Roger Ebert’s latest blog post makes me feel a little better about my growing curmudgeonliness, er, sense of disconnectedness from the culture around me. He begins by quoting a writer I’ve never heard of, Marshall McLuhan:
“Most people…still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.”
So far, this all sounds like the kind of ivory-tower “critical theory” claptrap that spooked me away from pursuing a Master’s degree in literature. But the post becomes quite a bit more interesting when Ebert applies McLuhan’s rearview theory to his own life. And here’s the section that really caught my eye:
In the media, I am analog by training and long habit. Phonograph records seem logical to me. Now that I can obtain any music in an instant on the internet, the music is no longer present. When I owned an LP album, I possessed something tangible. When I download an album from iTunes, I can listen to it, but I possess nothing I can touch. When I enter a theater and see a movie, I experience it differently than when I watch a video. The instant availability of tens of thousands of movies diminishes them somehow. In my nature I subscribe to the principle that a movie involves a screening in a place and at a time. The movie is an event. I do not make the mistake of believing my experience is better than those raised in digital immersion. Nor should they believe theirs is superior to mine. We are simply different; I have an older frame of reference. The fact is that my argument with video games may be a matter of my embedded nature. The thought of spending hours playing one fills
me with dismay. Nor are many gamers eager to read Balzac’s Lost Illusions, which I have just finished. Some are open to both. I applaud them.
Bingo. Now, I haven’t read Balzac myself, nor do I think it likely that I ever will. But this is merely a difference between my tastes and Ebert’s (or possibly an example of my own embedded nature, being a generation younger than him; certainly I’m more open to superhero movies than he seems to be!). Aside from that, however, what he says about tangible media so completely mirrors my own feelings that I wish I’d written it myself. I especially like the bit about how movies used to have a real significance that has been lessened by the evolution of home (or, I suppose these days, personal) video. I was just saying something along those lines to a younger coworker the other day… a much younger coworker who has no memory of what it was like back when you had to see an incredible movie as many times in the theater as you could, because once it was gone there was no guarantee you’d ever see it again. He couldn’t imagine such a thing; I have moments when I miss it.
It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. Human beings have been lamenting for centuries how different things are now than when they were kids, and how, in their eyes, things used to be better. But it is nevertheless good to occasionally find some reassurance that you’re not the first to feel that way, as it often seems.
Incidentally, I told you the next couple entries wouldn’t mention the space shutt– oops. Sorry.
