August  2010

David Gauntlett is an example of the newest “brand” of media scholar.  In fact, Gauntlett is a highly marketed brand unto himself.  His work is as much about his own celebrity as it is about anything else.  His name, face, voice, and personality precede all his work.  This alone should tell us something.  But then, Gauntlett is far from alone, there are many others who mirror this approach to (Michael Moore style) celebrity scholarship, for instance, Clay Shirkey, Charles Leadbeater, Richard Florida, Michael Wesch, Mark Deuze, Elliot Earls, Henry Jenkins.... to name but a very few in this ever-growing membership who position their identities “above the title”.  There are hundreds more, since celebrity is the holy grail of education today.  Fame, fortune, recognition and, importantly, promotion all hinge upon celebrity.  It exactly replicates the grab for power found in all other areas of society.  So how could it be otherwise?   Our educational “factories” are little different from those making widgets.  Gauntlett simply “games the system” better than most.  It works; he has prospered mightily.

Gauntlett, by necessity, is one of the growing number of scholars who understands the importance of publishing work in a variety of media.  He understands the basics of video and visual manipulation.  In the land of media-illiteracy, this too marks him as “cutting edge”, contemporary, hip and insightful.  And it is his video, below, which helps to situate the normative we see sweeping media studies, cultural studies, digital studies, creative industries... whatever it is you want to call it.  The seduction of “new” media always trumps “old” media, making TV the perfect foil against all that is “good”.

Here, I will use one of David Gauntlett’s recent videos uploaded to YouTube as an opportunity to examine the common, inherent faults in this kind of glib theorization. 

                    Play Gauntlett’s video, then consider my comments...

0:00 -- 0:37

Gauntlett’s clever self-promotion embedded into a rather cute, disarming intro spotlights his omni-presence and solidifies brand authority. 

0:37 -- 0:56

A color photo of William Morris in 1843?  Morris is “thinking of the past and dreaming of the future”?  How does Gauntlett know?

0:56 -- 1:17

Here we see the first fallacy. With the arrival of digital media, humans are suddenly more creative in the 21st Century?  Says who?  By what measure?

1:17 -- 1:41

Here we see the second fallacy. Television is the convenient culprit in comparison to “the promise, if you are willing to be optimistic, of digital media”.  This is the egregious stance of too many contemporary scholars.

1:41 -- 2:10

We see a convenient jump to parallelism in order to substantiate a failed premise.  Indeed, making is not connecting: Making is making; and connecting is connecting.  Regardless, is any of this unique to today?

2:10 -- 3:00

TV: “It’s just a lot of watching.”  But Gauntlett offers nothing to assure that either of his “models” is acceptable.  So, I offer this more accurate visual of human creativity instead: 

.

To point: how much “watching” purposefully occurred in past centuries?

3:00 -- 4:42

“Making things for yourself” is indeed a most vital point, one which resides at the very heart of Cultural Farming.  However, digital tools are also “industrial tools”.  They often govern (ie., templates, etc.) what can and cannot be built.  Mastering digital tools too often means mastering “industrial” behavior, and thus mastering the “industrialization” of self-image.

4:42 -- 5:15

The problem with Gauntlett’s premise here is that William Morris was a “socialist critic” designer who championed a return to humble hand-labor and hand-craftmanship, which enriches both ourselves and our world.  This is something different from wanting to “invest the world” with our meaning.”  The latter suggesting a messianic investment regardless of the tools or techniques used.

5:15 -- 6:34

Gauntlett’s notion that TV as a media tool is something different -- less useable or less meaningful -- shows an enormous arrogance and breath-taking narrowness, particularly in comparison to YouTube.  All moving-image technologies can and should be theorized similarly (much of YouTube is ripped directly from TV -- and vice versa.)  Back-peddling to the failure of one BBC virtual game only signals Gauntlett’s tenuous position.

6:34 -- 9:23

                     

Gauntlett’s conclusion is, interestingly, not the problem here.  How he arrives at his conclusion in this video, however, is convenient, deceptive, impotent, faulty.  His idea of “craftivism” is merely another way of surmising that we all benefit when our labor concludes with us directly at its end-point, because it enables us to see and appreciate the result.  And it does.  But are digital tools or Web 2.0 (whatever that is) linch-pins that swing us away from evil television?  No.  TV is inescapable, as we witness most all forms of technical communication converging into kinds of television.  We need to master this tool called “television” critically (Illich?).

Thousands, perhaps millions of people are out there right now gaming the ‘system’ for themselves, digitally replicating television production with little, if any, chance of “connecting” any better than not.  Gauntlett claims, however, that happiness and social capital are intrinsic to making.  Ok, but it’s an impotent premise.  What matters most today is neither “making” nor “connecting”, rather it is honing an ability to critically make connections... regardless of the tools we use or the (media) environments in which we create.  Simply gardening, like making digital media, is not much of an answer to any deep concern about living in this world, today.

     Critical (gardening) Production = Cultural Farming

Maybe Gauntlett’s book will fill the holes his video creates.  But then, this video is but a 9 minute hook (that Gauntlett expects us to watch) to further promote book sales: Clever x2.