But, Is it Truth, or Art?- pt. 1

"And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves "It's pretty, but is it Art?""- Rudyard Kipling

 I've begun to talk about the changes in the media over the last fifty years. And I intend to talk about advances in technology that improved and changed  audio and visual recordings. But, first, I need to take a moment to ask you to consider a philosophical question: which is the event? That moment which you recorded, or that moment when you play the recording?

When Thomas Edison and his assistants first developed the phonograph, he originally intended it for either a doll's voice, or for a business dictaphone. The idea of selling recorded music did not occur until later. The original use of Edison's Kinescope films were as sideshow, penny arcade diversions. Marconi's first radios could only broadcast morse code messages.

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The first recordings of music were done at live performances, using mechanical victrolas. No acoustic tiled sound studios existed. The first film stages were constructed outdoors, to take advantage of the sunlight. They recorded pantomine plays.

Now, in France, where the art world had been experimenting with Trompe d'Oeil imagery, there was also daguerrotype photography. And already, there were experiments with what could be done with "in the camera" & "in developing room" effects. Double exposures, matte paintings, etching negatives... All trying to manipulate the image that the lens of the camera had captured. So, a frenchman named George Melies decided to test what could be done with the moving picture equipment of his time.

Skip ahead in time, and the diaphragm  microphone and speaker systems from the early telephone is connected to the radio. Now, sound can be transmitted. And radios can broadcast music or conversation. Also, spoken drama, with sound effects to communicate settings and action. Thus is born the Foley Artist . Movie theaters abound, but still show silent films. Newspapers, printed by steam presses, are the dominant medium for information. They keep costs down by selling advertising space. Now, Radio and movies decide to compete.. We have the birth of the news broadcasts (though, to be fair, radio stations were forced to adopt the practice due to the new FCC decrees about public service time) and of the movie newsreels. Moreover, the sound recording industry has formed a symbiotic relationship with the radio industry. Much of the technology is inter- compatible, and radio airtime can sell song recordings. This is the fledgling electronics industry.

At first, radio news consists of announcers just reading the newspapers on the air. They have no news desk of their own. Often, radio stations employ news columnists to host their own broadcast. This is where Walter Winchell, Louella Parsons, et al. came from. And we see this pattern repeat itself, where a noted newspaper reporter can gain celebrity by contributing to other media. News reels, however, are hampered by it's need for elaborate equipment, and slowness of developing the film. It could not compete with "breaking news" of the moment, but can capture scheduled events. Thus, a news reel may capture a parade, the arrival of dignitaries, sporting events, or trials of criminals. It's only luck if a calamity like a fire or weather disaster is captured. Often, they only report the aftermath of such events.

Because so much of the revenue depends on advertising, the news media must try for as large an audience as possible. But, it also must not dissuade advertisers by reporting anything that disturbs the advertisers. Thus, the concept of 'objective journalism' became the standard. But, the wider audience craved sensationalism, and the new celebrities of the media (movie and radio stars) attract attention because so much is otherwise unknown about them. So, 'muckraking journalism' also grows.

Let's skip ahead to a critical age of technology and media; Sound recording has finally combined with film. In 1931 "Frankenstein" is released, 1933 is the release of "King Kong" & "The Invisible Man", 1936 is the release of "San Francisco", 1939 is the release of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "The Wizard of Oz" & "Gone With the Wind" (the latter two adding the new technology of color cinematography). And, in 1938, Orson Welles' Mercury Radio Theater broadcast "The War of the Worlds".

Film media had long been trying to capture not only what was real, but also what was imagined. And yet, it wanted to capture imagination in the most realistic form possible. We've had this evolution of special effects in cinema to create these images, using expensive, time consuming means. They could recreate medieval settings, great disasters,  imaginary lands and fantastic creatures. The cinema had surpassed the stage.

Yet, Orson Welles had done the same thing by metaphysical judo; He took the disadvantage of the radio to show you what he was creating, and used your assumptions about the medium to convince you that it was, in fact, happening. By imitating a regular radio program for his introduction, and sticking to that format without a third person narrative voice, he placed his audience into the event as it unfolded.

Next time, we will discuss the movie serials, the scifi films of the fifties, Godzilla films, Noh theater and it's relation to ancient theater, documentaries, and how media has this dynamic tension between representationalism, and expressionism.