Mediated

I gave this book 5 stars because it does deserve it and it forces you to be more objective about the TV and virtual reality world we live in today and how far it infects our minds and behavior. I highly recommend it. It's all about the Me Generation and how we are being treated as emperors were centuries ago. Everything is presented to us on TV and in stores as though we are entitled to anything we desire. Or that's how our minds eventually see it. Mr. de Zengotita goes into very insightful details about how our minds are being manipulated to think and act certain ways by TV shows, movies, news, etc. It reminds me of George Orwell's fictional attempt to explain the manipulated mind's schizophrenia regarding reality in his book, 1984. There is an oddity in the book, which is Mr. de Zengotita's judgmentally insulting half his readers, or maybe most of his readers. He does this a handful of times, inserting short bursts of emotion against stupid people, which he says are President Bush, Jr., his defenders and people who aren't hysterically frantic about oil drilling, hunting, fishing, big business, etc., including Alaskan eskimos who want big oil companies, as he admits. These are idiots in his mind, which is extremely ironic. As he demonizes many of his readers for not agreeing with him, he actually admits that these stupid people are closer to reality than the mediated people he criticizes throughout his book. Apparently, these mediated people are the ones who hate Bush and love leftist utopias. This means that they are the ones living closest to unreality, being most gullible for pop culture's virtual reality. Such unreality also implies self-deception and the desire to deceive others, knowing or unknowing. So he is contradicting himself in his attempt to feign objectivity, unless he wants to invent a contrast between stupid and unreal. Even the way he denounces the stupid people makes him look like he has media effects operating in his own mind, which he does in general admit to. So it's possible that he may not always practice what he preaches. And he's honest about it, so this oddity doesn't ruin the book. It's just odd. Nevertheless, he likes to see himself as an ideological moderate. But the book is superb for people who need to learn how to restore one's mind to the way it was before the 1960's activism made everyone think like an actor putting on an act and before everyone made up fake lives on computers. For readers who remember life before 1970, it's a good exercise of mental restoration. And those who were born after the Baby Boom, it's a necessary exercise of human restoration.

In Mediated (at one time titled The Flattered Self), Zengotita shows how a media-saturated culture has created a new breed of narcissists-namely you and me. We are, Zengotita argues, so self-absorbed, so obsessed with our own flattery, so hell-bent on the creation of our own perverse sense of celebrity that we have lost the true measure of greatness. For example, he argues that we can no longer aspire to great heroism because truly heroic figures are no longer relevant in our media world. Heroism, which requires devotion, sacrifice, imagination, and mythos, has been replaced with counterfeit celebrity that makes "heroism" appealing only when it's a consumer product. Literalism, self-aggrandizement, being pandered to by an onslaught of advertisers in every media form, and the resulting delusion that we are always the center of the universe makes us into pseudo celebrities so that we have no room in our consciousness for the real heroes of the world. He makes a great case for the fact that we have become, thanks to the media, more like full-time actors than real humans. All of us, he says, have learned from television "method acting," so that a media person could stick a microphone in front of any Average Joe and that Average Joe would be able to give a polished interview. We're all competing to be the star in a world of wannabe celebrities.He does a good job of showing how television gives us a God's-eye view of everything so that we have a delusion of omniscience and this false power fuels our delusions of grandeur. Additionally, this God's-eye view spoils us so that we can't live in stillness and see life in the here and now but only media's cheap, hyped representations of life.This unhealthy quest for god-hood, he shows, has taken shape in the popularity of Reality TV shows, which feed our sense of entitlement, self-pity, and our narcissistic wish to be recognized over others.By showing how our inability to embrace true heroes connects to our obsession with making ourselves into pseudo heroes, Zengotita has found an original, sometimes funny, and always profound way to make us look at the way the media is shaping our psyches and our souls.

I would like to give this review 3.5 stars, so I rounded up to 4.The book appears to be mostly informed opinions from Zengotita. It doesn't have as many facts and studies as I'd like, but his opinions are not wacky or anything. I certainly agree with most things he says. I agree that as technical advances occur there is just simply more media for one to take in, therefore taking longer to reach a "culturally accepted" point of media intelligence.Zengotita's views in the book are, simply put, his views. Again, not much fact (although there is some), but it's easy to agree, and his observations are right on. I would also say one of the major points of the book is to show the reader HOW the media is affecting society, to make you aware. There is something to learn from this book, however, it's definitely geared more to those who are VERY interested in media and culture, not those who are just looking around.