why media?

“What came first, the music or the misery?”

So asks Rob Fleming, the lead character of Nick Hornby’s immensely popular novel High Fidelity. He is in a contemplative mood, perusing his vast record collection in a post-breakup slump.

It’s a simple enough question, but pretty big when you take the second to contemplate it. After all, we imagine that our thoughts and actions are ours and ours only - conscious, independent, controlled. But while this may be partly true, the importance of environment probably shouldn’t be ignored.

The fact is that entertainment media is all around us, swirling in a dynamic and influential hurricane that hits us every day. So what if I hadn’t listened to pop music my entire life? Would I hold the same feelings about love, about relationships and anger and life in general? What if I hadn’t read The Catcher in the Rye? Does Jersey Shore make me stupider? Does listening to shock-rap like old-school Eminem and Odd Future make me more violent?

What came first, the media, or everything I know?

Let’s be honest, though: there aren’t going to be very many easy answers to such loaded questions. As a Lifestyle columnist for the Daily Trojan, I tried to wrestle with the issue of culture, controversy and media and how it can shape our mindsets in a column titled Culture Clash. It was a bit tough; examining new ideas and events and social phenomenon every week hardly provided a blanket answer for readers (and myself) at the end of the semester.

I’m thinking that the same will be true of this blog. At the very least, my weekly ramblings will help ask some curious questions about the world of media that we live in today.

That might seem pointless, but if I’ve learned anything from studying and practicing the discipline of journalism, it’s that we ought to ask more questions (not in the crazed conspiracy theorist/fervent Tea Party activist way, just in the name of learning). And we’re definitely not asking enough questions about all the shit we consume.

And maybe - just maybe - thinking about the media will help better it. I don’t know about you, but I think that American entertainment might be in a little bit of a slump these days. Thankfully, I haven’t seen My Super Sweet Sixteen on too often lately, but we’re still missing a spark of innovation and critical thinking that maybe existed some time ago. It’s time we changed that.

To get down to the nuts and bolts of it, expect writings on small issues, broad topics and everything in between. Anything from viral videos to a stupid moment on cable news to the fate of the film industry is, in my head, fair game. Think Esquire writer Stephen Marche’s always excellent 1000 Words About Our Culture crossed with New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, but with more collaboration.

Okay, so the writing won’t be that excellent, but still.

I hope that you guys will freely ask questions, both about the crazy stuff I might be saying or about other issues or happenings that you think I should bring up. Blogs are hardly the place to get lectured, anyway. They are - or should be - hubs of communication and discourse. So that’s what we’ll try to do here.

And if you end up not really liking what you’re reading...well, it was worth a shot, right?