I Dislike Passive-Aggressiveness

I don’t usually read introductions to books, and I might be unclear on the introductions purpose. Both of the introductions to “All Consuming Images” were sporadic and left me unsatisfied as opposed to wanting more. I read the material in the order it was presented and began to realize that the difference between “Introduction to the New Edition” and “Shoes for Thought” is the deterioration of time. The 1999-Ewen was erratic, constantly jumped from topic to topic, and didn’t develop his thoughts. Reading “Shoes for Thought” was like going back in time to meet a more coherent, but still eccentric Ewen.
I disagree with many claims in the text and Ewen also leaves me with some questions. The main argument I walked away with was that images are how humans view the world. We have been interpreting images since the beginning of man. I disagree with Ewen’s assertion that visual media images are “the necromantic key for opening the mass mind” (xxxi). Women in ancient Greek theatres had miscarriages when they experienced certain images. I would argue that there was not some ‘image revolution’ in 1895 with Le Bon’s “The Crowd”. History illustrates more the evolution of images in different forms, but no sudden light-switch as the text suggests on xxvii (27). And because the perception of images is deeply rooted in human make-up, how destructive is the ‘mind control’ Ewen asserts is being applied to the masses on page 30 of the “Introduction to the New Edition” by public relations professionals? If humans have been subjective participants in images from birth, than Linda M.’s assertion that we are blindly led by the media isn’t true (page 20 of “Images Without Bottom . . .”). What struck me most about “Images Without Bottom. . ,” was not it’s message, but the comment the chapter makes on the 1980’s. Ewen states on page 23, “The power of style, and its emergence as an increasingly important feature on people’s lives, cannot be separated from the evolution and sensibility of modernity.” But it is apparent by the Neiman-Marcus advertisement Ewen uses at the top of the first chapter that the focus on intellectuality, style and modernity was a condition specific to that decade. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an ad boasting, “ATTITUDE is a disposition with regard to people or things” (15). Therefore, if the 1980’s were a period of strong modernity, why are we here? The better question is what makes media studies valuable away from anthropology and social psychology and beyond legitimizing modernity? I gather that Ewen’s only ‘gift to the world’ was bringing focus to modernity in intellectual circles.