Douglas Ruhkoff’s new book arrived this week, and, predictably, I’m hooked. I’ve devoured nearly everything Rushkoff has written in the past decade, and my interview with him for PLGRM Magazine last fall was a landmark experience for me. The Douglas Rushkoff tag on this blog is dense.
Present Shock is concerned about the ways that contemporary life is thoroughly simultaneous. To his great credit, Rushkoff worries about stuff, and the stuff he worries about he writes and talks about. Now, he’s worried that texts and Facebook and The Simpsons have driven us all to be present RIGHT NOW to lots and lots of stories and people in disparate places.
Example 1: the collapse of narrative. Present Shock is full of nuanced and searching analysis of the ways in which the traditional narrative arc has stopped working. Broadcast media are rapidly learning that the interactivity ushered in first by the remote control and then by the internet has rendered the traditional narrative arc a dull weapon. That arc rewarded the storyteller who was able to lead her audience into greater and greater states of anxiety before saving them with a climax (read: a product) that resolved all the conflict. Rushkoff is arguing that audiences won’t stand (or, rather, sit) for that anymore.
[excursis: “The Bible’s stories–at least the Old Testament’s–don’t work quite the same way. They were based more in the oral tradition, where the main object of the storyteller was simply to keep people involved in the moment. Information and morals were conveyed, but usually by contrasting two characters or nations with one another–one blessed, the other damned.”]
Here’s my assertion: modern evangelical and liberal theology is dependent on the traditional (non-Biblical) narrative arc, and part of the “decline” of these expressions of Christianity is the result of peoples’ media-trained immunity to that arc. For Evangelical theology, one’s salvation and the threat of personal damnation is the conflict that is solved by the climax of the cross and empty tomb. Yet for people who don’t go with the evangelist into the conflict, the climax holds no meaning.
Similarly, liberal protestant theology unfolds a story of increasing conflict not over an individual’s salvation but the state of humanity and the planet. The climax comes with values (typified by Jesus) of sharing, self-sacrifice, and, of course, love. But for a religiously plural populace, the question is: who’s values are those and why should I trust that person?
In place of the narrative arc we now have The Moment. People live in The Moment, love in The Moment, believe in The Moment, and search for The Moment. Where is faith in The Moment?
YoRocko! 
I’m diggin this Rocky. Might I suggest that is why there is interest in the theology of the event? I think that’s one of the reasons I have resonated with Jack Caputo and those of his ilk. Their use of deconstruction to unleash the event harbored in things like the name of God enable people to find God in the moment rather than in a long narrative arc.
Just some quick thoughts. Let me know if they spark anything on your end.
Adding Caputo to my list now. I was attracted to the narrative theology of Lindbeck for a while, and I ate plate after plate of the missional theology project of Darrell Guder et. al., and that whole thing is wrapped up in the narrative arc (the mission dei is the hero?). Heck, I was taught to preach in a narrative style. I have to admit that all the cultural projects that Rushkoff describes as pushing The Moment, from Xtreme sports to MMORPGs I have skipped; I am steeped in the traditional narrative and kinda depend on it. In that vein, the deepening conflict of my blogging life takes one more step towards resolution when Tim Storey comments.
oooh! The narrative! I haven’t read present shock, but I deny any assertion that we are outgrowing the narrative. The story is everything. No moment can exist without context.
So every text and every 15 second video is still part of the narrative of the receiver. Maybe the understanding of narrative needs to be broadened to accomodate the many many streams of input.
When I read Joyce’s Ulysses last year (i’m still waiting for my medal to arrive) I was struck by how very contemporally relevant it was. Joyce took one day and pulled out all the bazillion little details that make up modern life. It was confusing and disorienting and very very recognizable and relevant.
But as humans, we process an enormous amount of information really quickly. Thats been true in the jungle and in the city. Is that distant sound going to require me to run really fast right now?
maybe it’s a tiger, maybe it’s a cell phone ringing.
The moment has always been with us. And so has the narrative. But we crave the narrative. It would behoove us to get better at it though.
Because the mulitiple moments are really competing narratives. “Do I answer this chat request or do my homework? Am I a cool friend or a good student? What story will i pick up?”
Murphy, you are a valuable contributor as always. Rushkoff has been accused by some critics of extrapolating from a small sample size of particular phenomena to a large theory. The phenomena he’s using here are television and film scripts that increasingly exist unto themselves and don’t even try to construct a coherent story. “lost” and “memento” are favored examples. Of course, this makes me wonder about preaching. My generation of preachers were taught to deal with the particular context and contours of a specific text and to resist the impulse to tie it in with the larger biblical narrative. That’s very much The Moment. I’ve stopped being constrained by that though. I guess this all poses the question about who gets to frame e narrative.
🙂 i will resist the temptation to refute a book I haven’t read yet. But I will never lose faith in the narrative.
as far as who gets to frame a narrative…Even the nobodies are the heroes of their own story (rosencrantz and gildenstern). Everybody’s story is about the self.
Basically, people –PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE–suck at narrative.
The news cycle is speeding up, and the real stories, like investigative reporting, are not being told. It’s just factiods and press releases from the corporate office. The real people who understand the craft of telling a story are out there, and they have an audience. I’m not a fan, but Stephen King is making money.
And I think that Lost was a little more subtle. One of the reasons it was so popular is because it had a week between each crazy episode. Which meant that the relationship between the material (what us english majors call ‘the page’) and the viewer placed a lot of responsibility on the viewer. That week gave the viewers time to walk the halls of their minds, shuffling through the experience of the show and think about what it MIGHT mean, thinking of possible connections and plotlines that exceeded what actually happened next.
And because of the challenge to the viewer, it kept the attention, kept things unexpected in a way very few shows could do.
I didn’t watch it when it was running. I saw all of the first season in one week. I could tell that it would have been better if I had time between. So, it didn’t really age well. Not for me, anyway.
Anyway, if we could rise to the occasion and get better at narrative, instead of relying on sensationalism, I bet the populace would like it even better than the Moment.
…did I just refute a book I didn’t read yet? okay maybe. sorry. But i still think I’m right
Refute away!
Rushkoff is not suggesting the collapse of narrative as a norm, but describing what he sees happening. He most certainly would agree that the people out there who are still telling good stories are more worthy of our attention. I think he’s more worried than anything that the trend away from big stories and towards present moment-based experience is harming us, and he wants to help people thrive in spite of it.
This would be a great discussion book, don’t you think? 🙂