Media Theory Lecture 2

Last weeks lecture summarised "Media Theory".

Stephen covered Communication Studies (USA), Media Studies (UK) and also the cultural studies in Europe. Due to the advance in technological communications, theorists struggle to keep up. Cinema, television, newspapers and radio have had a huge imapct on society and the ways in which companies use these devices to communicate with the world.

Stephen Stockwell examined the French new wave cinema and how it was brought about. The availability of cheap, light-weight cameras and audio equipment used simple methods to tell complex, challenging stories like La Jetee which became the basis for Twelve Monkeys and Alphaville which might be claimed as the first work of cyberpunk. (Stockwell, 2007 Lecture notes week 2) I will now brief you on La Jetee.

The Film we watched "La jevetee", was filmed using photographs played out as a photomontage with no actual dialog but a story about the few survivors after the World War III in Paris. The survivors were forced to live underground and some of the few were then participants in an experiment to be sent back to the past, before the war, to hopefully recover the neccessaties they were deprived of due to the radio-activity. After being sent back and forth, the subject was then killed in the triumph to go back in time to the past.

Basically, people in that era thought of a concept of time travel to solve a problem they may have had, in this sense, the scarce amounts of food and medical supplies was jeopardising survival.

In Summary, The lecture outlines the advances of Technology and how it was used in the past to make the present better. However, as technology advances, society doesn't always follow. It has ups and downs, but we cannot help the new age world from growing, so I guess we just have to sit back and take it as it comes :)