Blog #12 Media and Messages

One of my favorite, occasional little treats to myself is go to the library and check out an Agatha Christie book on CD. I have tried to read her books but they just don't seem to move me. Either that or the British style of writing doesn't jive with my American ADD. The teleplays on PBS fall short also; somehow the acting is too... British. Not Monty Python British but Masterpiece Theater British, alright, boring. But I love to listen to the stories and my imagination goes wild imagining the English cottage by the sea and the murder and Mr Poirot solving the case. I never come close to solving the case, but it is a wonderful 4 hour escape while I am stuck in traffic.
Now, trying to keep this PG, while my wife and I were dating, we IM'd each other while we were at work a few times, and wow! A lot of fun! Things were said that wouldn't have been said in person. I'll stop before I get too far, but that email from her during the day was so comforting and fulfilling. Sure, I would be seeing her later, and most likely going on a date with her, and even with her mother accompanying us on several occasions, but the email was different.
In my younger days, single days, I would go see movies and then read the books. I felt like the movie was the rough draft, the broad strokes of the idea, but the novel was the whole picture. My expectations were already out of the way by the movie, now I got to find out what the characters were thinking, what their motivation was.
Most of us have seen the old, brown newspapers our parents or grandparents kept of really important events, like the moon landing or Kennedy's death, and for me, the news just has more meaning in a newspaper. The newspaper documented the assassination and you held it and read it and it became Kennedy's obituary. In print it was sealed forever. Except for seeing the devastation of September 11th on TV, internet news and television news has become just a soundbite, another sensational event in between Burger King and Car Dealer commercials. Nothing against Princess Diana, but a great person died at the same time, who gave her life to the cause of suffering people all over the world. But the sensationalism of the death of a princess overshadowed the passing of Mother Theresa. Who had the time to go to the store, get a copy of the paper that day and save it?
A good conspiracy theorist will tell you it's a plot to distract us from the real garbage going on. But I wonder if there is some truth to the fact that rapidly changing headlines and blockbuster movies every week and a constant bombardment of useless information is a medium to manipulate the masses.