Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 4, Issue 3-4, 2005

Aristotle identified four causes of natural phenomena: formal, efficient, material, and final. The efficient cause is the maker and the making process. The material cause is the matter involved (solder, bricks . . .). The final cause is the result or object itself. Formal cause, however, remains enigmatic. Long thought to be “plans” or “blueprints,” it is found to be situational or environmental cause and to operate in many fields, particularly the arts, and the study of media and their ecologies.

This article contends that Orson Welles’ (1915–1985) success in a variety of media results in part from his astute understanding of the audio and visual potential of these media. Parallels are drawn between his intuitive grasp of media as an artistic practitioner and the academic tradition of media ecology and medium theory. Welles’ “media sense” is seen as complemented by his skill at adaptation—the ability to alter source material in ways that innovatively utilize the full sensory possibilities of theater, radio, and cinema. Examples discussed include theatrical productions, such as Marlowe’s Faustus, the Les Misérables radio broadcast, his first feature film, Citizen Kane, and his last completed film, F For Fake.

Based on radio’s exclusive reliance on the particular material of sound and its flexibility as an interface, this article argues that the medium presents a great potential for cognitive participation, especially in terms of mental imagery. Several verbal and nonverbal techniques that utilize this potential are analyzed in a series of short documentaries co-produced by National Public Radio and the National Geographic Society. Through the use of linguistic means, such as vivid words, the present tense, metaphors and analogies, rhetorical devices, such as rhythmic patterns, repetitions, and alliterations, as well as the expressive qualities of voices and natural sounds, radio producers are able to evoke a rich, often synesthetic complex of mental images.

Sparking controversy among British and American audiences, Nigella Bites is certainly not your typical cooking show. However, by viewing the show from a media ecological standpoint, we see that it is an example of how television as an “information system” can change our views about gender roles. The show’s appeal is categorically one with a postfeminist perspective that is an assertive form of femininity merged with a feminist consciousness. Therefore, it calls into question the extent to which we perform gender roles and provides a more complex outlook of women’s roles than some of the one-dimensional televisual representations of the past.

The recent proliferation of pro-ana websites, which promote the maintenance of eating disorders, may be fostered by the psychological traits of eating disorders, media bias toward thin female images and discourse of body dissatisfaction, and the characteristics of online communities. This article examines the roles these factors play in the rise of pro-ana websites themselves and the attitudes that they represent. An active, long-term recognition and critique of the thin ideology promoted by negative media images and taken to the extreme by pro-ana sites may stem the growth of pro-ana attitudes and body dissatisfaction among women in general.

Desmond, John M. and Peter Hawkes. Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 312 pp. Paper $50.00, ISBN 0-07-282204-X.