Responses 4A: Calvino & Media
❧ How might one of Calvino’s points apply today in our Net culture? For this last question, you might do a more creative response. For instance, you might create a scenario that clearly echoes Calvino yet makes a point about our addiction to the Net. ❧ Creative options: Re-write a portion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by replacing the old man’s eye with an item connected to the Net, such as the camera on a computer or cellphone. ❧ Change an element in Calvino’s story so as to make a similar, slightly different, or completely new point. You can explain how the change would work or you can do a creative re-writing.
Calvino
Italo Calvino creates a feeling of the madness of the protagonist by describing his thoughts that are integrated into the setting. For instance, the protagonist started “brandishing the remote” control out of the window. The narrator wanted to use the remote to capture the life that surrounded him. The description of the neighborhood, the visual concepts, and the auditory cues that the protagonist perceived as he went around the city. Making the readers imagine the streets and the square of that place, along with the sounds of ambulances. Calvino creates a setting that reflects the madness of the protagonist. (99 words)
*** This response could use more proofreading, and the final sentence could tie things together more clearly, yet it gets at the relation of psychology to setting.
❧
This short Story by Italian Author Italo Calvino carries an ability for readers to dive into self- reflective states. Using imagery, the narrator makes one see his compulsive thumb pressing as an addiction, unstable and deadly like a gun. Calvino uses this “T.V. remote” as a metaphor for changing your channel in life. This develops into conceit When Calvino writes of how he is afflicted by a condition that leaves him motionless for hours at a time giving the reader a paralytic aspect. A very real aspect in our lives theses days, when one fears parts of their personality it is better to view something on tv for psychological projection then it is to take internal action. This structure fits postmodern traditions well and leaves the reader to question the consumption of his own screen time.
*** This response also needs some proofreading (especially the mixed construction in the second-to-last sentence and the obscure notion of “a paralytic aspect”), yet it brings up insightful points about metaphor and conceit, psychological projection, and postmodern writing.
❧
The arguments that Calvino makes to rationalize his proclivity to flip through channels for hours on end could be used almost verbatim by the internets subculture of online conspiracy theorists. Similarly, they believe that the happenings of our world are interconnected in a meaningful yet obscure way. Furthermore, the cryptic nature of our reality can be deciphered using ones ability to distil the truth from the vast collections of disinformation intended to mislead us. Countless hours are spent each day opening and closing thousands of Youtube videos, with their attention focused so sharply on discovering the truth, that distraction is impossible.
*** This response makes a number of insightful points. I would omit the final sentence and replace it with one that pushes further into the relation between subcultures of conspiracy, the interconnection of obscure meanings, and the decipherment and distillation of cryptic reality.
❧
You Are What You Eat. Calvino’s ideas are relevant now in connection with our addictive binging of the feed. We are always hungry for more. We can scroll for hours unaware of time passing, like the trigger of the remote control only more rapid like machine gun fire, never sure where a bullet may hit. Never fulfilled, we pretend to be what we see on these small devices. We are always plugged into these cells. Our pocket holds enough ammo to start a war, to fight for things we post we believe in. Are we conforming to our own stories or someone else’s feed? (99 words)
*** This response has many good ideas, and they are fairly well connected within the overall idea of feeding and binging. Each of these statements could be expanded into a response: “we pretend to be what we see on these small devices”; “Our pocket holds enough ammo to start a war, to fight for things we post we believe in.”
❧
The assumption of insanity is bought to the reader’s attention in Calvino’s “The Last Channel” with first-person point of view ramblings. The narrator insists on telling his truth with clear intentions of his actions, yet everything he says does not comply, as if he's in another world, or on another channel. He acknowledges the crime more so proving his madness but knows he can always just push the button to change things. (73 words)
*** This response pushes Calvino’s text toward a creative and logical conclusion: the protagonist is on another channel, which allows him to completely dismiss any charges against him.
❧
In Calvino’s text “The Last Channel”, the narrator’s search for a flawless romance is comparable to the desire for a perfect, Instagram worthy relationship in today’s net culture. People are swiping through dating apps and profiles in hopes to find a station better than the current. Phones, tablets, and computers are the tools used to broadcast our existence among others. Social media has become merely commercials of people’s lives; however, the shows being advertised are rarely reality TV. (78 words)
*** This response is particularly strong toward the end. The similarity between Calvino’s TV and our Net is pushed into a witty conundrum (which also hints at a vicious cycle): our online social interactions are like ads for the fake programmes of our lives (and our fake lives would then continue to promote themselves in ads… ad infinitum).
Creative Responses
Calvino shows the analogy between crime and the narrator’s desire to find a program fitted for himself. Starting with the image of the narrator’s bullet like impulse to switch programs. This impulse and desire overcame the narrator as he robbed and murdered. The analogy becomes more prevalent starting when the narrator tuned to a more prosperous band of frequency as he robbed banks and jewelers, when the narrator murdered Volumnia’s family in hopes to switch to another channel that is a hundred times more attractive. The analogy is well concealed in harmless acts of browsing television channels. (97 words)
*** This is an ingenious response, I think. I initially thought it was a misreading of Calvino, but then I saw it as a creative take on the unreliable narrator. It turns the whole story on its head. I think Calvino would like this one.
❧
I yearn to swipe my finger across her face, a short gentle stroke. My index finger moves against the cloth of the hospital issued cotton pants, the fabric rubbed to softness from the frequent tic. If only I could stretch the restraints far enough. Just one swipe and the next could be better. A better doctor, smarter. Someone who understands what I’m trying to get to. Even if she was I’d have to swipe again. Because its out there - my angel. With every one I discard I move closer. I swipe again, the pad of my finger worn smooth.
*** This response is concrete and yet also elusive, and has a subtle psychological distortion at the end. (Note: it’s = it is; its = possessive)
Poe
The following three creative responses apply Poe’s story to the world of computers and social media. The first one could develop further the notion of “reflecting into my peripherals,” the second one is compact and tightly integrated, and the third one is too long yet very much in the spirit of Poe. I enjoyed reading them all.
#1
“Once the thought was there it revolved around my brain endlessly. I had no reason, nor desire to commence such an act. I did not want to steal from him. I did not want any pieces of his fortune! My reason lied with that nauseating computer in his window. It had a pale blue blinking light always reflecting into my peripherals. Mad it did make me – mad! I could not bear look at it any longer – I needed to demolish the incessant blue blinking light, only then to decide I would need to rid myself of the old man too.”
#2
It is impossible to say how first the tweet first entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ‘Comment’ there was none. ‘Share’ there was none. I loved my Facebook profile. It had never wronged me. It had never locked me out. For its ‘Likes’ I had no desire. I think it was Zuckerberg’s eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a Google Glass over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to delete my profile, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
#3
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing an end to the ringing, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the laptop. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a simple dim display, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the screen. It was on—brightly, brightly shining on—and I grew restless as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull green indicator, along with the hideous FaceTime camera that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person on my screen: I had directed the laptop webcam towards myself as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for obsessing is but over-acuteness of internet surfing?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick ringing, such as a phone makes when enveloped in an amazon prime box. I knew that sound well, too. It was the notification ringing of a cellphone. It increased my desire, as the clicking of a keyboard stimulates the writer into a session.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the cellphone motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the screen brightness upon the eve. Meantime the hellish display of advertisements increased. They popped up quicker and quicker, and notified louder and louder every instant. The internet must have been restored! It vibrated louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you incite me well I have told you that I am anxious: so, I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of the notifications, so strange a nuisance, this excited me to uncontrollable stress. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the ringing grew louder, louder! I thought the migraines must commence. And now a new anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by the professor!