McLuhan’s maxim, “the medium is the
message” was extreme when first introduced in the 60s and is extreme now. Many
theorists and students of theory have torn him apart, ripped his work to
shreds, and sworn him off as a heretic for placing such little (if any)
importance on the content of a medium. Our
select readings for this week introduced McLuhan’s revolutionary theory as well
as several similar theories evolving from this idea that “the medium is the
message.” Bogost’s understanding of McLuhan and his personal ideas regarding
the message seem to have found a happy medium in which he attempts to acknowledge
both points of view. He states, “The medium is the message, but the message is
the message, too. Instead of ignoring it, we ought to explore the relationships
between the general properties of a medium and the particular situations in
which it is used.” This co-mingling of constructed message and inherent message
are on display in the new media text Hollow
Documentary.
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| Hollow: An Interactive Documentary |
The creators’ intended message is
stated fairly obviously at the beginning of the experience. Youth in small
towns are migrating to larger cities where more opportunities await them. These
dying counties, as a result, struggle financially and legally often causing
bankruptcy and a spike in illegal activity. As is the case with many
documentaries, project director, Elaine McMillion, is attempting to give voice
to the voiceless and bring this problem to the forefront of people’s concern.
McMillion herself is from a small town in West Virginia and calls herself “the
face” of this mass exodus of youth. She knows it’s a problem and her way of
aiding in the relief effort is to bring attention to the plight of the people
left behind. She highlights 30 unique individuals who live in this county. How
the population decrease has affected them, how they are attempting to improve
their situation, and even nothing more than just an observation of their
everyday lives. Her intended message is clear and, it is probably safe to
assume, clearly read by the audience. The content of the experience, however,
can also affect viewers in very different ways. While watching scenes of
bluegrass and old-timey music being played my personal experience shifted from
outside observer to a participant. What was shown looked and sounded like home.
To me the urgency of saving this place became personal because of the actual
content that was shown.
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| My family's cabin in Virginia - The setting of Hollow reminded me of home |
Documentaries, in their own right,
have a message. Their medium is film, but McLuhan may argue that their message
is this idea of giving voice to the voiceless or exalting the everyday. What
documentaries say to the world is that anything can be put on film and then
shown to someone who wasn’t there to experience it firsthand. This fact, it
could be argued, then undermines the importance of immediacy or real-life
experience. What’s so unique about Hollow
Documentary, though, is that it’s not strictly a documentary. More than
anything it’s a collage of different media organized into a website. The
website’s medium is a mashup of text, photographs, music, and film. Each of
these media is made up of its own more basic level of medium (words, images,
notes, moving images, etc.). In the combination of each of these forms, a new
medium is created with its own unique message. The interactive nature of this
website and the reader’s ability to pick and choose which parts to read, listen
to, or view create a new message of control. This gives the audience the power
to create themselves.
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| One example of a resident's plight |
I’m sure that Bogost would agree
that precisely because media have a unique message a creator chooses that
medium to best further the personal message of their content. In an interview
with McMillion in September 2013 she states, “it was a little unsettling for me
to think of this as a film that had just an end, whereas with Hollow being interactive and a new
media project, it’s able to grow and change and develop in new ways. It also
allowed us to bring many more voices to the table and cover a lot of issues
that now the user can explore at their own interest.”
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| Project director, Elaine McMillion with a young resident of McDowell County, WV |
McMillion, in the
production of Hollow was well aware
of the connotations associated with the medium of documentary. She specifically
wanted to avoid the end. With this new media project she was able to deliver
her message in a way that may avoid a feeling of “done.” The content of Hollow is a call to action. If a viewer
has a definite finish then their resolve to change things may end with the
credits. In this way the casual viewer feels far more invested and, in a sense,
in a position of power. The user can skip over the things that they deem less
important and relate more quickly and more deeply with the parts that are. Controlling
the website and their own experience instills in the audience exactly what
McMillion was after: the compelling need to help.
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| Several screen shots of the interactive interface |
Interview at: http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/2013/09/hollow-an-interactive-documentary-made-while-in-school-but-its-no-student-film/#.UzMZ8vvalig
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