Customer Reviews

Mediated: How the Media Shapes Our World and the Way We Live in It

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

In Mediated (at one time titled The Flattered Self), Zengotita shows how a media-saturated culture has created a new breed of narcissists-namely you and me. We are, Zengotita argues, so self-absorbed, so obsessed with our own flattery, so hell-bent on the creation of our own perverse sense of celebrity that we have lost the true measure of greatness. For example, he argues that we can no longer aspire to great heroism because truly heroic figures are no longer relevant in our media world. Heroism, which requires devotion, sacrifice, imagination, and mythos, has been replaced with counterfeit celebrity that makes "heroism" appealing only when it's a consumer product. Literalism, self-aggrandizement, being pandered to by an onslaught of advertisers in every media form, and the resulting delusion that we are always the center of the universe makes us into pseudo celebrities so that we have no room in our consciousness for the real heroes of the world. He makes a great case for the fact that we have become, thanks to the media, more like full-time actors than real humans. All of us, he says, have learned from television "method acting," so that a media person could stick a microphone in front of any Average Joe and that Average Joe would be able to give a polished interview. We're all competing to be the star in a world of wannabe celebrities.

He does a good job of showing how television gives us a God's-eye view of everything so that we have a delusion of omniscience and this false power fuels our delusions of grandeur. Additionally, this God's-eye view spoils us so that we can't live in stillness and see life in the here and now but only media's cheap, hyped representations of life.

This unhealthy quest for god-hood, he shows, has taken shape in the popularity of Reality TV shows, which feed our sense of entitlement, self-pity, and our narcissistic wish to be recognized over others.

By showing how our inability to embrace true heroes connects to our obsession with making ourselves into pseudo heroes, Zengotita has found an original, sometimes funny, and always profound way to make us look at the way the media is shaping our psyches and our souls.

In recent years, Tom de Zengotita has emerged has one of the most ambitious of the Harper's Magazine essayists. Fans of those essays won't be disappointed here. Mediated combines the themes of his Harper's work into a seamless whole. The result is an engaging, funny, and deeply serious meditation on the role of mediation in our frantic postmodern lives.

De Zengotita is an anthropologist by training, but a cultural critic/philosopher by trade-and a damn good one who covers his ground with authority. As a teacher at the Dalton School, he enjoys deep exposure to the trends of teenagers, and as a professor at NYU's Graduate School of Arts & Science, he has his finger on the more absurd developments in the highbrow stuff, too. Both modes of being are beautifully fused in this book, enabling him to tackle his subject from both directions.

The gist of his argument is this: The ultimate (and often intentionally secret) goal of modernity is to get God out of the equation so man can finally become the author of his own being. The terror of arbitrariness-the accident of your race and gender-and the universal pain of anonymity, are cured, superficially, by the freedom to make choices. Mediation steps in to give you "options"-to give you the freedom to choose this or that and pave the way to selfhood. Everything, including the ground and the sky, can be thought of, presented, packaged, and (sometimes) sold in ways that are flattering to You and only You. Forget heroes and idols. You are the center of it all. And celebrities? They need You to buy into their brand, too.

(Two examples Me-centeredness I've noticed since reading the book: The "Welcome- Your Name Here" bit on the opening page of this very site, and Citibank's ATMs way of addressing you like an old friend: "Hold on, I'm working on it" as if a computer that can't speak can somehow have a casual, friendly tone.)

In Mediated, you'll learn why storms now have names. You'll learn why people describe 9/11 as a "surreal" event. You'll learn why George Bush assumes the postures of Texas manliness. You'll learn why it has become normal to implant fish genes in strawberries. And, of course, you'll learn why we feel compelled to put words in "quotes."

All of this is placed in its historical context without being dry and academic. In the same, casual tone, de Zengotita explains the philosophical underpinnings of the Simpsons and Harry Potter, and how Nietzsche, Descartes, and Locke, relate to the prospect of human cloning. In the process, we learn what we have gained from mediation and what we have lost. And we've gained and lost a lot.

The book is deeply funny, and delivered with a modesty rare in such lofty pursuits. A must read for anyone who wants to talk with depth and seriousness about the cultural issues that define our era.

Tired of your newsweekly's glitzy "media" column? Or establishment outlets like CNN Reliable Sources? This book is some non-corporate, free thinking... substance! (at last) Written from a genuinely philosophical bent, informed by history and the social sciences, this is not the kind of analysis you find in the MSM.
But the beauty part is it's all that AND a breeze to read. And covers not just the usual political-media topics, but how media pervades how we live our lives in all the day-to-day banality.
So, great beach reading AND you'll impress your summer dinner guests afterwards with your insights from this book...

De Zengotita is a brilliant and elegant writer who is able to put clear words to vast and complex problems you've thought about and struggled with, but were unable to ever properly articulate--problems regarding where our relationship to the ever-expanding media might be leading us. Combining erudite philosophical insight, humanistic anthropological concerns, and highly readable language, he takes the hyper-self-conscious world of reality shows and 24 hour news in which we live, and questions the effects it is having on the way we think about ourselves, and the way we see what's around us.  The examples he uses are absorbing, hilarious, and scarily dead on.  This is the kind of book that changes you, and sends you back to the world with new weapons of perception...

Contrary to the last reviewer's posting, this book was not difficult to follow. In fact, De Zengotita's voice is so fresh and clear compared to most academics who have tackled similar topics. And if one thinks his thoughts are "fragmented" - this has more to do with the nature of the topic than anything else. And as for extracting a single sentence quote to make a categorical claim about the overall value or style of a book - well that's just careless use of rhetoric to make a point that most likely doesn't hold.

This book is very well written; it expresses in depth thoughts clearly and with simple yet effective language. However, it is no wonder that there would be resistance from readers - after all, the Modernists convinced us that analytical rigor and stylistic performance were in some sense separable. The old-schoolers claimed that when analyzing world and culture that one must do so with detachment and "objectivity." This book shows that such divisions between "analysis" and "performance" (and that such concepts as "objectivity") no longer hold (or mean the same thing) in a mediated culture. If readers are demanding that De Zengotita's writing be more detached, more logical and analytical and less performance-oriented and less concerned with involved personal experience then they missed the point.

The other thing I want to say about this book is that - yes, it is about the media and its effects - but it is also about something more fundamental. This book is the most clear expression (or demonstration) of what it means to say we live in "the postmodern era." There has been a lot of books written on what "postmodernism" means, and most of them are lofty academic expositions that speak to only a select few. This book speaks to everyone and says some very thoughtful things about what it means to live in a late-capitalist, media-driven postmodern society. If you're interested in that kind of thing, this is a 5 star account that won't disappoint.

Yes, this book is that good.
-----The entertainment/industrial complex owns our sense of community and comparison. I can only guess how people used to establish a sense of community in the 1800's (walk a quarter mile to borrow a cup of sugar?) but commercials and news and Nielsen ratings own what we each think everybody else is doing/watching/considering at any given moment.
-----The reason a tv blaring in the background helps you not feel lonely is not just because of the voices and music snipets. It gives you a distinct sense that this is what everyone (the tribe) is doing right now. That's why finding your favorite song on the radio is so much more fun than just popping in the CD... because you know it is being shared.
-----I can see where the other reviewers are coming from as far as his zig-zag method of discussing topics. I had to almost chuckle at one part where he compares so many things (I think it was Harry Potter to "Where the Wild Things Are" among other things) and filled it with so many amendments (this is just like this except this is this, and substitute a sense of this for a sense of this), that in no time there is little difference between "Apocalypse Now" and a bottle of windex in my garage. 4 out of 5 stars, man I'm mean.
-----That being said, I think the style is supposed to ride the same frenetic energy as all the media outlets out there now (TV, movies, internet, games etc). Also, I understand he was/is a columnist and as such the book has a less formal, less term paper feel and a much more conversational feel. I personally like it. Its like sipping a little too much coffee with a friend and consequently the spirited conversation gets just a little wacko.
-----I almost forgot. A if not THE major thrust of the book is not just what hold the media has over you, but the rather new, strange sense of entitlement people have regarding current events as they happen. It's as if a generation or 2 have been raised that have gotten over the "wow" factor of television. No longer impressed by anything moving on the screen, most of us have a sense now that commercials as well as their shows are trying for, aspiring toward our approval and/or money. As such we are each passive (observers) and active (passing judgement). (Even these very reviews are a way of joe-average getting to comment and pass judgement on a high quality, compelling book that somebody else had to bust their hump to produce.)
-----Maybe back in black-and-white-tv days there was an idea that the content of television would demonstrate our nobility as a country, as a society or for our era as proud, serious men in ties tried to speak as if they were etching stone tablets in the annals of time. But, in this present postmodern era this new generation I'm describing already know that television (a.k.a. the tribal watering-hole) isn't really about anything more than wanting to be accepted by the viewers so that "Will and Grace" can have a 7th season and Michelin can sell tires.
-----We no longer get a sense of community from the news (etching the annals of time) because as viewers, we detect the news-show itself more than its content. The news reports on reality and none of us are reporters. Plus bad news stories piled on bad news stories that are much worse than anything that has ever happened to you leaves you no hook on which to hang your identification.
-----We do get a sense of community from sitcoms because they are about "real" things like dating, going to the health club, getting or losing a job, getting coffee with friends and zinging your buddy with a one-liner etc. Plus they are funny and people like to be funny when retelling their favorite parts of the sitcom to others. THAT gives a sense of community.
And then at the end of the day the news finds what is worth reporting about people who went about their daily "real" lives anyway, doesn't it? Whether politicians, soldiers or people in terrible accidents... they were all on their way home to have a beer with friends or go home to their families, right?
-----Its a weird self-referring loop that: "Around and around it goes, where it stops? ..."
It doesn't stop. No one even understands what "it" is. And it changes every few years.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg.
Big fun topic.
Little fun book.
Go.
Read.

Having just finished reading this book, I am about to do something I have never done with any other - immediately start reading it again. After what is at heart a pessimistic and rather fatalistic vision of our present and future, I feel strangely uplifted and inspired. Maybe, as other reviewers have mentioned, it is the feeling that a crucial truth is being unmasked about the direction man, and the West in particular, is heading. He makes a persuasive case for why people want what they want and why cultural and media organisations respond to us in the way they do. Perhaps it is the rare exhilaration of reading something that feels like agenda-free speech, someone seeking only to find a pattern in it all. Or maybe it is the excitement of receiving an authoritative perspective it is hard to challenge. The writer uses history and philosophy to support highly sensitive powers of observation about the present. He clearly enjoys people's strengths and their foibles but fears for us. He would be the first to admit he is not a god, but it feels very important to listen to what he's saying.

With a degree in anthropology, Dr. De Zengotita sees into our world with an incitefulness that most of us lack. He looks at our present lives and sees things that most of us miss. And in this book he is looking at the impact of the media (mostly television) on our society and that of the world. And to a surprising extent, the impact of the media controlls the world.

The media controls what we see. For instance the United States media talks about each American soldier killed in Iraq. Yes, that's a tragedy. But what about the 125 people a day dying in automobile accidents in the US alone. What about the almost 3,000 people a day who die from AIDS. They aren't news.

I live in a small town; far, far away from the centers of power, of media. I'd kind of like to know what's going on in the world, not have some puffy haired guy talk to me endlessly about a rock star on trial, or a right to die case. But of these things we have no power. We listen to what the media wants to tell us.

A great book that talks about the changes that TY and the Net have brought to us.

De Zengotita's central tenet in "Mediated" is that images and forms the media produce serve primarily to cater to our self-centered nature, here called the "flattered self." These feed the meaningless, amorphous "blob" of postmodern consumer culture, which serves no purpose in society. As the media becomes more fractured and prevalent, messages and truths become essentially meaningless. One problem with his "blob" concept stems from its primary characteristic: amorphousness. It flexes to encompass all of De Zengotita's ideas. Ironically, in doing so, the concept of the blob diminishes the bite of his arguments, allowing him leeway to wiggle out of more detailed descriptions of his theories.

He posits that the new power afforded to individuals alters various aspects of our lives, including puberty, politics, and entertainment. People no longer are able to "fill in the blanks" in the lives of their heroes, so heroes naturally become more local and less monolithic. Individuals are afforded god-like modes of power, making the "extraordinary" commonplace. The increased rate and type of interactions become overwhelming to individuals, who find themselves unable to process or deal with them. In reality, I would say this is a straw man argument; people rarely feel overwhelmed by information. What is not useful or required passed quickly through, not remembered and not harmful.

Like many scholars of a certain age, De Zengotita's is pessimistic about the possibilities of media. One of his many suggestions is that a music concerts now "provide fans with the only experiences of transcendent social belonging most of them will ever know" (given that they are not religious and not "joiners"). It's a provocative statement - but would he recognize such an event if it he found it? I believe he would be less likely to recognize such an event than other scholars who gives new forms of mass self-expression more credence. On other fronts, he is more convincing - take for instance his examples of interactions between "real" versus artificial through the complex interactions between audience and players in reality television, or the public revelation and cleansing of talk shows.

The "flattered self" and "meworld" cannot fully explain the multitude of interactions and motives encountered in modern life. It's a difficulty we encounter since the rise of mass media, where the media are inexorable from its audience and participants. On the dust jacket, Norman Mailer praises the book, saying "there are anywhere from three to ten stimulating ideas on each page." Indeed, De Zengotita's ideas are poignant, and excuse his occasional overreaching or unconvincing example. (still, using one's own children is an example of the latter... "weak tea" as a professor of mine frequently said)

The idea of the "flattered self" is an entirely appropriate metaphor for the current age. This basic concept is primarily what makes this book a provocative read. At one point, this was its title. If this remained as the title, the focus refined, and its arguments condensed, "Mediated" would be a true classic. Unfortunately, it's not quite at the level of Neil Postman, although one can detect a few strokes of his felt-tipped pen in De Zengotita's carefully considered arguments.

It would seem there's nothing new to say about media - but editor and author Thomas de Zengotita finds much more to talk about in his Mediated: How The Media Shapes Your World And The Way You Live In It. Chapters examine media representations of options, people's lives, events, and social issues with an eye to considering how media changes self-consciousness itself, inviting viewers to transform their lives into performance pieces. An intriguing survey adds much new material to the already extensive publications on media and society.