Pastor’s Post #18: “UNDERSTANDING MEDIA” (05/06’17)
In 1985, Dr. Neil Postman, then Professor of Communications at New York University, fired a shot across the bows in what would soon become “The Media Wars”. His book, with the ominous title, Amusing Ourselves to Death, built on the earlier works of Marshall McLuhan, especially McLuhan’s most popular and well-known book, The Medium is the Massage- only half-wrongly called The Medium is the Message.
The burden of both McLuhan and Postman was to alert the public that media – the means by which we understand and interpret information – are not neutral. Our languages are our media, wrote Postman. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture. And, while one may respond that this is something of an overstatement, there could be no doubt that all media deeply affect the ways in which we think, the things that we value, and our ways of living in the world. Cultures built around the spoken word functioned communally. One thinks of tribal leaders, gurus, and respected teachers who, in their own settings, developed bodies of devoted followers. Radio – a medium primarily of the spoken word – united a nation at war in the 1940s. Cultures possessing the written word developed more or less learned individuals who thought freely and, too often, independently. The result has been cultures that are increasingly individualistic –with the positives and the negatives associated with that. All media gives. And all media takes away – as with any advancement in the progress of society.
But, with the rapid rise of television beginning in the late 1940s, our culture was more and more influenced by images and their distinctive power. Early warnings about the dangers of television dubbed the new technology a “plug-in drug.” Life began to revolved around a medium more designed for entertainment than for imparting information. And McLuhan and Postman warned of how that seemingly innocuous shift from one medium to the other would inevitably re-shape our way of viewing the world.
Postman drove home the point by comparing the two well-known dystopian novels of his day, George Orwell’s 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In his Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman summarized his case that, while both novels developed bleak pictures of potential future society, Brave New World (a world in which people were made complacent through a drug called soma) was closer to the kind of society formed by the entertaining power of images. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books, wrote Postman. What Huxley feared is that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance… In 1984 people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. Postman, writing in 1985, presented Amusing Ourselves to Death to make the case for the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Now, over thirty years later, more and more people believe that Postman was right.
And in those thirty-plus years, a whole new discipline of study has emerged (with Postman being its father): Media Ecology.
Ecology is our environment. And in the same way our physical environment affects us for better or for worse, so also does our media environment. And we do live in an environment increasingly filled with technological media: Televisions (including televisions in supermarket check-out lines, restaurants, fitness centers, and even at gas pumps), computers, tablets, hand-held devices – even billboards that now distractingly change every few seconds as roadside commercials. The medium of music that is now digitized, customized, and transmitted through the completely personal means of ear-buds and headphones. All of these are radically altering personal lives, social lives, and the culture that grows out of life as it interacts with (and is changed by) the media surrounding it.
Ask any teacher how cell phones have transformed classrooms and students.
Then ask if the transformation is for the better.
Christians are (or should be) particularly interested in media and media ecology. We are people of words – because God gave us words in the 66 books we call The Bible. But we are also people of The Word – Jesus Christ, who is the express image of God. People heard Him as He spoke words. But they also saw Him (although they did more than that – they could feel Him and they actually dwelt with Him). Word and image were brought together. How, as Christians, should we put these things together? How, in the 21st century, should we understand media? Should we fear our technological Brave New World? Should we just rejoice in it, accept it, and use its resources uncritically (as many churches are doing – with what seems to be great success)? Or should we face our technologically mediated culture so that we are not conformed to this age, but transformed by the renewing of our minds? That, of course, must be our response – because God calls us to that – in His word!
My guest today is Dr. Gregory Reynolds. Not only is he Pastor Greg – pastor of the Amoskeag Presbyterian Church (a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) in Manchester, NH, but he is also the author of The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures – the most comprehensive treatment of Media Ecology from the perspective of Reformed Christianity – Christianity that has its roots in the Calvinistic branch of the Protestant Reformation.
This topic is so important and its implications so vast, that we’ll be devoting two editions of A Visit to the Pastor’s Study to delve into it. This week we’ll consider the big picture: Understanding Media. For the next edition, we’ll draw out many of the practical lessons for Living Wisely in Our Mediated 21st Century World.
Dr. Reynolds (and Pastor Greg), welcome to A Visit to the Pastor’s Study…