Response to “Listening In” by Susan Douglas

CC flickr user Svadilfari

In her book titled “Listening In“, Susan Douglas mentions something that made me stop and re-read the sentence once more just to be sure that I understood it correctly and really have reason to disagree. And I do. She mentions the special kind of “vibe” that the radio creates, for example when you listen to it in the car on a long way home. She describes how radio can take you out of yourself, and yet “paradoxically hurl you into your innermost thoughts”. Now don’t get me wrong, I perfectly agree with this. The thing I really could not understand is the reason why she adds; “Television, by contrast, just doesn’t do this”. So basically what she is saying is that TV cannot take you out of yourself and yet hurl you into your innermost thoughts!?! If that is the case, then I completely have to disagree.
The way I see the comparison between radio, TV, and I think books should be added as well, is the following. All three usually try to convey a story. The original and in some ways simplest (and in other ways the most complex) is reading a book. The voices that you hear in your head are voices that you yourself create. Basically, the whole experience of reading is created by you (of course being led by the author). Now, after listening to a recording in class, that was done in a way to tell a story (about a girl from a difficult background that made it as a boxer), I realized something about radio. It tries to tell a story, just like a book, but it constricts you in a way. In a book, the voices you hear are made up completely by your fantasy. In the radio, a person had been recorded and that is the voice that you are stuck with. Now, while listening to the story of the boxer in class, I realized that even though the story was very touching and quite good, I could hear through the people’s voices that it is not completely real. There was a part in the recording, when the girl was saying inspirational stuff about boxing and it literally felt like a NIKE commercial to me. It didn’t sound like something that girl would really say if she was telling me the story in person and not trying to put on an act. This ties in with TV. Basically TV is just like radio, except that it constricts you even more in a way, by adding the visual aspect of everything. Now the characters that you could imagine yourself are before your eyes and you either like them or not. But there is another difference. A movie beats radio in telling a story, because sometimes an image of a person’s face (if it is a good actor) can convey more emotion than thousands of words.
I could go on and on about this, but these are basically the reasons why I think, that nowadays radio is the LEAST popular of the three storytelling-options. This is also why I disagree with Susan Douglas on the previously mentioned aspect of the comparison. I hope that throughout our audio section, since it seems to be based on radio a lot, I will find something that only radio can give you. Something that would make me want to start listening to radio again to hear a story, and not rather open a book or see a movie.