October
22, 2012
Mayeesa
Mediated
Communications 1111-06
Professor
Bradley Lambert
Podcast
Analysis
Podcast Name: This American Life, Episode 475-
Send A Message- 06.28.12
In this episode, Ira Glass uncovers
how communication can be skewed; intentionally and unintentionally. Through the
light-hearted conversational style that is trademark to "This American
Life", Glass tells the stories of messages relayed through various mediums
who's recipients try their best to decipher their meanings.
The prologue introduces the theme of
the episode through an interview with reporter Josh Bearman. He tells about the
misguided decoding of scrambled messages sent from Galileo to Johannes Kepler
in the 17th century. In the first act, the story of a traveling pair of pants
and pink dress is uncovered as Producer Brian Reid reports. Reid tells of a
family whose tradition is to send the message of an unborn child's gender
through these garments to a pregnant woman in the family originated 35 years
ago and has been right (almost) every time. Act 2, features the audio of comedian Dave Hill
during a live show at the Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn where he tells the story of
his adventure in a New York subway station. A homeless man threatens Hill and he learns
that messages can still come in bottles.
In the 3rd act, Sonari Glinton, a
reporter for NPR news tells about his childhood in Chicago's South Side and how
a messenger is sometimes more important than the message. The White principle
of Glinton's grade school changed his ideas of Jesus' image by simply changing
the crucifix that adorned the front of the classroom. Nancy Updike brings the
final act, telling the story of how one father recorded conversations with his
family at home and in his car in which he tried to get them on his side after
his wife left him. 12 years after his father's death, Bill finally decided to
listen to the tapes and discovered that he wasn't as heroic as he believed he
was.
I found the most compelling portion
of this podcast to be act 3 in which Sonari Glinton talks about his grade
school principle, Sister Rosemary Brennan. Glinton does very well in setting
the scene of the time period; explaining how important Jesse Jackson's run for presidency
was to his community and telling how the South Side of Chicago, his childhood neighborhood,
became increasingly black during his grade school years. At first , these facts
seem unimportant but the relevance becomes
apparent as Glinton goes into the story of how Sister Brennan changed the
crucifix in each of the classrooms in his Catholic grade school. Glinton uses
great imagery describing his principal as a short Irish woman who stood on her tiptoes
onto of a chair to reach the crucifix in his classroom. Through Glinton's
description of Sister Brennan we as listeners gain an instant respect for her
knowing that she quietly demanded it. The conflict of the story was Sister
Brennan replacing the White Jesus crucifix, that had been a main fixture in
each classroom, with a Black Jesus crucifix. She allowed Glinton and the other
students in the class to believe that the only sinless man to walk this Earth
looked like them. I believe the final aspect of the segment, a song by Nina
Hagen entitled "Personal Jesus" brought it all together helping the
listener to understand the moral of the story.
