Book Review: Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America, by Brenton J. Malin

Abstract

Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America. Brenton J. Malin. New York, New York: New York University Press, 2014. 309 pp. $25 pbk.Whether getting plaudits or the pillory, new communication technologies tend to bring out polarizing emotions in people who talk about them. This was true in ancient Greece, when Socrates, among others, criticized writing in an era of orality. It has been true in recent years, as when commentators such as Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, gets pitted against the views of Steven Johnson, and his ideas in Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.Brenton Malin's newest book, Feeling Mediated, does not pick a side. It instead redirects such divisive debates. It does so first by stripping away from them the related propaganda and mysticism, and second by repositioning those discussions into the social, cultural, historical, and ethical contexts that they share. His primary approach includes a comparison and analysis of the rhetorics of both emotions and technologies, particularly those that arose in 1890s to 1930s' America, when radio, phonographs, and motion pictures became established. Along the way, he puzzles over the intertwining of emotions and technologies that gets shrouded in a pervasive attitude of what he calls This key term describes the focus on physiology or medium affordances at the intersection of thought about emotion and technology that shields larger societal understandings of mediated emotions.Rather than delve into the emotional potency of any particular technology, Malin concentrates on our persistent uses of language to relate our feelings about communication tools as they emerge. These rhetorics have clear impacts on the ways in which we talk to each other and simultaneously morph those feelings into the metaphors that the technologies create. In this vein, Malin picks a variety of compelling examples from which to make his points about media physicalism. These arguments include both artifacts that might seem obscure today, such as a stereoscope, and also prominent and enduring modern media forms, such as the movies. Malin, an associate professor of communication and the associate director of the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh, also has written American Masculinity Under Clinton: Popular Media and the Nineties Crisis of Masculinity, plus a diverse collection of other pieces that similarly investigate ways in which identity gets composed and shaped by-and especially through-the media.In odd contrast to the topic being addressed, Malin chooses to craft the first few chapters of this book in a nearly emotionless style. This clinical approach conveys a textured resonance of his deep knowledge about the subject matter, through the careful layering of the meticulously collected evidence. It also can plod along, in many places, in an almost encyclopedic tone, with barely a hint of a humanly voice. …