Arjun Appadurai
I found this essay by Arjun Appadurai to be a great way to
end the semester, because there are so many connections that can be made, both
in terms of theory and concepts in “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy,” in relation to many of the readings that we have done throughout the
semester. One of the key quotes
that struck me by Appadurai was when he states, “…I call mediascapes and ideoscapes,
which are closely related to landscapes of images. Mediascapes refer
both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and
disseminate information…which are now available to a growing number of private
and public interests throughout the world…” (515). I found this quote to be important, because it directly
connected to Walter Benjamin’s idea that at this moment in time, society is now
able to produce and reproduce at a rapid pace, allowing for anyone and everyone
to be a viewer. What is ironic is
that Arjun Appadurai ends his essay with a section titles “The Work of
Reproduction in an Age of Mechanical Art, and states, “I have inverted the key
terms of the title of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay (1969) to return to this
rather high-flying discussion to a more manageable level” (520). The connection that I made to Benjamin,
was clearly one that Appadurai wanted the reader to make, given that he
incorporated Benjamin’s essay into his own. But, I think that says a lot, given how important the reproduction
of media has become in our society.
Nowadays, like Baudrillard one famously states, there are copies of
originals, and works without originals at all, and this is all possible through
means of reproduction, just as Benjamin and Appadurai state.
My media example for this week is a picture of a billboard
with the caption “Buy Something!” and relates to Appadurai’s idea that “…Many
audiences around the world experience the media themselves as a complicated and
interconnected repertoire of print, celluloid, electronic screens, and
billboards” (515). With this in
mind, the “Buy Something!” billboard is an example of a direct message to audiences,
and a direct correlation to the idea that viewers are bombarded with messages
through different mediums. Billboard
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