Charlatan

So assuming that popular media is not going to just up and vanish... isn't is relatively safe to argue that the best thing that could happen for the media is diversification rather than consolidation?

The more niche the programming, content, whatever becomes, the more chance there is that ALL (or nearly all) points of view will be captured?

There is no escaping the beast to be sure but at least it should speak to me and my experiences when it wants my attention...

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ARTelevision

perhaps, but perhaps not.
without a sense of shared commonality, I think we're sunk.
excessive diversification of sources can lead to the kind of narrrowcasting that makes for increasingly narrow minds.

I think we either develop a greater ability than we display today to comprehend worldviews other than our own or...else, basically.

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Charlatan

I agree with that, Art.

It is interesting. For all the divisiveness that gets written about here, I think America is probably one of the most successful nations at building a common history and mythos. Considering it was virtually created from scratch a few hundred years ago, makes it all the more powerful.

There does seem to be a big disconnect between current day world views, however and I agree that greater understanding and tolerance is required on all sides. Orthodoxy from any point of view is a negative.

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flstf

I think you are on the right track in regard to media influence. I also think that people in urban areas are exposed to others of different cultures and beliefs from them and are therefore more accepting of peoples differences than rural folks. But I think that will change, or I hope it will. With satellite communication etc.. they have much of the same media exposure as the cities. Where I live we get 100+ channels on TV and high speed internet via satellite.

I have made several cross country trips on my Harley mostly avoiding the main freeways in order to visit the small towns and try to get a feel for the local areas. It is getting harder and harder to find small towns that are unique anymore. As soon as the Walmart, McDonalds, etc... go up, many of the mom and pop stores and restaurants on main street are forced to shut down. You might as well be in a suberb of LA, LOL. The people there are still close to the earth but their living experience is becomming not much different.

Many of the complaints I have heard about city folks is that as soon as they start moving in they try to zone against things like smelly livestock and gun clubs, etc.. Also people sense that some of their traditions like Christmas displays downtown are under attack. Political correctness is almost a curse word. I don't think the rural areas will ever become totally urbanized but I hope eventually they will become more lenient when it comes to social issues and still stay fiscally conservative. The best of both worlds.

Manx

flstf -

I agree that exposure to different cultures is a crucial aspect of why urban populations are different than rural/suburban populations. In fact, I would say it is that distinction much more so than media that controls the disparity in culture between the two general types of population in this country. Media is but a reflection, twisted, sanitized, amplified - but still nothing more than a reflection.

One could even say that this twisted, sanitized, amplified reflection of urban culture being presented to the rural/suburban population is prompting that population to push back with greater urgency. But the underlying difference remains the exposure to multiple viewpoints and how this exposure contributes to a higher degree of acceptance for any alternative viewpoints.

ARTelevision

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps a sense of exposure and sophistication overrides a higher degree of acceptance.

Personally, I'm not accepting an answer or a solution at this point. This seems to be similar to fish discussing the attributes of the only water they have ever known.

Without more substantial analysis and reflection upon what exactly constitutes the nature of our mediated experience and its effects upon us, I'm content to pose the problem and even it's potential insolubility. Perhaps we can overcome this. Perhaps we can not.

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Manx

I wouldn't say so. We're discussing American culture, not World culture. A major portion of the varied cultures found in urban centers is the higher degree of immigrants, less inebriated and generationally programmed by the American media. It is this exposure (among others), lacking in rural communities, which increases acceptance. That it is lacking in rural communities is likely to be a large portion of the disparity of understanding between urban and rural society. Urban environments are more accepting. Rural environments are not.

You can test this by donning a clown wig, singing showtunes and walking through SoHo in NY. Maybe you'll get a few looks. Try it in a small town and most people will wonder what's wrong with you.

ARTelevision

Sorry, but I don't buy any of that.
I will continue thinking about the nature of the problem and not accepting quick explanations. I think it is far deeper than that and deserves far more complex and balanced explanations. The essential axiom in cultural analysis is non-judgmentalism.

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roachboy

art--you assume that television occupies the same kind of relation to how people construct their views of the world in urban and suburban/rural spaces--i do not think that is the case--television does not float above other patterns of sociability--it is used in terms set by those patterns.

i think you have basically different patterns in these spaces.

nor do i find that people in the city tend to see their views doubled in those of tv--no-one i know watches tv for information about the world--they check in with it to see what the american ideological apparatus is making of them--but they do not rely on it.

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ARTelevision

Thanks roachboy, you cogent comments are always appreciated. As you know, I pursue this question in many ways and prefer to raise it without arriving at conclusions. I don't see anything even resembling a resolution to the dystopianism of our identity/relationship to contemporary media. It requires, after all, psychoanalyzing ourselves. And there are far more impediments to doing this successfully than there is any evidence we can do it at all - or at least to the degree that seems necessary to me.

This is one of the big questions that I am very comfortable in raising but not very comfortable at all in accepting answers.

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Manx

I'm not selling anything.

As I mentioned, it is my perception of a major portion of the cultural disparity - not a final or quick explanation. The overall proclamation I have made is that variation in environment promotes acceptance of that which is atypical or different. Monotony in environment promotes non-acceptance of that which diverges from the norm. I do not consider that to be either judgmental, imbalanced or simplified. It is but one of undoubtedly many differences between urban and rural culture, certainly not one to be considered irrelevant or taken lightly.

nofnway

How about the one map I can't find anywhere.....the one that shows the whole country in red and labeled as Bush Country and NOTHING labeled Kerry Country

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Ustwo

Laugh I'll remember that the city folk are so accepting the next time I walk through the projects.

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Manx

You want a match for that straw man?

Charlatan

Wow Art... I think that is the most optimistic I seen you in ages... Usually you are missing the first sentance altogether...

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- Old Man Luedecke

ARTelevision

heh heh - yeah - even some fish did evolve toward freeing themselves entirely from the bonds of their aquatic environment.

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roachboy

one interesting subplot in all this: connecting this status of the maps with the assumptions about documentary film that underpinned the recurrent f911 threads.

using conservative responses to moore's film as anecdotal evidence, i can say this: the folk who invest in that space seem to want to naturalize images that they are presented in the context of "informational" programming. they like to believe in "objectivity" and its correlate, that a camera would not distort what it filmed. that there are not problems with the relation of spectator to world, understood as accumulation of objects. it seems a kind of enforced naievte. total faith in genre rules--if it is "news" it must be presented as "objective"--the curious twist in this--and i think this particular feature is not specific to the right--is that what is understood as "objective" is that which correlates at the level of assumptions/framing gestures to the political predispositions one brings to watching in the first place. "objectivity" then is about the desire to have one's politics written into a logic of nature, to make them not problematic, to remove them from the space of argument.

if that is true, then the problem with the map conflict comes from the status imputed to the objects by viewers. i do not think that the folk who channel information into right media in particular are bound by the same relation to what is broadcast as those who consume it--for the former, images are images and can be manipulated--for the latter, images--presented in certain contexts, with the "correct" political assumptions built into it--are reflections of nature.

if this is accurate, then it means that the viewers in this ideological space are motivated at some level by anxiety and that the contents of this space function at some level as reassurance. if this is true, then the reassurance would tend to override or exclude a critical relation to images. which would mean that graphics like the maps slot straight in as enframing a vision of the "nation"--and that you would not expect a critical relation to that enframing to emerge from within this space.

this would in turn run into a space where competing maps--as reduced versions of cometing visions of "the nation"---juxtaposing them would not engender a meaningful debate about what is a stake across the question of maps as elements in an ideological campaign--instead you woudl get an exchange of defenses of the spaces within which the maps are situated, performed more or less automatically.



all this as a way of suggesting that this matter--what is going on with these graphics--can be framed in a way that does not require we try to take on the general question of television and its relation to patterns that shape its usage in spaces that you classify in extremely general terms.

i sometimes wonder about this in myself: the desire to be able to shift to an extremely high level of abstraction in analysis is a function of the desire to occupy a kind of super-spectator relation to the social processes in which one is, in fact, embedded. whether the same set of relations i outlined above inform everything about the relation of a Theorist to the objects theorized--in a direct or inverted way, it comes to the same thing.

just wondering.
but maybe it is the coffee i am drinking.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Nazggul

"The times they are a changin'" Well, not really. I found this map comparison very interesting.

http://www.selekta.com/map.jpg

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joeshoe

I like the maps with the different hues showing the party alignment. I feel those most accurately represent the population.

joemc91

Some interesting links about this.

<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/">Election results adjusted for population density</a>

<a href="http://java.yukstah.com/~joe/gsp.htm">I made this page myself. It's a ranking of state per capita gross state product (similar to GDP) according to data collected by the Minnesota department of commerce, ranked from highest to lowest. I just thought it was sort of interesting.</a>

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