While it may be common practice to critique the content of the media we consume — “Is the message of this film true?” “Do violent video games make people more violent?” etc. We seldom consider how the mediums of communication might be forming us.
I’m a film major. One of my dreams is to make movies for the big screen. I love film as a medium of entertainment. So, when I say this, please listen to me.
Visual entertainment is wreaking havoc on American society.
Let me explain.
Technology acts as an extension of ordinary human ability. Consider the GPS. Humans have navigated the globe for thousands of years without any “global positioning system.” Today, the GPS on my phone enables me to explore foreign environments with remarkable accuracy. Having never been to Belfast, Northern Ireland, I can find the nearest convenience store in seconds. While the GPS acts as an extension of natural human ability — the ability to navigate — it also numbs that ability. My use of GPS has taken away any necessity for me to learn to get around independently. I am lost without it.
Navigation is one thing. But this principle is also true for other mediums of technology. While social media might connect us with a broader online community, it threatens to disconnect us from our immediate context. Spotify may enable me to listen to my favorite songs anytime, anywhere, but it also numbs my appreciation of it. Film is remarkably immersive. That’s not necessarily bad. As David Foster Wallace says in his essay E Unibus Pluram:
Television’s biggest minute-by-minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. Receive without giving. In this respect, television resembles other things mothers call “special treats” —e.g., candy or liquor—treats that are basically fine and fun in small amounts but bad for us in large amounts and really bad for us if consumed as any kind of a nutritive staple (163).
We must be wary, then, of film and other immersive media technology because the more immersive the medium, the more it numbs our senses.
Not only do our technological mediums threaten to numb us, but they are also unexpectedly formative. Wallace goes on to make another astute observation about television: “For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant feature of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching” (155). This essay was published in 1993.
In 1980, Neil Postman made a similar observation in his seminal work Amusing Ourselves to Death. “Americans no longer talk to each other,” he argued, “they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials” (92-93). In other words, American society has been shaped to look like the very technology it loves most dearly: television.
So, let me say it again… Visual entertainment is wreaking havoc on our society.
We are formed not only to look like the content we consume but also the medium through which we consume that content. This is the case not only with film but with every technological medium we find ourselves using: language, books, computers, sprinkler systems, garage door openers, microphones, etc.
The solution to these problems is not to ban film or any other technology and become Amish. We cannot go on, however, persisting in our mindless and often naïve assumption that the mediums through which we communicate are creating a better society. Every technology is inherently formative.
So, here’s my proposition: the more immersive the medium, the more we need to moderate our consumption of it.
Some mediums of technology are more demanding than others. To speak requires that we articulate words, formulate ideas, and organize them in a way that clearly communicates our intentions. To receive these words, listeners must listen and re-create them in their mind’s eye — chew on it, swallow, and digest it in order to make the ideas their own and fully understand what is being communicated before responding. That makes film the baby food of modern entertainment mediums. It comes prepackaged with images, concepts, and emotions already masterfully combined to engage audiences.
In short, the more immersive a medium of communication is, the less it enables us to be creative participants in the practice of communication. In order to develop into strong and wholistic individuals who are truly able to recognize and articulate the beautiful, the true and the sublime, we must be careful how much of the most immersive mediums we consume. We must instead learn to love the world through demonstrating to it the art of moderation.
