Jean Baudrillard : An Influential Thinker

Technology has always been popular, but it has come to the point in our society where it can consume too much of our time, like it had in Montag’s society. Nowadays, we seem to always be in touch with technology one way or another. Even when we do not encounter it, we are probably using technology to help us somehow, like how it has become second nature for people to check the time just by turning on their phone. However, the problem might not be the technology itself but how often we use it. In Montag’s society, the problem was not the televisions themselves, but how the televisions consumed each citizen’s life. The people in the society became increasingly disinterested in having meaningful conversations with each other, and when they were not at work or school they were watching television. They were

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

Antoine Watteau’s La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat) uses many elements of the Rococo style of painting to instill a sense of intimacy. In this painting, members of the elite society gather unceremoniously in a wooded clearing. The people make casual exchanges as they mingle in the park. Trees and foliage dominate a majority of the painting. A small white building can be seen in the background through a clearing in the trees. Watteau uses color, composition, setting, and pose in the painting to create intimacy.

In this day and age, television is seen as the most useful technology in the world where we get enough information, entertainment and knowledge. People believe that it is more preferable to have a television rather than to watch a live play in the theatre due to the freedom of relaxation and high level of participation. In this essay, Marshall McLuhan’s technology is the extension of human senses along with Walter Benjamin’s reproduction of art would be analyzed. The main of this essay is to analyze two theoretical concepts and compare them to one another in relation to television and also how these two theoretical concepts would approach television as a technology.

Throughout the text, Carr occasionally references Marshall McLuhan’s ideology stating that, “The medium is the message” (Carr

The article “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumptions” by Diana Kendall sparks the idea that social inequality may be a product of our media-driven society, but is media really to blame or is it a scapegoat in order to leave any personable responsibility out of the picture? Kendall writes “the media do not simply mirror society; rather, they help to shape it and to create cultural perceptions” (315). Although this statement holds validity, one could argue that it may be the other way around. Maybe it’s society that influences media, which in turn causes media to market for us in a more relatable fashion, for the main goal of media is to advertise to a relatable audience. There is no denying that media holds the high ground

In Chapter six of Practices of Looking theorist Michael McLuhan stated during the 1960’s that “a medium is any extension of ourselves through a technological form”. He also believed that it is a way in which individuals extend their bodies in processes of communication, which despite him writing in the 1960’s is highly relevant in contemporary society. The chapter discusses how people rank modes of media in terms of importance. For instance, an article on Facebook or seen on a social networking platform may not be as highly regarded by the average viewer, as it can be perceived as not being credible. Yet, a newspaper article is often held in a higher esteem.

Jacques Benigne Boussuet was born September 7th, 1627, in Dijon France. He died in 1704, however his ideas did not. Bossuet wrote a book named, “The Principles of Politics derived from the scripture” which summarizes the idea of a monarchy based upon The Word of the Most High. Bossuet debates that a human man does not seat the throne or become king, but the true king is God. Bossuet writes in his Political Treatise, “Consequently, as we have seen, the royal throne is not the throne of a man, but the throne of God himself.”(Jacques Benigne Boussuet) Furthermore, Bossuet explains that the a king gains his power through God and whoever goes against the way of the king, goes against the way of God. There is no one to change the thinking of God, or to suggest new changes in His arrangement. Therefore, if the king derives his power from God, the one who is Most High and does not have a wavered thought, neither should the king.

In the television profile “This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage,” Allan Kaprow says “[McLuhan’s] talking about goggles…Everybody has a set of goggles… yours is a private idiosyncratic set of goggles and suppose that the generation before has a different set of goggles and you both think you are looking at the same thing and you are not” (12:12). This is an interesting point as it further complicates McLuhan’s arguments not only is the way a person receives information (the medium) going to impact (massage) the person, but the lenses or goggles the person has is going to impact the way the person is massaged by the medium as well. Perhaps it is the cumulative experience with the medium that plays a role in determining how the person perceives the message of the medium and how that message will impact upon them, as Postman’s son suggests in his introduction to his father’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which Postman claims that current college students struggle to criticize modern technology and mediums because they grew up with them and thus influenced the formation of their

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is a pivotal article in history that changed the way in which many communications scholars viewed media. Both authors were members of the Frankfurt School, a school of thought which looked further into Karl Marx’s theories about capitalism and the issues of mass production. Published in 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer revealed their beliefs that the media, much like the economy, is becoming mass produced, and is therefore turning people in society into media-consuming robots. Industrialization created work lives for people in which they would work on only one part of a larger machine. As a result, they felt less involved in the completion of the project as a whole, and therefore felt less pride in their jobs and their lives in general. Instead, these people turned to media and pop culture so that they would feel more fulfillment within their lives. Adorno and Horkheimer believed that these people had a reduced capacity for original thought because media is now force feeding them the ideas of what they can think and feel. This essay will prove that although Adorno and Horkeimer’s points were justified through the eyes of authors George Lipsitz, Lev Manovich, and Susan J. Douglas, there are still exceptions to their theories that they do not account for.

Philippe Bourgois’ book, In Search of Respect, is an ethnographic study about the social and cultural isolation of the people in inner-city New York, in East Harlem. Since Bourgois was accepted into a crack-dealing community in Spanish Harlem, he writes about their daily operations with a focus on a few people, namely Primo and Caesar. In one of Bourgois’ conversations with Caesar, he brings up the topic of the neighborhood being a friendly place, to which Caesar responds, in an irritable manner, by stating that just today he’d witnessed an array of violence. This ‘culture of terror’ mentioned by Caesar is one of the main reasons why Spanish Harlem has been marginalized. Furthermore, it is dealers like Primo and Caesar, who generate and perpetuate this culture which continues to

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLluhan uses the Greek myth of Narcissus as a metaphor for our inability to notice the gradual societal changes engendered by new extensions of ourselves. McLuhan writes that because “the 'content' of any medium is always another medium” (McLuhan 8), we tend to focus on the obvious, not that the message of that medium, the “social consequences... [that]...result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves” (McLuhan 7). An example he uses is that the content of a novel is print, and so we focus on the plot, not the effect of the novel on society. This syndrome he terms the “Narcissus trance,” a pseudo-hypnotic state induced by using technology

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York. And Basquiat died of a drug overdose on August 12, 1988, in New York City. He collaborated with Andy Warhol in the mid-1980s, which resulted in a show of their work. He was a self-taught artist, Basquiat began drawing at an early age on sheets of paper his father, an accountant, brought home from the office. Basquiat first attracted attention for his graffiti in New York City in the late 1970s, under the name "SAMO." By the mid-1980s, friends became increasingly concerned by his excessive drug use. He used the Neo-Expressionist movement. At the age of 7, Jean-Michel Basquiat was hit by a car whilst playing in the street.

This theme of consumerism is one of the strongest driving forces in the novel, which explains why the role of the television is so important. “TV’s commercial emergence coincides with the ‘golden age’ of Fordism.” (McCarthy 2) The television thrives merely on the ratings that bring about an enlarged group of commercial viewers, and the more viewers, the more money is brought in through commercials and advertising. Although many people believe that they themselves are not influenced by advertising, no one can escape the brief moments of mind-numbing product awareness being drilled into their heads.

Economism, or vulgar Marxism, is a key feature in explaining the media’s role according to Marx. This is also referred to as the base/superstructure model. In economism, “the economic base of society is seen as determining everything else in the superstructure, including social, political, and intellectual consciousness.” (Marxist Media Theory 1) This maintains that the media is used as the base of society. Society is referred to as the superstructure. Clearly, media shapes society even today. Since consumers rely on the media for information and entertainment, (ex. Television and radio new, magazines, newspapers, Internet), they are shaped by whatever forms of media they chose to be an audience to. The media manipulates everything from popular fashion to the food people consume.