis film. I thought of it as kaleidoscope in that the author wanted to portray as sometimes viewing a film closed minded...and not seeing the bigger picture. The film had no narration just pictures and sounds; the only picture seen was of one animal. My question is, was this the point of her film, that some people only look at animals one way? Whether they would studying them or conducting an experiment, what purpose did this show, or was that the purpose to see right through the lens that we normally do not see?