Interference
The American media desensitizes us. We experience, on average, up to 5,000 advertisements per day (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html), advertisements which use stereotypes and persuasion to get one to not only do or buy certain things, but to think certain things too. Advertisements are not the only problem, however. One can eat breakfast while listening to news reports about car accidents, muggings, murders and the like, and then drive to work without even a thought to the safety of automobiles or of the areas in which we travel, work, and live. Not only do we not worry about ourselves, but we also will often forget the majority of the aforementioned news broadcasts within the hour– consciously, anyway.
I think that the NPR article “A Gift from the Interwebs” exposes many issues in our media-driven culture. The Antoine Dodson interview is a perfect example: we hear about a rape attempt in the projects, then, instead of actually looking into the issue or expressing any concerns or thoughts about it, we laugh at the auto-tuned parody video. How many people actually took the video seriously? How many of us even believed that the rape attempt had actually occurred? When I heard someone singing “hide your kids, hide your wife and hide your husband…” for the first time, before I had seen the video, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. However, upon watching to the original video, Antoine Dodson’s recorded antics meant so much more. While Mr. Dodson has since used his fame to raise awareness about the dangers of living in the projects, that activism campaign has failed to capture the attention of the vast majority of people who have seen the the Youtube parody of his interview.
Daym Drops, the Youtube fast-food reviewer, has become the victim of a related yet distinct issue. The “Brilliant Auto-Tuned Burger Review,” as NPR describes it, took the video of an average Youtube poster of relative obscurity and turned it into a viral hit. The question is, to what extent is Daym Drops’s newfound celebrity gratifying or fulfilling, or, most importantly, deserved? Yes, he made a very enthusiastic fast food review from his car, but why does it matter? Well, the answer is simple: it doesn’t. Within the next 12 months, the name Daym Drops will fall completely off the radar of the average American media connoisseur– as Marilyn Hagerty put it, “One of these days, I’ll go back to being the little old lady on Cottonwood Street.”
The question is, why were Daym Drops’s and Antoine Dodson’s original videos auto-tuned in the first place? I would suggest that it is because of the stereotype of the “ghetto” black person, the working-class, poorly-educated, unsophisticated image we are constantly exposed to in the media. These two videos, along with others like them such as Shocantelle Brown’s “I Beweave Hair Salon” video (which went viral among the community of young NYC metro area gay men) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSB-5Nnw9rU), reenforce these negative stereotypes, and so placate and gratify the mass consumers of mainstream media.
The real question is “Who has actually benefitted from these videos?” The Gregory Brothers– three white guys from Brooklyn– certainly profited (monetarily at least), but what have they done to enrich the world? My answer: “Not much.” Having spent most of my childhood in a very white/Middle Eastern suburban Orthodox Jewish community, I’ve seen what negativity these videos can spawn in the ignorant and closed-minded. Discussions that were sometimes tacitly and often explicitly racist would crop up whenever these types of videos would be discussed, and it disturbed me greatly– not just because the discussions were abhorrent, but because of what they reflected about the community I grew up in. (I found that observation– that the young Orthodox Jewish community was just as racist as a standard WASP community– quite amusing; one of the things the Orthodox Jewish community prides itself on is its separation from mainstream culture.)
What does this have to do with Marilyn Hagerty’s Olive Garden review? Marilyn Hagerty belongs to another group often cruelly misrepresented in the media: she is a geriatric woman. Old women in the media are usually portrayed as sassy, flippant, or outright rude. They are represented as senile, broken and disabled, which is often not the case. And what was done when this modest lady from a small North Dakota town wrote a simple, gracious review of an Olive Garden? It bought her instant fame on all the major talk shows. Logical, isn’t it?
No, it’s not, and that’s exactly the point. American media plays upon stereotypes and heuristics. Its tool is sensationalism, and its effect is a scrambling of priorities and thoughts in the minds of the masses. The future efficacy of the news to actually inform people is in great jeopardy. If we do not alter what media we can consume and our reasons for consuming media, our society will continue on its path to cultural collapse.
– Ari Himber –
8 responses so far
You say that Daym Drops is the latest victim of this issue. Yet, he made a video thanking the Gregory Brothers for their auto-tuning of his videos. The Gregory Brothers made him relatively famous and gave his videos more views and allowed Daym Drops to generate more revenue as well. He seems to be very happy about what the Gregory Brothers did for him.
Here is the link to the Daym Drops Oh My Dayum Youtube Exclusive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEstiPzDfgg&list=UUJNtkDAqZBwJF4GKVD-5QKw&index=4&feature=plcp
I completely agree with your points. The auto – tuning and review of a local restaurant do nothing to help this country in these pseudo-depression times. In fact, like you suggested, these media exaggerations overshadow the true vices of this society, whether it be crime, discrimination, or other ever present social issues. If the political system were on the road to recovery, then the media would follow, due to its subjugation under political control. The American people must restore their nation’s former reputation. If the media was able to undo the reputation, so can it restore it.
I think your opinions on this are very valid. We live in a day and age when most kids could probably name Justin Bieber’s top song but can not name our first few presidents. When useless stories and viral videos like this become used as entertainment, we drift further and further away from an educated and cultured country to one that is solely interested in gaining a few quick laughs.
Joe, I see what you are saying, and so I will clarify. What I meant was that, even though Daym Drops made a one-time profit monetarily, what has he gained as a person from the experience? What I meant was that his video was used as a tool to profit others without contributing much to the creativity and positivity that mass media has the potential to create. I didn’t mean that he was a victim in the classical “hurt” sense as much as a victim in the “used” sense.
You brought up a very interesting statistic on advertisements – it is difficult to even imagine or recount it. we often see the advertisements, yet we have concurrently learned to not see them at all. As we often ignore the many advertisements we see due to its abundance, we began to naturally ignore many other things, making it much easier for other media sources to impose on us their views and coordinate our actions. It’s a frightening thought, and it certainly brings George Orwell’s dystopia in 1984 closer into a reality.
Gen Hua, it definitely does! I personally am a huge fan of dystopian literature, along with societal commentaries portrayed through fiction (as an example, Voltaire’s “Candide.”) I actually did a project on the history of dystopian literature in 10th grade as my honors presentation, so, as you might easily and correctly surmise, anything that mentions “Brave New World,” “Player Piano,” “1984,” etc, quickly grabs my attention 🙂
Sounds like you have quite a unique interest there! Though I’m not a fan with as much enthusiasm as you towards dystopian novels, I did enjoy reading “1984” and “Brave New World.” I was actually intending to read Voltaire’s “Candide” the other year but never had a chance to pick it up – I might give it a try during the winter break! – I think by this point, we are deviating very far from the intended discussion topic (hahah).
Oh, you must! Also, Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” is an INCREDIBLE read! 🙂
And while I agree that we have deviated from the topic quite a bit, at least it’s positive, productive, intellectual discussion rather than the “media” we had to consume for this blog post!