somnambulist culture

Media is slowly turning us all into somnambulists, especially in an era of rapid electronic reproduction. As we dive deeper and deeper into a man-made sea of technological gadgets and information widgets, the content that is created through their use heightens the “spectacle” as described by Guy Debord in Society of the Spectacle, and engulfs us in a perpetual state of trance-like suspension. “Prediction and control consist in avoiding [a] subliminal state of Narcissus trance.” (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, p. 15) According to McLuhan, only the serious artist is able to avoid this trance through an awareness of the changes in visceral perception. However, the serious artist is only a slight fraction of the global population. And “global” is now where technology has taken us.

As we quickly reach the carrying capacity of this planet, the "spectacle" grows with us. Larger populations demand more jobs to support families. At the same rate, media grows to deliver content to these rapidly growing populations and more people rely on the media itself to survive regardless of the effects of content. So, what happens to a society that depends on sustaining this trance as a means to survive? I recently viewed the film "Elephant" written and directed by Gus Van Sant about everyday high schools kids who decide to shoot up their school and everyone in it. The film was made in response to the Columbine shootings just a few years ago. Although not intentional, Van Sant demonstrates the thesis in which McLuhan attacks through exemplifying the trance-like state induced by the media upon ordinary kids. According to the film, these kids learned violence through media. They practiced their aim playing a video game, they watched forms of propaganda through archived Nazi television specials while assembling their new guns that they purchased through the internet. Van Sant portrays them developing and deploying their plan-of-attack with virtually no signs of remorse or emotion whatsoever. They seemed to be floating through time, desensitized, through their own media-rich culture.

As the spectacle is kept alive, shock-value decreases, forcing the content to explode with more spectacle, until it desensitizes human values and existence altogether. I was just in a discussion about how the murder of a person in a film or the local news does nothing emotionally for them since it's a theme they expect to see. If a dog dies, however, it's devastating.

We are surrounded by content forced upon us through media, yet we rely on new technologies to communicate to friends and family. Aside from the rare serious designer, it cannot be escaped. Media becomes the vehicle in which to make a living, support families, sustain relationships, and to simply exist unalienated in our own cultures. "The ultimate conflict between sight and sound, between written and oral kinds of perception and organization of existence is upon us." (McLuhan, p.16)