From Habermas’ “Public Sphere” to DeLuca & Peeple’s “Public Screen”

In this shortened version of Habermas’ outlining of public sphere, we get a definition of the concept public sphere as: “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.” The concept is that in a public sphere, people assemble together as one acting public body, leading to public reason which contrasts to the governing state body. It is essentially organized discussion, creating public consensus which then can in turn influences political action. Habermas also argues that with the historical change from a feudal constitutional society the public sphere was able to come about and as it did, public broadcast media like newspapers played a vital role.

Historically, public sphere is associated with the “coffeehouse discussions” where you see groups assembling for debate and discussion. It was open, disregarded status, and based on rational thought with a goal of reaching consensus. Although on the surface the sphere is understood as open and free to anyone, of course it wasn’t like modern society. The sphere was free to white educated middle class males as far as my understanding goes. But that aside, the public sphere is still where the people have the position to influence action and influence the governing bodies. Other important historical events that you see as the public sphere emerges is the growing idea of a separation of church and state, which arguably only came about after the Reformation and the idea of a person having an individual and direct relationship with God, taking away much of the power of the Church.

The public sphere has and is continually changing. It was once about a physical space that could be occupied, now there are fewer coffeehouse meetings. Media was once just a source of information, but as the capitalistic society grew, the more the media realized it’s value as another capital-making system through advertisement and news-managing. If you follow along the arguments of intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, the broadcast medias [newspapers, news stations] are purely a medium of “manufacturing consent.” They exhibit the news in the interests of their monetary-backbone, the corporations who own them. In our society, the majority of media is controlled by a few companies, and their interests correlate with the products of their medias.

In my past studies, I came across this concept of public sphere through “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the Lessons of Seattle” (2002) by DeLuca and Peeples, which looks at the transitioning of the concept of public sphere with the onset of new media. They use the common definition of public sphere as an open, public, physical space where public opinion is formed. The transition is that public opinion is formed out of a new, pseudo-physical “public screen.” They talk about how the way information is shared nowadays, that you can’t really distinguish between public and private spheres. The separation between public and private is slimmer because of the mobility of our technology, as you can carry the “screens” with you. This new way of information transfer is based around the inception of new media.

One of the other points to DeLuca and Peeple’s argument, is that events can be staged for the screen, as another way of manufacturing consent, or just drawing attention to something. “Image Events” can be very persuasive, cause the public to empathize with an event, or make them hardened against a subject (like violence). Image events exist to ask the public to watch and to see their point of view. And the audience isn’t just an objective public observer, but they are immersed in the images and thus will form an opinion of the situation. DeLuca and Peeples talk about the 1999 WTO protest and riots in Seattle in their article. The media predominantly showed images of violence instead of debate and delegation, which does grab the attention of the viewers, so whether that’s good or bad, it is successful in getting viewership. Not as much information was given to the public as the event happened so any kind of hope for public consensus is lost.

The contributions of new media to the public sphere are varied. For one thing, “screens” are widely available, and can lead to instantaneous social action. Social movement can happen much more rapidly than ever, and be more widespread. There is also some difficulty in getting social action to spread, like for instance when the topic of action is against established structures which people are hesitant to change. New media doesn’t work face-to-face, it does not necessarily occupy a physical space like the public sphere did. With the screen you don’t have to necessarily plan or produce flyers or anything tangible. There are less limits on who can be a member of the public screen - basically anyone with a screen. And anyone can be both a sender and a receiver. This can be seen in the alternate reality game “World Without Oil" where the spectators were also producers.

Do these differences lead to more consensus? Hard to say. The principles of how people come to a consensus don’t necessarily change with new media, however it does lead to more shared information, and increased availability of information. When working at it’s full potential, the screen works like the media used to work, as an information sharing medium. There is still a danger that the screens can become what old forms of broadcast media have, and there can still be bias in the information, and still some consent manufacturing. The ability to be more free though, is still there, and that is a positive difference.

Remediation in Film (and Digital Photography)

I thought Remediation: Understanding New Media (Bolter & Grusin), laid a good foundation for talking about new media, being that this was the first reading for class that really could address more modern forms of media. Of course, it’s easy to see that media at it’s very core is basically the same through history, whether it is the technology of writing or the world wide web. I chose to focus on read about two of my interests: digital photography and film. I will focus on the film chapter, as I felt that my concluding thoughts on film were similar to digital photography.

Bolter & Grusin cite film theorist Gunning who explained an audience view with a sense of immediacy and being aware of it at the same time. They call it the “duality of looking at and looking through.” Another duality they explain, is that there exists a cinema of attractions and a cinema of narratives. They say the cinema of attractions was what existed at first in the movies and the cinema of narrative was what came about second with the development of Hollywood-cinema. The cinema of attractions did show things in real time and the audience enjoyed them for the reason that they were amazed at the dual hypermediacy and immediacy they experienced when watching real events on the screen. I would extend that this is the same idea that news programs use and how television primarily started out as. That same fascination with watching real world events yet being aware of the medium of the screen is presenting the event to you in the safety of your living room has now developed into the other mediums we get news form like the internet.

There is also a duality in watching narrative film, since the audience understands that they are not watching real people and that it is “just a movie.” I think this book was written a little before “reality television” really took off. But the same thing applies to reality TV -- the programs are set-up to be real people, behaving and talking without scripts and without interference, or so they say. But let’s give the producers the benefit of the doubt and say that these programs are unscripted, does that mean there aren’t other ways the show is mediated? Well the people on the show, the “real people” were chosen for certain reasons (that they were good looking or really types of personalities that would cause drama) and they are put into situations that are set up to have certain outcomes. So the shows blatantly claiming to be reality are very much hypermediated. And I think most people watching recognize this so again there is that duality of immediacy and hypermediacy. The same argument is made for digital photography, as the viewer experiences a sense of immediacy at the same time as recognizing the influence of the medium. That duality exists in both mediums.

So will movies (or digital photography) become more hypermediate or immediate? Can film ever reach full realism/immediacy? I don’t think so, because of many issues with the medium itself. In a broad sense, if we’re talking about narrative film (which for this reading I think so) then film tells a story, either set in the past or the future. FIlm can try to set its story in the “present-day” but because of the medium itself, there can be no accurate way to present “real-time” stories. Otherwise it would just be a play again, and not film, and the good thing about film (as opposed to plays and the theater) and the authors touched on this, is that film can cut and not show everything that happens in real time. Audiences have been trained through watching hours and hours of movies and they don’t want to see things in real time for very long. The average shot-length of a movie is mere seconds for a reason. As for the past and future, a there are so many details that can be overlooked (purposely or not) when making films about the past, it’s impossible to not have some historical inaccuracies. And who’s to say what the future will be exactly? So there is no immediacy there. The same goes with digital photography as a photo can only capture something of the past, something that has already occurred, so really there is no potential for total immediacy in a photo, only a perception of realism.

As B&G showed, there is a duality in remediation between hypermediacy and immediacy. I like their dichotomy explanation, that immediacy can only exist because hypermediacy exists, and vice versa. This argument could be remediated about any subject. We define things by their opposite. I am a redhead because I am not a brunette. I am tall because I am not short. If everyone was the same height, there would be no “short” and “tall.” You have to look at the context of something to understand what it is, basically. This is true for movies as well as other mediums of media.

One thing I think the authors could have also addressed, is the cultural attitude and bias of the public towards certain kinds of remediations. For example, in literature remediation is commonly accepted and often praised. Shakespeare wrote very little “original” work; in fact I believe he only wrote 2 plays that did not come from an older source in literature or storytelling. Yet Shakespeare unquestionably contributed to literature and language in ways that was profound. For the average person, questions of his originality are just mostly looked over.

Then again with cinema, because it is a widely seen medium and popular with the masses, public opinion is very common. FIlm is constantly remediating literature, video games, previously made films, radio programs, etc etc. When a film is based on a book - I’ll stick with fiction lit for right now - it is understandable, based on the way the medium of film works, that it will inevitably leave something out from the novel, much like a film about the past will always have some historical inaccuracies. To me, each step that a medium takes in remediating a given subject is a step towards increased hypermediacy, as much as the medium wants to show immediacy, yet there can never be just one or the other. To reiterate B&G, neither can exist without the other.

Whoa...harry potter?