Yes I'm the Girl Who Said the Teacher Would Never Know

Though I was the girl in class who said that her takeaway from the article was that the teacher would never know if we cheated, I legitimately participated in the media deprivation activity.

How I spent my media deprivation:
.5 hours—Reading Reader’s Digest
2 hours—talking to family
8 hours—sleeping
11 hours—at work: actually working, gossiping with co-worker, building a fire in a trash can
1 hour—driving with only the hum of the engine, the whir of the fan, and my loud off-key singing
1 hour—eating in silence while reading The Washington Post Magazine
.5 hours--making hand-written lists such as this one

I planned my media deprivation activity around my favorite media, having huge media binges before and after the 24 hour period. I would be lying if I did not speak of the inevitability of media in my daily life, however. During the 24 hour period, I did use media in specific situations at my work. I answered the company phone 5 times—answering questions about merchandise and hours. I also used the computer’s point of sale software 7 times. E-media has become so engrained in our society that to refuse to use it is to refuse to do even the least media-related jobs.

When I was thinking I might try to write about the activity without actually doing it, I imagined that I would be totally miserable without media. I thought I would be like the student in Danna Walker’s class who felt “homeless”. I knew that my family would not be supportive (and they weren’t) because they are as dependent as I am. I thought that life without media would be void of joy, too quiet and too boring.

In actuality, when I was depriving myself of media, I was not too terribly bored. Though I did crave media, I had lots of time to be alone with my thoughts. I felt more together and more creative for the few hours I unplugged myself. If only I had the willpower to deprive myself more often.

An all-around smarter guy

There is an inherent catch-22 in the debate over word or image-based communications. Never has it been so obvious as in “Two Cultures” in which the individual who favored book learning came across as much more intelligent and eloquent (on paper) than the woman who set out to defend the television. Coincidence? I think not.

One of the major issues of the article is the question of whether or not images eliminate sacredness. This question is similar to Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of aura. Indeed, Postman cites the Hebrew National commercials that use God and Uncle Sam to sell hot dogs. He argues that images have a symbolism and a seductiveness that make them much easier to be exploited than words, so they are overused and quickly lose their value. Paglia, on the other hand, says that images actually become more powerful the more frequently they are used. Although I think that Paglia is right about images’ symbolic meaning becoming more and more concrete with repetition, this watered-down meaning is really a far cry from its original complexities.

Clearly, Postman won the debate. Because he had been trained in the word with its solid histories of logic and values, he was able to communicate much more clearly (granted: in print). Postman supplied Paglia with words and presented a much smoother, more professional line of reasoning. Maybe that’s because of the medium used, but I think that it gets at something much deeper—the natural superiority of the written word.