Response 2/7/13

Reading through the chapter on Pragmatism, I found myself rather unimpressed by its lack of real substance. Leaving alone the whole pragmatic approach to metaphysical problems (which I don’t like either, but that’s for another blog), I was unimpressed by the way pragmatism was referenced int terms of government regulation. Take, for example, the different “types” of violence the book posits on 90-92. Who can be expected to clearly delineate between “historical” violence and “hyper-real violence”? These seem like arbitrary distinctions. It’s not really “pragmatism” to try and regulate media this way, because media violence itself is just too difficult to legislate. Besides, who do we get to do this? Cultural critics? Lawmakers? Special regulators? No matter who you would choose as the group to decide what “type” of violence is being shown in media, it’s extremely likely that the group you would choose would end up being either overly conservative or overly permissive. It seems to me that pragmatism in regards to things like art or the media seems like an ideal to aspire to, but a philosophy that doesn’t work. I’ll go into more on this in my presentation, I think.

I found the signs/signifiers chapter, while something I’ve seen before, a lot more palatable. While we talked a lot about these concepts last semester, I had not really seen these concepts applied to media in this way. I can certainly see using the “cluster” type analysis when viewing media, for example. One thing that I am interested to see as we go forward, however, is ways to talk about class and economics without having to use a Marxist lens. I hope that’s something we can explore as we go through the semester.

There are some aspects of the cultural analysis chapter, however, that did make me feel somewhat uncomfortable. For example, I don’t think the criticism of the Cosby Show on 144 was really on the mark. I agree with the book that it is in some sense a “whitewashed” version of reality. On the other hand, knowing Cosby’s comedy and his persona, I think it was an appropriate show for him. While I’m certain that the show was done intentionally, I am enough familiar with Cosby’s work that I think I can safely posit that his show was going to be pretty middle of the road as far as political or social commentary, regardless of where it was set. I agree that we can be critical of the show for various reasons, but I think it’s also equally relevant to note that Cosby had been doing “clean” comedy for quite a long time before that show began. Still, I do appreciate the way this book is priming us to think critically about media in general, and the chapter as a whole was pretty interesting.

@ Graham – I’ve seen that documentary and it’s really good.

@ others who aren’t Graham – he posted a link to a documentary about the ratings board. Basically, the movie describes how the movie “ratings” are really just run by the studios. I think it’s a great documentary and I recommend it to anyone who’s interested.