Mediated How the Media Shapes Our World and the Way We Live in It

by de Zengotita, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9781596910324
• ISBN10: 1596910321
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-02-21
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary

Just when you thought there was nothing new to say about the media, along comes a book that redefines the debate with a disturbing question: Surrounded by an increasingly pervasive, powerful deluge of media representations, could we be losing our access to "natural" or original thoughts, feelings, and experiences? Sophisticated, satirical, sometimes searing, sometimes forgiving, this book takes on what we take for granted. From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of terrorism, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from the hip-hop nation to blogs, from ironic kids and drifting twenty-somethings to careerist workaholics - de Zengotita conducts the grand tour. He introduces us to ourselves as we are now: immersed in options, surrounded by representations - and driven by it all to unprecedented levels of self-consciousness. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: Method Acting	1	(12)
Chapter 1: Learning to Love the Blob	13	(20)
Chapter 2: The Cult of the Child	33	(48)
Chapter 3: Twilight of the Heroes	81	(48)
Chapter 4: Identity Politics	129	(46)
Chapter 5: Busy, Busy	175	(34)
Chapter 6: The Fate of Nature	209	(40)
Chapter 7: Jedermensch ein Übermensch	249	(30)
Coda: Terror	279