Piece 3 full draft

The public space, and the shared experiences, within it have always been formed by individual people. Paul Goldberger, in 1999, claimed that technology was destroying our concept of public space. But is technology at fault? Interestingly, covers of The New Yorker do not reflect this particular attitude toward technology. Moreover, it seems that The New Yorker has had a contrasting attitude throughout the years. The New Yorker is more concerned with the educated individual as opposed to the sheepish public mass.

            Paul Goldberger claims that cell phones are the cause of public space becoming more private. Meaning that when someone is talking on a cell phone, they are less focused on where they are; their focus is pulled to place where the other person is. As he puts it: “It turns the boulevardier into a sequestered individual, the flaneur into a figure of privacy. And suddenly the meaning of the street as a public place has been hugely diminished”. Essentially, technology is removing us from the shared experiences of the public space. We experience places as a “kind of engagement with particulars” and cell phones are taking us out of this engagement. The “particulars” are the details; they are what make up the uniqueness of a place. Moreover, Goldberger asserts that this is causing a monoculture to emerge. This monoculture is ruining the uniqueness of places.

The New Yorker was created to be a cultural magazine with a more sophisticated sense of humor than magazines running at the time. Throughout its, now almost 90 year, run The New Yorker has strived to portray the culture of New York in its articles as well as in the cover art. However, early covers of The New Yorker had their focus on the individual not society as a whole.

 

This is the cover of the June 22, 1935 issue of The New Yorker. Here we see a young man who, presumably, just graduated from college and now faces the challenges of the future. The pink section of the cover exemplifies what can be considered as a successful life. The gray side represents a less affluent lifestyle. But, what are this man’s options? On the pink side, he is heading a meeting, he’s a diplomat, and he has people waiting on him. The pink side is the side of money and power. The gray side shows a life of hard work yet none of the occupations shown are in any technological industries. Moreover, the gray side has the man working a musician; suggesting that an occupation that involves creativity is a bad thing. While the majority of the American populous was concerned with the Great Depression, The New Yorker was more focused on the futures of the newly graduated. Intriguingly, this magazine, that claims to have its fingers on the proverbial pulse of New York, completely disregards one of the biggest economic catastrophes in modern American history. The New Yorker’s audience is the individual. It relies on the educated, lone reader because the public is made of individuals. The New Yorker puts the individual above the public and the public space. Part of Goldberger’s argument is about how, in the past, people moved together as a mass public entity experiencing the urban environment together. However, this cover would suggest the individual has always been at the center.

            The New Yorker, interestingly, seems to ignore major world events in exchange for focusing on the individual.

This is a cover from 1942. The world is in the grips of WW II, at this time. Here we see a soldier at the gunner position on a military plane. However, instead of being attentive and at the ready to engage in combat, the soldier is staring musingly at the full moon. Could this lack of focus be considered losing track of “the particulars”? If Goldberger’s argument is correct, is this soldier not participating in the public experience? Once again, The New Yorker chooses to focus on the individual and not the public space.  The New Yorker puts the individual, in this case literally, above the public experience. Its goal is to focus on the educated individual because that is who is reading their magazine. Looking at the pubic as one homogenized group is not the best way to understand the details that Goldberger insists that we are missing. The individuals are the “particulars”. They are the nitty-gritty details of a place. If Goldberger wants us to engage the “particulars” of a place, then we need look no further than the individual.

            However, The New Yorker has had groups on their covers. Yet, with this focus on a group, we still see the importance of the individual. 

This cover, from June 1988, presents us with a flock of birds. These birds all have what look to be Walk-mans, a portable cassette player. It would appear that the Goldbergerian nightmare of a privatized public has reached us before the introduction of cell phones. But notice that it is all the birds are different colors; they are all different form one another. But they are still together as a public. The individuals make up the public Goldberger would claim that they are missing out on the public experience by isolating themselves with technology. That is not the case. The New Yorker is portraying this technologically induced isolation as a unifying force. The birds are united by their technology. They are united by a common interest. Those individuals, those particulars, are coming together to form the public. Is that not how society works? Society is made of individuals who come together to form the lager public; there cannot be a public without the individuals.

            Individuals give a place its uniqueness. The New Yorker portrays this idea in their cover art by focusing on how important the individual is and by placing the individual above the public. Individuals are the trees that make up a beautiful forest. To argue that the lack of interactions between these trees makes them any less a forest, is wrong. Paul Goldberger wants us to think that technology draws us away from the public space and that we have lost our ability to participate in the public experience. However, as the covers of The New Yorker demonstrate, the focus should not be technology’s influence on the public, but rather the more integral individual.  

New Yorker Covers

Responding to "Disconnected Urbanism"

The argument made by Paul Goldberger in "Disconnected Urbanism" is that cell phones take us away from where we are geographically. Goldberger asserts that while you're talking to someone on a cell phone, you're more focused on where they are. He believes that " you are not on Madison Avenue if you are holding a little object to your ear that pulls you toward a person in Omaha". Goldberger is saying that as we talk, we lose our sense of our location and that we no longer share in the experience of living. This then causes a breakdown of urban life as we know it, according to Goldberger. He theorizes that this collective pull leads to us being "transported out of real space into a virtual realm".

I don't completely agree with this assertion. He is blaming technology for us not connecting to the outside world. However, one could make the same argument for being deep in thought or simply not paying attention. We are not actively trying to escape where we are, in general. In fact, we are usually trying to connect to someone else who is somewhere else. Also, I disagree with his opinions about area codes. He feels that they used to be connected to a place but now because cell phone can move all over, the area codes don't mean anything. To me area codes are like ID badges for for the person to whom it belongs. For example when I meet someone with a strange area code, I wonder where they could be from thus making them more interesting. Or on the flip side, (since I am at college) when I see my area code come up, I get really excited and think of home. So would that be considered being pulled away from where I am, Mr. Goldberger?

Piece 2 Draft

Sean Levy

Dr. Devine

Expository Writing

12 March 2014

*Needs an intro*

Deception plays a key role in this film. One of the scenes that we see this in is the scene where Robby and Peter are engaged in a conversation with a person, using the username “Untitled”, in a chat room. Peter believes that the person that they are talking to is a man pretending to be a woman. The irony here is that while they are claiming that they are being deceived, they are deceiving someone at the same time. But what’s the significance? What does this say about digital culture? This tells us that the film is also putting a heavy emphasis on real world interactions. It also tells us that we can only know someone by meeting them face to face. The barrier of the internet and technology prevents us from interacting and learning about each other. We might be who we say we are on the internet and we can easily lie right to each other’s faces. I believe that this tells us to go out into the real world and meet each other. Moreover, that the best way to know someone is in real life. Not by the words on a screen but by skin on their face, the blood in their veins and the reality of their soul. Miranda July wants to portray the digital world as a hazy uncharted territory where one cannot be sure of another's identity. This places more of an importance on the quality of interaction in the real world as they are portrayed as more fulfilling than those made artificially (either on the internet or as posts on a window). The real world, as seen through this movie, is a place where the interactions made by the characters strengthen the connections made between them. This is contrasted by the interactions made through artificial means. The artificial interactions do not end well and weaken, or completely destroy, any connection that the characters may have had.

Another theme of the film and that is the concept of the real vs fake. Just first scene ends, Christine's narration continues as the camera focuses on a bird sitting on a branch. It then cuts to Richard, who is staring at the bird. Richard then looks at his ex-wife, whom he recently divorced from, as she is separating their belongings. She hands him a framed picture of a bird and tells him that it belongs to him. The bird outside could be a symbol of real life and the static picture is a symbol of life through someone else. July is saying that we cannot live our lives through the experiences of others and we must go out into the world and experience things for ourselves. This can also be seen in one of the last scenes of the movie in which Robby leaves his apartment to investigate a clanging noise that can be heard throughout the film. It is revealed that the source of the noise is a man tapping a quarter on the bus stop sign. Though his mother told him that is was the computer that controls the street lights, Robby is unsatisfied and therefore must investigate for himself. This is important because we must be the ones to find the answers for ourselves. We must live for ourselves and experience all we can. The only truth we can really accept is the one that we see with our own eyes and our own experiences. 

The Script

"Peter: It's probably a man.
Robby: Why is it a man?
Peter: 'Cause everyone just makes stuff up on these things."


This quote from the film illustrates a point that I've been dancing around and that is the concept of "deception". In this film, there is an overlying sense of deception among the characters. In this scene in particular, Peter and Robby are engaging someone, labeled "Untitled", in conversation in a chat room. The irony here is that they are assuming the identity of a man while accusing the person they are talking to of lying. Moreover, when Robby asks why, Peter's response indicates how Miranda July wants to portray the digital world as a hazy uncharted territory where one cannot be sure of another's identity. This places more of an importance on the quality of interaction in the real world as they are portrayed as more fulfilling than those made artificially (either on the internet or as posts on a window). The real world, as seen through this movie, is a place where the interactions made by the characters strengthen the connections made between. This is contrasted by the interactions made through artificial means. The artificial interactions do not end well and weaken, or completely destroy, any connection that the characters may have had.

A.O. Scott Review, What's Interesting?

"Ms. July proposes a delicate, beguiling idea of community and advances it in full awareness of the peculiar obstacles that modern life presents.[...] One of these is the tendency of city dwellers [...] to live hermetically sealed inside their own minds and habits. Individuality itself makes communication difficult, but the drive to be yourself does not dispel the longing to find (and maybe also to become) somebody else." (Scott 2005).

This quote is interesting because of Scott's interpretation of the film. The interpretation Scott provides is that the meaning behind the film is that though we like to think of ourselves as autonomous, we still have a drive to connect to more people. I agree with this interpretation. But I also think that is goes deeper than that. I think that this film not only stresses the importance of connections but more so the importance of real life connections. In the film, the relationship that works out in the end is that exists in the real world, Christine and Richard. Christine and Richard are the characters whose relationship starts, builds, and matures face to face. They interact with each other in person and in the end they discover that they should be more than just casual. This contrasts the relationship that Robby has with "Untitled" as their relationship only exists online as Robby deceives "Untitled" into thinking he's a man as opposed to a child. In the end, the woman revealed to be "Untitled" realizes that their relationship only existed online. 

Establishing Shots

Me and You and Everyone we Know begins with the sound of what we believe to be waves lapping at the shore. Then, the screen fades from black onto a static image of a couple sitting on the beach at sunset. Our main character, Christina, creates dialogue for the couple and voices both of their parts. The conversation that the couple is having is them making a vow to live their lives to the fullest without any fear. This vow is the couple's promising a connection to each other. This scene, I believe, sets up one of the themes of the film. The theme stresses the importance of the real life interactions and connections that we make in real life.

The first scene ends but Christina's narration continues as the camera focuses on a bird sitting on a branch. It then cuts to Richard, who is staring at the bird. Richard then looks at his ex wife, whom he recently divorced from, as she is separating their belongings. She hands him a framed picture of a bird and tells him that it belongs to him. She then requests that he not make a scene. He says that they should have some kind of ceremony it represent that they once were a family. He then goes to his kids' room. The kids, Peter and Robby, are on the computer creating a tiger out of symbols and spaces. Richard asks if he looks like a guy who would be considered "ok". The younger child, Robby, Richard if he's mad at them. Peter responds that Richard looks fine. Richard goes outside and lights his hand on fire with lighter fluid. This scene contrasts the previous as it is about a family falling apart. The bird outside could be a symbol of real life and the static picture is a symbol of life through someone else. I believe that this represents another theme of the movie. This theme is that we cannot live our lives through the experiences of others and we must go out into the world and experience things for ourselves.