Notes from Media Lecture

Wheaton professor Read Schuchardt gave a lecture here at work last week. Here's a few notes I took:

Lee seigel: Art of attention v art of distraction

Narcissus perceives himself to be the other. We project ourselves onto God’s person. We create our own imaginary Jesus.

“Be aware of how unaware it’s [the medium] going to try and make you be.”

Hermaphrodite myth

Interface culture – steven Johnson

Predictable v unpredictable: We disengage when we know what will happen next. With 500 channels on TV, we all know what will happen next.

X-files – all about unrequited love. Science and religion.

“Narcissism metastasizes into solipsism. I’m the main character in my own life, and my iPod is the soundtrack.”

"If you don't worship at the altar of the iPhone, it's the best false God available today."

“Cultural heretic”

Literacy promotes deferred gratification and helps you to focus on the other.

And here are two videos of him speaking at Wheaton last spring.

There are a few more clips on YouTube.

Time is money

Cultural texts provide the flesh and bones, as it were, for what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call the “metaphors we live by.” These are metaphors that shape our most basic understanding of the world as we experience it, metaphors that shape our perceptions and our practices without our even noticing them. As Lakoff and Johnson point out, the North American proverbial saying “time is money” is a root metaphor for a fundamental aspect of human experience and suggests that time is a valuable commodity. This metaphor predisposes us to think about everyday life in terms of “spending,” “saving,” or “wasting” time. Once again, we see how culture exerts its hegemonic influence by taking captive our imagination.

from “What is Everyday Theology?” by Kevin Vanhoozer, in Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends.

Following the prophets.

If the prophets of the Bible didn’t understand all of their own prophecies, why do we expect that we’ll understand everything God asks of us? Why does it have to make sense to us before we’ll obey? Or how do we determine when to follow God into something we don’t understand? And how do we know which way that is?

"It's a one-way thing"

Here's some anecdotal conversation about strange relationships created by the medium of television from the perspective of some recent American Idols (via Newsweek).

Hicks: I've had an older couple come up to me and ask me for an autograph and say their phone bill is $400 to $500, voting and texting for Idol. When people say they invest in your career on the show, they invest their time. But they also invest their money. Even younger people come up to me and say, "My cell-phone bill is $200 extra this month."

Sparks: Sometimes people feel like you owe them something. I love meeting them, but sometimes it gets scary when they get angry at you when you make them wait. The Idols all have a different relationship with our fans. They all feel like they know us, because they grew with us on the show. You have to be careful with what you say or how far you let people in.

Archuleta: I don't think they realize it's a one-way thing going on. You're not getting to know them.

Sparks: Do you get people coming up to you and giving you a hug?

Studdard: Yeah.

Sermon tapes

Every technology is a value statement. If that value were put into words we might say we disagree with it, but our choices to use certain technologies betray our biases and values.

With this in mind, I was thinking about sermon tapes. Well, now it’s mostly CDs. Sermons are recorded to CDs, tapes, mp3s, and now even DVDs so they can be distributed to those who couldn’t make it to church. Let me affirm from the outset that these can indeed be valuable for the listeners.

Probably the two most common reasons these listeners don’t get to church are that they’re elderly or they’re incarcerated (to draw no parallels between the two). But even while the pastor is delivering his own message, the sermon tapes themselves are also delivering messages. The messages I can discern are these.

The sermon is the most important event that happens at a church gathering. Most sermon tapes are just that, sermon tapes. They don’t include the music or announcements, baptisms, baby dedications, or the conversations that happen during "fellowship hour." The sermon is really the important thing. Sermon tapes perpetuate this already-held belief, and are not its primary instigator.

The information delivered in the sermon is more important than the gathering itself. Because of the centralization and elevation of the sermon in the church gathering, we church kids have started to believe that it’s the sermon and not the gathering that is essential. Just last Sunday, I showed up late to church. I felt okay about it though because I hadn’t missed the sermon yet—so I wasn’t really missing anything important. But in truth, the presence of the gathered community of believers is probably more transformative for the individual than the sermon is.

The lone believer can grow spiritually with a regular collection of good sermon tapes. Taken to the extreme, some might conclude that they can have all the real benefits of church without actually having to go to church. This is absurd, of course. It’s the commitments to others and responsibilities of real relationships that keep many from following their own sinful desires. You can’t have a relationship with or through a sermon tape.

Now, I’m not saying sermon tapes have no value. Indeed, many will argue that it’s better to have them available than not. It’s better for the elderly and the incarcerated to hear a word from the preacher than not. But these sermon tapes will always bend toward supplanting the power of the gathered church. If we give out the sermon tapes but don't spend just as much time being with the people we give them to, then we fail to grasp what it means to be the Church.

You are better than a sermon tape. You are the medium. What message are you sending?

How far is it?, Or The Logic of Technology

(Continued from "Boston on Foot" and "Proportions, Proximity, and Pace of Life")

What goes through your mind when you’re driving along a major thoroughfare and you a spot pedestrian traipsing down the side of a road that has no sidewalk? For me, my brain generally circulates through a recurring set of possibilities. I imagine that maybe he is poor, homeless, or mentally unstable. I wonder whether his car broke down. Or I reason that perhaps his license was suspended.

I realized, as I thought about these scenarios, that all of my explanations assumed some sort of deficiency, that the man lacks some basic need. I realized that I was working from the assumption that no capable person with adequate means would walk as a functional means of transportation. I doubt I’m the only one who has thought this way

Technology, as it develops, not only changes the proportions of our lives, but it also changes our perceptions, just like it has with walking and driving. With the advent of mechanized transportation, walking has been relegated to evening exercise, the weekend stroll, or the narrow needs required at the office, the mall, and the home. In the same way that horse-drawn carriages are now quaint pleasure rides, walking is a luxury, not primarily a functional necessity. I mean, we might get annoyed if the parking lot is full at the grocery store.

My sister moved downtown Chicago to go to college. When we came to visit her, she would take my parents and I to some new restaurant or store in the area. After the 9th block, my parents and I would be wondering how much farther it was. My sister had grown accustomed to walking everywhere. We, on the other hand, were happy to navigate our town ensconced in glass and steel.

Technology changes how we think about things as simple as walking. When people walk where we expect only cars to travel, walking is transformed from natural to abnormal. Even though, as in Boston, the reality may be the other way around.

Proportions, Proximity, and Pace of Life

(Continued from "Boston on Foot.")

Our increased ability to reach distant places more quickly hasn’t only changed how we travel though. It’s changed how and where we live. Living 40 miles from work made no sense even 50 years ago. Instead employees chose to live and work in closer proximity—probably requiring less time to commute as well. Likewise, they shopped at nearby stores, worshiped in nearby churches, and spent time with nearby friends.

In my own life, I’ve chosen to live some 200+ miles from family and even more from friends because I know I can cover that distance in my car quite in just a few hours. But despite this capability, I am still separated from them by a significant distance. I’ve chosen that distance because I’m able to close it if and when I choose, but that distance still disconnects me from them. And in reality my range of life defaults to what’s nearby and eventually disconnects me from those farther away, no matter what I could do in theory.

In my social psychology class in college, we learned that “proximity breeds liking.” It is still true. This past year a few friends moved in to our apartment building. These were the friends I went to Boston with. Had it been others who’d moved in, our roadtrip might’ve included those people instead. I’ve become closer with them emotionally because I’m closer to them in proximity. Indeed, my closest friends over the past ten years have always been those I’m living with. Maybe that’s partly my nature, but we can’t like those we don’t know or don’t see.

The proportions of proximity do change with technology. The person I call my neighbor may not live across the hall or down the street anymore (even Jesus recognized that). Being aware of this reality is important, even if we choose to live according to these new proportions.

Twice a week I carpool with a colleague from work. Last fall there was a mid-afternoon thunderstorm that knocked out power to most of the traffic lights on our route. Our normal 25-minute commute took more than an hour. As we crawled along, we noticed all sorts of scenes and features that we’d never noticed whizzing past—a trail into the woods, a sign, a house, a store.

Sometimes I wonder if life is meant to be taken in at the pace of our legs. The faster we travel, the farther ahead we cast our eyes. On my feet, stopping to smell the roses wouldn’t cause a traffic jam. In my car, I may miss the roses altogether. And the only scents I notice are diesel exhaust fumes, burning oil, and the occasional skunk.

Boston on Foot

I visited Boston this past Memorial Day weekend with some friends. Boston is called “The Walking City.” As we drove through the downtown, that title’s accuracy was immediately apparent. People were out walking everywhere, not only in the historical districts but throughout the city in many different neighborhoods. The sidewalks were packed with foot traffic. Some locals told me that many Bostonians don’t have cars. In fact, the couple we stayed with didn’t own one.

Since McLuhan’s Understanding Media was fresh in my head, I filtered my Boston experience through the book’s perspective. (That’s when you know it’s a good book!) McLuhan argues that technology changes the proportions by which we live our lives. This argument helped me understand why Boston is indeed a walking city.

Boston is one of the oldest cities in the country. Harvard was established in 1636, which means that Boston was already a place on the map. In 1636, most people used one means of transportation: their feet. Indeed I was told that many of the roads in Boston were simply paved cattle paths. That’s why GPS is so unreliable there. There is no street grid.

The US pushed westward as transportation developed faster and faster transportation. Trains, cars, and airplanes all came into mass use as the US moved west. Thus, further west, you see cities and towns developing differently, with different proportions, from those in the east.

Chicago was a major water port and train center in its developing days. For this reason there are some 5 to 8 major rail lines fanning out from Union and Ogilvie Stations. This transportation changed the proportions we lived by. We need no longer travel by foot or horse, but by rail. Man could go farther in the same amount of time. Over time, these railways have allowed the Chicago suburbs to expand farther and farther west. People now live some 40 miles west or north of Chicago but take the commuter train in every morning. This was unthinkable for a city like Boston during its development. The proportions changed in the 200 years between Boston’s birth and Chicago’s.

Likewise the proportions have changed farther west in cities like Scottsdale, Arizona where the car is the primary means of transportation. That city’s layout and traffic patterns probably reflect the car’s primary usage. It’s known for its sprawling exurbs, catering to the proportions we live by with cars replacing our feet.

And now, with air travel, many states in the Midwest have been dubbed “flyover states” by those who travel between New York and LA. The patterns continue to change as our transportation technology changes.

Obedience rises in the mourning.

I’ve been in church all my life. I’ve lived among Christians who know their Bibles and take notes during sermons. And like them, I resemble outsiders much more than I resemble Jesus.

Last Sunday morning walking into church, I was thinking about what obedience looks like in my life, in my context, in the world I inhabit. I thought maybe God, in his infinite wisdom, would take all those variables into account when I faced his judgment. I would receive grace as I struggled to know what obedience looks like here and now, even if it looks different from what I read in my Bible.

The sermon wrecked my rationale. You know it’s a good sermon when it dismantles your defenses and reminds you of everything you’ve know and don’t want to admit.

For all us church kids who know our Bibles, I’ve been trying to figure out how knowledge translates into obedience. Implicit in most sermons is one answer: Obedience is the result of having enough information. If they aren’t obeying, give them more information. Close the case. Prove your argument.

But that answer just hasn’t worked very well. Look at us. Even as we have more and better Bible scholarship, there’s more and better information in conflict too. The proportions for and against remain about the same. No, the problem isn’t a want for information.

I think obedience is a matter of mourning. We don’t need to be convinced; we already are. Instead, we need to mourn the losses of the things we love—the things keeping us from obeying, the things keeping us from God. We need to have a funeral for all the things we prioritize above God—our idols, our ideals, ourselves.

I think a church kid’s movement toward obedience can take a cue from the famous Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When I’m faced with the hard and fast lines Jesus takes against the sins in my life, I wriggle and writhe. I do a lot of things to avoid accepting it and obeying. I don’t need more information, more head knowledge. I need to deal with it emotionally. I don’t need to read more books and feel conviction. I need to cry about not getting my way, and then let it go.

The stages of grief make sense to me for this process. I might amend them a bit. Maybe something like rationalizing, resistance, compromising, mourning, and obedience. But I think the five stages as they are serve as a good guide. There are a lot of places in my life where I need to grieve my priorities and the inconveniences that will come from obeying. I need to have a funeral and bury what’s dead. And I’ll cry for a while, maybe go back and try to dig up the bones and resurrect it, but maybe after a while I’ll be okay. I’ll stop grieving over things that were dying anyway. And in their place, I’ll find things that won’t.