English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Last night's Daily Show (http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=82077) provides an example of the oscillation Lanham describes. Not only are we looking at Anna Nicole Smith's death on CNN, but we are also, with Jon's TiVo skills, watching ourselves watching it. By compiling examples from the 24 hour cable news channels, The Daily Show provides meta-news, drawing our attention to the way news channels draw our attention. While in the end, the show seems to argue that our culture is in a downward spiral, that we are losing our sense of propriety, text, and seriousness (Rob Riggle starts to ask a very interesting question, before he's cut off: "Has image trumped substance in our pursuit of--"), Lanham would argue that the very existence and popularity of TDS shows a kind of sophistication on the part of the viewers. Those who despair that most adults aged 18-25 get their news from Commedy Central rather than the traditional newspaper or CNN haven't realized that TDS also despairs at this (listen to Jon's comments sometime). For those of us who only get our news from TDS and the Colbert Report, watching the show is an exercise in oscillation: We are simultaneously learning the "content" and analyzing the design. Sometimes it feels like everything is moving too quickly during these oscillation moments, like I can't both appreciate the satire and absorb the factual information. See my blog on efficiency for that, however.