Week Four: Shannon, Weaver, and Weiner

Inmachine use of Machines

I found this week's readings quite fascinating. The breakdown of communications in the Shannon and Weaver text was something I had never considered. Communication, to me, had always been a vehicle for conveying information. The question of what made up the vehicle, and what the information it was conveying really amounted to hadn't crossed my mind.

The mathematical deconstruction of communication into small units of information and the process of viewing that information as a measure of freedom of choice seems groundbreaking. It's a bit like taking a step back compared to the other readings we've done. Whereas they are all concerned with meaning and manipulation based upon communication, Shannon and Weaver zoom in and examine the very nature of communication itself.

Weiner, then, comes in and makes a broader point. He agrees quite readily with Shannon and Weaver's thoughts, as he says on pg. 4: "If I am sending the letter e, it gains meaning in part because I have not sent the letter o." The more information contained in any method of communication, the more freedom of choice was available in communicating.

His most vocal point comes on pg. 16, as he states he "...wishes to devote this book to a protest against the inhuman use of human beings... ." To limit the human brain in any way, he feels, is one of the worst things a society can do.

So I begin to wonder, is this not a touch hypocritical when compared to his view on machines? The readings for this week all break communication down to a simple process, in many cases interpretations of electrical impulses. The human brain is only different from any other encoder and decoder in that it operates at ridiculous speeds. 

If a human forced to row a boat as a slave is a terrible crime in Weiner's eyes, is it acceptable to create a machine to do it? Surely the machine could be put to better use, the components it would be made of would be capable of furthering communication had they been put into an encoder or decoder.

Not that I disagree with Weiner's sentiments about limiting the abilities of any human. It just struck me as a little strange, when he spends most of his introduction discussing the possibility of machines replicating human behavior, that he should suddenly exclude them from his great crusade.

Hon 3013 Week 3 - Enzensberger and Habermas

Sports Writing and the Impossibilities of Modern Media Manipulation

Enzensberger makes very interesting and repeated points about the abilities of media to manipulate a society. First among them is that as new media continues to open channels of two-way communication between producer and audience, the possibility of total and complete control of the media vanishes.

In his case he was referring a government's ability to use the media as a tool for manipulation, but it applies to every aspect of society as well. Enzensberger could see the shift coming in a time before the internet, a time when radio was still relevant, and a time when the number of television stations in most areas could be counted on one hand. If his assertion was true then, it is doubly so today.

So let's ignore all the political implications for a moment and examine his claims in a relatively harmless realm: sports writing, specifically baseball. For the majority of baseball's lifespan, information could only be disseminated through newspaper and radio. These are both forms of media that Enzensberger described as "means of distribution" rather than "means of communication." They operate as one-way systems; whatever information they present is all the reader or listener can receive with no way to interact with the producers.

In such a system, manipulation is quite possible. With baseball, it was manipulation without malicious intent but manipulation nonetheless. Sportswriters at major papers were the only voice for the general public when it came to baseball news, and their word was law. Progressive thinkers like Bill James, a founding father of sorts of baseball's statistical revolution, would never be able to find work at as a columnist because their thoughts were so against the prevailing sentiment of the times.

So they were forced to write independently. James self-published his Bill James Baseball Abstract starting in 1977, and in it one could find statistical breakdowns and conclusions about players and the game as a whole that would never appear in a newspaper.

But one could only find them if they knew where to look. James was, in the words of Enzesberger on page 107, "at best an amateur but not a producer." James was coming to find that what the general public thought about baseball wasn't correct, but the general public couldn't know this because of the manipulative distribution structure of the media.

Fast forward to today, a time of new media and no prevailing manipulation. (It is still important to note, as Enzensberge does, that all forms of media are manipulative. It is only when control can be exerted over the media or that all manipulation is directed towards a single end that it becomes problematic.) The new media explosion has made it possible for every kind of opinion on every kind of subject to easily reach the general public, and the general public can just as easily make a response to the producers.

The old baseball mindset of valuing RBIs, scrappy play, and Gold Gloves has mostly been relegated to sports writers for major papers. Bill James and countless others like him now have just as much of a say as they analyze new defensive metrics, evaluating pitching independent of defense, and determine proper values for offensive production.

Bert Blyleven, a major league pitcher from 1970-1992, is a perfect example of the effects of sports writing before and after the new media age. Over the course of his career in nearly 5000 inning pitched, Blyleven proved himself to be worth 90 Wins above Replacement, good for 13th all-time.

But the media didn't know what WAR was while he was a player. They didn't know, or chose not to report on, everything he was doing that set him apart as one of the best pitchers in the history of the game. They didn't say he was bad, but they certainly failed to properly recognize him.

That showed when it came time for Hall of Fame voting for Bert. He first appeared on the ballot in 1998, and any decently informed baseball fan of today would say he should have made it in on the first ballot. Yet he only received 17% of the vote, a far cry from the 75% required for election.

That number hardly rose until 2008, at which point the new media of the internet had established itself. Not only were the opinions of those that participated in new media being heard by the general public, they were heard by traditional sportswriters as well. Blyleven received 62%. 

This year, he was elected with 80% of the vote, finally recognized as an all-time great by sports writers. In a way, as far as baseball writing was concerned, this event signaled the death of media manipulation on the public. Thanks to blogs, twitter, and web-based television, media has become a wonderfully open and useful system.

Hon 3013 Week 2 - Arendt and Benjamin

Mass Culture and Film

As a filmmaker, the first question I ask before starting any project is, "Who is my audience?" Not, "What is the value of this piece?" or, "What does this say about the world I live in?" but, "Who is my audience?" Along every step of the creative process, from conceptualization to finishing the final cuts in editing, consumption of the product is at the forefront of my mind.

This is not to say that I don't consider the other questions, But the nature of the film business in its current state, and really the nature of every entertainment industry, has so conditioned its producers to think of consumption first, content second.

As I read Arendt's essay, Society and Culture, this was all I could think about. While mass society has blurred the class distinctions and afforded someone like myself the opportunity to pursue a career in the arts, it has also brought into question the role and intentions of arts themselves.

While this is only a portion of what Arendt discusses, it is the topic that struck me the most. In particular, I felt the following paragraph on pg. 283 was noteworthy: "The entertainment industry is confronted with gargantuan appetites, and since its wares disappear in consumption, it must constantly offer new commodities. In this predicament, those who produce for the mass media ransack the entire range of past and present culture in the hope of finding suitable material. This material, however, cannot be offered as it is; it must be prepared and altered in order to become entertaining; it cannot be consumed as is."

Even though it was written in the 1960s, the message perfectly describes the current state of the film industry. Film is but a facet of culture, yet the audiences are just as hungry as the audiences of literature, music, photography, art, etc. As mass society grows so does the hunger for more, more, more mass culture. New films are kept in theaters for mere weeks instead of months as they were in the past, and the turnaround between theatrical and home release has shrunk to nearly nothing.

From this constant desire for more, the film industry has turned to the second part of Arendt's quote. It seems the vast majority of films released these days are remakes or reboots, each reimagined in some way to repackage the same product to resell to the same customers.

The truly visionary filmmakers, those that put content and meaning before consumption, find there is scarcely room for their work in the mainstream system. Their films, if they can find investors willing to fund and distributors willing to release a less consumable product, are relegated to art house theaters and limited audiences.

But perhaps this is not a bad thing. While the place of the producer, the intellectual, as Arendt states, may be one where the "sole function is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to make them palatable to those who want to be entertained...," there are still those that make art for arts sake.

So while culture may have dubbed the Michael Bays and McGs of the world "intellectuals," there is still room for inspiring and fresh material. Society transforming into mass society, in turn transforming culture into mass culture, has made the intellectual more of an intellectual of, and maybe just as importantly, for the proletariat.

edit: Published before discussing Benjamin. His essay was written in 1934, a time in which film was just beginning to reach its potential as an art form and vehicle of culture. While he does not discuss film in depth the way he does literature or theater, a point he makes about good intellectuals in literature applies to film as well.

He states that for a medium to flourish and remain relevant to a culture, it must constantly redefine itself, building upon the successes and improving upon the failures of past work. He exemplifies this by comparing opera and epic theater. Opera, he wrote, had done little in the way of evolving, and was becoming stale in culture. Epic theater, on the other hand, imported techniques from film and radio to give the viewer an entirely new experience, one that kept it important to culture.

A similar trend is currently presenting itself in film. The revitalization of 3D has taken over almost every current release. In some cases, 3D (specifically every film converted to 3D in post-production) is just another means of making the product more consumable. In others (films shot and designed around 3D, such as Avatar or Tron: Legacy), 3D is being employed as a tool to further the experience.

While 3D has yet to really be properly explored as the next step in filmmaking, the possibilities exist, and it may bring new relevance to a media mired in the drive for consumption.

True Grit

The Coen Brothers. Jeff Bridges. A western. What more could I want?

A good ending?

Maybe I had hyped the film too much. The trailer had me convinced. True Grit would be the one, the first great western since Eastwood shut the door with Unforgiven in 1992.  Here were Joel and Ethan Coen, come to breathe fresh life into a long irrelevant genre. Here was The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, ready to abide on the open range. Here was newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, garnering rave review after rave review as the true star of the film.

And there I was, sitting in the theater, thoroughly underwhelmed.

I must take care to avoid being overly negative, because I liked True Grit. I really did. Just not as much I as had hoped to. The strengths of the film far outweigh the weaknesses, but the timing of the few mistakes only serve to call the whole thing into question.

The acting was top-notch. There's nothing left to say about Bridge's turn as Rooster Cogburn that hasn't already been said; it truly is the role of his life. Matt Damon is given relatively little screentime to shine as Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, but shine he does. Josh Brolin, in what amounts to little more than a cameo, creates a layered and troubled villain.

And of course, Steinfeld, as young Mattie Ross, earned all the praise she had been given. She single-handedly carries the first act of the film with such a precocious guile. No small feat, considering her most well-known work to date was the made-for-TV Summer Camp. She will  at least be nominated for, and should outright win, an Oscar for her performance.

The dialogue was marvelous. Gone was the typical stilted western drawl, in its place an almost medieval court-like reverence for language. Even unintelligent characters spoke with grace and eloquence that the words became surreal, giving the film a captivating and easily listenable pace.

The cinematography was breathtaking. But that's a given, it's a Coen Brothers film after all. Roger Deakins, long-time collaborator with the Coens, has a wonderful way of matching the look of the film to the mindsets of the characters. From the cold, unforgiving, snowy wastes of Fargo to the claustrophobic warmth of suburbia in A Serious Man, Deakins has proven his talent. He brought all of it to True Grit, creating a lush and hostile portrait of Indian Territory as Mattie and Rooster hunt their prey.

My issue was with the script, specifically, the ending. What was a well-crafted journey for Mattie, one of personal maturity and independence, was dashed after the action had seemingly been resolved. Rooster rode heroic ("Fill your hand you son of a bitch!" - glad they kept this line), LaBouef lived up to his big talk, and Mattie proved she was a woman true to her word. And then it ended. Lights up, everyone clapped, film of the year.

Oh wait. No, no it didn't end. For reasons that still baffle me, the film pressed on past its logical point of conclusion. Mattie fell in that hole, and with her fell my praise. Rarely is two hours worth of characterization and development cast aside as fast as it was in True Grit. In that single moment and the scenes that followed afterwards, the entirety of the film was undone. Mattie was once again weak and worthless without the help of others (in this case, most importantly, the help of a man).

It all just felt so pointless after that. An even more meaningless epilogue attempted to rectify this, but the damage had been done. I left the theater with a bad taste in my mouth, wanting desperately to say I loved it but finding myself unable.

True Grit situates itself firmly in the middle tier of Coen Brothers films. Not as great as the great, but not bad either. As far as westerns go, it fits in nicely with every recent attempt at the genre - flawed, and a far cry from definitive.