8
Street roots
Sept. 14, 2012
Bursting
the bubble
A conversation with ‘On the Media ’ host Brooke
Gladstone about her new graphic novel and what
she really thinks o f our relationship with the news
BY AARON BURKHALTER
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
n 1796, London tea broker Janies Tilly
Matthews said that criminals operated an
“air loom” that controlled people through
rays that travel through the air. In 1919,
Freud apostle Victor Tausk met a young
woman named Natalija who said an ex-suitor
was hurting her through a coffin-shaped
“influencing machine.”
Today, we blame our own odd behavior on
the media. Civic discourse losing its civility?
Blame the talking heads on CNN and Fox
News. Students gunning down their peers at
high schools and college campuses? Must be
video games. But Brooke Gladstone, host of
the weekly NPR program “On The Media,”
rejects that idea in her graphic novel “The
Influencing Machine.”
As depicted by comic artist Josh Neufeld,
Gladstone is shown on every page,
addressing the reader face-to-cartoonish-face
as she lays out her manifesto on modern
media. She contends that while the media
might represent a warped, funhouse mirror,
it’s still a telling reflection. Just as James
Tilly Matthews and Natalija blamed their
erratic behavior on imaginary constructions,
contemporary media consumers too quickly
scapegoat media outlets when they don’t
like the stories being told.
Gladstone wags a finger at media
producers and consumers alike while
splicing together centuries of history and
commentary. Because every new
development in media resembles an old
development, she remains optimistic. We
survived the advent of radio and television.
We’ll survive the Internet.
I
A aron Burkhalter: Many N P R and
public radio personalities have published
books. And no doubt you could have written a
traditional book on this topic. Why did you
decide to work in the realm of comics?
B rooke G ladstone: A variety of reasons.
One of which is that I get books all the time
about the media, and they start to blend one
into the other after a while. And I didn’t
want to write a book that I didn’t want to
read. So, that was one thing. Another thing
is the way that I am used to relating to
people and conveying information has
everything to do with radio, and I thought
comics would be the closest I could get to
preserving that voice. Not because I’m a
comic person on the radio, but because
there is a unique quality of intimacy. But
radio also is unique because it’s not offered
in the same way (as) any other medium.
And so I wanted to be able to do what I get
to do on the radio, which is to talk directly
to people. There’s that illusion that the
person is speaking directly to you on the
radio. It’s not something that you
experience when you’re reading an article
or even watching a TV, when you have the
sense that there are a million people tuned
to the same channel. When you’re listening
to the radio you feel like somebody’s breath
is practically on your cheek. And so I
wanted to be able to speak in balloons and
look my reader in the eye because I was
taking them on a complicated and non-
chronological journey through history, right?
Starting with the invention of the written
word and projecting forward to the year
2045, and I didn’t want to lose them along
the way.
A. B.: What was the writing process like?
B. G.: It was nothing like I had ever done
before. Basically the process was, I would,
you know, roughly write a page, and then I
would divide it up into sections. And then I
would write it again with shorter and fewer
words. And then I would write it a third
time after I had thought up the image. In an
illustrated book, the pictures support the
text. But in a comic book, the pictures
replace the text. It’s a very dense book. You
may have had that experience if you read it.
There’s just a lot jammed into those pages.
And a big part of that has to do with the fact
that I could remove context and description,
because I could supply it in the image. And I
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F O N T H E M E D IA
would write a very complicated description,
maybe 200 words with three reference links
from the Internet that I would send to Josh,
and then maybe 35 words of actual text.
A. B.: You compare media consumers to this
young woman from the early 1900s who told
her psychiatrist that an ex-boyfriend had a
machine that he could use to control her.
Please explain how we view the media today as
a controlling machine.
B. G.: The more widespread media
becomes, the more it becomes part of the
air we breathe, the more suspicious of it we
become. A lot of that suspicion is justified. I
don’t pretend that the media are not biased
or that they in any way reflect a true picture
of the world as it is. It’s a reflection in a
funhouse mirror. What I was saying is that
we participate in the process of making the
media the way they are. They’re essentially
a commercial operation. If they didn’t sell
their image of the world, then they wouldn’t
continue trying to peddle it. There isn’t a
conspiracy, is my point. Every time there is
a new technology, there is the suspicion that
it’s going to change what it means to be
human; that we’ll lose our volition to it. And
that’s been going on since the beginning of
science. That’s why really the Patient Zero
in the book is James Tilly Matthews, who
ends up in the loony bin. Basically what I
contend is that it’s not a responsible or
useful position to blame the media
whenever, increasingly, it is in our own
hands to change the media.
A. B.: Have you seen any recent examples
where, as consumers, we have changed the
media?
B. G.: Certainly the biggest headline of
the last year was probably the Arab Spring,
as it’s been called. Much of that was largely
reported in its initial stages and throughout
by social media that is entirely in the hands
of amateurs. And in that case you saw the
limitations of official media, because the
Middle East in particular is a region in
which it’s very difficult to maintain a free
press. And you have A1 Jazeera; it does a
See BUBBLE, page 9
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