The Washington Monument. Mount Rushmore. The Lincoln Memorial. The Statue of Liberty.

They’re the monuments Americans grow up learning about and forming their American identities over. But why? Lawrence Vale answers this question of representation through monuments in his book “Architecture, Power, and National Identity.” In it, he claims that “reassuring civic messages and discomforting authoritarian ones engage in a kind of cognitive coexistence” in national monuments. These monuments are emblematic of American life because they embody both power and diplomacy.  For example, the Statue of Liberty reminds onlookers of an alliance with France and freedom for all, which would constitute as a reassuring civic message. However, this monument can also be construed as a declaration of power over other nations. In this country, freedom reigns, and the statue firmly sits upon the idea that discriminatory ideals of other nations are left at the harbor. In other words, liberty reigns above all, and other countries are powerless to stop it.

The Statue of Liberty

Looking into the meaning behind any popular historic monument will yield similar analyses, but these same principles also apply present-day structures. Some of the most archetypal examples of building for power in contemporary society can be found right here on campus. The most obvious example is the UT tower. This tower in particular sits an inch above the Capitol building, demonstrating pride and power over not only other universities, but also the state of Texas itself. In class, we talked about how towers are phallic, representing boldness and pride, which is exactly what the UT tower does through its stature.

The UT tower, like many monuments (such as the Washington Monument), uses a phallic design to evoke a sense of power.

More recently, the bridge that links the communications buildings carries these same messages of pride, and reassurance that Hale writes about. This massive structure beautifully glimmers during the day and illuminates at night, announcing the entrance to the University. However, the bridge itself serves almost no practical purpose. In order to find the entrance, students must climb to the second floor of an arbitrary building. The bridge then deposits students on the third floor of another random building that opens into an elevated plaza. Given that there’s a much more direct crosswalk right underneath the structure, the bridge would only be useful for a select few students that just happen to have back to back classes in the respective buildings that the bridge connects. This in itself proves that even many of today’s structures are built primarily with ideas of power and “reassuring civic messages,” as Vale asserts.

The bridge announces to prospective students that the University will help ‘bridge’ the gap between the present and the future, but it also represents wealth and beauty: two major contributors to power.

After reading William Uriccio’s “The Future of a Medium Once Known as Television,” consider the following questions:

1. How has Web 2.0 expanded since the publication of this article in 2009? What are some new characteristics? Based on these developments, what advancements do you predict Web 3.0 will entail?
2. How would you interpret the findings from comScore VideoMetrix on page 27? Do you agree with Uriccio’s or Neilson’s interpretations? How do these numbers reflect a changing medium?
3. Explain why Uriccio refers to television as heterochronic and YouTube as heterotophic. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? What would television look like if it were heterotophic or YouTube if it were heterochronic? Is heterochronia in television still relevant?
4. How has the television industry limited itself? How is YouTube capitalizing off of television’s self-imposed limitations? How can television change to keep up with consumers’ changing needs?
5. How has the film medium adapted to current consumers? In what ways should the film medium be categorized? (technological geneology, rituals such as film festivals, exposures, something else?)

Question:

1. How has portability impacted television? Discuss both negative and positive impacts.

In his textbook chapter, P. David Marshall talks a lot about the increased portability of television. I’m going to preface this blog entry by mentioning that Marshall wrote this piece in 2009, back when watching portable TV meant putting a disc with the first season of friends into your portable DVD player on a long car trip. Even though it’s only been seven years, portable TV has changed drastically. For many, it means watching Netflix on your iPhone at the gym… or on a plane…  or at a boring family gathering. So that’s what I’m referring to when I say portable TV.

The most notable change brought on by portable TV is increased consumption. There are now screens EVERYWHERE, which has both its pros and cons. The most apparent con is that we get less exercise and sunlight, but increased consumption fosters a community feel, since TV brings people together.

Portable TV also affords us more agency. Marshall talks about how traditional television leaves little up to the consumer. Yes, you can choose which channel to watch, but other than that, the TV does its own thing and continuously spouts out content and information. With portable TV like Netflix, we can pick when and where we watch shows and episodes of our choosing. Although we could be robbing ourselves of valuable information using this method, increased agency is generally a good thing for the consumer. It puts more pressure on networks to create quality content since there’s a more pressing threat that we’ll simply watch something else if their shows are bad. Hollywood went through this same transformation when the spectacle of movies began to wear off and Edison lost his monopolistic control over the industry.

The third biggest change deals with content and affects networks rather than audiences. Since screens continue to shrink and audiences increasingly bingewatch, producers must find a way to cater to these new needs. Marshall mentions that some shows have tried to change filming styles to better suit phone screens, and writers have complicated the plots (Jane the Virgin is a great example of this) to hook viewers for hours on end. It’s too soon to tell weather or not this is a negative or positive development for the TV industry.

Portable TV has undoubtedly changed television’s landscape. Like any development, it carries both negative and positive changes, but overall, the agency, community, and content change are largely beneficial.

Her eyes longingly gaze toward a life she was never able to obtain. Her children, poor and afraid, huddle around her, slumped over strong shoulders that have tirelessly borne the burden of raising an impoverished family for years.  She is the Migrant Mother– the iconic face of The Great Depression, captured in a moment, remembered for decades to come.

Back in 1936, this image catapulted Dorthea Lange, a struggling photographer, into everlasting fame. “Migrant Mother” ignited empathy across the nation for those hit hardest by the depression. However, one crucial element is glaringly absent from this quintessential piece of visual rhetoric– its context.

In the beginning of this unit, we talked about the Rhetorical Triangle– a model developed by Blitzer that defines the key elements required to analyze a text. He pins audience, writer, and context to each of the triangle’s vertices, indicating that they’re each equally important. We know both who both the speaker and decoder of this message is, but when and where was this photo taken? Who is this so called “Migrant Mother” and what’s her story? Without answers, this photograph lends itself to contextual manipulation, which it did have to endure in the form of propaganda after it was published.

When pressured for context, Lange admitted to staging the photograph without knowing anything about her subject. The image is striking, but there’s no telling whether or not it accurately depicts the reality of the Great Depression. All we know is that it portrays an accurate depiction of America’s memory of this time period, an analysis we can only make when we evaluate the context of this image’s distribution– the fact that Lange gave her audience absolutely no context to reference.

There’s a reason Blitzer included context in his triangle. Without it, it’s easy to misconstrue information and impossible to gain a holistic understanding of a circumstance. Even the deprivation of background information is valid context for analyzing situations, as understood in the analysis of “Migrant Mother” by Dorthea Lange.