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My Midterm Manifesto By Bekah McKendry

Now, 75% percent of the way though my first year of doctoral work, I am looking back on what type of grounding I’m coming from. So much of my academic career this year has been focused around gathering my past studies in order to examine my new ones, or as is often the case, to examine the works of my colleagues. Having been a bit of an academic philanderer, floating from one topic to another for many of the past fifteen years, it is difficult to put my finger on one sole axis from which my point of view can be drawn. I have degrees in Dance, English, Theatre, Broadcast Journalism, Education, and Film, as well as an attempted degree in Entomology, and a large five-year career in radio. It is hard to pinpoint which hat I put on in each situation, as it often seems to be which ever one is most convenient and looks best with my attitude that day. But, it has become apparent my most prominent source for critique and criticism comes from a “real life” media approach.

I can’t believe I just put “real life” in quotes…and did it again, but I have some strange issues with this term that I must break down a bit. I have spent the past six years of my life working for a national media company. I have worked as a producer for their radio show, TV network, magazine, and most recently the film division. I hate to say it but this has really hardened me and my approach to the work of others and my own. I consider this to be real life because it is outside of academia and practice, but I question if any movement in media is ever real. Though I try to separate and be conscious of the fact I’m in an academic setting where art is supposed to be experimental and the “purpose” and legal sides are the last thing people think about, my first inclinations when asked “what do you think about this” is to examine its marketability and go over how one can’t just borrow pieces of copyrighted material without hours of hearty legal paperwork. So yes, I have become the hardened art “suit” that I used to hate. And even though I sometimes find myself cringing at phrases like “who is your target demographic?” leave my mouth, I think this has also really helped my own self-criticism and gives me a helpful point of reference for others. We will not be grad students forever (fingers crossed!). Someday we will all leave this university, and then suddenly marketability and using copyrighted material become some of the most crucial aspects of our work and creation process. And though right now it is great to enjoy artistic website creation with only ourselves, our art, and our portfolio in mind, eventually these skills must be related to our “real life” (there I go again) work, which is governed by a system of laws and stipulations that already guide much of my vision. Hardened? Oh yeah big time, and quite cynical too, but I think my grounding helps to prepare myself and others for the road ahead.

My second center for critical grounding is definitely a visual one. Be it film or TV, most of my academic and career experience has been in a visual realm. I find that many of my critical approaches to the work of my colleagues come from a visual perspective, quickly pointing out problems with framing, lighting, images, or visual contradictions. At the same time, I have discovered that while I’m focusing so much on visuals, I apparently turn off my ears. When watching audio/visual projects like Liz’s, I noticed all tiny elements of the visual side, but failed to hear and catch large portions of the audio. So while I feel comfortable giving advice on visual problems and creating visual fluidity and narrative, I find myself a bit overwhelmed by audio projects. I’m also a bit afraid to aggressively approach audio in my own work.

Now for big question- Who is at my Table? I honestly thought I was going to have to sit down and thumb endlessly through past textbooks searching for some theories with which I agreed or found supportive in my own work. But surprisingly, the flood philosophers came fast and furiously to the point I could not possibly summarize all of them in one small paper. I have to admit that I also had a great backing for this at CUNY and NYU. Both of my programs at these schools were very stringent on philosophy and sourcing for all academic ideas. One of my thesis directors, Heather Hendershot, always used to tell me, “Nobody cares what you have to say unless you can support your theories with somebody well-known who kind of alluded to it first”. So with that in mind- my table is not a dining table, but a coffee table in front of a comfy couch. It is covered in big bowls of popcorn and countless bad movies and TV shows. The table/couch are facing a big TV ready to go, and seated alongside me munching on popcorn are Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey, and Jacques Lacan. Michael Foucault has been hanging around the movie party too, but at the moment we sent him to get some pizza.

I’ll begin to break down my choices with Walter Benjamin. Benjamin really enforces and gives support to much of my real life experience and theories. Benjamin broke down the role of author and took the power of art out of the artist/author’s hands and gave it to the audience, feeling that it is not as important what the author intended, but how it is received within the audience. After years of work in media, this has become one of the philosophies that I most subscribe to and see in my own work. One must always keep the audience in mind; otherwise there is little reason to present work to the public. Butler and Mulvey both bring feminist critiques of media, but also strong examinations of the way bodies play visually. Lacan can seem a bit dated at time, but in visual art his structuralist theories establish why we are able to create stories and patterns out of seemingly unconnected imagery, a crucial stage for TV, Film, and Comics. Foucault has many thoughts on media and power control that I also strongly adhere too, but I have not yet done a complete study on him which is why for the moment, he is on a pizza run, while the rest of us are watching TV and analyzing every image, body, and connection