'The Zen of Listening\r'

'Douglas, Susan. (2004). The Zen of Listening, in Listening in : Radio and the American Imagination (22-39). Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. elevate Radio is examined here as a shaper of generational identities, as a uniting office for the creation of ”imagined communities” or nations, and as a wishful device with associational links in our past. In addition, it is portrayed as a powerful aural gadget that stimulates us cognitively not further through our imagination; our creation of images or whims found on listening, only if also through music, which engages us emotionally.Further discussed is a comprehensive history of intercommunicate in America and its contrasting relationship with newspapers and literacy, and television and its visual component. This contrast, and the existence of the intercommunicate and the ways we listen squander fundamental temporally bound char soureristics that argon heavy in understanding times, the middling its elf and our relationship with it as it give-up the ghosts engrained or interwoven into our e veryday lives.The text examines the tender implications and reasons for being of communicatecommunication set and refers to variant scholars who have examined the family and its effects of this revolutionary device which unites listeners through simultaneousness of listening and the physical responses listening engenders. Through the physiological, social, cultural, and technological spheres of this medium, it is obvious that it is much more complex than unremarkably gestated, and the text brings to light the ramifications of its introduction into a literary, visual culture, creating a hybrid America : a conservative, literate society entwined with a traditional, preliterate. ral culture. Word Count : 230 Keywords : nostalgia, radio, imagined comm conformity, modes of listening, music, ritual Response ”With radio, the interior ”I” began oscillating wi th the voices of those never met, never up to now seen (31). ” The permeating qualities of the ”voices of radio” in the minds of listeners is an issue, in my opinion, that clearly implicates radio as a persuasion tool, which is an element of the medium that appears to be ignored in the text.This neglect to fully examine the implications of the medium and the various elements that are quintessential to the formation of a complete and comprehensive understanding of the workings and complexities of radio presents a rudimentary portrait of the form which should definately be corrected. I argue that Susan Douglas presents an incomplete account of the burn down of radio in her idealization of the medium and that, uniform the listener who is ”inclined to remember [radio] at its ruff”, she fails to examine the aspiration of radio messages and focuses more on the experience of listening to the radio (Douglas, 2004, p. 5). Firstly, with a dry land on the ab ove sentence, she idealizes the form and effects of radio by overlooking or barely pitiful on the idea of the technical hand that plays a rather large role in the medium, and affects the objects and motives of the speakers and the national they disclose. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of these voices is cause for concern for listeners as they are fertilize to subtle influence from these ” acquainted(predicate) voices” who infiltrate themselves into the very thoughts of individuals.Susan Douglas article addresses many ideas that revolve around radio, but does not seem to pay much worry to the commercialization of the medium despite her mentionning that ”by the 1930s, with the extremely commercialized network system in place, a great majority of these voicesâ€which sought to sound familiar, intimate, and even folksyâ€represented a centralized consumer-culture (Douglas, 2004, p. 31). ‘ beyond the idealized concept of the ”imagined communityâ⠂¬Â and the positive unity it creates among the listeners, the commercial hand in the medium of radio implies a veritable intention in the outmatch of the medium; one that seeks numbers. Douglas does mention that in an travail to maximize profits, the network and advertisers aimed for the largest possible audience, promoting the medium of radio as a ”nation-building technology (Douglas, 2004, p. 24). ‘ This emphasis, however, on the maximisation of profits casts doubt on the integrity and the intention of radio. The oscillating voices of ”those never met, never even seen” which act with the inner voice of the listener are sully by an underlying struggle between social consolidation and betterment, and commercialism. This leads to the conduct to examine content and intention in radio, and to the need for a critical sound judgement of this revolutionary device.Secondly, these voices which penetrated our minds, spoken by unknown radio personalities, did more than allow us to free our imagination. In effect, these voices which now interacted with the inner voice of the individual could become subtle influences of our ideas, and beliefs without our even knowing. This danger, which I greatly believe is applicable in this business deal medium, especially when winning into consideration the novelty of the device in the 1930s, could cast off listeners unguarded against potential manipulation or influence.The idea that the voices of the radio speakers have a certain familiar or intimate quality illustrates this desire to station with the listener, which leaves that latter to fend for himself in the identification of the verity of messages, and in the intention of the speaker who is trained to interest an audience. The various personalities that would speak to the nation through radioâ€the ”politically powerful and the rich, [… ministers, educators, […] comedians, singers and actors”â€could have various intentions in their speeches; they could seek to sway auditors to favor certain ideologies, to act in certain ways, or could misdirect or misinform listeners (Douglas, 2004, p31). Furthermore, the ability for radio to adjust to various circumstances of listening makes it even more appalling as it becomes the background music of our daily lives, fashioning these voices that much more likely to become a part of our interior dialogue (Douglas, 2004).In conclusion, as mass media of various sortsâ€newspapers, television and radioâ€become national, and all-encompassing, the need for critical analysis of every aspect of distributively medium becomes necessary to understand the limitations of each, and their intentions. Since there are many underlying motives to every medium, especially commercial or political ones, and since mass media have developed into such huge social entities with powerful nfluence, it is important to think by ourselves, without the implication of unknown ot hers in our reasoning; to question why we believe certain things, and how we came to so as to remain individuals in the mass, and to be able to ward off unwanted influences which whitethorn find their way into our subconscious. Word Count : 782\r\n'