ALTERNATIVE MEDIA FOR PEOPLE CENTERED DEVELOPMENT
Caption: Opium of the Masses.
Speaker: Rahat YusufiNov.01.1999 ISI Bangalore
These are just ‘talking points’ for something akin to a workshop or a brain-storm; we must all contribute to illuminate the darkness of our time! To set the ball rolling, therefore, and since our theme allows, let us look at some theory first. Perhaps a brief sketch of history of use of media and then we come to present day situation, look upon shape of things to come, or how we can shape future with the use of media.
This last point requires some preparation on vision as well as possibilities offered by chosen medium, or combination used, what is called mixed-media or multi-media.
So we take some primary ‘key-words’ such as:
1/ What is a ‘medium’?
Money, the witch, roadways, railways, air & water ways; Print, Radio, Video, Telephony, pager, cell-phone, posters & hoardings, LCD / neon signs, net and the world wide web. We can make this list longer if we try. In a way, all these are instrumentalities, some one-way others two-way substances or vehicles through which an effect is transmitted / transported. The ‘medium’ is usually understood to be inert (like a truck, wheel barrow or a bullock-cart!). The active ingredient, usually language, images or coded effects or messages can be contained, stored, transported between those who ‘make’ & those who ‘receive’ / ‘access’ them. In this transaction, ‘meaning’ is said to be made, or it is supposed to emerge. We shall address the idea of meaning & meaning making a little later.
2/ What is communication?
These are just ‘talking points’ for something akin to a workshop or a brain-storm; we must all contribute to illuminate the darkness of our time! To set the ball rolling, therefore, and since our theme allows, let us look at some theory first. Perhaps a brief sketch of history of use of media and then we come to present day situation, look upon shape of things to come, or how we can shape future with the use of media.
This last point requires some preparation on vision as well as possibilities offered by chosen medium, or combination used, what is called mixed-media or multi-media.
So we take some primary ‘key-words’ such as:
1/ What is a ‘medium’?
Money, the witch, roadways, railways, air & water ways; Print, Radio, Video, Telephony, pager, cell-phone, posters & hoardings, LCD / neon signs, net and the world wide web. We can make this list longer if we try. In a way, all these are instrumentalities, some one-way others two-way substances or vehicles through which an effect is transmitted / transported. The ‘medium’ is usually understood to be inert (like a truck, wheel barrow or a bullock-cart!). The active ingredient, usually language, images or coded effects or messages can be contained, stored, transported between those who ‘make’ & those who ‘receive’ / ‘access’ them. In this transaction, ‘meaning’ is said to be made, or it is supposed to emerge. We shall address the idea of meaning & meaning making a little later.
2/ What is communication?
Associations that a word like this throws up are manifold. Let us put down some allied and root-words and look at their meaning; what follows is straight out of my dictionary:
* Commune` (as noun) in France means co-operation. A small territory with some form of self governance.
* Commune (as noun) in Communist Countries means an agricultural community; or a group of people living with common ownership.
* Commune (as verb) to feel as one with, be in close touch with, to share, give or receive.
* Communicate to have means of passage. To succeed in conveying one’s meaning to the other.
* Communism to hold all things in common.
* Community Common enjoyment of rights, beliefs, language etc.
* Com-mutual reciprocal
* Communication the process of achieving all this.
3/ Communication, by the looks of the meanings that we have gleaned from preceding exercise seems like it could and would flow freely, any which way in the community. With the advent of www & so on, notions of territoriality associated with communities are also fading. It would appear that there is potentially an endless, seamless, free-flow of ideas, images, dreams, opinions, stories, information, even myths & legends constantly sliding and forming, fading, emerging and shifting around in an ebb & flow which seems like a lot of fun, very robust, very invigorating and empowering indeed.
BUT, implicit in this schematic word image, even at this sage, we detect that there is an assumption of use & knowledge of English language, for instance, let us say as a unifying factor. What happens immediately is that all the rest of cultural and linguistic nuances are set aside, to be able to ‘get on with the net’ as they say.
THEN, there are service “providers” and a separate set of “consumers”. And why /& what ought the providers provide and what makes the consumers consume and pay for it?
SO, between the idea (conception) and the practice (execution), there is a major block (shadow) called the ‘interest”. In whose interest is it to practice the idea of communication?
4/ Let us examine cutting and building a new road. It will facilitate communication, they say, the builders. Now, first of all, whose interest or need activated the idea of the said road? Who decided which are the points and places that the road is connecting? The villages and people where the road will take up land will be compensated, but did they actually need the road, & do they really want compensation money? Do they want to go where the road is leading them?
To be sure, then, communication channels / net-works are designed, built and put in place for & by vested interests in society. This can be seen as ringing true even in case of making / receiving a phone-call. The ‘you-call-me / I call you’ scenario is all too familiar. The pager, for instance, has been always a top down one way tool & now passé. Now every body carries a cell-phone but the under-dog will always give you a missed-call!
5/ The media shell, therefore, may be value neutral by definition but its use is not so; is indeed manipulating opinion & manufacturing consent. The ‘form’ of a particular medium and ‘content’ it can communicate often contain a menu-driven, built-in, semblance of choice, which is not a real choice at all. It is virtual. It is possible, however, to use form & content of any medium either to achieve clarity or obscurity. It can be manipulated to mystify / de-mystify.
If they do it, it is propaganda
If we do it, it is education!
6/ Since we have come so far, I don’t see why we ought to go back into history of media, specially Film medium, because history of film is the history of its magnitudes and powers of manipulation. How documentary cinema altered the mind-set of an entire generation. How big, the ‘Big Grossers’ really were. The Imax. Dominant politics and profiteering economics, greed for power and mind management, history tells us, have been prime movers of media.
NOW, can we reverse or alter this trend? Do we want to? If yes, then how can ‘we’? First of all, do we wish to quantify ‘alternative media’ by the same measures the main-stream has? Can we present a viable choice to ‘end users’? (For the moment let us call them that).
At this point I have to take a side and count myself among “makers” of media’ I can now begin to shift the emphasis of this exercise from an objective perspective to a subjective one. That is that of a Film-maker.
7/ So, if I were a young woman, or man, fired by a passion for social change, revival, resurgence, revolution; and if I wanted to use the media; first of all I would have to choose one. If I wanted to be autonomous, I would choose the film medium. The ‘authorship school’ of film-making would suit me perfectly. I would imagine I was like Ruskin Bond, living and writing from Missouri and becoming famous all over the English speaking world.
BUT, am I ready for my social intervention? To create a rough & ready paradigm, I may choose to find ‘functionality’ by situating my attitude orthogonal to main-stream. My indicators, as to what I should do, would then spring from a series of observed characteristics of the main-stream media. Cinema, for example, would show up as:
8/ Some characteristics of main-stream cinema.
# powerful sensational dramatic
# mass media
# professional actors
# dialogue driven
# commentary based
# box-office oriented
* Commune` (as noun) in France means co-operation. A small territory with some form of self governance.
* Commune (as noun) in Communist Countries means an agricultural community; or a group of people living with common ownership.
* Commune (as verb) to feel as one with, be in close touch with, to share, give or receive.
* Communicate to have means of passage. To succeed in conveying one’s meaning to the other.
* Communism to hold all things in common.
* Community Common enjoyment of rights, beliefs, language etc.
* Com-mutual reciprocal
* Communication the process of achieving all this.
3/ Communication, by the looks of the meanings that we have gleaned from preceding exercise seems like it could and would flow freely, any which way in the community. With the advent of www & so on, notions of territoriality associated with communities are also fading. It would appear that there is potentially an endless, seamless, free-flow of ideas, images, dreams, opinions, stories, information, even myths & legends constantly sliding and forming, fading, emerging and shifting around in an ebb & flow which seems like a lot of fun, very robust, very invigorating and empowering indeed.
BUT, implicit in this schematic word image, even at this sage, we detect that there is an assumption of use & knowledge of English language, for instance, let us say as a unifying factor. What happens immediately is that all the rest of cultural and linguistic nuances are set aside, to be able to ‘get on with the net’ as they say.
THEN, there are service “providers” and a separate set of “consumers”. And why /& what ought the providers provide and what makes the consumers consume and pay for it?
SO, between the idea (conception) and the practice (execution), there is a major block (shadow) called the ‘interest”. In whose interest is it to practice the idea of communication?
4/ Let us examine cutting and building a new road. It will facilitate communication, they say, the builders. Now, first of all, whose interest or need activated the idea of the said road? Who decided which are the points and places that the road is connecting? The villages and people where the road will take up land will be compensated, but did they actually need the road, & do they really want compensation money? Do they want to go where the road is leading them?
To be sure, then, communication channels / net-works are designed, built and put in place for & by vested interests in society. This can be seen as ringing true even in case of making / receiving a phone-call. The ‘you-call-me / I call you’ scenario is all too familiar. The pager, for instance, has been always a top down one way tool & now passé. Now every body carries a cell-phone but the under-dog will always give you a missed-call!
5/ The media shell, therefore, may be value neutral by definition but its use is not so; is indeed manipulating opinion & manufacturing consent. The ‘form’ of a particular medium and ‘content’ it can communicate often contain a menu-driven, built-in, semblance of choice, which is not a real choice at all. It is virtual. It is possible, however, to use form & content of any medium either to achieve clarity or obscurity. It can be manipulated to mystify / de-mystify.
If they do it, it is propaganda
If we do it, it is education!
6/ Since we have come so far, I don’t see why we ought to go back into history of media, specially Film medium, because history of film is the history of its magnitudes and powers of manipulation. How documentary cinema altered the mind-set of an entire generation. How big, the ‘Big Grossers’ really were. The Imax. Dominant politics and profiteering economics, greed for power and mind management, history tells us, have been prime movers of media.
NOW, can we reverse or alter this trend? Do we want to? If yes, then how can ‘we’? First of all, do we wish to quantify ‘alternative media’ by the same measures the main-stream has? Can we present a viable choice to ‘end users’? (For the moment let us call them that).
At this point I have to take a side and count myself among “makers” of media’ I can now begin to shift the emphasis of this exercise from an objective perspective to a subjective one. That is that of a Film-maker.
7/ So, if I were a young woman, or man, fired by a passion for social change, revival, resurgence, revolution; and if I wanted to use the media; first of all I would have to choose one. If I wanted to be autonomous, I would choose the film medium. The ‘authorship school’ of film-making would suit me perfectly. I would imagine I was like Ruskin Bond, living and writing from Missouri and becoming famous all over the English speaking world.
BUT, am I ready for my social intervention? To create a rough & ready paradigm, I may choose to find ‘functionality’ by situating my attitude orthogonal to main-stream. My indicators, as to what I should do, would then spring from a series of observed characteristics of the main-stream media. Cinema, for example, would show up as:
8/ Some characteristics of main-stream cinema.
# powerful sensational dramatic
# mass media
# professional actors
# dialogue driven
# commentary based
# box-office oriented
# monolithic conception of ‘audience’
# riddled with obscene innuendos & overt violence. (we can increase the list)
9/ My antithetical schematic paradigm would then look somewhat like:
Mainstream
Magnitude 35mm. 70mm. Imax Surround Sound
Broadcast
Sensational
Dramatic
# riddled with obscene innuendos & overt violence. (we can increase the list)
9/ My antithetical schematic paradigm would then look somewhat like:
Mainstream
Magnitude 35mm. 70mm. Imax Surround Sound
Broadcast
Sensational
Dramatic
Escapist
Powerful (in itself)
Generalized as mass-medium
Dialogue driven &/or illustrating commentary text
Use professional actors and deep bass voices
Box-office return
Territorial audiences
Anybody paying is welcome
Alternative
DV. 16mm
Narrow-cast
Powerful (in itself)
Generalized as mass-medium
Dialogue driven &/or illustrating commentary text
Use professional actors and deep bass voices
Box-office return
Territorial audiences
Anybody paying is welcome
Alternative
DV. 16mm
Narrow-cast
Sensitive
Analytic
Confrontational
Empowering (the viewer)
Culture and Language specific
Visually oriented, resonating with sounds
Work with non-professionals & use location sync sound
Value for money
Viewers, select audience
I choose my viewers
Sub-Textual Values:
Mainstream: Morbid, violent, macho, full of song & dance signifying nothing, time-pass. Anaesthetizing.
Alternative: Educational, healthy, concerning quality of life. Transparent, democratic, secular, nurturing, peaceful, justiciable, significant, anesthetizing.
09/ Some of the properties of film medium, however, I shall not be able to escape while I develop my antithetical model of Alternative film-making. Those, such as, the quality of my craftsmanship, clarity of my conception, composition, structure, dynamics of Editing and use of Sound. My eye for the light, either available or artificial. Timing, perspective, magnification, control & use of color & contrast and of course, the quality of my observation. These I have to share, whether I like it or not. There is no alternative there, no choice. One can not avoid the climate and context in which one’s work would eventually be placed and received. Socially embodied norms and cliches. Attention spans. Stereotypical structures, stories, issues, acting and gender related attitudes. Our work will have to eventually co-exist with all this and more. Quantitatively, it is always going to be minimal, vernacular, inward looking.
10/ Media do not pro-actively do ‘development’. It merely helps to create a climate conducive to change. It can alter the ecology of mind; catalyze certain trends, attitudes and values among people affected by that climate. We live in a climate saturated with media; much of it might actually be canceling each other before hitting us; nevertheless, both as makers as well as users of media we have to be discreet, we have to know that it can merely indicate, it can not actually take aim, shoot to kill.
11/ Creativity, Quantification, Satisfaction:
Most media, I should imagine all media could be de-constructed in this way and open ended, informed choices can be made both by the ‘users’ and the ‘makers’. Life projects can be chalked out and often, this is how these vocations work best; even the commercial world is full of dedicated artists and craft-persons.
Creativity sets in, if we regard the process as, as important if not more precious & alive than the product; and again, merely because one is playing with the medium, as is not the real thing. It only looks like real but it is a re-presentation; it looks authentic but it is not a fact, it is like a dream. The experience of watching a movie, in a movie-hall, is like a dream. It is a catalyst. It exists in our imagination, our consciousness.
No box-office gross figure, no critical acclaim column length can match the satisfaction of watching the film you made, with the folk you made it with.
For our ‘model’ to be complete and be truly viable an ‘alternative’; Alternative Media must have, acquire or develop its own distribution & exhibition infrastructure. In time, it must aim to create a niche of viewer ship and must attract support from each socio-lingual and ecological region in the Country, wherever it is being received. Like other channels it must invite viewer’s participation. This alone would complete the ‘Cycle of Communication’... and create vital ‘feed-back-loops’ to nourish and enrich it. This is a lot of work, nearly three quarters of the entire enterprise; and how all that is to be accomplished; that is another story.
Caca1864.readings
Analytic
Confrontational
Empowering (the viewer)
Culture and Language specific
Visually oriented, resonating with sounds
Work with non-professionals & use location sync sound
Value for money
Viewers, select audience
I choose my viewers
Sub-Textual Values:
Mainstream: Morbid, violent, macho, full of song & dance signifying nothing, time-pass. Anaesthetizing.
Alternative: Educational, healthy, concerning quality of life. Transparent, democratic, secular, nurturing, peaceful, justiciable, significant, anesthetizing.
09/ Some of the properties of film medium, however, I shall not be able to escape while I develop my antithetical model of Alternative film-making. Those, such as, the quality of my craftsmanship, clarity of my conception, composition, structure, dynamics of Editing and use of Sound. My eye for the light, either available or artificial. Timing, perspective, magnification, control & use of color & contrast and of course, the quality of my observation. These I have to share, whether I like it or not. There is no alternative there, no choice. One can not avoid the climate and context in which one’s work would eventually be placed and received. Socially embodied norms and cliches. Attention spans. Stereotypical structures, stories, issues, acting and gender related attitudes. Our work will have to eventually co-exist with all this and more. Quantitatively, it is always going to be minimal, vernacular, inward looking.
10/ Media do not pro-actively do ‘development’. It merely helps to create a climate conducive to change. It can alter the ecology of mind; catalyze certain trends, attitudes and values among people affected by that climate. We live in a climate saturated with media; much of it might actually be canceling each other before hitting us; nevertheless, both as makers as well as users of media we have to be discreet, we have to know that it can merely indicate, it can not actually take aim, shoot to kill.
11/ Creativity, Quantification, Satisfaction:
Most media, I should imagine all media could be de-constructed in this way and open ended, informed choices can be made both by the ‘users’ and the ‘makers’. Life projects can be chalked out and often, this is how these vocations work best; even the commercial world is full of dedicated artists and craft-persons.
Creativity sets in, if we regard the process as, as important if not more precious & alive than the product; and again, merely because one is playing with the medium, as is not the real thing. It only looks like real but it is a re-presentation; it looks authentic but it is not a fact, it is like a dream. The experience of watching a movie, in a movie-hall, is like a dream. It is a catalyst. It exists in our imagination, our consciousness.
No box-office gross figure, no critical acclaim column length can match the satisfaction of watching the film you made, with the folk you made it with.
For our ‘model’ to be complete and be truly viable an ‘alternative’; Alternative Media must have, acquire or develop its own distribution & exhibition infrastructure. In time, it must aim to create a niche of viewer ship and must attract support from each socio-lingual and ecological region in the Country, wherever it is being received. Like other channels it must invite viewer’s participation. This alone would complete the ‘Cycle of Communication’... and create vital ‘feed-back-loops’ to nourish and enrich it. This is a lot of work, nearly three quarters of the entire enterprise; and how all that is to be accomplished; that is another story.
Caca1864.readings
