Mr. Fish interviews Lewis Lapham

[n2doc]

snip:
Lapham: I think that what’s happened is that we have a new language. My answer comes out of Marshall McLuhan—McLuhan publishes “Understanding Media” in 1964 and makes the point that we shape our tools and our tools shape us and he sees the shift from print to the electronic media as a revolution in the settled political aesthetic order. Now his observations from 1964 have simply become more and more apparent and seemingly more prescient as time has gone by. He recognized that television is not a medium that lends itself to philosophy, literature or even straightforward narrative.

Fish: Nor does it provide a stopping point for contemplation, which is the only way of deepening their understanding of things.

Lapham: Right—with the electronic media there is no memory, it’s always the eternal present, which is constantly dissolving and contributing to a great social anxiety.

Fish: The electronic media has also forced people to become much more private and much less engaged in the community and, therefore, much less politically active. For example, consider the difference between Jon Stewart and somebody like Mort Sahl. Back in the early ’60s, if you wanted to see Mort Sahl you had to congregate with other people in a public space and that takes a certain amount of bravery because you’re visibly aligning yourself with a specific point of view. Not only that, whenever you congregate in a public space you’re making a statement—a political statement, even, given the stuff that Sahl was talking about—with your body and because there are other bodies then the statement is substantial because it is amassed. Conversely, when you watch Jon Stewart you are not in public, you’re in your house—you don’t even need to be wearing pants!—and your dissent is not amassed. You pose no threat to the dominant culture because all you’re doing is watching television. It’s the same thing as wearing a T-shirt from the Gap that has a peace sign on it and thinking that you’re part of the peace movement, even though you’ve done absolutely nothing of any real significance for the cause. In fact, you’ve just gone shopping and given money to a corporation that your peace sign speaks contrary to.

Lapham: And you lose democracy that way because democracy is face to face and it’s argument with people unlike yourself. Television keeps you inside your own set of circumstances where there’s no risk, and dissent is a habit of mind that withers unless you use it.


more
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/june_gloom_with_lewis_lapham_20110902/