Finding the eyes to see
Aiden, Jun 21, 05:58 AM
The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them. – Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
One day I did an experiment in the way I see. It was a weekend evening and my housemate, Eric, invited a bunch of people over to watch a movie. He brought home a video projector from work and turned it into an event.
He rented Winged Migration, which was enjoying media buzz as a spectacular new nature film, touted as a breakthrough in documentary cinematography. The cameras somehow fly along with migrating flocks of birds.
From the intimacy of our living room, we could be swept up into the sky and fly along with larger-than-life birds as they filled a four-foot-wide screen and squawked through our speakers.
I recall feeling awkward as I helped him arrange the chairs and set up the screen.
“Um, Eric, no offense, but I’m not going watch the movie with you guys tonight.” I winced. This was socially uncomfortable.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want the movie to skew my perception of the natural world. When I see birds in the sky, I don’t want to think of some documentary movie, I want to think of birds in the sky. No offense, I hope you enjoy it.”
He was puzzled. He said the movie would actually enhance my appreciation of nature, that the next time I see geese, I’d have a better understanding of them and what they go through. I didn’t give in.
So that night, I sat upstairs and read a book, overhearing the occasional rumble from the sound track and honking and squawking of birds flying through our living room.
I have a growing sense of unease about surrendering my time and attention to highly-manufactured representations of reality – like movies and anything digital. This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped using computers or browsing through web portfolios for photos to include in this magazine. But it does mean I’m paying more attention to what affects how I see.
Take Hollywood movies, for example. Through their selection of characters, location, plot, dialogue, sets and portrayal of dissidents they reinforce most of the power imbalances in society. Pick a problem: race, class, gender, relations with indigenous people or nature. Each of these will be addressed in a way that serves, supports and blesses what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer called the “culture industry.” It’s essentially a factory system that produces pop culture to satisfy the masses to the point of docility, while the bosses of industry stay rich.
Even “outstanding” (this has to be in quotations because ours is a culture obsessed with hype, which is a problem) non-Hollywood films like Jesus Camp, Bowling For Columbine and An Inconvenient Truth, become blips in our discussion. And, because dissent is hot for the market, it’s just more fodder for the culture machinery.
As I plug in to this world – even to comment negatively upon it – I feel hip and relevant. But what has happened to my perception of the world, my way of seeing? I’m still in the cinema world, sitting in the row for curmudgeons, shaping views safe for the culture industry. It can’t be undermined or avoided, only actively resisted.
—
Why am I even talking about this? Because I’m in transition away from civilization. Okay, that’s a grand statement. But if civilization means more consumerism, preparing for war, paving roads, fencing in homes, more cell phone relationships, I want to go the other way.
I need to see another way, a beautiful way. Unfortunately, there are competing and non-humanizing views of beauty and wonder in our midst. The Wal-Mart aesthetic has crept into our heads. We look for bright colors, shiny knobs. We prize efficiency, and quantify value with price tags. We seem to enjoy anything that disconnects us from our natural surroundings. We accept and even prefer “virtual” reality and “simulated” flavors. We see beautiful golf greens on the sports television network and forget about where we live and dream about get-away vacations.
We are both victims and agents of this collective maladjusted vision. It is hard to see differently when most of our views are so “picture perfect.” But I’m trying to see differently, to embrace “plain-old” when offered “new and improved.”
I often think of the zen-like phrases Jesus offered to the world. “Don’t worry about your clothes. Look at the flowers, you should all be like flowers!” Or birds, learn from the birds. I have this deep sense that there’s some secret mystery to life that is within our grasp. Jesus was trying to communicate that vision, not an other-worldly vision but a fuller-worldly vision. It had to do with restoring Eden, seeing heaven on earth. It sounds magical, but I think he assumed we could see the radiant glory of Being Itself if only we had the eyes to see, the ears to hear. I want those eyes.
Aiden Enns is publisher of Geez magazine.
Reprinted in Geez 06, Summer 2007. Subscribe to Geez
Comment
Questions? Comments? editor@geezmagazine.org
But how is reading or writing an article in Geez any different? We’re all continually shaped, informed and influenced by everything all the time. Our own experiences influence our own behaviour.
— Brad · Aug 19, 11:51 PM · #
Somewhat holier than thou rhetoric here- don’t you think?
Have you ever spent time living in a Old Order Mennonite community?
I don’t think you’d like it too much.
No time for such naval gazing as this working on a farm 12-16 hours a day with no electricity and only draft animals for propulsion.
Pretty much nothing to do but work, eat and sleep day in and day out. Very little time for intellectual pursuits.
— Q8Dhimmi · Oct 2, 07:42 PM · #
I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I think the greatest challenge here is deciding what you should and should not participate in, since you obviously can’t be completely cut off either. And no matter where you draw the line, the risk is always there of being viewed as hypocritical.
— Vanessa · Oct 28, 10:27 PM · #
thanks for the thought material. Its a different perspective than the mainstream, and I appreciate that.
— joyce · Dec 11, 12:35 AM · #
Keep following your internal vision—-heading away from pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, facing your fears (or at least recognising them) and you are on the right track to finding that vision of perfection in your own life, right down to the last detail. It doesn’t mean that your life will be all roses, more likely it will be even thornier, but the thorns will have purpose for you. Yes, find your own vision, not someone else’s manufactured one! It is the way to where you want to get to. “In order to arrive at what you are not you must go through the way in which you are not.” (TS Eliot, Four Quartets) And, most importantly, it must be your own individual way. Thank heavens there are a few people out there trying to find that hidden way, discarding the comfortable,looking inside themselves for their own internal rightness.
— Kathy · Dec 22, 08:53 PM · #
“I have a growing sense of unease about surrendering my time and attention to highly-manufactured representations of reality – like movies and anything digital.”
You’re riding a fine line here. What format did I read your article in? What medium is your website on? On what medium do you do the lay-outs for your print magazine? The contradiction is monumental, brother. If you want to speak about more fodder for cultural machinery, I’m afraid you’ve added a cog.
In this statement I’ve pasted above (in the context of your article), you’re throwing out Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky, amongst other Christian film directors who’s message confronts what you’re attempting to talk about in much more profound and revealing ways, using the medium you disparage. How different is that book you read from the great works of these directors? Your book and these directors films fulfill roles not contradictory to each other. If you are wanting to avoid technology here and “transition away from civilization”, you’ll have to go way back past your book to pre-agricultural society. Actually, to before language, your preferred medium. These mediums can be used for God’s purpose, just as other technologies have, such as the book (read – Bible). Movies and “anything digital” can affect how we see in positive and profound ways. Anti-technology/society rants won’t get you anywhere. It’s Ludditism. It’s not the medium, it’s the intention behind the medium.
If you are talking about the shallowness of Hollywood and popular culture, sure, but this complaint goes beyond this day and age and beyond the technology you’re disparaging, back to Jesus’ day and beyond. I can’t help but feel there some sort of hippie-like idealism your trying to prop up that is in deep contradiction to Jesus’ message about the flowers of the field and the birds of the air. From what I understand, the message from the text you’re quoting is not to be anxious about your life. This does not suggest removing yourself from civilization or becoming a luddite in the slightest.
The reason why I’m laying into you is because you are throwing this out into the public forum. I cannot abide this kind of misleading pap, especially when I really appreciate what you are trying to achieve. Pull up the old bootstraps buddy, your in the public eye.
— Stefan · Feb 1, 05:40 AM · #
“Truly you recognize that all things are good and fair, because all is truth. Look to the horse, the great beast that is so near to man; or to the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him; look at their faces, what meekness, what devotion to man, who often beats them mercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what beauty! It’s touching to know that there is no sin in them, for all, all except man, is sinless, and Christ has been with them before us. It cannot but be so since the Word is for all. All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery of their sinless life.” – Father Zossima
Your distaste for popular culture is warranted, not self-righteous. If geniune, it is a root desire of mankind to know truth. Your article impresses upon me the existence of such a desire. To discover Truth; to witness it in creation, rather than choke on the force fed idealistic concepts of popular culture.
Sympathy for your cynics, they did not realize your aim.
— dennis vangibe · Mar 12, 10:44 PM · #
Perhaps the best way to approach the onslaught of media is not a negative one: avoidance-though limits are undeniably necessary.Perhaps a positive alternative of pursuing being filled with the Truth and Spirit will help us pray, analyze and commment more accordingly. I understand your frustration and I think there is much truth to your comment.
— mindy · Apr 16, 03:06 PM · #