Critical Production

            A particular focus for this past week has been rather intriguing; production of content as part of a critical focus. This is an interesting aspect to media literacy, considering we are living in The Age of The Annoying Orange and Epic Fail Blog, because it is an aspect that is so readily applicable by every day media literates. Now something that kept coming up in my own thought process with production was, how to make production a part of MLE?

            First off, a pertinent aspect to this conversation is to ask, “Why should production be a part of the critical process?” And according to most everything on this dear planet, there are simple explanations and more complex explanations. A simplistic aspect is that as individuals become more critical of their intake, they will become more critical of what they produce. A more complex discussion includes the rapidity of Internet culture absorbing, and eventually super-ceding, such traditional medians as print, film, and television, the democratization of media production/consumption, and perhaps the oversaturation of content on a media consuming society.

            Now those explanations may be a bit wordy but each one has its pros and cons as areas of interest to media literacy educators. The first explanation is easier to consider when positioned in a framework of critical action. For instance, a chain of critical action might be; intake, reflection, application, dissatisfaction, production, reflection, repeat. This certainly covers many of the media literate, especially now in the “heyday” of Youtube, Twitter, and Internet TV. In fact, a great many sensations on the Internet have become successful media producers in the traditional areas of media (Lucas Cruikshank from Fred, Lena Dunham of Girls). However, the difficulty in this type of simplistic component of the explanation is that there are consumers who never have the desire to produce, or who may believe that their media interactions can’t be reconciled as ‘production’ in any kind of professional sense. That is where the need for the more complex discussion comes into effect.

            A complex answer to why production is a part of the critical process lies in the evolving ‘culture’ (I say culture with trepidation because of the vagueness that word may denote amongst certain audiences, myself included) created by the Internet’s interactions with individuals within a societal framework. This isn’t to say that the “simplistic” explanation isn’t true in most, or all, of its assertions. But, what needs to be considered is that the Internet is creating a rapidly evolving kind of interaction with society and individuals, but that those interactions are not self sustainable for the Internet. There is a hunger and need for content that has to come from somewhere and more than likely it will spring from the minds of a consumer. Of course there are commercial aspects at play in all of this but, for the purposes of this discussion, focus shall be maintained on the non commercial aspects. Now, the simple explanation, at this point, says that if a consumer is critical in their consumption their production ought to have a critical eye itself. This type of scenario, however, is not always the case.

            In recent years there has been movements in the field of education towards incorporating media arts as an aesthetical or technical subset of interests. This addresses the individualistic desires of media consumers/producers, however, it doesn’t satisfy their role in a larger environ. For instance, a person may write a blog about Southern cooking while living in Europe. This example might have critical implications, but it is difficult to say unless the producer has critical intentions while making the effort. The individual may write the blog for such individual reasons as; an exercise in auto-biographical journalism, filling a commercialistic niche as a hive-mind for the disenfranchised Southern cuisine connoisseur, etc. However, if the producer is creating this, critically, then the content can become about alienation, acceptance, and the parts of identity that are shaped by regional influences that we treasure. The point is, creation is good and noteworthy, but critical creation is able to transcend formalism and strike a deeper chord amongst people.

            Now that there has been discussion about why there is a need for critical production, it comes to the difficult task of how to integrate this into Media Literacy Education. While there are several ideas about how to achieve such a task, one possible way is to have an individual become self critical, this might seem a bit abstract and tasking individuals with a kind of ultra-sentience; but it is also vastly important. This means that a person has to become somewhat aware of their identity and how that relates to media. Part of this self critiquing is the knowledge that our individual identities are subject to change based upon any number of permutations in life; including, but not limited to, age, religion, parenthood, livelihood, etc. Once a person can grasp (even vaguely) this concept then some question can take place concerning critical media intake. In simple terms this is about the point where the complex and simple explanations run together or come extremely close to one another. But this whole process isn’t easy, it is difficult enough having a person become acutely aware of their media intake, let alone deconstruct their identity, and then use all that knowledge to construct critical media content. This is a great challenge faced by Media Literacy Educators, and although the task is daunting, the plausible outcomes are worth going after.