I closed last Monday's media literacy blog – "The Wizard's Toolbox" – with the argument that journalism, and all media, is practiced exactly the way people want. That is because people, not the media, created the Wizard's tools, the values and definitions that media professionals use to provide the public with news and entertainment. The mass media, created with the arrival of the Gutenberg press, simply took those values and definitions and turned them into a business.
If you want to verify this independently, close your computer right now and do not consume any media for one week. No news, no entertainment, no newspapers, no television, no movies, no magazines, no books, no radio, no recordings, no Internet, no advertising, including billboards.
When you have separated yourself from media, you will be living exactly as people did before media, before Gutenberg, going back to the beginning of humanity. Just as those pre-media people did, you will still react to the immediate world around you, using the same code with which you respond to media, a "reaction package" created from the basic Wizard's tools: conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism, and curiosity, plus the "definition of news:" anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.
Where did this reaction package originate? How did it arrive on the planet? Let's go back to "The Dawn of Man," the title that Stanley Kubrick provided for the famous opening scene of his 1969 movie, "2001 – A Space Odyssey." That scene could just as easily be titled, "The Dawn of Media," as it unfolds before us on YouTube.
(Note: the link doesn't show the entire sequence; for the completion of the sequence, click here. The musical score accompanying this section was discarded, happily, before the movie's release.)
That planet was inhabited by primitive humans, still ape-like, in Kubrick’s vision, who lived in groups of 20 or so in forbidding terrain. Watch them, for evidence of the code emerging as they reacted to their world. Conflict surrounded them: the heat of day, the dark of night, the growl of big cats in the darkness, the search for food, the conflict for water, animals competing for the food. Disaster struck suddenly, sensationally: a cat springing from a ledge, bringing a human down, and death was the consequence. The people were never free of the threat to the status quo. They huddled in terror under rock overhangs in the darkness, listening to the cries of the cats.
They knew about prominence. Each group followed a leader who emerged naturally as the one in the group who had the respect of the others in part because of strength and size – usually but not always the largest – and because of his quality of dominance, but mostly because he seemed to know things. He seemed to want to know things, in ways the other people didn’t. He knew where food and water and dangers were and he knew the land and the sky. People in the group felt an urge to keep him in sight. He acquired prominence.
People in the groups all looked alike and behaved alike and yet they knew they belonged to their group. They recognized each other and would only mate with each other and natural bonding between parents and offspring enforced the sense of belonging. They were bound demographically, and felt a comfort in their physical and emotional proximity. In any group there were young children, young adults and adults, the total number varying from 20 to 30 depending on illness, accidents and predators. No one starved. They shared a strong human interest. Food was shared even with the weakest who could not gather it themselves. Their food was berries and grasses and bark and insects found in the ground. The best was saved for the leader because the people knew how important he was to them.
When two groups came close together there was conflict. Mostly it was food or water that brought them into the same place. Groups facing each other across a favorite watering place sought to establish priority by screaming, gesturing, foot-stamping and charging. There were rocks all around their feet but it never occurred to them to pick up a rock and throw it. Usually it was the leader’s display dominance that settled the issue and determined which group would drink first.
Then something happened. A leader scratching for food beneath a mound of animal bones picked up a bone shaft, a femur, to move it, but it tapped the ground and small fragments flew up. The leader, curiously, tapped again. Bones flew. Again, harder, and harder, and bones broke, a skull shattered, and in the leader’s brain, a connection was made. Something had changed. Now we saw a tapir fall, killed by the bone weapon, who no longer would be a competitor for the food, and that was progress.
Then, in a transfixing moment, the tapir became food. At the end of his bone club, the leader saw a red color. He became aware of a scent that moved him in a new and powerful way and brought him back to the tapir. He saw the same red color on the tapir’s battered skull, and it gave the same scent. He touched the red with his fingers. He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Deep inside him an instinct awoke and instantly was very strong. He licked at the red and inside his throat gathered a growl that grew into a roar of discovery. He knelt and lifted the tapir’s head. This took great courage. With equal care and helplessness, he sank his teeth deliberately into the flesh. Then he gently pulled, and the flesh came away. Then he chewed, and then swallowed, and a novel new circuit in humankind was closed.
It was not many generations before all the groups knew what the leader had discovered that day and after a thousand years the overall population of the people on the coastal plain had quadrupled because of the new and abundant food supply that could be killed with a bone club. And at the watering places the rock had become a weapon in the group confrontations. It was a new and violent life among the people but by then no one remembered the old ways. Irrevocable changes had occurred.
At that point, Kubrick had his ape-man throw the bone club into the air and fast-forwarded a few hundred thousand years, where the reaction package remains intact, but life is not so intense, as you will discover in your week of media deprivation. In fact life in the civilized 21st century can be totally boring, day in and day out, which is why you will yearn for more action. Your reaction package cries for it. That is why, after Gutenberg, and the introduction of the media and shared media codes, for humans, there was no turning back. They discovered they didn't need to witness a sensational conflict; it could be imported to them, from far away.
May 18, 2009
May 17, 2009
May 16, 2009
The heroine in "Madama Butterfly"
I keep going to the opera, I keep running into world-class heroines.
Three years ago (well, how many operas have YOU been to in the last three years?), it was the Queen of the Night, in "The Magic Flute." The heroine wasn't the Queen of the Night, it was Cheryl Evans, who sang the Queen's role. I was damned impressed – floored, actually – and I blogged about it:
"Both of the night’s big moments belonged to the Queen of the Night. First, she floated earthward from the loft in a huge cradle of crescent moon and cascading bows of purple gossamer (color of eggplant, I thought), like a brooch you would see Zandra Rhodes wearing on an airplane.
"Later, she sang an aria into which Mozart had inserted a lightning series of notes placed sort of like tiny footstep leaps of faith across a yawning void. Hit them all, he is saying, live to sing another day. Miss just one, just slightly, and down you go, into the void, falling until the end of time. She hit them all. I don’t know how. Imagine a hockey goalie, stopping eight shots in three seconds, left, right, up, down, middle. And then doing it again, a couple of minutes later. At the end, she got the night’s loudest ovation."
Cheryl Evans read it and sent me a nice email. She is a Pittsburgh native and enjoyed being compared to a hockey goalie but really wanted to be compared to Pittsburgh hockey legend Mario Lemieux. She also said she was a big fan of the Steelers' Troy Polamalu, which made sense. He plays strong safety the way she sings Mozart.
This time – last night, in fact – it was "Madama Butterfly." The heroine wasn't Madama Butterfly, though she did leach out the total of my paternal instinct. The heroine was Patricia Racette, who sang and performed the Butterfly role. This opera was two hours and twenty-five minutes long, in TWO ACTS. The first act was an hour, then a divine intermission. The official program showed Act Two and Act Three coming after intermission, but that was propaganda. There was no break in the action until the final curtain. Opera aficionados talk about the demands "Madama Butterfly" makes on an audience, and the audience is SITTING DOWN.
Patricia Racette NEVER sat down. In the 2:25, she was offstage for about two minutes. The rest of the time she was singing, not like you or I would sing, but in a voice of beauty and power that causes critics to pull out all the superlative stops. She was also a hell of an actress. Anybody who can sing for 2:23 straight, and act, too, is not an opera star, she's a world-class athlete. I was thinking, during a slow part early on, about all the stories in the theater, the 3,000 in the audience, each with a story being lived in real time that perhaps included, at that moment, individual commitment associated with being at an opera. Not all the good stories, I gravely intuited, were onstage.
But Patricia Racette kept singing, and in time she eroded that point of view. There was no other individual story of commitment in the room to compare to hers. At the end – and I must say the finale, in this San Diego Opera production, is stunning – she has stabbed herself and is sprawled on the stage, dying. The boor Pinkerton appears, kneels next to her, takes her hand, tugs so her shoulder rises and her lifeless head lolls. At the last note, he lets go, she slumps heavily to the boards. After what she has been through, it is the night's easiest bit of acting for Patricia Racette. The personal stories reverse. The scene blasts away the audience's fatigue, which rises, recharged, while on the stage the heroine has time for a relaxed inhalation or two before receiving our applause. We should applaud for two hours, but we can't.
Three years ago (well, how many operas have YOU been to in the last three years?), it was the Queen of the Night, in "The Magic Flute." The heroine wasn't the Queen of the Night, it was Cheryl Evans, who sang the Queen's role. I was damned impressed – floored, actually – and I blogged about it:
"Both of the night’s big moments belonged to the Queen of the Night. First, she floated earthward from the loft in a huge cradle of crescent moon and cascading bows of purple gossamer (color of eggplant, I thought), like a brooch you would see Zandra Rhodes wearing on an airplane.
"Later, she sang an aria into which Mozart had inserted a lightning series of notes placed sort of like tiny footstep leaps of faith across a yawning void. Hit them all, he is saying, live to sing another day. Miss just one, just slightly, and down you go, into the void, falling until the end of time. She hit them all. I don’t know how. Imagine a hockey goalie, stopping eight shots in three seconds, left, right, up, down, middle. And then doing it again, a couple of minutes later. At the end, she got the night’s loudest ovation."
Cheryl Evans read it and sent me a nice email. She is a Pittsburgh native and enjoyed being compared to a hockey goalie but really wanted to be compared to Pittsburgh hockey legend Mario Lemieux. She also said she was a big fan of the Steelers' Troy Polamalu, which made sense. He plays strong safety the way she sings Mozart.
This time – last night, in fact – it was "Madama Butterfly." The heroine wasn't Madama Butterfly, though she did leach out the total of my paternal instinct. The heroine was Patricia Racette, who sang and performed the Butterfly role. This opera was two hours and twenty-five minutes long, in TWO ACTS. The first act was an hour, then a divine intermission. The official program showed Act Two and Act Three coming after intermission, but that was propaganda. There was no break in the action until the final curtain. Opera aficionados talk about the demands "Madama Butterfly" makes on an audience, and the audience is SITTING DOWN.
Patricia Racette NEVER sat down. In the 2:25, she was offstage for about two minutes. The rest of the time she was singing, not like you or I would sing, but in a voice of beauty and power that causes critics to pull out all the superlative stops. She was also a hell of an actress. Anybody who can sing for 2:23 straight, and act, too, is not an opera star, she's a world-class athlete. I was thinking, during a slow part early on, about all the stories in the theater, the 3,000 in the audience, each with a story being lived in real time that perhaps included, at that moment, individual commitment associated with being at an opera. Not all the good stories, I gravely intuited, were onstage.
But Patricia Racette kept singing, and in time she eroded that point of view. There was no other individual story of commitment in the room to compare to hers. At the end – and I must say the finale, in this San Diego Opera production, is stunning – she has stabbed herself and is sprawled on the stage, dying. The boor Pinkerton appears, kneels next to her, takes her hand, tugs so her shoulder rises and her lifeless head lolls. At the last note, he lets go, she slumps heavily to the boards. After what she has been through, it is the night's easiest bit of acting for Patricia Racette. The personal stories reverse. The scene blasts away the audience's fatigue, which rises, recharged, while on the stage the heroine has time for a relaxed inhalation or two before receiving our applause. We should applaud for two hours, but we can't.
May 15, 2009
Archives: A reminiscence from the 56th grade, June, 2006
Can animals talk?
Sure they can. The most famous talking animal in the world reigns over an international entertainment empire worth billions. He dresses up and strolls the grounds of his entertainment fantasylands from California to France and we happily pay $65 (last time I checked) a head, including kiddies, so the kiddies can find him and run up to him and tell him all their secrets while the parents stand to one side and smile as happily as if their children were talking to the President of the United States. We even try to get a word in edgewise, and at the end we always say, “Thanks, Mickey.”
Believe in talking animals? I cried watching “The Lion King.” People buy insurance from a company whose spokesman is a gecko. But my favorite talking animal is – still is – Hobbes, the charming, witty, erudite tiger in the old comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”
And it is Hobbes who tells the secret of our affection, and our need, for talking animals. Hobbes, of course, is Calvin’s sidekick. Calvin is about seven years old and lives almost every moment of his life outside the box, in his imagination. It is in our imagination that animals can talk. Calvin and Hobbes can be having the grandest time, and then one of Calvin’s parents comes into the room. When the parent is there, Hobbes is a stuffed animal propped up against a chair. The parent at that moment is inside the box, and Hobbes can only live where imagination lives.
Imagination is so important to us all. Inside a box is no way at all to live. All you can see are the insides of the box. I was in the 32nd grade when I learned I was in the 32nd grade. An adult is living way too boxy a life when he doesn’t know what grade he is in. Wouldn’t you know, the day I learned that I was in 32nd grade (gosh, that was 25 years ago) was a day I was at Disneyland. We were standing in Main Street, looking up the street at the Fantasyland castle. I had seen the castle before, on earlier Disneyland days, and I was sure its spires soared with all the majesty of the finest castles of Europe and other romantic lands.
But this day, workmen were sprucing up the castle with new paint and other maintenance, and they had scaffolding up. I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and looking at it now, it looked like a grid of known dimensions overlaid on Snow White’s castle.
And the castle was incredibly small. The grid to me represented a known box – data – and inside the box, the soaring castle was no bigger than a two-story house.
In that instant, I learned something of vital importance that I had not known before, and in that same instant I realized that happened all the time. I had learned things that year that I did not know the year before, and I would learn things next year that I did not know now. I was, and ever would be, in a grade in school. That day at Disneyland, I figured out that I was in 32nd grade. Now I am in 56th. My God, I have learned a lot since then. Just last Sunday, I learned one of the most beautiful lessons of my life, and so now I know much more about love than I did in the first 55 grades.
What I learned at Disneyland, staring at the amazing shrunken castle, was the importance to me of imagination. I was six years old once and, like Calvin and Hobbes, lived life freely, every day, outside the box. Then I started to school, and I started acquiring data. It was data I had to have – two plus two and so forth – but it was also data that overlaid my imagination and started to contradict it.
Staring at the castle, I knew that I never wanted to lose that imagination. In that moment, I learned that the perfect life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the wisdom of a 65-year-old. At the time, I had to settle for keeping the imagination and my, what a difference that has made.
But I would have to wait to acquire the wisdom of a 65-year-old. Now, in 56th grade, I am drawing perilously close to that goal, but a goal it still is, which must be why I feel so damn happy this morning. Great God Almighty, I am outside the box.
Sure they can. The most famous talking animal in the world reigns over an international entertainment empire worth billions. He dresses up and strolls the grounds of his entertainment fantasylands from California to France and we happily pay $65 (last time I checked) a head, including kiddies, so the kiddies can find him and run up to him and tell him all their secrets while the parents stand to one side and smile as happily as if their children were talking to the President of the United States. We even try to get a word in edgewise, and at the end we always say, “Thanks, Mickey.”
Believe in talking animals? I cried watching “The Lion King.” People buy insurance from a company whose spokesman is a gecko. But my favorite talking animal is – still is – Hobbes, the charming, witty, erudite tiger in the old comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”
And it is Hobbes who tells the secret of our affection, and our need, for talking animals. Hobbes, of course, is Calvin’s sidekick. Calvin is about seven years old and lives almost every moment of his life outside the box, in his imagination. It is in our imagination that animals can talk. Calvin and Hobbes can be having the grandest time, and then one of Calvin’s parents comes into the room. When the parent is there, Hobbes is a stuffed animal propped up against a chair. The parent at that moment is inside the box, and Hobbes can only live where imagination lives.
Imagination is so important to us all. Inside a box is no way at all to live. All you can see are the insides of the box. I was in the 32nd grade when I learned I was in the 32nd grade. An adult is living way too boxy a life when he doesn’t know what grade he is in. Wouldn’t you know, the day I learned that I was in 32nd grade (gosh, that was 25 years ago) was a day I was at Disneyland. We were standing in Main Street, looking up the street at the Fantasyland castle. I had seen the castle before, on earlier Disneyland days, and I was sure its spires soared with all the majesty of the finest castles of Europe and other romantic lands.
But this day, workmen were sprucing up the castle with new paint and other maintenance, and they had scaffolding up. I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and looking at it now, it looked like a grid of known dimensions overlaid on Snow White’s castle.
And the castle was incredibly small. The grid to me represented a known box – data – and inside the box, the soaring castle was no bigger than a two-story house.
In that instant, I learned something of vital importance that I had not known before, and in that same instant I realized that happened all the time. I had learned things that year that I did not know the year before, and I would learn things next year that I did not know now. I was, and ever would be, in a grade in school. That day at Disneyland, I figured out that I was in 32nd grade. Now I am in 56th. My God, I have learned a lot since then. Just last Sunday, I learned one of the most beautiful lessons of my life, and so now I know much more about love than I did in the first 55 grades.
What I learned at Disneyland, staring at the amazing shrunken castle, was the importance to me of imagination. I was six years old once and, like Calvin and Hobbes, lived life freely, every day, outside the box. Then I started to school, and I started acquiring data. It was data I had to have – two plus two and so forth – but it was also data that overlaid my imagination and started to contradict it.
Staring at the castle, I knew that I never wanted to lose that imagination. In that moment, I learned that the perfect life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the wisdom of a 65-year-old. At the time, I had to settle for keeping the imagination and my, what a difference that has made.
But I would have to wait to acquire the wisdom of a 65-year-old. Now, in 56th grade, I am drawing perilously close to that goal, but a goal it still is, which must be why I feel so damn happy this morning. Great God Almighty, I am outside the box.
May 14, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Texas brisket barbecue
Of course in Stretch Cooking one good way to make a little go a long way is spend a little money for a big piece of meat. Like a brisket. Many supermarkets won't have the whole brisket, in the bag, but most meat markets do, and butcher shops in neighborhood grocery markets. They sell for around $2 a pound.
You can cook a brisket in several delectable ways, such as braising or baking, but these instructions are for turning a brisket into home-style Texas barbecue. When you say, "Barbecue," to a Texan, he or she will reply, "Brisket," whereas a Tennessean will say, "Pork," a Kentuckian might say, "Mutton," and a Californian will say, "Back yard."
When you drive through Texas, go slow through the towns, and in every one you will pick up the scent of barbecue, rising from the barbecue joints. Therein, the Texas masters barbecue briskets in huge pits, with a firebox at one end, from which smoke from smouldering mesquite is drawn through the pits and over the briskets for long, slow, magical hours. What I offer is a way to obtain a reasonable replication at home.
You start with a whole brisket, “in the bag,” as they say. You need one that is around 10 pounds, with a decent slab of fat on it. Don't be intimidated by the fat; some of it cooks away, and the rest gets trimmed off. The fat does the basting, and if you get a brisket that is too lean, it will be dry. Take the brisket out of the bag and sprinkle it liberally with salt and fresh-ground pepper.
My cooker is a 22-inch Weber. I can actually do two briskets on it, if you are feeding that many (one brisket is plenty for eight). Use a chimney fire-starter to make a fire of 35 charcoal briquets (I use Kingsford Mesquite) Pile it against one side of the fire grate. On the fire, place two or three chunks of lump mesquite charcoal (available at most supermarkets). On the grate opposite the fire, place a drip pan – I use a big, rectangular aluminum baking pan – lined with foil. Open the bottom vents all the way.
Start no later than 7 a.m. Place the grill so one handle is over the fire, providing briquet access. Place the brisket over the drip pan, and place the cooker cover so the vent is over the meat. This vent should be open no more than halfway. Every 45 minutes to an hour, flip the brisket, and add seven or so briquets and a couple more chunks of mesquite charcoal (break up the large chunks with a hammer). You want a fairly slow fire. If you can rest your fingertips on the grill behind the brisket for two or three seconds, that is about right.
Continue this way all day long. About 7 p.m., feed the fire one last time and let it die out overnight. In the morning, wrap the cooled brisket loosely in foil. Empty the drippings into a saucepan. Put a little water and vinegar in the drip pan and heat it carefully on the stove to loosen up burned-on drippings and add these to the saucepan. Place the saucepan in the freezer until the fat hardens on top. Remove the fat and discard, carefully warm the drippings, and strain them into a separate saucepan. Add a medium bottle of ordinary barbecue sauce (I use KC Masterpiece) and heat through to blend drippings and sauce. Add fresh-ground black pepper to taste, a splash more vinegar, and a tablespoon or so of oregano.
Trim the excess fat off the brisket. An hour before you're ready to eat, start a new fire in the Weber. Place the trimmed brisket on a sheet of foil on the grill opposite the fire and let it reheat. Slice it across the grain into long, thin slices (an electric knife is great for this). There will be "burned ends" that break off; pass these around as teasers. Serve the meat on a platter; it will be tender enough to cut with a fork. Gently warm the sauce and serve it on the side. Classic side dishes are pinto beans and potato salad.
You can cook a brisket in several delectable ways, such as braising or baking, but these instructions are for turning a brisket into home-style Texas barbecue. When you say, "Barbecue," to a Texan, he or she will reply, "Brisket," whereas a Tennessean will say, "Pork," a Kentuckian might say, "Mutton," and a Californian will say, "Back yard."
When you drive through Texas, go slow through the towns, and in every one you will pick up the scent of barbecue, rising from the barbecue joints. Therein, the Texas masters barbecue briskets in huge pits, with a firebox at one end, from which smoke from smouldering mesquite is drawn through the pits and over the briskets for long, slow, magical hours. What I offer is a way to obtain a reasonable replication at home.
You start with a whole brisket, “in the bag,” as they say. You need one that is around 10 pounds, with a decent slab of fat on it. Don't be intimidated by the fat; some of it cooks away, and the rest gets trimmed off. The fat does the basting, and if you get a brisket that is too lean, it will be dry. Take the brisket out of the bag and sprinkle it liberally with salt and fresh-ground pepper.
My cooker is a 22-inch Weber. I can actually do two briskets on it, if you are feeding that many (one brisket is plenty for eight). Use a chimney fire-starter to make a fire of 35 charcoal briquets (I use Kingsford Mesquite) Pile it against one side of the fire grate. On the fire, place two or three chunks of lump mesquite charcoal (available at most supermarkets). On the grate opposite the fire, place a drip pan – I use a big, rectangular aluminum baking pan – lined with foil. Open the bottom vents all the way.
Start no later than 7 a.m. Place the grill so one handle is over the fire, providing briquet access. Place the brisket over the drip pan, and place the cooker cover so the vent is over the meat. This vent should be open no more than halfway. Every 45 minutes to an hour, flip the brisket, and add seven or so briquets and a couple more chunks of mesquite charcoal (break up the large chunks with a hammer). You want a fairly slow fire. If you can rest your fingertips on the grill behind the brisket for two or three seconds, that is about right.
Continue this way all day long. About 7 p.m., feed the fire one last time and let it die out overnight. In the morning, wrap the cooled brisket loosely in foil. Empty the drippings into a saucepan. Put a little water and vinegar in the drip pan and heat it carefully on the stove to loosen up burned-on drippings and add these to the saucepan. Place the saucepan in the freezer until the fat hardens on top. Remove the fat and discard, carefully warm the drippings, and strain them into a separate saucepan. Add a medium bottle of ordinary barbecue sauce (I use KC Masterpiece) and heat through to blend drippings and sauce. Add fresh-ground black pepper to taste, a splash more vinegar, and a tablespoon or so of oregano.
Trim the excess fat off the brisket. An hour before you're ready to eat, start a new fire in the Weber. Place the trimmed brisket on a sheet of foil on the grill opposite the fire and let it reheat. Slice it across the grain into long, thin slices (an electric knife is great for this). There will be "burned ends" that break off; pass these around as teasers. Serve the meat on a platter; it will be tender enough to cut with a fork. Gently warm the sauce and serve it on the side. Classic side dishes are pinto beans and potato salad.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)