The Gods are Inside and Out

James Hillman has said that psychopathology today is not just a problem of interior states, but rather that psyche lives inside and out:  Outside in the depressed buildings, the manic depressive commute, the schizophrenia of everyday life.  Psycho-pathologies show up not only in mind, but on the television, radio and cinema, in program, format and genre, in the characters and personalities who bring us entertainment--be it fact or fiction. 

In the lecture below, I want to pose a question to my students.  They are currently weaving their way through Freud and Jung and on their way to Lacan; their focus is media studies, and Hillman notes, time and again, that the psyche, ill or healthy (for buildings can be grand, driving a pleasure, and everyday life a joy) lives in both the form and the content of texts.  So whether we are interested in mass mediation, micromediation, or, for that matter, interpersonal mediation, we need to know mythologies we live.  

In fact, we started this class studying semiotics, and in a common way, we started in the middle of a course.  Because semiotics seeks to uncover myths, but what myths can you uncover if you don't know the myths we live?  Life is often like that.... Isn't it?

Watch Hillman, who many consider Jung and Campbell's heir apparent, speak about the gods. My question is this:  What does he mean when he mentions the politicians and the journalists?  What recognition is it that brings the audience to applause?  To answer this question you really need watch only part one, but parts two and three are equally engaging (Of course, some of you will find this totally boring.  If that's the case, hang in there. One day you will be a journalist, or politician, or, in some way The Media itself:  It's good to know what power you truly have).

http://youtu.be/iFkkQ9eq8qw

Dreams as hyper-link

Richard Dawkins revolutionized evolutionary theory by shifting the "survival of the fittest" from organisms to DNA. This strikes me as one of may "postmodern turns." Vannevar Bush, hypertext, the hyperlink, depth at the surface: These people and ideas, appearing along with Einstein, Picasso and Darpa, move communication theory from the interpersonal to the wired, molecular, interconnected, and transparent.While my analogy may be wrong, the impression I hope to make is not. Psychoanalysis, especially in the age of Lacan, is still relevant for the study of cinema.

Perhaps a movie like Paprika makes the same move, from organism to DNA, from dream as personal or collective unconscious to dream as intercommunication with the Real, Imaginary and Symbolic, in its representation of the psychoanalysis of dreams.

 I'm a fan of James Hillman.  His view of the psyche as external (as well as internal), or better, as a semiotic "third text," an intersection of the real and the ideal (like the signifier and signified) expressed in the Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World (another must read), supports my hypothesis.

This movie falls into my "must watch" animation file. It's an example of being able to express ideas because animation allows for expression generally too expensive for live action (one dimension of anime's genius, if I may personify, is its ability to express perception not in spite of, but because of the relative lack of industry funding.

For our class, COMM 403 MEDIA STUDIES, please read the review in the Mechadamia book series (which I highly recommend reading).

http://books.google.com/books?id=Wef0-7tdw2sC&lpg=PA326&ots=5DPcNXcMDk&dq=psychoanalysis%20anime%20paprika&pg=PA326#v=onepage&q&f=false

Is the unconscious, positing only its existence, personal (Freud), collective (Jung), linguistic (Lacan), and/or intercommunication (Paprika)?
k

IQ - EQ - Empathy - Listening

Our communication program at the local university has taught a class called "speech" for many years.  Some programs have taken one section of this class and made it a class unto itself.  That topic is "listening."  We're already pretty good at talking, writing, texting, expressing, and so on.  However, when we measure listening, reading, viewing, we see often that comprehension does not equal expectation.

People blame this on many things, I think "time anxiety" is a major factor.  Indeed, I lecture quite a bit about time--in cinema, television, video, music, radio--and the ways we live time (which is not the same thing as so-called "real" time.  We live more of a "reel" time.

Daniel Goleman always captivates me.  His book on EQ is, in my humble opinion (OK, so I'm not all that humble), a must-read for the college educated body.

See how much of this applies to you (in the following video).  Then, read, view, the blog below this one and see what connections can be drawn.

Are you Experienced?

How connected is connected? How interdependent is interdependent?  When does interdependence become dependence? What? Here...

Tiffany Shlain has made a new documentary on the (un)wired world.  Are you so connected that you've become disconnected?

Narrative and Music Video

Every once and awhile I post a blog because the data it contains might be useful later.  Here's a traditional narrative analysis, a la Todorov, using a Lady GaGa music video.
http://jsilverlake.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/researching-the-narritive-ways-of-todorov-and-propp/

COMM 203 This is a Test

1. Get your reader's attention
2. State your thesis, organizing idea, or main point of the blog
3. Substantiate your idea
4.Be sure to use multimedia and embed pictures, sounds and movies
5. Leave a lasting impression

TV as Tele-Vision

My first meditation of the year.  Here is a great example of what TV can do.  TV can allow people to tell their stories. This is a tele-vision, a vision of something broadcast over a distance, thus, a shrinking of that distance.  These stories make a difference.  When we look at world disasters, natural or man-made, we find that assistance (at least mass assistance) is given to those people and places from which we see compelling stories.  The stories, and the images, compel us to action:  Or do they?  When we see disaster after disaster, do we become numb, do we feel overloaded, overwhelmed? Worse, has TV become such a "merely" entertainment matter that it's an entertainment only venue (the TV is, I like to say, and I think I do so in the words of Tania Modleski, that TV is really a domestic appliance, and thus not much like cinema at all).  If so, can we find it in us to select a mission (even one phenomenon, such as the abuse of women in Afganistan) for us to do something about?  Our model of media criticism, at it's most simple, is observe, analyze and act.  What will you do?