The Zen of Listening

Douglas, Susan. (2004). The Zen of Listening, in Listening in communicate set receiver and the American Imagination (22-39). Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Abstr effect Radio is go throughd here as a shaper of generational identities, as a uniting forces for the creation of imagined communities or nations, and as a nostalgic invention with associational links in our past. In addition, it is portrayed as a brawny aural gadget that stimulates us cognitively not only by means of our imagination our creation of images or minds based on listening, but as well as through music, which engages us emotionally.Further discussed is a comprehensive history of radio in America and its contrasting relationship with newspapers and literacy, and television and its visual component. This contrast, and the existence of the radio and the ways we listen hit important temporally bound characteristics that be important in understanding times, the medium itself and our relationship with it as it becomes engrained or interwoven into our everyday lives.The text leavens the social discounts and reasons for being of radio and refers to motley scholars who have examined the form 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 some(prenominal) more than than complex than commonly believed, and the text brings to light the ramifications of its introduction into a literary, visual culture, creating a hybrid America a conservative, literate monastic order entwined with a traditional, preliterate. ral culture. Word deliberate 230 Keywords nostalgia, radio, imagined community, modes of listening, music, ritual Response With radio, the interior I began oscillating with the voices of those never met, never blush 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 section of the medium that appears to be neglected in the text.This neglect to fully examine the implications of the medium and the several(a) elements that are quintessential to the formation of a hit and comprehensive understanding of the workings and complexities of radio presents a rudimentary enactment of the form which should definately be corrected. I argue that Susan Douglas presents an incomplete account of the draw close of radio in her idealization of the medium and that, like the listener who is incline to remember radio at its best, she fails to examine the intention of radio messages and focuses more on the experience of listening to the radio (Douglas, 2004, p. 5). Firstly, with a basis on the above sentence, she idealizes the form and effects of radio by overlooking or barely touching on the idea of the commercial hand tha t plays a rather large role in the medium, and affects the intentions and motives of the speakers and the content they disclose. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of these voices is cause for resuscitate for listeners as they are prey to subtle influence from these familiar voices who come home themselves into the very thoughts of various(prenominal)s.Susan Douglas article addresses many ideas that revolve around radio, but does not seem to pay overmuch attention to the commercialization of the medium condescension her stirning that by the 1930s, with the highly commercialized network system in place, a great majority of these voiceswhich sought to sound familiar, snug, and even folksy equal a centralized consumer-culture (Douglas, 2004, p. 31). Beyond the idealized concept of the imagined community and the incontrovertible unity it creates among the listeners, the commercial hand in the medium of radio implies a received intention in the scale of the medium one that seeks nu mbers. Douglas does mention that in an effort 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 maximization of profits casts distrust on the integrity and the intention of radio. The oscillating voices of those never met, never even seen which interact with the inner voice of the listener are tainted by an underlying struggle between social consolidation and betterment, and commercialism. This leads to the get to examine content and intention in radio, and to the need for a critical mind of this revolutionary device.Secondly, these voices which penetrated our minds, spoken by unknown radio personalities, did more than admit 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 da nger, which I greatly believe is applicable in this mass medium, curiously when taking into consideration the novelty of the device in the 1930s, could leave 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 identify with the listener, which leaves that latter to fend for himself in the realization of the veracity of messages, and in the intention of the speaker who is trained to please an audience. The various personalities that would speak to the nation through radiothe politically powerful and the rich, ministers, educators, comedians, singers and actorscould 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 strength for radio to adjust to various circumstances of listening makes it even m ore alarming as it becomes the background music of our daily lives, making these voices that much more likely to become a part of our interior talk (Douglas, 2004).In conclusion, as mass media of various sortsnewspapers, television and radiobecome national, and all-encompassing, the need for critical analysis of every aspect of each medium becomes requisite 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 much(prenominal) huge social entities with powerful nfluence, it is important to think by ourselves, without the implication of unknown others 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 screen off unwanted influences which may find their way into our subconscious. Word Count 782