I refrained from posting on Brooke Gladstone’s talk until I (somewhat) accomplished this goal. A week ago I decided to log off Instagram. I didn’t directly take her advice and delete the application because I wanted to test myself. I was curious to see how many times my fingers would gravitate towards the application. As I waited for my food, as I walked to class, as I had a boring meal with a friend, I’d keep opening the application and stare at the log in sign, fighting the urge to reenter this superficial world where people are portraying their lives as what our generation would call “#goals”. Later in the week, the struggle was a lot less and I felt liberated from Instagram. The time I’d spend uselessly scrolling, I give that time to a book, a friend, or myself. I was saving time and energy. I kept telling my friends about this challenge and most of them would respond saying that they were proud of me, but they’d go back to the application after our brief conversation. For everyone: It’s better than a food cleanse and I recommend that everyone should try it, you will feel great.
Gladstone touched on very important points during her talk. She reminded us that we have the power to choose the media we consume. We can choose to read an article from NYTimes, CNN, Fox, or Independent. But, as we read, we must question the information being given to us. Many sources give us information, and most readers accept them as facts. But that, is in fact, not true. It made me think of what my Corporate Finance professor keeps reiterating. “Don’t accept any statistic on a website until you know how the person reached that number. The statistic will most likely be a number pulled out of a hat.” We are wired to be distracted, but we are not forced to be. As a documentarian, we need to find the truths and present it to our audience. Making a documentary is a form of reporting; the differences are that the documentarian engages with the interviewee, focuses on certain perspectives, and is in film form.
Her comparison of Orwell 1984 and Huxley Brave New World got me excited because I remember painfully reading both pieces in high school. I love how she contrasted the concepts of both books and related Brave New World to media today. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance, and here we are today. We need to filter out today’s junk media and save our culture from becoming trivial. Going back to Junot Diaz’s point, she emphasized how we need to allow ourselves to get bored to have great ideas and think about the future. We shouldn’t allow media to keep distracting us and encouraging our brains to develop this short attention span.
I initially didn’t enjoy how Gladstone was a stationary speaker, especially after seeing KJ float around the room. But, her tone and insightful talk suited her body language. She wouldn’t have been able to read her lecture if she was moving around the room. I am glad we were able to hear her talk, especially after reading The Influencing Machine two years ago.