Excellent critique from Jenn Lena with respect to Wired’s piece on prostitution that was getting passed around last week. I shared the article also and was undoubtedly struck by the information but was also turned off by its presentation and some of its trendy language, and here’s why:
I remain interested in Sudhir Venkatesh’s research on black and grey market economies, including prostitution in New York. (Full disclosure: he was on my dissertation committee.) Here’s a recent piece in Wired Magazine, reporting some details from his survey of almost 300 sex workers. While there’s some compelling, curious and quite sad information included, I’m left discomforted at the formatting of the piece, which looks more like a fashion magazine “how to” insert (or, even more accurately, the time use almanacs that dude publishes every year…and which I now cannot remember the name of nor find) than a journalistic reporting of life as a sex worker. For example, in the list of items sex workers carry with them, “extra panties” for clients who want a “souvenir” is accompanied by a charming little line drawing of a pair of bikini underwear, right next to a drawing of lubricant and bandages for “rashes, rawness and bruises.” Having just bought some of Edward Tufte’s work, I feel certain that soon I’ll have a precise way to describe this disjuncture between intention and visual representation.
And I think this disjuncture she speaks of can be associated in many ways to the rise in popularity of infographics and, possibly moreso, the impact of the visual-based consumption that the interconnected-magnets demand in general. This is something I’ve had trouble articulating in the past. So where I can barely conjure the words to describe why these graphics rub me the wrong way, leave it to a sociologist to articulate it with the preciseness it deserves. And I don’t think the underlying content necessarily determines the degree of disconnect. Which is to say, yes, a Lil B concert could (and should) be considered a less weighty topic, but in my opinion both are poorly served by the respective presentations and tone of discourse. The underlying experience or content is somehow altered.
This ability to transform nearly anything into some form of tagged and quasi-compartmentalized ha-ha entertainment is disconcerting and speaks to not only the creators of the end content but also to those who consume it, voluntarily or involuntarily as it may be.
