Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age - Softcover

Reinke, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1433563797 ISBN 13: 9781433563799

Verlag: Crossway Books, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

In a world of shiny attractions that grab our attention and demand our affections, Competing Spectacles helps us to thrive spiritually by asking critical questions about where we place our focus.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tony Reinke is a nonprofit journalist and serves as senior teacher and host of the Ask Pastor John podcast for desiringGod.org. He is the author of Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books; 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You; and God, Technology, and the Christian Life.

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Competing Spectacles

Treasuring Christ in the Media Age

By Tony Reinke

Good News Publishers

Copyright © 2019 Tony Scott Reinke
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4335-6379-9

Contents

PART 1: THE AGE OF THE SPECTACLE, 
§1: Life inside the Digital Environment, 
§2: Spectacles Defined, 
§3: Distracted Spectacle Seekers, 
§4: Image Is Everything, 
§5: The Spectacle of the Self in Social Media, 
§6: The Spectacle of the Self in Gaming, 
§7: Spectacles of Tele-Vision, 
§8: Spectacles of Merchandise, 
§9: Politics as Spectacle, 
§10: Terror as Spectacle, 
§11: Ancient Spectacles, 
§12: Every Nine Seconds, 
§13: The Spectacle of the Body, 
§14: The Church in the Attention Market, 
PART 2: THE SPECTACLE, 
§15: Spectakils in Tension, 
§16: Prynne's Footnote, 
§17: The World's Greatest Spectacle, 
§18: Is the Cross a Spectacle?, 
§19: Two Competing Theaters, 
§20: Spectators of Glory, 
§21: The Church as Spectacle, 
§22: The Church as Spectacle Maker?, 
§23: A Day inside the Spectacle, 
§24: Our Unique Spectacle Tensions, 
§25: One Resolve, One Request, 
§26: The Spectator before His Carving, 
§27: A Movie So Good It Will Ruin You — Would You Watch It?, 
§28: Resistible Spectacles, 
§29: Summations and Applications, 
§30: My Supreme Concern, 
§31: A Beauty That Beautifies, 
§32: The Visio Beatifica, 
§33: Dis-Illusioned but Not Deprived, 

CHAPTER 1

Part 1

THE AGE OF THE SPECTACLE

§1: LIFE INSIDE THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

Never in history have manufactured images formed the ecosystem of our lives. They do now. Sixty years ago Daniel Boorstin warned us: "We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so 'realistic' that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very home in which we live; they are our news, our heroes, our adventure, our forms of art, our very experience." Sixty years later, this risk is now our reality. We live as if all the media broadcast into our eyes is life itself, as if our images now offer us an alternative existence.

To this cultural phenomenon I raise my objection.

In a consumer society, images are the language of transaction. Images aim to provoke something in us in order to get something from us. New images ask us for all sorts of things — our time, our attention, our outrage, our money, our lust, our affection, and our votes. Is it possible to resist them? Should we try?

This book is a theology of visual culture, a culture that is increasingly closing in around us. It will not help you prioritize your TV options. Online viewing guides will help you there. It will not help you watch pop films through a gospel lens. Several good books do this already. Nor will it help you untangle the narrative threads of a thoughtful film. Long conversations with friends are superior. More intentionally, this book is a companion for Christians walking through digital detoxes, the now necessary periods of our lives when we voluntarily unplug from pop media, news media, and social media in order to de-screen our eyes and to reorder our priorities.

As a convention, I must litter this book with two hundred footnotes. On first read, ignore them and read slap through the book as if they didn't exist. Later you can return to the notes for deeper exploration.

To keep the book brief, I painted my argument as one rough silhouette using a wide bristled brush and black paint on a white canvas. A much longer book could bring in a full spectrum of detail and color. Here I simply seek to answer one question: In this "age of the spectacle" (as it has been called) — in this ecosystem of digital pictures and fabricated sights and viral moments competing for our attention — how do we spiritually thrive?

§2: SPECTACLES DEFINED

First we must clear up some definitions. Spectacles can mean one of two things. Spectacles are eyeglasses that sharpen human vision, bringing clarity as we look through them. In this sense, worldviews are metaphorical spectacles by which we see the world. But that is not how I will use the word. For this project, spectacles is confined to its second meaning: a moment of time, of varying length, in which collective gaze is fixed on some specific image, event, or moment. A spectacle is something that captures human attention, an instant when our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at us.

In an outrage society like ours, spectacles are often controversies — the latest scandal in sports, entertainment, or politics. A spark bellows, grows into a viral flame on social media, and ignites the visual feeds of millions. That's a spectacle. As the speed of media grows faster and faster, the most miniscule public slip of the tongue or passive-aggressive celebrity comment or hypocritical political image can become a spectacle. And often the most viral social media spectacles are spicy tales later exposed as groundless rumors and fake news.

Whether it's true, false, or fiction, a spectacle is the visible thing that holds together a collective gaze. And that's the focus of this book. A spectacle can come packaged as a brilliant photograph, an eye-catching billboard, a creative animation, a magazine centerfold, a witty commercial, or a music video. It can be an advertisement or a sarcastic anti-advertisement, a sitcom or a mockinganti-sitcom, a talk show or a cynical anti-talk show. Spectacles can go meta: TV shows about TV shows, ads about ads, and movies about movies. Spectacles are ambitious videogame landscapes, network television series, a blockbuster movie, a horror film, a sports clip of an athlete's glory (or injury), or a viral GIF on social media.

Spectacles can be accidental or intentional — anything that vies for our eyes: a historic presidential inauguration, a celebrity blooper, an epic fail, a prank, a trick shot, a hot take, a drone race, an eSports competition, the live streams of video games fought with fictional cannons, or real warfare fought with steel weapons. Spectacles are the latest video from a self-made YouTube millionaire sensation, or a flash mob meant to appear as a spontaneous gathering in public. And the age of spectacle making spawns a particular form of celebrity: the loudmouthed provocateur and the nitwit icon — notoriously unsuited for any other social role but fame.

Ad makers use premeditated spectacles to bolster corporate profits, but spectacles can have more grisly origins: a teen suicide on Facebook Live, a public assassination, a police-shooting video, or traffic footage of a deadly accident.

A spectacle can target you while simultaneously speaking to a million "yous" (like a popular video ad meant to coax purchases). Or a spectacle can gather together a community for a unified purpose (like a live political speech meant to coax votes). A particular tweet can become a viral spectacle, but the whole ecosystem of Twitter is one endless spectacle too.

Some spectacles draw us together in regional unity, like cheering for a local sports team. Others bring us together disconnectedly, like watching a movie in a theater. Some...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crossway Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1433563797
• ISBN 13: 9781433563799
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar