uFebruary 17, 2006
Picture it. I'm sitting at my computer trying to figure out something obscure about verifying transmission of DTMF digits and something obscure about the English language at the same time, like does validate digits mean the same thing as verify digits and if so why and so on... and my cellphone rings. This is odd since Ned is in Brazil trying to find himself again and he's really the only one who calls me on my cell when I'm at work. I look at it and realize it's a text message. I read the message, which only says u, ascertain that it's not from anybody I know, and delete it. A half second later, another text message arrives. Again it says u and I don't know the sender so I delete it. This happens again and then again for a total of 4 times. My cubicle neighbor asks "Is that you?" unironically. For some reason this reminds me of an article by Bill Marx on WBUR's web site about online movie reviews somehow leading to replacing live theater with cellphone movies so we start taking pictures and talking about making movies with our phones. At least tiny movies would be more interesting and possibly less enigmatic than that single character text message, u.Anyway, I couldn't quite follow the logic of how getting most of our movie reviews online would lead to viewing most of our movies on cellphones let alone how that would lead to "culture that fits on a screen". A cellphone screen. Teeny tiny culture. Leaving aside the problem that I don't know what culture is -- this has been a problem for me since sometime in 1995 or '96 when I read The Future Does Not Compute, in which Steve Talbott says, among other things, that the Internet is corrosive of culture -- what kind of culture (whatever it is) fits on a cellphone screen? Music videos for sure. And movies made with cellphones, which are all the rage now with contests for cellphone filmmakers sprouting up all over the place since the first one in Portugal. I actually think challenging film students to make a 30 second film with their cellphones is a good way to stimulate creativity. Check out the Ithaca College Cellflix Festival. The winning film is kinda cool.
The meme going around seems to be that once young people get used to seeing everything on tiny screens that will be what they expect all the time so anything designed for another medium is doomed. Even live theater. Audience expectations supposedly will shrink along with screen size. Marx even quotes David Farr of the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London quoting Emma Rice (Kneehigh Theater -- also in London) as saying that people are more "visually literate" than "aurally or linguistically literate" nowadays. Theater without words? Don't most of those MP3 files people are loading into their iPods have lyrics? How will we entertain people who not only can't read words but can't understand the words they hear? I'm getting this image in my head of tiny 30-second video clips of mimes gesturing to a soundtrack by Kraftwerk or something.
I dunno. The Internet was supposed to have made words obsolete 10 years ago yet look at how many people blog using text rather than graphical images. Some of the words are even polysyllablic. Some people even blog about words -- lately I've been enjoying Language Hat very much. The theater has supposedly been dead since the middle of the 20th century so i don't think it's the size of cellphone screens that's killing it. Oh and books are still the killer app for reading just in case you thought I could get through an entry without mentioning that little meme. If I kep at this long enough I can even work in Franklin Pierce, I'm sure.
A couple of things people don't seem to be mentioning about cellphone movies though are: 1) Can you hold your phone at arm's length for the duration of a feature length film? 2) How many people can watch the cellphone screen together? I'd much rather curl up on the couch with Nancy and pop a DVD into the player and watch the movie together on a TV screen than have each of us watching separately on cellphones. And there already is a feature length cellphone movie out there, made in South Africa so we'll soon find out how far into viewing the film you get before you drop the phone from fatigue or tendinitis or a momentary attention lapse.
Combine a meme and a mime and a text message u and when Chao-chou asks "Is the theater really dead?" Joshu answers "Mu".
Today's
Reading
The Run by John Hay, Down the Bay by Wallace P.
Stanley, Playback:
From the Victrola to Mp3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and
Money by Mark Coleman
This
Year's Reading
2006
Booklist
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Copyright © 2006, Janet I. Egan