Throughout the chapter “Satellite Panoramas” in the book Cultures In Orbit, Lisa Parks reinforces the idea of the media utilizing satellite-captured imagery to exact 'remote control' over the audience. The application of both imagery and “expert” interpretation through television broadcasts reinforces unsubstantiated fears and long-held ideologies in American popular culture. The same way in which interspace satellite imagery is applied to the media can also be observed through the months of the year known across the southeastern United States as 'hurricane season'.
Hurricane season is a time that is characterized by obsession and, at times, hysteria. Such states of consciousness are primarily media-driven, leading the American populace to become rabidly consumed with statistics and facts about a storm, despite the facts that they are virtually all incomprehensible to their audience and that the storm is merely a tropical depression just forming off the northwestern coast of Africa. However, this is a crucial time for the media to beging to recondition the American psyche, and it begins with this barrage of incomprehensible facts and statistics, which leads people into a state of worry and concern, thus constantly tuned in to their trusted station for weather news. As the storm initially progresses on a path in the general direction of the southeastern United States (as it typically does), the next phase of the media's assault is engaged. The media transitions into treating the storm as if it is an invading army gaining momentum as it destroyes anything and everything in its path. Statistics to show its increase in size and strength are plastered all over television screens. Then, right on cue, visual evidence in the form of third world countries being devastated (which harkens back to previous class discussions on “shock” photos), which acts as a warning to Americans to either prepare accordingly or end up like a third world country (infrastructure and building sturdiness aside, of course). As Parks wrote in regards to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashing into Jupiter, “this practice of presenting live coverage of catastrophic events happening elsewhere has become one of the dominant television news conventions of our time”(p. 145).
If the storm should happen to impact the Caribbean, then the imagery is taken to another level, aided by NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) and transmitted by every news outlet across the country (and especially so by the weather stations and local television news in the southeastern US). First is the classification of a storm into a category (1-5) which are repeated as if it is a reverse DEFCON level. Next is the implementation of what is referred to as the “cone of uncertainty”. It is essentially a standard deviation of a hurricane's projected path, but more importantly, it serves to maximize the range of potentially impacted citizens, thereby maximizing the base of the audience. It is at this time that anywhere within the “cone of uncertainty” that even capitalism begins to kick in. What were once the bare necessities known as a “hurricane preparedness kit” has now ballooned into a “hurricane survival kit” (implying of course, that you need everything on this list to merely survive). What is coincidental (or not) is that the list requires you shop in virtually every kind of department store (grocery, hardware, electronics, clothing, etc). Never has there been a more combined influential mechanism over such a large group of people than that of fear and capitalist consumerism.
The calculated media, and eventually capitalist consumer, campaign based on fear in the form of tracking a hurricane is one that is as formulaic as it is effective. The efforts to paralyze an entire region's psyche with just a handful of words and images behind the basis of a governmental agency and the transmission by every news outlet is, year in and year out, roundly successful. From the outset of grabbing the citizenry's attention with what could potentially down the road have a chance of turning yoru city into a third world to the ultimatum of “buy or die”, the non-stop assault on the fearful American and the American consumer is exemplified by that of a hurricane's path. It is not just the hurricane that is the gathering storm.
- William Jennings
Hurricane season is a time that is characterized by obsession and, at times, hysteria. Such states of consciousness are primarily media-driven, leading the American populace to become rabidly consumed with statistics and facts about a storm, despite the facts that they are virtually all incomprehensible to their audience and that the storm is merely a tropical depression just forming off the northwestern coast of Africa. However, this is a crucial time for the media to beging to recondition the American psyche, and it begins with this barrage of incomprehensible facts and statistics, which leads people into a state of worry and concern, thus constantly tuned in to their trusted station for weather news. As the storm initially progresses on a path in the general direction of the southeastern United States (as it typically does), the next phase of the media's assault is engaged. The media transitions into treating the storm as if it is an invading army gaining momentum as it destroyes anything and everything in its path. Statistics to show its increase in size and strength are plastered all over television screens. Then, right on cue, visual evidence in the form of third world countries being devastated (which harkens back to previous class discussions on “shock” photos), which acts as a warning to Americans to either prepare accordingly or end up like a third world country (infrastructure and building sturdiness aside, of course). As Parks wrote in regards to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashing into Jupiter, “this practice of presenting live coverage of catastrophic events happening elsewhere has become one of the dominant television news conventions of our time”(p. 145).
If the storm should happen to impact the Caribbean, then the imagery is taken to another level, aided by NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) and transmitted by every news outlet across the country (and especially so by the weather stations and local television news in the southeastern US). First is the classification of a storm into a category (1-5) which are repeated as if it is a reverse DEFCON level. Next is the implementation of what is referred to as the “cone of uncertainty”. It is essentially a standard deviation of a hurricane's projected path, but more importantly, it serves to maximize the range of potentially impacted citizens, thereby maximizing the base of the audience. It is at this time that anywhere within the “cone of uncertainty” that even capitalism begins to kick in. What were once the bare necessities known as a “hurricane preparedness kit” has now ballooned into a “hurricane survival kit” (implying of course, that you need everything on this list to merely survive). What is coincidental (or not) is that the list requires you shop in virtually every kind of department store (grocery, hardware, electronics, clothing, etc). Never has there been a more combined influential mechanism over such a large group of people than that of fear and capitalist consumerism.
The calculated media, and eventually capitalist consumer, campaign based on fear in the form of tracking a hurricane is one that is as formulaic as it is effective. The efforts to paralyze an entire region's psyche with just a handful of words and images behind the basis of a governmental agency and the transmission by every news outlet is, year in and year out, roundly successful. From the outset of grabbing the citizenry's attention with what could potentially down the road have a chance of turning yoru city into a third world to the ultimatum of “buy or die”, the non-stop assault on the fearful American and the American consumer is exemplified by that of a hurricane's path. It is not just the hurricane that is the gathering storm.
- William Jennings
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