A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: In Unliving Colour

 

Humans are, to use a word  commonly used by many Gens today on social media, "weird". There is, for example, the fact that humans, despite being the only race on this planet, divide themselves into a variety of groupings such as clans, tribes, cliques, "ethnic" groups, and nations, each of which think they are the greatest thing to have ever appeared on the face of the globe since the beginning of time. There is the fact that individual humans, particularly in the core nation West, think that they and they alone have within them a kind of authoritative aesthetic holy spirit which allows them to discern what is and what is not great in literature, film, and television. And those endowed with this holy aesthetic spirit will gladly tell you in godlike declarative sentences what books, films, and TV programmes are great on social media. That these authoritative declarative sentences are absent any comprehension of the fact that empirical data has conclusively shown that humans do not and can not agree on precisely which books, films, and TV programmes are great doesn't seem to bother them in the least let alone cross their minds. There is the fact that humans have created weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction that have largely been held by a cartel of great Western powers for most of atomic bomb history. These weapons of mass destruction, of course, can kill millions of humans alone, not to mention the fact that if MAD ever comes to pass it will negatively impact the planet humans live on and depend on for sustenance and life. And then there is the fact that significant numbers of social media "reactors"--I can't call them commentators since they don't generally rise to that level--have an unreasonable and irrational fear of black and white films, black and white television, and, one assumes, by extension, black and white photography. Apparently, black and white photography isn't trendy enough to allow "reactors" to make money from by "reacting" to such photos. Money, of course, is the real reason, after all, that most "reactors" are on YouTube, the social media site I have been observing over the last several years, in the first place.

Generally speaking, this unreasonable and irrational fear of black and white films and television is grounded in the same ideology of progress that has undergirded and continues to undergird so much Western cultural and "intellectual" life. Beginning, particularly in the nineteenth century, many in the West conflated political, economic, cultural, and technological change with progress. They had faith in the notion that Western society was progressing towards an inevitable utopian radiant future where the faux democracy fetishised by most in the West would result in the end history, where the oligarchic capitalism fetishised by most in the West would triumph and end history, and whether the ever greater quest for "realism" or "naturalism" fetishised by many in the West would lead to history's end, and where. 

This ideology of progress also impacted perceptions of and notions of the media. Many though not all Westerners--there are almost always countercultures and subcultures in complex societies and cultures-- for example, believed that talking pictures were more "realistic" than silent films because they were more modern and as a consequence were inherently superior. Many believed that colour films and  colour TV programmes were and are better than black and white films and television programmes because they were more "realistic","naturalistic", "modern", and technologically "sophisticated".

This technological utopianism, which like all culture and ideology was and is socialised into human beings throughout the course of their life turning them, in the process, into virtual knee jerk autonomic actors rather than a critical thinking reflectors, have blinded many if not most "reactors" to the aesthetic qualities of black and white cinematography, an aesthetic that developed between the advent of filmmaking in the early twentieth century and the mid-twentieth century. This lack of understanding about media history and aesthetic history has been and is exacerbated by the fact that most of those who watch film and television know little about the history of mise-en-scene, that which is in the frame, or the aesthetics associated with mise-en-scene whether of black and white or colour films and television. As a consequence they often aren't attentive to what is right before their eyes and concentrate instead on that which is the easiest thing to grasp in cinema and television lands, the plot. Even here there are problems, however. While doing their standard what I read or saw on my summer vacation plot summaries, many do not explore the more complex forms of narrative associated with plot such as tone (comedy, drama, tragedy, melodrama, satire, parody), metaphor, allegory and world building. 

Whether this absence and silence is due to a lack of schooling and education, limited schooling and education, a lack of interest in schooling and education--far too many are going to college in places like the US where schooling has become a rite of passage associated with boozing and wenching and getting a job rather than a ritual associated with increased knowledge and theoretical and methodological training--is, I suppose, an open question. It is a question, however, that social media platforms like YouTube may help us address. What is clear already, however, is that for many of the amateurs "reacting" to films and television on social media in their typical stream of limited consciousness way have an irrational fear and lack of understanding of the history of cinema and television and the aesthetics of each tells us something interesting and intriguing about human beings particularly in the West.

Aren't we just so blessed to have millions and millions of gods living amongst us carrying the authoritative holy spirit within them? And aren't we so blessed to be able to hear the logos of these millions and millions amongst us who can tell us authoritatively what god's political system is, what god's economic system is, what god's cultural system is, what the best books, films, and television are and why they should always be in colour becausre god is a "realist"? And finally shouldn't we give thanks that these gods can also tell what is "normal", what is "weird", and what is "deviant"? Halleluyah!