Intellectual Autobiography

INTELLECTUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

This is just an odd collection of television shows and movies that come to mind when defining media that has affected me. While books, family, and friends would be superb and socially acceptable answers to the question ”What has influenced your life?” this list serves as an example of touch points in my life. With whom these shows and movies were watched and discussed adds the friends and family component to influences in my life. Most people can provide a similar listing. One’s life-affecting media listing can identify their generation, their location, and possibly their culture. When we add to this music, magazines, and favorite Internet sites, we find more parameters to define a person. Each form of media has their own demographics, when we add up each preference it is like putting together pieces of a personality.
My scholarly background includes a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a certification to teach Art in the Kindergarten through twelfth grade environment. Included in this education was a fair amount of human development theory. In the field of social work there was a great emphasis on individual and family histories, an attempt to discover what has influenced a child or an adult to be in whatever difficult situation that has brought them to the attention of the social worker. Another important component of Social Work is observing a person in their environment – how does one react to their peers? Reframing these methods of discovery of an individual to include media influence could provide a great deal more information to a person’s case history.
In art education there is naturally a focus on providing students with information to prepare them for post-secondary education or employment. While learning all that was necessary to educate America’s youth (i.e. an education focused course load plus studio art and art history classes), I became interested in history. Prior to this, it seemed a dry, boring subject, but adding pictures and giving background history (often including the scandalous facts) piqued my interest and brought in one of the threads that interested me during my social work education. Famous paintings and advertising often had an effect on the society at large. Manipulating the image of a public leader to change or form the ideas of individuals made art seem powerful and showed how abstract ideas and images could change a person’s life.
For my research, I would like to discover how media affects a person and how society at large influences media. In my experience while the cultured would like to think it is the highbrow arts (opera, fine art, etc.) that have great impact on society, I would propose that it is the lowbrow arts (television, radio, etc) that impact society at large. As a former social worker, church youth group leader, and more recently a public school teacher I have found that while family certainly does influence a person’s development, children spend a great deal of time in a media saturated environment compounded by discussing this media with friends while in their great chunk of a day called school time and this may have a greater influence upon children.
Media consumer trends are greatly interesting. I would venture a guess that the externalization of memory and the immediacy of new media have reduced attention spans. As a teacher, interdisciplinary connections were encouraged. If we look at this while viewing societal trends we may learn more than isolated studies can teach. Looking at recent history, more specifically the twentieth century, we can see a progression from a focus on home and family life to the growth of mass media such as movies and magazines to radio and television to mp3s and podcasts. Media consumption has shifted from being a group experience (as in movie and radio shows) to being a more personal experience (DVDs, MP3s, and DVRs) to becoming a participatory experience (podcasting and social networking). In the past few years Do It Yourself (DIY) has become increasingly popular as evidenced by Martha Stewart, Debbie Stoller’s Stitch n’ Bitch books and groups, many craft blogs, the popularity of stores such as Home Depot and Lowes, and magazines such as Make and Craft. A guess as to the reemergence of the popularity of crafts and home improvement would be that it is a revolt to media saturation and long days spent working on a computer. To provide a type of balance in life, people are countering these daily abstractions with tangible creations. Further inspection of these trends could provide a better or different explanation.
I hope to use both my scholarly and practical education to observe, report on, and direct the conversation between media and society. This connection between self and media is a vital link, which according to my preliminary research has only been shallowly probed.