Mediated
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"An important moment in the history of popular culture is the moment that culture went from "live culture" (the audience was present in the same location as the cultural manifestation or performance) to "mediated culture" (the cultural manifestation was first recorded and played back at a later date by the audience). This happened first in the sixteenth century with the invention of moveable type and the subsequent birth of of mechanically reproduced books which started the revolution known as print culture. Nothing much happened in the relationship between "live" and "mediated" until the early twentieth century, when music and theatre underwent this conversion. Music was recorded to be played back by a phonograph or gramophone. Theatre was recorded on film and played back in the cinema. The period of the 1920s to the 1950s saw the development of "live" mediated entertainment (radio and television broadcasts). The 1980s saw the development of personalized mediated visual entertainment such as video tapes and DVDs."--Sholem Stein |
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Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It (2005) is a non-fiction book by anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita about the effect of the media in the Western world.
Summary
Mediated aims at creating awareness rather than offering ready-made solutions to remedy the intrusion of too much media in our industrial societies. Rather than writing yet another pamphlet against the media, the author chooses to focus on the mechanisms and the processes of our mediated society.
The basis of his analysis is that the opposite of reality is not phony or superficial, it is optional. We choose between options to determine who we are, to make statements to the world about who we are. People, he argues, have always done so, but the difference with today's situation is that we have a lot more options. In terms of options, comparing the modern world with the post-modern world is like comparing a breeze with a hurricane. The media forces at work since the fifties have contributed to expanding our options greatly, making the self "aware" of the possibilities to be who it deems worth being.
We have become method actors, constantly flattered. Deception is luring because it is the inherent condition of the "flattered-self". So we seek new ways of satisfying our selves. These are the true forces at work behind what de Zengotita calls the "virtual revolution".
Reviews
With Mediated, Thomas de Zengotita received critical acclaim outside his field of study. The Washington Post called it "A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media". O, The Oprah Magazine stated "Reading (...) Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend, the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions".
