Mediarrhea
It is no longer possible to smugly ask, as Congress does, what are the effects of media (on reality)? The question has no meaning, since reality itself has become a media scenario; reality experiences its birth and death almost entirely on the terrain of images, symbols, and language. The question is, how does reality now function in media?
As media have become increasingly technologized, there has been an implosion of reality in media, a general instance of the implosion of reality in technology. In this implosion media lost their ability to communicate. We must agree with the philosopher Baudrillard that advanced media exhaust themselves in the technical staging of content. Through media, reality confronts individuals as a code, useful for enhancing the credibility of media, but not intrinsically valuable.
The code is the frantic totality of our imperatives—vote, consume, be informed; it is the familiar, the assumed, the American project’s only common thread, like the titles of recent Tarantino flicks, players in a national election, names of bestselling authors, latest sports scores, latest models of automobiles, and CNN fashion news. ... The code is a kind of mediarrhea, the product of institutions that possess ever more sophisticated means of saying nothing. In proliferating the code, media have presided over the death of meaning even as they add exponentially to the store of information.
From the Future Imperfect Manifesto
It’s funny how I wrote that stuff years before the explosion of reality television, before the Internet’s rise and fall, before The Matrix brought Baudrillard to the masses. I swear I wasn’t on drugs. I was thinking about this quote in the context of Leslie’s experience taping The Fifth Wheel on Tuesday. It was an odd adventure and also a lot more contrived than the producers would have us believe: they were rather more interested in using the participants as set pieces in some imaginary drama than in capturing genuine human interaction. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that “reality” is so much pretty plastic wrapped around yet another traditional media product. I’m trying to get Leslie to blog about it, so stay tuned for a behind-the-scenes look at reality television.
DeeGee posed the question of what compels us to keep pushing our sexual boundaries. Well, perhaps it’s because as we retreat further from the boundaries of mainstream, mediated sexuality, with its cariacatures of human desire, we draw closer to the realm of authentic experience. For me, the naked loft party is one of those increasingly rare venues where some kind of real human exchange takes place, unburdened by gender roles and arbitrary definitions of what constitutes “legitimate” sexuality. It is one of those dark, mysterious zones where the contrivances of the mainstream world are left behind. I am driven to explore because, like all explorers, I think that if I can get far enough out there I might arrive at some sort of truth.
Leslie had a date last night with a cute young Latina girl, and I joined them later on at our favorite watering hole. The girl got a bit tipsy and needed to be packed into a cab. This is just as well, as we have a long weekend coming up. A “date” with another couple, then the underwear party in Brooklyn, then an after party, then trying to catch a few hours of sleep before we hit the SKIN party tomorrow night, followed by yet another after party. A nice gay store clerk helped me pick out some underwear that leave nothing to the imagination. If I get even semi-hard at the party tonight the entire room is gonna know about it.
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