The decline of global civilization
Media Unlimited shows the torrent of sounds and images has a substantial undertow
REVIEW
MEDIA UNLIMITED
by Todd Gitlin
Metropolitan Books, 260 pp.
Central to cultural commentator Todd Gitlin's latest media study is the notion of responsible citizenship. Except in the works of thinkers like Gitlin and John Ralston Saul, it's not a topic that is raised often enough these days, but it's one that makes Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives essential reading for anyone who works in media, and of import to all others.
Gitlin not only elaborates the various ways in which we, as citizens, try to cope with what he calls "the torrent" – mass media perceived as a pluralistic whole, rather than the singular entity it's often considered to be – but he also documents how we got to the point we're at, chronicling the last 350 years of popular entertainment and critical theory along the way.
Gitlin is concerned with the ways in which media take us away from civic obligations, contribute to the oversimplification of thought and even inhibit complex intellectual endeavour. But, moreover, he's interested in helping us understand why many citizens believe absorption in representation – sights, sounds and stories – is their inalienable right. How, he asks, do we relate to media when they have become the central defining factor linking most of us together?
To this end, Gitlin's book is sure to be discussed in academic treatises for years to come, but it's written in a clear, intelligent, conversational tone that opens it to the greater public as well.
If Gitlin is to be criticized, it's only to say he's long on questions and short on answers – a polite way of noting that he offers few solutions short of slowing down our consumption to think about media in a whole new way. Of course, when he's making the first step of that very task so much simpler, just by presenting his ideas in such a lucid manner, it's hard to fault him too greatly. How we go about answering his questions is, of course, our responsibility.
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