Critical Media Studies

The people have spoken! One of our listeners, Jessica, asked if we would do an episode on the Frankfurt school, preferably Horkheimer and Adorno. And when you folks ask, we oblige!In prepping for an episode on chapter two of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Barry and Mike asked the age old question: Why just do one chapter of incredibly dense German philosophy when you can take on the book in its entirety? So that's what we're beginning here.Over the next five episodes we will be discussing the individual chapters of The Dialectic of Enlightenment. The goal for each is twofold: First, we want to explicate the central arguments of each chapter and then, secondly, we will be applying those arguments to the digital media as they exist now, at the end of 2022. This first episode attempts to lay out Horkheimer and Adorno's general argument about the Enlightenment and to sketch the direction for the books remaining episodes. We hope you enjoy and, as always, welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions!

In this episode Barry and Mike wrestle with the idea of updating Benjamin's article "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." Of the many questions that they attempt to address, perhaps the central one is: Can we update Bejmanin's theory and still maintain its philosophical integrity? Or has the digitization of virtually all media created an environment where his terms remain useful as a starting point, but ultimately anachronistic? Spoiler alert - They do not reach a definitive conclusion. However, as with most of the episodes, they do wander into new questions and attempt to draw useful conclusions. This one was fun, but a bit messy.

In this episode Barry and Mike take up Stuart Hall's 1980 essay, Encoding and Decoding. They discuss how his arguments hold up after 40+ years and what our participation in the current media landscape mean for not only consumption, but the production of meaning as well.

Barry and Mike discuss Wendy Chun's book, "Updating to Remain the Same" and discuss the political and social implications of her arguments. They begin by deconstructing the terms of her argument that Crisis + Habit = Update and pay particular attention to the role that Chun assigns neoliberalism in defining the perpetually shifting nature of our networked selves. This one gets a little messy.

Barry and Mike discuss the main ideas in Michael Miller's article. They specifically hone in on three of his main arguments:1. That as it is often utilized on social media, (T)heory functions more as a means of accruing social capital than as a foundation for debate 2. That what he calls "weak theory" becomes anti-intellectual" in its attempt to create moral superiority3. About the public value of "progressive punitivism" as a means of achieving a moral high ground.In addition to playing with the way that these ideas work on social media, Barry and Mike look at how these ideas work in our analog existences as well.

As a follow up to their previous discussion on Deleuze, Barry and Mike look at William Burroughs' 1975 essay, "the Limits of Control" and discuss how his arguments hold up, nearly 50 years later in a (much more) digital world.

Barry and Mike discuss Deleuze's "Postscript on the Society of Control" to investigate all of the ways that he argues societies have been kept in line. As Deleuze argues that we currently inhabit two separate but related control rubrics simultaneously, there is a bit to tease out. The guys trace the history of social control according to Foucalt and Deleuze with the aim of understanding what our technologically enabled freedoms actually cost and why the freedom to do what we'd like might not be much of a freedom at all.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss the idea of Techno-Fatalism as it pertains to Robert Christgau's response to the Ted Gioia article from The Atlantic where Gioia posited that the streaming of old music was killing new music. As both Barry and Mike are lovers of music (though not all of it "good"), this one has a bit of a personal feel to it. As such, there are new terms coined, ideas for t-shirts, and maybe* a bit of optimism. This was a fun episode. We think you'll enjoy it.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Baudrillard's 1985 essay "The Implosion of the Social in the Media", in which he offers a very thought-provoking thesis. Baudrillard asks what if, rather than enslaving and manipulating the masses, the media actually empowers, or emancipates them? What if all of the freedom and choice and desire that we fear might be manipulated or taken from us were the problems in the first place? These, and other "What If's", are the subject of this episode. We hope you enjoy!

In this episode Barry and Mike look at Roland Barthes' 1964 Essay "Rhetoric of the Image" and discuss his theories of advertising against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. Spread across multiple foci, the discussion touches on the ways that images, despite their obvious curation, create manufactured senses of what is natural or authentic and are then used to send and sustain powerful rhetorical appeals.