The Revolution Will Be Televised

By Rick Belbutoski

This week isn’t about pop culture analysis, but rather a focus on the role that media plays in shaping the way its consumers perceive some of the grandest events of their lives. Thanks to Joey Parrish’s conversation with Professor John Glen, we here at Media Matters were able to pay tribute to the holiday we marked last Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The late 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s were times when television news broadcasting was in its infancy. Professor Glen spoke to how the young generation of baby boomers understood how to use television to their advantage, often flooding the airwaves with images of peaceful protests being met with harsh backlash.

 

Going forward here, I will explore the effects of media in this time period as well draw on how technology has changed the way we relate to the world today. I’ll be doing this by using three other historical events as examples: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, America landing men on the moon, and the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam in comparison with our involvement in the war in Iraq.

In 1960 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected our nation’s president by the narrowest margin ever at that time. Our country’s first Catholic president faced major challenges early in his term. A failed attempt to invade Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The communist governments of the former Soviet Union and Cuba joined forces, moving Soviet weaponry in range of American targets. Arguably one of the tensest times of the Cold War era, this thirteen day standoff in October of 1962 could have meant the end of our country as we knew it. Less than a year later, President Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, Texas while riding in his limousine. He was assassinated before a live television audience; his death conformed by a television news media that was more concerned about journalistic ethics than market share and spectacle.

In his Inauguration Speech in 1961, President Kennedy called the United States to go to the moon. The Soviet Union had succeeded in putting the first men into orbit in 1959, and after Kennedy’s call to action, a new kind of American cowboy began exploring a new kind of frontier. Though some are reluctant to believe that the United States ever landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, this event was broadcast to a world watching in silence as man accomplished what was thought to be impossible.

While the world was busy watching men land on the moon for the first time, the United States was involved in a war that disturbed the majority of the nation. Television coverage of the war in the late 1960s and early ’70s as well as images of anti-war protests lead to a remarkable shift in the nation’s feelings about our role in Vietnam. A Gallup poll taken in late August of 1965 reported that 60% of Americans felt that sending to troops to Vietnam was a good decision. By May of 1971 Gallup reported that only 28% of Americans agreed with the war.

While Vietnam coverage exposed harsh realities, Iraq war coverage seemed to play more like sensationalist spectacle. 

Media plays a major role in how we relate to the world around us. In cataclysmic events, such as these, media brings these events into our living rooms. On Saturday’s radio show on 91.3 WCRD: The Pulse of Ball State, we used these historic events as examples to illustrate the importance of vigilantly seeking information in a world that is now more heavily mediated than ever before.

Tune in this Saturday at 11 a.m. on 91.3 FM for another edition of Media Matters: The Public Screen.

New Year's Resolutions in a Hi-Res Age

  

By Sam Watermeier

In this season of new resolutions, advertisements for the weight loss-boosting cereal Special K are everywhere, all of which enticingly ask, “What will you gain when you lose?” Over the past year of losing weight, I have gained an unsettling awareness of our culture’s obsession with physical appearance — an obsession that seems to have reached an all-time public high. 

When I turn on the TV or open a magazine, I feel inundated with photos and tales of physical transformation.

In the fall of 2011, I decided to transform my appearance as well. I was simply tired of being a chubby guy. I felt like a thin person trapped in a big body, which seems to be the media’s view of anyone who is overweight. Like any ambitious American, I wanted to shed my shell as quickly as possible.

The regime that followed was essentially glorified torture. For several months, I ate and exercised as respectively little and much as possible. My daily meals consisted of the following: a Slim Fast shake in the morning, a Special K cereal bar for lunch, a salad for dinner and coffee throughout the day to boost my energy. I jogged on the treadmill for at least an hour every day, usually burning between 500 and 700 calories (about half of what I was eating.)

Between late November and February, I lost about 50 pounds (more than I should have, according to my doctor.) At a certain point, I didn’t feel hunger anymore. I fed on reactions to my new appearance.

Herein lies the dangerous appeal of Facebook or any social media — its ability to evoke almost instant validation. When friends liked my new profile pictures and commented on my appearance, I felt absolute satisfaction. Only later did I realize how shallow and artificial that satisfaction was.

Most of the “likes” I received were from people I barely knew. Why did so much of my happiness depend upon their virtual validation?

When you turn on the TV, you are bound to find plenty of strangers telling you that you will be a better, happier person if you are thin. (This is also suggested by the countless “happy hand on hip” profile pictures online). In my view, we live in an aesthetic-driven age in which our external condition — and society’s view of it — determine our internal state rather than the other way around. Is that because society is becoming more two-dimensional, as people are engaging more with cyberspace than the world outside it? Like The Film Yap’s Nick Rogers wrote in his review of “The Social Network,” we have all been in computer whiz Mark Zuckerberg’s position at the end of that film, refreshing our Facebook pages, “awaiting digital confirmation of our flesh-and-blood worth.”

Social media offers an illusion of intimacy, a chance for people to acknowledge each other’s appearances more comfortably and discreetly.

Of course, the emphasis on physicality over personality was apparent long before the advent of profile pages. The media seems to always largely focus on what is tangible, visible, marketable. (Weight loss programs are arguably easier to “sell” than treatments for depression.) News and social media focuses on issues we can see — and sensationalize.

In that sense, our culture has scratched only the surface of human potential. Hopefully we can dig deeper, look into less visible problems, reach for less tangible goals — food for thought as we chase our resolutions this month. 

This Saturday, from 11 to noon on 91.3 WCRD, you can hear more of Media Matters' thoughts on this topic.