Puck’s Prattle

The comment on my January post on media immediacy (in which I rather cheekily lay claim to the phrase “the immediacy is the message”), and my reply thereto, have, among other things, inspired me to write a bit more on this concept, an idea that has consumed me for some time now. I’ve also been moved to flesh this out more fully by discussions with several of my colleagues. I can’t quite call this an essay; I’ve yet to formulate a solid argument and thesis that will adequately cover the whole of the concept while providing me with a starting point for research. Nevertheless, I’m slowly beginning to piece together my own observations, and am at last able to write down some coherent (if not cogent) musings on the matter.

The usual questions I get are:

1. What exactly do I mean by media immediacy? Am I talking about a more and more entrenched culture of instant gratification, or are there larger issues involved?
2. What are some concrete examples of how the growing ethos (and grip) of media immediacy is, perhaps insidiously, manifesting itself at the level of the individual and group?
3. Why am I so preoccupied with this idea in the first place? Where did it come from?

Before I proceed, there are a few things I’d like to clarify. First, there’s the issue of the term media immediacy being a bit of a mouthful. When I had my Eureka! moment about media immediacy—when I was finally able to distill the many observations I had made into a concise term—I considered adopting that terribly trendy academic construction that uses parentheses, brackets, or slashes to create multiple meanings of one word. This would have looked something like im[media]cy or im/media/cy. However—and at the risk of offending my fellow scholars—I find that to be gimmicky and so overused as to have already become hackneyed and, I daresay, rather affected academic onanism. Moreover, academic chic is totally out of step with my overall writing style. In any case, media immediacy is actually quite melodic if you pronounce it as one word, joining the vowels between the words as they would in Italian opera.

The other thing I need to clarify is my use of psychosocial, a term that comes up frequently in my work on media immediacy. Wikipedia provides an excellent summary:

The term psychosocial refers to one’s psychological development in and interaction with a social environment. The individual is not necessarily fully aware of this relationship with his or her environment. [...] Contrasted with social psychology, which attempts to explain social patterns of behavior in a general sense, the term “psychosocial” can be used to describe the unique internal processes that occur within the individual. (”Psychosocial”, Wikipedia)

Much of the communications theory, as well as work in the emerging field of digital ethnography, that I’ve studied focuses on the sociological; it is concerned mainly with the big picture, and paints with broad strokes. I prefer to redirect my examination back onto the individual and group, being interested in the impact of these sociological considerations at the personal, psychological level, and the resulting back-and-forth interplay between individual and group psychologies. Some refer to this individual-centered study as media ecology, which “looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value” (Postman). And I am indeed hoping to examine how media immediacy affects psychology—not just how we behave, but how we perceive, understand, and even think.

Finally, while I’ve occasionally come across the term immediacy used in communications and new media theory, the meaning is invariably different from mine, which is probably a good thing.

Now, onto my discussion proper.

I haven’t come up with a solid, one-stop definition for what I mean by media immediacy; if I do, it will probably come during my graduate studies, whether or not I end up writing a thesis on this topic or not. Still, this is the slant I hope to bring to my graduate work in general—the lens through which I hope to do much of my critical examination and analysis.

My conception of media immediacy does indeed pertain to our growing insistence, even dependence, on instant gratification, for the elements that enable media immediacy in the first place are also necessary to provide said gratification. When we think of instant gratification, however, we naturally think of consumer culture and our dependence on getting what we want when we want it, be it material goods, information, or communication. Our inclination is to keep our conception of immediacy on the more base levels of greed and impatience. To leave it there, however, neglects the more fundamental, underlying psychological and psychosocial phenomena that extend far beyond mere gratification.

In order for media immediacy to exist, there must be a confluence of several kinds of immediacy. (For simplicity’s sake, I will start with the Internet; to go back to satellite communications, telephony, and telegraphy would be too much to handle, and as I will show later, these modes of communication don’t fit into my model of media immediacy, which is is dependent on digital technologies.) The temporal immediacy of the Internet came first, and this itself happened in stages. Dial-up Internet access was quite the novelty, but the advent and proliferation of high-speed access is what truly allowed this temporal immediacy to assume agency over social and individual behaviour. Could YouTube, for example, have taken off in the age of 56 Kbps dial-up? Who would want to spend that amount of time uploading a 125 MB video (with the constant threat of call waiting, if not turned off, beeping and dropping the connection), let alone wait for it to buffer in order to watch it without skips and pauses? Sure, there are people who still do it that way, but let’s face it: YouTube owes its existence to the high-speed infrastructure. The few times I listened to web radio in the late 90s, on my 200 MHz Pentium with 32 MB of RAM and a 56.6 modem, I’d rapidly grow frustrated at how it would cut out every thirty seconds or so, and then buffer for two minutes, only to play another mere thirty seconds. (The limitations of the rest of my hardware were also significant factors, and we cannot overlook how the exponential increase in home computing power has contributed to the temporal immediacy of communciations. I deliberately say “home computing” here for reasons that will become evident in my discussion on physical immediacy.)

The temporal immediacy cleared an crucial hurdle once the near-instantaneousness of the fiber optic networks “out there” was finally brought into the home through DSL and cable connections. I believe this was necessary for the so-called “Web 2.0″ revolution (and revolution is a difficult term; I’ll discuss this in a moment) to occur, because now the user could not only download, but upload, large amounts of data, making platforms such as YouTube viable. If Internet users were still stuck using dial-up modems, it is likely that the bulk of web broadcasting content would still be coming from corporations, with their superior resources of Internet access. Instead, just about anyone with a decent computer and high-speed connection can participate in this two-way, decidedly more democratic, Web 2.0 paradigm.

I will state, however, that I’m not on the bandwagon that blindly celebrates the Web as having gone through some sort of definitively democratizing revolution. I still believe that the Web is very much under corporate—and in many places, government—control, and will probably stay that way for some time. That being said, we cannot discount the tremendous change that has occurred over the past few years. In his lecture “One Nation Under Google,” Darin Barney of McGill University warns against making sweeping “revolutionary claims”, stating that

[w]e can be properly skeptical of the revolutionary claims made on behalf of YouTube and iPhone while still paying careful attention to the way in which technology—and here I refer to a broad range of technology that encompasses far more than merely the digital—is bound up with the organization of social life, the distribution of political and economic power, and the everyday practices that comprise a culture. While it may be misleading to characterize YouTube and iPhone as revolutionary, it would be equally misleading to suggest that inhabiting the world with the internet and mobile telephony is the same as inhabiting the world without them. Things happen when new technologies arrive on the scene, or when practices surrounding old technologies change. (Barney 7)

Even as we keep this in mind and curb our unbridled enthusiasm, we cannot deny that what was still very much a one-sided communications paradigm even as little as five years ago has been forever, gloriously and gaudily, overrun by ordinary folk. A discussion of the extent (fallacious or not) of this democratization, and whether it constitutes a true revolution, is beyond the scope of the present piece. Nevertheless, it is important that I stress that, to some extent, I share skepticism of revolutionary claims regarding new media; however, I will at the same time continue to assert that something has changed: the irreversible shift towards media immediacy in its fullest model.

Returning to temporal immediacy, here is where it makes its first contribution to the psychological immediacy I will discuss later. I can access just about any video I want on YouTube or through a BitTorrent tracker, because my computer is fast enough, my Internet connection is fast enough, the communications infrastructure is fast enough, and the uploader’s own Internet connection and computer are also fast enough to have posted it in the first place. The psychological immediacy here is that I know that this is possible. If I suddenly remember, say, a music video I liked when I was a teenager, I know that I can sit down at my desk, find the video in a two-second search, watch it, and escape into an 80s reverie—courtesy of 2008 technology, of course. Another example, though imperfect, is this: once upon a time, if I were in the middle of a TV show and the phone rang, I might let it go through to voice mail, or grudgingly set the VCR to record. Nowadays, if I really must take the call, I know that in a couple of hours, the show will probably be available for (legal) streaming on the broadcaster’s website, or barring that, on a BitTorrent site for (illegal) download.

How does this new psychology manifest itself in terms of my self-conception, my relations with others, and my world view? I don’t know yet—that’s what I want to investigate. What I’m fairly certain of, however, is that this psychological immediacy has changed the way we behave and even think. Does my merely knowing I can escape into whatever musical landscape I want, courtesy of YouTube or web radio, make me a happier person? Perhaps.

Now, for the other part of the equation, another form of immediacy: the physical. This is a more recent development born of the convergence of ever-more-powerful portable devices—laptops, the BlackBerry, Internet-capable cell phones, and of course, everyone’s favourite example, the iPhone—with expanding wireless networks to service them. These devices are right there, in your pocket or purse or briefcase or backpack, and so the media immediacy once confined to the home or office can now be with you wherever you go. If you missed Lost last night, you can download it to your video iPod to watch on the subway ride to work. And if you’re lost, you can use your cell phone or other portable device to access Google Maps, or your car’s GPS navigation system will tell you exactly what route to take (let’s not forget that these are powerful portable communications devices in their own right).

This physical immediacy contributes to the overall psychological immediacy in that it places this temporally immediate access to seemingly infinite information in your pocket, at arm’s reach. The successful and rapid adoption of portable devices prompted electronics manufacturers to develop more powerful devices capable of delivering the ever-increasing amount of wireless content beyond voice—content being provided in fact because of the ubiquitousness and increasing capabilities of portable communications in the first place. It’s very much circular: the cell phone handset is suddenly capable of displaying video and accessing the Internet, so the cellular provider expands the capacity and scope of wireless delivery, promising better reception in more locations; in turn, the handsets become more sophisticated to provide a more enjoyable experience for the user, the wireless networks are further fortified in response, and so on.

The psychological comes into the picture again in our knowing that we have this power in our pocket. The perplexing question is still how this new psychological and psychosocial immediacy of media manifests itself in terms of our self-conception, our relations with others, our world views. Does this foster a sense of entitlement? Of community, however virtual? Does it comfort us, because we know we’re never out of touch with the world (unless we choose to be)? Does knowing that we need never miss out on anything—a phone call, a sports score, a television show, a breaking news event—change our very thought processes?

We can consider how the temporal, physical, and psychological immediacies have come together by looking at the changing nature of media coverage of world conflict. It has been said that the war in Vietnam “was the first television war … [Television coverage] brought the ‘horror of war’ night after night into people’s living rooms and eventually inspired revulsion and exhaustion” (Hallin). Veteran broadcaster Walter Cronkite’s grim assessment of the war is considered to have swayed public opinion once and for all against the war; even President Lyndon Johnson “famously remarked to an aide, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America’ ” (Hallin). But footage of the bombings, burning villages, and casualties still had to be shipped to network outposts, developed (much of it being on film), and edited together before finally being broadcast. The necessary intervention of mediating agents thus diminishes and dilutes immediacy.

The 1991 Gulf War is generally considered the first “live” war, with 24/7 news coverage, when “[f]or the first time people all over the world were able to watch live pictures of missiles hitting their targets and fighters taking off from aircraft carriers. Allied forces were keen to demonstrate the accuracy of their weapons” (”Gulf War”, Wikipedia). We were getting the story as it happened, but was it the whole story, or the Pentagon-approved version?

U.S. policy regarding media freedom was much more restrictive than in the Vietnam War. The policy had been spelled out in a Pentagon document entitled Annex Foxtrot. Most of the press information came from briefings organized by the military. Only selected journalists were allowed to visit the front lines or conduct interviews with soldiers. Those visits were always conducted in the presence of officers, and were subject to both prior approval by the military and censorship afterward. This was ostensibly to protect sensitive information from being revealed to Iraq. This policy was heavily influenced by the military’s experience with the Vietnam War, which it believed it had lost due to public opposition within the United States. (”Gulf War”, Wikipedia)

Thus, even in the age of instantaneous satellite broadcasting, what we witnessed on our TV sets in 1991 was still very much filtered through one or more powerful, even monolithic, mediating entities: the Pentagon, the State Department, the CNN news director, and probably even Standards and Practices departments. What we thought was immediate was in fact heavily mediated.

The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan no doubt follow the same model, at least in terms of professional broadcast and print journalism. There’s a difference now, however, brought about by the confluence of vastly superior technology, the temporal immediacy of the Internet, and the physical immediacy of portable devices connected to wireless communications networks. While it often comes down to the lowly, even banal, camera-equipped cell phone, the power of this confluence is still great enough to subvert, or at least threaten, the monolithic and draconian corporate and political powers that seek to control information, public opinion, and mass psychology.

The current protests in Tibet are an excellent example of the power of media immediacy. The Chinese government is controlling (dare I say censoring?) not only what is reported in the Chinese media, but also the access foreign journalists have to the areas of conflict. But there are people at street level who have camera cell phones, and they have not only the power to record what is happening—exactly what is happening—as it happens, but thanks to wireless access to the Internet, the power to immediately upload these images to YouTube or another such platform. Several years ago, our intrepid amateur video reporter would have had to return home or, say, rush to an Internet café, transfer the cell phone video to a computer, and only then upload it to the Internet. In the interim, he or she might have been apprehended by the police, and even if successful in getting past them, might then encounter various government-established Internet firewalls. And, of course, until early 2005, YouTube—by far the “standard” platform for video sharing and personal webcasting—did not exist; there was no one-size-fits-all de facto and de rigueur place to upload amateur video. Sure, one could email the video to a news organization, but that would then involve another mediating agent. Our intrepid amateur reporter, however, has direct access to the world, and in turn, we have direct access to the reality captured on his or her cell phone, however grainy and jumpy. The power of the mediating agent has been dramatically reduced, if not eliminated in many cases. And I’m sure oppressive regimes are aware of this new reality of media immediacy. Returning to the example of Vietnam, consider the My Lai massacre of March 1968, which was covered up by the U.S. military, and only fully came to light in late 1969. Had there been cell phone cameras, wireless Internet access, and YouTube back then, My Lai would have exploded into the public consciousness that very day, if not as it happened. Or perhaps it wouldn’t have happened in the first place, because the American military, aware of this media immediacy, would have known better than to go on a sadistic rampage against innocent villagers under the ever-present gaze of camera cell phones connected to the world. This is another manifestation of psychological media immediacy.

Thus, this very new dynamic and synergistic convergence of rapidly-evolving technology enables more powerful and sophisticated portable devices, faster and more reliable communications networks (both wireless and fiber optic), and accessible platforms for the instantaneous sharing of information (YouTube, blogs, Facebook, and so on). I will not make the foolish and rushed declaration that “the” power is in the hands of the individual; that would be blind and conflated optimism ignoring the reality of “their” still being in charge: governments, media outlets, corporations. Nevertheless, the power of the individual to play a significant and dynamic role in the exchange of ideas and information is unprecedented, undeniable, and indelible—and quite a sudden development. And the rest of us have rapidly come to expect this level and almost saturated richness of communication—until recently unimaginable—while knowing that we, too, can become active participants.

This is media immediacy.

I realize that the above examples indeed look mainly at the big picture, while I stated earlier that my interest was more on the psychosocial. It just happens that the model of world conflict is a clear and accessible example not only of the manifestations of media immediacy, but the power thereof. I’ll narrow my focus now: consider this commercial for Rogers Wireless, which demonstrates a manifestation of psychological and psychosocial media immediacy.

The girl in the passenger seat uses her cell phone to take a picture of Tyler, the driver, making a goofy expression. Nothing special, but still a sort of physical immediacy, since she has the power to do this in her hands. She uploads it from her phone directly to her Facebook page. Here the physical immediacy (which is actually ethereal in part) of wireless communications comes into the picture: not only does she have Internet access on her cell phone, but Rogers now provides direct access to Facebook over their wireless network. One less mediating factor—and immediacy, of course, implies a lack of mediating agents. The whole thing comes full circle as her friends in the back seat use their own portable devices to access Facebook through a wireless network not only to view the picture of the driver of the car, but to comment on it.

They’re all in the same car!

She could have simply snapped the picture of Tyler and turned around to show it to her friends in the back seat, and they could have made their funny comments by speaking. (How old school.) However, her immediate impulse was to post the picture to Facebook, and her friends’ collective (and this is indeed a collective mentality, in my opinion) impulse was to go on Facebook and make their comments there. The only thing that comes out of their mouths, in fact, is laughter—barely verbal communication, while their actual verbal conversation is done on Facebook. Again: they’re all in the same car.

True, this is an ad promoting new handsets and Rogers’ wireless network’s now providing Facebook access. Still, this sort of scene is by no means far-fetched. In fact, I believe this is the reality of the Millennials (or iGeneration, or Generation Y—there has been no consensus on what to call them, unlike with the Baby Boomers or Generation X, but this lack of consensus is perhaps telling in and of itself). The Internet, and the overarching culture of media immediacy, is to them like television was to me and, to a lesser extent, my parents, and radio to my grandparents: a form of communication that’s always been there. The fundamental difference is that the Internet is, by its very nature, a two-way paradigm. This is how I counter challenges that this has all happened before with the advent of television. Yes, television caused a major upheaval of its own, changing society on myriad levels while making fortunes for Zenith and Swanson Foods. But, short of appearing on Reach for the Top, I could not really participate in television, and if I wanted my ramblings to be widely read, I’d have to write for a newspaper or a ‘zine… or distribute photocopies of my manifesto on a street corner. Now, I can not only blog, but produce and broadcast my own silly webcast, from my computer desk—for the consumption of the entire world. (And I have done.)

This brings me to my third point for discussion: Why am I so consumed with this? It’s very simple, really. I, and my fellow Generation Xers, came of age before the Internet explosion of the mid-to-late 1990s. We were adults, university students, some of us getting married and starting families, in a pre-media immediacy world. We used pay phones; I always made sure to have a quarter or two on me should I need to make a call. (Due to the lessened demand for pay phones, the price has gone up to fifty cents. With apologies to the Buggles, “Cellular killed the telephone booth.”) We usually did our research at the library, and if we needed a book from another library or an article from an online database, we would probably have to order it from some out-of-the-way desk in the library. Now, of course, I can connect to my university library from home, access any one of many online resources (JSTOR is by far my favourite), and through a detailed keyword search, find articles directly relevant to my research. No more standing in the library stacks flipping through one book after another, skimming the text to see if the book is worth checking out, because I hate carrying a ton of potentially useless books in my knapsack. Downloading a PDF of an article scanned from a scholarly journal is far more convenient—far more immediate. Once again, the psychologial immediacy is that I know I can do this.

Still, I must stress that even for my having come of age before all of this great electronic stuff, before the immediacy of new media, I’m no Luddite. I’m very much an adopter of new technology and user of, and participant in, new media—if not quite as rapid (or rabid) as the younger generation. However, I see myself as having one foot in each of the pre- and post-Internet worlds; as the Joni Mitchell song goes, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now.” I am enthusiastic in my use of new technology and new media, but I believe that I am more judicious about it all, and, because I remember how things were before, I am all the more appreciative of it. I even catch myself sometimes marveling at how wonderful—and powerful—new media can be.

Being in a university environment, however, places me in close quarters with people ten, fifteen years younger than me, which prompted the initial observations that led to my cobbling together this notion of media immediacy and the psychological and psychosocial effects thereof. These kids were different than we were at the same age, and it wasn’t just the technology in their pockets, and it wasn’t the usual loosening of morals and propriety that happens with every new generation. This generation gap seems more profound than previous ones. They seemed to act and even think differently, and while I still have difficulty pinning down what exactly is different (though I’m slowly getting closer), I was fairly sure I knew why they were different and what was behind it all. The new media explosion (allowing for the sake of simplicity that this started around 1995 or 1996) happened almost exactly in between the respective comings of age of the Xers and the Millennials. Still, it wasn’t just the computer, it wasn’t just the Internet, it wasn’t just the cell phone, it wasn’t just wireless access available almost everywhere—it was the confluence of these. The common factor among all of these ingredients was their respective immediacies: temporal, physical, psychological, and psychosocial—hence media immediacy. I feel I’m in an excellent position to study this phenomenon precisely because, as I said earlier, I have a foot in both the pre- and post-media immediacy worlds. I have just enough distance from the Millennials as to maintain my critical objectivity without being so out-of-touch with their reality as to not understand them.

Finally, a bit on “the immediacy is the message.” This is of course a spin on Marshall McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message,” which itself can be difficult to wrap one’s head around. Mark Federman of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology has written an excellent essay clarifying the concept, with concrete and accessible examples; I strongly suggest readers of the present discussion read his piece. Within the text are some passages that I can take further using my model of media immediacy. As for the confusion over what McLuhan meant, I applaud Federman’s summarily putting it to rest thus:

Many people presume the conventional meaning for “medium” that refers to the mass-media of communications—radio, television, the press, the Internet. And most apply our conventional understanding of “message” as content or information. Putting the two together allows people to jump to the mistaken conclusion that, somehow, the channel supersedes the content in importance, or that McLuhan was saying that information content should be ignored as inconsequential. (Federman)

The most important thing here, which people seem to miss, is that McLuhan never meant the medium trounced the content of the message. And, similarly, when I say the immediacy is the message, in no way do I diminish the importance of the medium and its own inherent message, let alone the initial superficial content. I simply mean that we can now add another dimension to McLuhan’s equation, and we cannot write off as the Internet being merely one more medium to include alongside television, radio, print, and so on—as if at par with these “older” media in terms of influence. The various immediacies I discuss above, and, most importantly, the confluence thereof, bring the paradigm of new media to a level that entails a dynamism, accessibility, volatility, and agency exponentially greater than anything we knew before. Darin Barney attempts to caution that “[o]ne would have to have a severely limited view of what constitutes change, and an impoverished sense of what is included in ‘everything,’ to think that a few new ways of exchanging information on the web, or the folding of two or three digital technologies into one, makes for a revolution” (Barney 6). I disagree strongly with this short-sighted and arrogant assessment. His cursory conception of these new ways of communication digital technologies as being merely several folded into one—a simplistic additive model—completely neglects the synergistic reality brought about by the confluence of immediacies.

Federman states that “[a] McLuhan message always tells us to look beyond the obvious and seek the non-obvious changes or effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the thing”. Likewise, within the new paradigm of media immediacy, we must also look beyond the obvious—the message and the medium—and “seek the non-obvious changes or effects” of the intrinsic, yet intractable and even inscrutable, new realities of media immediacy.

WORKS CITED

Barney, Darin. One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic. Toronto: Hart House Lecture Committee, 2007. Retrieved 24 March 2008 from <http://www.mcgill.ca/files/arts/barney_2007HartHouseLecture.pdf>.

Clark, Leslie. “Walter Cronkite.” American Masters. 2006. Retrieved 23 March 2008 from <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/cronkite_w.html>.

Federman, Mark. “What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message?” 23 July 2004. Retrieved 24 March 2008 from <http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm>.

“Gulf War.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 24 March 2008 from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War>.

Hallin, Daniel. “Vietnam on Television.” The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Retrieved 23 March 2008 from <http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/V/htmlV/vietnamonte/vietnamonte.htm>.

Postman, Neil. “The Reformed English Curriculum.” High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education. Ed. A.C. Eurich. New York: Pitman, 1970. Retrieved 23 March 2008 from <http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/>.

“Psychosocial.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 15 March 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2008. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial>.

Marshall McLuhan famously coined the saying “the medium is the message.” The difference today is that media are truly immediate. Therefore, in 2008, the immediacy is the message.

Perhaps I’ll write more on this later, but for the time being, I SAID IT. Let the Googlebot sweep my blog and archive it for the world, for all time.

A Late Show with David Letterman Christmas tradition is a fantastic performance of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by the inimitable Darlene Love, gorgeously backed by singers and an expanded CBS Orchestra to re-create live the unmistakable “Wall of Sound”, all expertly directed by Paul Shaffer.

But before this can happen, Paul must remind us of an unforgettable Sonny and Cher Christmas special of yore, and Cher’s very memorable rendition of “O Holy Night”…

This is Darlene Love’s performance from last year.

Sadly, due to the ongoing and seemingly interminable Writers’ Guild strike, there will be no such performance this year.

The original version of the 1984 charity single is still, in my opinion, the best. In aid of the famine in Ethiopia, it was the first of many, many 1980s star-studded benefit songs. There’s a sincerity and innocence of spirit to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” that USA for Africa’s schmaltzy me-too! ”We Are the World” doesn’t even come close to matching.

I first heard the song soon after it was released in December of 1984 and hit big everywhere. A girl at my school transcribed the lyrics with the names of who sang which lines. (I remember her having put a question mark where Bono’s name should have been. Canadian twelve-year-olds in 1984 could be forgiven for not being familiar with U2. But we sure knew who Boy George, Simon LeBon, Paul Young, and a WHAM!-era George Michael were.) It’s become a Christmas classic in its own right, and never fails to stir up some very pleasant memories.

Bing Crosby’s final Christmas special, in 1977, featured an odd little duet with none other than glam rocker David Bowie. “The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” has now become a classic in its own right. This article gives a good behind-the-scenes account of how it all went down. There’s a widely-held notion that Bing was generally out of it and had no idea who Bowie was, but this is disputed here:

It’s unclear, however, whether Crosby had any idea who Bowie was. Buz Kohan, who wrote the special and worked with Fraser and Grossman on the music, says he was never sure Crosby knew anything about Bowie’s work. Fraser has a slightly different memory: “I’m pretty sure he did [know]. Bing was no idiot. If he didn’t, his kids sure did.”

A simple duet of “The Little Drummer Boy” might not have been memorable on its own. The “Peace on Earth” counterpoint is what makes the piece so powerful.

The original plan had been for Bowie and Crosby to sing just “Little Drummer Boy.” But “David came in and said: ‘I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?’ ” Fraser said. “We didn’t know quite what to do.”

Fraser, Kohan and Grossman left the set and found a piano in the studios’ basement. In about 75 minutes, they wrote “Peace on Earth,” an original tune, and worked out an arrangement that weaved together the two songs. Bowie and Crosby nailed the performance with less than an hour of rehearsal.

I don’t know if I saw this particular Christmas special when it aired. The reason I love this bit is not just because of the song itself (with its gorgeous, very 70s arrangement), but because it evokes memories of old-school Christmas specials—the kind that died sometime in the 80s. Sure, they still do specials like Christmas at Rockefeller Center, but these seem more like concerts than anything else. Back in the 70s—the heyday of primetime variety shows—Christmas specials were gaudy, whimsical affairs, with bad comedy sketches and questionable production values. The awkward banter between Bing and Bowie is a good example of the cheese factor inherent in old-school specials.

I have nothing much to do since the end-of-semester-from-hell ended, so I thought I’d dust off the blog and post some of my favorite Christmas videos. I considered doing some sort of “Puck’s Twelve Days of Christmas Favorites,” but that would have involved my finding and rating twelve favorites. After what I’ve just been through with school, I’m in no mood to do anything involving structure, organization, critical thinking, or concentration. So I’m just going to throw a bunch of stuff at y’all: Holiday favorites found on YouTube, with a little blurb on why each is special to me.

Let’s kick it off with Saturday Night Live’s Sweeney Sisters (Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn) and their unforgettable Christmas medley. This episode of SNL aired December 20, 1986 with host William Shatner, and is probably best remembered for The Shat’s famous “Get a life!” sketch.)

The associated warm-fuzzy memory is of my sister’s first visit home for Christmas after having moved to Vancouver earlier that year. We were all so happy to see her again, and the mood at home was festive times ten. We watched this SNL together, and for the rest of her visit, she and I kept going up to each other singing, “Hark! how the bells / Here come the bells / There go the bells / So many bells! / Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas! / Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas!”

Something I want to research and write on for my M.A. is “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” wherein disproportionate media coverage is given to cases involving pretty, white, female victims (or would-be victims) of crime. Think Natalee Holloway, Jennifer “Runaway Bride” Wilbanks, Chandra Levy. (The current Missing White Woman is named Emily Sanders who, it turns out, lived a double life as an Internet porn star. I’ll have to keep my eye on this case.) In particular, I want to look at the intricate construction of the CNNian/MSNBCinian mythos of Missing White Woman Syndrome, including an extensive and considered analysis its obsessive tropes and stock characters.

In any case, I thought the term Hurricane Natalee was not only catchy but appropriate, given the tropical locale in which Miss Holloway disappeared. Googling “Hurricane Natalee” turns up nothing, so I’m laying claim to the term here and now. Hurricane Natalee is the media phenomenon linked to Missing White Woman Syndrome, in which a gigantic, yet rather predictable, storm of media frenzy descends upon an otherwise unspectacular crime, forcefully displacing more newsworthy stories in favour of hails of self-righteous platitudes, misplaced victimology, demonization of the foreigner, and pretty yearbook photos.

I must point out, for the thick, that anything I write would not be about Natalee Holloway herself, but rather the media’s perverse eagerness to turn the case into yet another another excuse for circus-like wall-to-wall coverage, complete with a catchy logo and montage and theme tune. It just seems to me that this case in particular set a new standard for sensationalist, over-the-top news coverage, cementing the place of Missing White Woman Syndrome as a real phenomenon in today’s media. Natalee’s disappearance, like any other, was tragic—but at what point does news reporting thereof cross the line and, in fact, become disrespectful to the memory of, and to the family of, a victim of crime?

Hurricane Natalee = Peter-James Nicoll’s term.

This little gem has been making the rounds. Stacy Hedger, Miss Douglas County, performs the Star Wars theme—more accurately, a knockoff of the Meco disco version thereof—on the trumpet, along with an interpretive dance. It gives a whole new meaning, on at least two levels, to “Thar she blows!“

This is hilarious and horrifying at the same time. It raises some questions that I’d like you to ponder while watching.

First, did she think that mediocre trumpet playing + mediocre interpretive dance = acceptable performance? These things aren’t additive. It goes the other way around, honey.

Second, how did this get past her bedroom mirror, let alone the friends and family she tried this out on before the pageant?

Third, what constructive criticism did said friends and family give her, and did she incorporate it? If so, how much worse was this performance before they gave their feedback? “Hey Stacy, I got an idea! Turn the trumpet around and pretend it’s a laser gun!”

Fourth, consider that she’s introduced as Miss Douglas, which means she’s already won some sort of preliminary pageant. How bad must the other contestants have been?

Fifth, how did this get past dress rehearsal?

And finally… how did she do in the end? Because if she was any sort of finalist, I’d pay big bucks for video of the other contestants’ performances in the pageant talent segment.

Points to ponder.

Andy Samberg and pals do it again. Fred Armisen (who I feel has become woefully underused on the show in the past two seasons) does a spot-on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, complete with slightly unsettling doe-eyed gaze and goofy smile. Adam Levine of Maroon 5 provides the chorus, and look for a quick cameo by Jake Gyllenhaal near the end.

“Evel” Dick Donato, arguably one of the most reviled Big Brother contestants, won BB8 with a vote of 5 to 2. Many were hoping his daughter Daniele would win simply because she’s the lesser of two evils (or “Evels”), but I’m still waiting for someone to convince me her game was better than Dick’s. Winning PoVs (Daniele won five, tying Janelle) does not equal strategy.

That said, I have a few observations about the finale:

• Joe—whom I used to hate—displayed humility and class in congratulating Dustin on his game. Dustin, did you have to be such a bitter, vindictive queen? Couldn’t you have just thanked him? You won $5000 (on top of your weekly stipend) and a trip to the Barbados, and then spent several weeks in the gorgeous sequester house. Get over it, and get over yourself.
• Julie Chen, aka the Chenbot, was so much more loose tonight in her delivery. Why is she so robotic and wound up during the live eviction shows? Was she loaded tonight?
• I really didn’t need to see Chicken George.
• Howie has gotten really fat.
• Janelle. Sweet, sweet Janelle. The most beloved contestant in BB history. I got a fever, and the only prescription is more Janelle!
  
• Nick had his arm casually draped over the back of Joe’s chair. Probably didn’t mean anything, but I thought I’d point that out.
• Eric was shitting bricks when the America’s Player twist was revealed. I’m sure he was only worried about Jessica’s reaction. I’m glad he didn’t propose to her, like Mike Boogie did to Krusta at the BB2 finale.

All in all, a pretty good season. The nemeses twist didn’t quite work out with Carol and Jessica, and Dustin and Joe didn’t generate any drama in the house, keeping their discussions private.

For next season, I’d rather see no twist at all than another lame one. This season would have turned out very, very differently had Eric not been forced to do the viewers’ bidding.

More anon, if I think of anything else to add. In the meantime, check out [the little spruce tree]!

Recently pruned and looking better than ever, the inimitable, irrepressible, and irresistible Daniel Baylis is back for another season of “introspective ramblings and questionable attempts at humour” on his blog, [the little spruce tree].

I don’t know if I can top the plug I gave [tlst] back in March, when I said:

In my literature studies, I always appreciate a work that’s real and honest, a work that manages to convey great meaning through economy, clarity, and familiarity of style, rather than through heavy, florid turns of phrase… [Daniel's writing] possesses that nearly inscrutable ability to convey depth of significance through the same economy, clarity, and familiarity of style that I value in literary texts. No matter what the message, I never feel weighed down or otherwise burdened by what I’m reading.

So don’t dawdle! Head on over now!

Spot on!

Holy Mother of God. I know I have a snarky post in me somewhere. If it weren’t so late, and if I hadn’t spent the past three hours in a Literature of the Fin de siècle seminar, I’d do my usual Puck’s Prattle treatment. Maybe I’ll come up with something tomorrow. Let me sleep on it…

In the meantime, check out [the little spruce tree]!

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) gets caught cottaging. The best part is the audiotape in which he tries to explain away his under-stall sexual overtures. It made me think of this series of Little Britain sketches in which MP Sir Norman Fry, flanked by his family, repeatedly finds himself in much the same position (har, har) as Craig.

…or should help South Africa, it should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future… for our children.

Miss South Carolina Teen USA, Lauren Caitlin Upton, screws up her answer big time, the video of which goes viral for the entire planet to mock.

Listen carefully to her words. The irony is deliciously cruel.

More excellent disco here on Puck’s Prattle.

This is brilliant, infectious electrodisco at the very beginning of the hi-NRG sound, which would continue through to the mid 80s. “Giving Up Giving In” is the signature song of the Three Degrees’ late 70s collaboration with electrodisco pioneer Giorgio Moroder.

This song comes on hyper-strong and never lets go. Listen carefully to how stacked the backing vocals are. The best word I can find to describe them is bewitching.

Her joyous delivery is mesmerizing. She’s in a bellbottomed pink jumpsuit, riding on the hood of a car driving through 1970s New York City.

I just realized what sub-genre of disco this perennial Barry Manilow hit falls into: New York Jewish. It’s so excellently tacky. Delicious to watch.

In one of the more interesting surprise evictions in Big Brother history, Dustin inadvertently backdoors himself—no dildo needed.

He totally did not see that coming. Dustin leaves the house wearing the same cruddy gray V-neck T-shirt and is interviewed by the Chenbot in her gazebo.

Those who know me know I’m fond of dissing the 1980s; I refer to them as being “a horrible, horrible time.” And there’s more than enough 80s hideousness to go around. Still, some good music came out of that decade. Case in point: well-done synth pop, or “sophisti-pop,” with solid hooks and evocative lyrics. For the first time, mainstream pop music that made no apologies for being completely synthetic with not the slightest hint of an acoustic instrument (other than voice). I think most are in agreement that the best of it came out of the U.K.

First, two prime examples of synth pop at its best:

Human League, “Don’t You Want Me Baby”

Depeche Mode, “Just Can’t Get Enough”

And for sophisti-pop:

Blow Monkeys, “Digging Your Scene”

Double, “Captain of Her Heart”