April 8, 2011

Compensation for the Real: Hyper-reality, Speed, and Inertia in the Mass Media Coverage of the Arab Uprisings




The only thing faster than the protests that began nearly 3 months ago in much of the "Arab World" was the media-hyper orgy that followed behind it. News stations from all over the world covered in a multitude of languages and filtered through infinitesimal mirrors of representation and a systematic over- saturation. Systematic because it follows a throughly planned, researched and executed schema in the most literal definition it follows a system. It could seem at times that media and all of its accomplices, talk shows, headlines, interviews, opinions, interpretations, and images were intertwined to create a circus and general spectacle for the Western public.

Where has all the 'time' gone?

In just a days time it seems as though all of those geeks that were a part of the event have vanished. The Glenn Beck chalkboards, Think Tank reports, and political hooplah have seemed to slow down and even disappear; it even seems as though the revolution itself has seem to slow. A familiar for some(our own Hank Stolte) a Jean Baudrillard speaks to this in one of his more well explained aphorisms:

I repeat: it is a question here of a completely new species of uncertainty, which results not from the lack of information but from information itself and even from an excess of information. It is information itself which produces uncertainty, and so this uncertainty, unlike the traditional uncertainty which could always be resolved, is irreparable.(Implosion of the Social in Media: Selected Writings pg.212)

This "excess of information" is what the Arab uprisings became subject too. The information that travels at the speed of light over oceans and continents seeking to identify, define, and magnify every aspect of every detail of the revolution to its most extreme form confronts the audience with a chaotic potluck of interpretations, facts, and observations. The Resonance whichmany including those of our own faculty have spoken on is amplified to its extreme by the over- saturation of mass media culture and:

"This is happening today with electronic media, where information is beginning to circulate everywhere at the speed of light. There is no longer any absolute with which to measure the rest. But beneath this acceleration something is beginning to slow down absolutely"(Selected Writings: Fatal Strategies pg. 196)

This can seen by the sudden disinterestedness in Libya, now partly it is because of the downsizing of US involvement which makes it less relevant, but also because the Rebellion has failed to produce the final spectacle in a way that is reciprocal to the speed that media coverage has already produced allthe possibilities of the events finality. In compensation for the lack of real in the real, the media attempted to hyper- actualize its potential into a mass media frenzy that signified nothing to the actual revolution that was taking place- although appetizing and seemingly delicious for most of the American public. However, 'beneath this acceleration something is beginning to slow down absolutely' the over- saturation of the media and images shoved down our consciousness inevitably begins to bring us to a slowness, a place of uncertainty and inertia. We turn to Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies:

"Tentacular, protuberant, excrescent, hypertelic: this is the inertial destiny of a saturated world. The denial of its own end in {190 Fatal Strategies} hyperfinality; is this not also the mechanism of cancer? The revenge of growth in excrescence. The revenge and summons of speed in inertia. The masses are also caught in this gigantic process of inertia by acceleration. The masses are this excrescent process, which precipitates all growth towards ruin. It is the circuit that is short circuited by a monstrous" finality.(Selected Writings: Fatal Strategies pg. 190)

Our excrescent coverage of the phenomenon has entangled and essentially sped past(at the speed of light)the event, This simulated media transcendence of the event leaves the actual event as a dying carcass challenged to overcome its more perfected and hyperreal form that the media has produced. However, because it has failed to overcome this challenge for whatever reason, the event has been finalized, actualized, and transcended in its most extreme form. Thus the event has been 'caught in this gigantic process of inertia by acceleration' that has transcended and gone above the experience of the pure event. In this transcendence the physical body of the event these revolutions are frozen in time never able to proceed on its destiny because it has already been predetermined by the subjective creation of its end and finality.












4 comments:

  1. Hank (or any other Baudrillard literate member) should do a post about Baudrillard similar to what Gonzaba did with Bataille.

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  2. Baudrillard's work is pretty accessible online, i really don't see a need to copypasta something that's not hard to find. Like the Bataille essays that Gonzaba posted here are pretty difficult to track down online and don't exist in a searchable format, so a digital reproduction of them made sense.

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  3. Good post. I can tell from the way that you write that you have read a lot of Kroker.

    "This can seen by the sudden disinterestedness in Libya, now partly it is because of the downsizing of US involvement which makes it less relevant, but also because the Rebellion has failed to produce the final spectacle in a way that is reciprocal to the speed that media coverage has already produced allthe possibilities of the events finality." - That line is particularly good.

    -JD

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  4. Thanks JD I had no idea you were trolling on here and you know your opinion holds a lot of weight so I appreciate the comment. Yes, some wacky character showed me that Canadian a while back....back in the good ol' days.

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