Week Six: Barthes and Focault

What's in a name?

It was interesting to see the general structuralist principles laid out by Barthes applied to different things by Focault. In the same way that Barthes broke down the meaning meanings and different "signifieds" of an image, so did Focault break down a name.

Particularly, Focault was interested in names of authors and what their meaning really becomes. His argument was that author's names are no longer representative of a person, but rather their body of work. For example, the signifier Stephen King does not have the signified of a middle-aged man in Maine, but has the signified of the associated horror and fantasy novels and short stories he has written. 

In thinking about this, I realized that Focault has quite a valid point, and not just when it comes to authors of literature. For myself, at least, when I hear the name of nearly any public figure, my mind immediately goes to what they've created, produced, or are generally known for. I don't hear the name Martin Scorsese and think of a nasally-voiced, bushy-browed New Yorker, I think of Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York, etc.

But is anything lost by removing the person from the signified? Focault almost makes it sound noble, as he writes "...the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society." We make authors larger than life, just through the fact or recognizing them for their work rather than who they are.

Yet the mere act of publishing shows that a person is willing to strip themselves of original identity and be known only for their works. Maybe it's just a vicious cycle at this point, but if an author cares enough about a certain topic or piece they wrote, it seems natural that they would want to spread that message. Should it get to the point of changing the meaning of their name, I would think they would be glad as it almost serves as free advertising for the work they wish to spread.

Week Five: McLuhan

TV: Still Cold?

Throughout the reading, I was quite perplexed by McLuhan's assertion that TV is a cold medium. Admittedly, I have no experience with TV as a medium circa 1964, but I just can't imagine anyone would view it as a cold medium today.

Right off the bat, McLuhan says that film is a hot medium and television cold. He then defines hot and cold, noting the difference to be one of suspending a sense in "high definition" and the level to which they allow participation. Ignoring the obvious joke that modern TV is broadcast in nothing but "high definition," I see no difference between film and television by either standard of his definition.

"Hot media," he writes on page 23, "do not leave so much to be filled in by the audience." Okay, I can follow that. A photograph shows an image in totality: hot. A telephone provides only auditory transmission, often imperfect, while requiring the listener to put a face to a voice: cold. Alright, I'm still with it.

Film merges photography and sound, operating on the persistence of memory at 24 frames per second while simultaneously engrossing the viewer's eardrum: totally hot. Yet TV, functionally the same as film: cold? Lost me.

Going more in-depth into television on pg. 309, McLuhan writes, "TV is a medium which rejects the sharp personality and favors the presentation of processes rather than of products." This is certainly untrue of modern television. We've arrived at a singular term for hosts of talk shows and news programs: Personalities. TV has become hyper-focused on personality, as it's what non-fiction shows live and die by. Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow, etc etc. all thrive in ratings because of personality. Little care is given to the content of the program, and the focus is entirely on the personality of the host.

And then comes an interesting thought, after a discussion on the differences between film and TV images on pg. 313, McLuhan comes to the conclusion that TV could be improved to match film on a visual perception level, but that it would then no longer be TV but something new entirely.

Perhaps this is where I disagree with McLuhan, as modern film and TV barely resemble film and TV of the 60s. 35mm prints are still quite common, but digital film is on the rise. Digital film, in presentation, is identical to high-definition TV (and interestingly enough, progressive-scan HD operates in a very similar whole-image based technology to 35mm film). As consumer televisions grow in size and home sound systems become more robust, the difference between film and television is closing quite rapidly.

Should McLuhan have written on the state of media today, I don't doubt his opinion on the temperature of film and television would be different. But would film still be hot, and TV cold? Maybe I don't have the best grasp on his terms, but I seem to think he would regard both, especially when considering digital film, as cold. Even working within his terms, I can't see either as anything but unquestionably hot.