Bruce Jackson
Bruce Jackson
century darwin deal define describe economic entered explain freud internal marx natural three trying
We entered the 20th century trying to deal with three ideas purporting to define or describe or explain three spheres of action, development and conflict: Darwin on the natural world, Freud on the internal world, Marx on the economic world.
war
The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.
both largely wars
Both of our wars in Iraq were, on American television, largely bloodless.
america condition longest sentences
America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.
cornered defend far less territory though
All too often, academic departments defend their territory with the passion of cornered animals, though with far less justification.
documents events presents public ready third wants
Which suggests something about media and war: it's not just that events happen and the media documents and presents them. There is a third element: what the public is ready to accept, what the public wants to know.
among daily embedded giving happened immediate larger pictures reporters send small stands time
The daily press, the immediate media, is superb at synecdoche, at giving us a small thing that stands for a much larger thing. Reporters on the ground, embedded or otherwise, can tell us about or send us pictures of what happened in that place at that time among those people.
aid caused general happened huge images magnitude outpouring specific
First, those images help us understand the general and specific magnitude of disaster caused by the tsunami. The huge outpouring of aid would not have happened without those images.
bring complete rarely wars
The media bring our wars home, but only rarely have they been able to do it in complete freedom.
guts mainstream resulting
The mainstream media showed, for example, no blood and guts resulting from the 9/11 attacks.
belongs documents historians history perhaps whom whose
Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.
instrument war
For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.
date far filmmakers films quickly taking
Filmmakers who use narrators pay a price for taking the easy way: narrated films date far more quickly than films without narrators.
Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of declining possibility.