Blog #2 - Megan Yamamoto

The language virus in Pontypool is an example of space-biased media because the virus could spread quickly and over vast distances through the use of radio, speakers, and the telephone. Space-biased media is defined as being light and portable and conquering space and distance in its transmission. These characteristics pertained to the virus as there was nothing tangible about the virus but rather an invisible entity that was capable of travelling through space and over distance to infect others.


Radio, telephone, and electronic amplification are contemporary forms of orality because they rely on oral communication in order to transmit a message. In Pontypool, the main characters experienced the virus spread when speaking on the phone with one of their radio listeners and used the speakers in the studio to draw away the infected individuals. Furthermore, each media form was dependent on speech and using speech to disseminate a message quickly and from a distance.

Comments

  1. Grace MurakamiFebruary 8, 2023 at 10:51 AM

    Hi Megan,

    Great post! I really like how to noted that radio, telephone, and electronic amplification all rely on oral communication, an important plot pint in the film but also to McLuhan's theory of the human sensorium. Here the radio or telephone is an extension of a human sense or faculty. In class we learned that the tele-technologies of the modern era of the electronic media ecology, like those used in the film, are extensions of hearing. It is interesting to think of the virus infecting people this way, through an extensiton of their senses!


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