(Oct 8, 1970)
For better or worse, we spend A LOT of time in front of our image-machines. While I did not read this particular chapter until after making the iReport video, it is clear that this chapter on the Transversal is quite relevant to the issues raised in the video. Ulmer writes that "the agenda-setting power of popular culture is based on its ability to transform science and history [and I would add religion, or the naively purported lack-thereof that constitute the mythology of our society" (95). In contemporary society, Christian belief and ideology is at risk of being wholesale written out of the societal mythology.
One might see the approach of increasing Christian representation in Entertainment media as somewhat consistent with the strategies advocated by Ulmer. In that our "identity experience" (99) is connected and influenced through a growing visual and electrate world, and that "one's own scene may be figured by the news[/entertainment media]" (95), it makes sense to explore that world of the Spectacle as a way of "using the visible to write the [increasingly] invisible" (111). Breaking through the emerging barriers, though, may be difficult, in that the public sphere "sanctions certain images and not others" (100), and the image of the normal/sane Christian is an image that seems to be on the outs.
Video ALSO posted on CNN's iReport: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-345054
(NOTE: Video Clips obtained from Public YouTube channels of ABC and IGN Downloads)
Referenced News Articles:
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