A Critical Ethnography of the Media: “Reading” What Isn’t There

 

There are, of course, a number of problems when it comes to the reaction videos of YouTube amateur reactors to to literature, films, books, and television programmes on that social media opiate, the newest of the lowest common denominator modern media form. Take for instance, the responses of most though not all social media reactors to the character of the mayor, the big bad of season three, in the masterful television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

For most of these amateur reactors whatever the mayor says can’t be trusted. In the age of Trump and others of his ilk before and after the coming or modernity he has to be gesticulating and behaving simply for his own advantage, they believe. The problem, of course, with this “argument” or “hypothesis" is that while the mayor is is clearly a parody and satire of the all-American family values guy and gal he truly believes what he utters just as, one presumes, so do at least some of his politically and ideologically correct brethren, particularly those of the sucker sort who have been adeptly pied pipered. He is serious when he warns of the ungodly dangers of uncleanliness (a good old time proverb many of the reactors don’t grasp in these radiant best of all possible world days). He is serious when he tells Angel and Buffy that their relationship is doomed just like that or Romeo and Juliet. And he is serious when he treats Faith like the daughter he hasn’t had in some time—he is over a hundred years old after all—or never had. A few reactors eventually get the Faith/mayor relationship--a doubling of that between Buffy and Giles (season three, in fact, is full of doublings including that in the aptly named “Doppelgangland”)--only after the intense confrontation between Angel and the mayor in the hospital in the last episode of the season, “Graduation Day”, as Buffy and Faith lie comatose in their hospital beds.

There are, of course, several reasons for the amateur Buffy reactor’s misreadings and misinterpretations of the mayor’s discourse and actions. The literalist kiddies (metaphor alert) of today can’t even see the literalism on the screen in front of their eyes and ears (literal and metaphorical). That is because there are things that don’t change. As PT once said, suckers are born every minute. Demagogues, of course, love that fact, that suckers—those who don’t know the difference between past and present spatially or temporally—are born every minute because it literally and metaphorically means they can more easily manipulate the masses for cultic politically and ideologically correct conformity. Now that would be a great allegory if it wasn’t for the fact that it is so literally true.

Another problem with the kiddies of the today, something that also connects them to past kiddies, is their inability to read or grasp tone. But then they don’t have experience with those adept at tonal shifts (and intellectual wit for that matter) like Shakespeare, Gogol, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Twain, and Hitchcock to help them since they have been fed on a steady diet of literalist and lowest common denominator cinematic crap that is characterised by low level wit, low level literal tonal shifts, low level literal parody, and they don’t really read much these days beyond their cell phones. Buffy, like Shakespeare, like Gogol, like Turgenev, like Bulgakov, like Twain, and like Hitchcock often comedy, tragedy, drama, satire, and parody all at the same time and while deciphering these changing tones may be a challenge for some of those brought up in this increasingly humanities free education world one would still expect that even the educated amateur should be able to discern the changes in tone and how tone works in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is not that difficult even for the socialised for conformity literally minded crowd.