august philippic

Ira Glass, the host of This American Life on public radio, in total darkness, began his — well, his what? His talk? His multimedia presentation? His spiel? Whatever — it was an homage to voices and their intimate power. Part of his point was that an enormous amount of prejudice is based on visual rather than aural cues. Because radio deprives us of first impressions, we allow its voices to engage us. Ira Glass played a clip of two boys in a housing project, complaining about how hard it is to get dates. Apparently the girls either avoid boys altogether or hook up with the sort of guy you would definitely not wish to piss off by hitting on his girlfriend, or on anybody he might want to be his girlfriend.

The presentation was taking place in Seattle, and it was clear that radio was allowing the white, middle class audience to focus on their common yearning — the desire for a partner. Taking that aspect of radio a step further, WNYC’s “radio rookies” project takes recording equipment to different neighborhoods and helps young people tell their own stories in a medium that encourages listening.

Radio may seem like a one-way transmission of station to those who tune in, but in Chinese cities it is clear that listeners are far from passive. The taxi drivers in Taipei listen constantly to talk radio, and frequently call in to local stations. They are a formidable political block — mobile, engaged, and capable of jamming thoroughfares in short order. When taxi driver’s protest, the city cannot operate. And one can spend hours listening to high schoolers and college students working through their emotional insecurities on the airwaves. Older folks, too. If you’ve ever encountered Delilah on a U.S. dial, you can picture the most common genres of Chinese radio just by pretending that Delilah let the callers talk a bit longer.

In cities, radio can foster a sense of community akin to a public park or an internet message board. I think Charlie Warner over at Media Curmudgeon is on to something when he emphasizes radio’s localism. Radio gives you accents, announcements, debates that can be as grand in scale as global warming or as small as the road work on a particular block.

I’m obviously not claiming that radio’s effects are restrained to cities, but urban areas do offer more venues for listening and for collective response. I like to listen to radio while working, but I hear it nearly everywhere — the cab, the barber shop, the grocery store, or (my favorite) the Met game blasting in the Mustang parked in front of the local bodega. A couple of years ago, during the big blackout, the same Mustang informed me that the problem was a surge, not a terrorist attack.

Of course, much of the conversation is inane, and the ever-increasing number of channels can mean that radio fosters segregation instead of transcending it. But the issue is voice — where do you hear people speaking in cities? You could do worse than to start with the radio.

Tags: cities, China //