As Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen stress in their book “Multimodal Discourse. The modes and media of contemporary communication” there is a shift from monomodality to multimodality in the Western culture today. (p.1) The “the dumbest generation” welcome page offers a lot of different modes which will be discussed in this paper. There is written text, graphics of moving text and another graphic – the site presents a lot of sign vehicles. Sign vehicles are the physical or material form of a sign.
“The Dumbest Generation” page can be devided in three parts. The header on top of everything with the red words saying: “The Dumbest Generation” infront of the white background of the page. On the left side of the screen there is a vertical navigation bar showing different categories of the website in grey letters like “reviews”, “articles” or “buy the book”. On top of the main part are the grey words “50 Million Minds Diverted, Distracted, Devoured”. Underneath there are floating letters which come from the left and change colors from red to black and tell some facts about the so called dumbest generation. Another eyecatcher is the bookcover which captures almost the whole page: the three words “THE DUMBEST GENERATION” written underneath each other in capital fat black and red words. In their center is a graphic of three robots holding a flag in their hands. Beneath the big letters it says in red: “How The Digital Age Stupefies Yound Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future*” and thereunder “hangs” cross a kind of black and white tag saying: “*OR DON’T TRUST ANYONE UNDER 30 MARK BAUERLEIN”. Thus the color scheme within these words and phrases is black – red – black – red in each line or phrase from top to bottom.
The dominant colors of the page are white for background, red, black and also a little bit of grey for the font. The combination of the colors red and black connotates power – it is a powerful statement that Bauerlein is making and the wants to draw attention, make people think and be alarmed. Red in itself is an emotionally intense color and a connotation of war and danger – the danger of the stupefied young American who came jeopardize the future. “The National Assessment of Educational Progress has pegged 46% of 12th-graders below the “basic” level of proficiency in science, while only 2% are qualified as “advanced.””* Red is also used in many flags like the flag of the USA which is also shown on the page. The white background color basically stands for purity and cleanliness – it is a reliable study which is based on facts. Additionally it brings out the effects of the other red and black element very well.
The website uses an alliteration “50 Million Minds Diverted, Distracted, Devoured” – all negative words to describe young Americans who do not know how to write interestingly for school: “No sharp metaphors, mots justes, nifty rhythms and parallels, or punctuating sounds.”* Bauerlein describes the youth with a figure of speech and by doing that he even emphasizes their inability of using them.
The moving text is another sign vehicle and presents some facts about the young generation – what it does and what it does not do. The letters are moving quickly and after looking at the page for while they are getting quite annoying, but they attract attention. It alludes to the youth not beeing able to focus a long time – “…the digital revolution, which he says has empowered students in certain ways while also eroding their attention spans and analytical abilities.”*
The grey and white navigation bar is well visible, but without any visual effects to distract the eye from the main “book cover” elements. The hierarchy of the links of the navigation bar suggest you move from the top to the bottom. You can read all about the book in the news, reviews, articles by Bauerlein and afterwards when you are convinced the book might be worth it you can buy it. Thus the navigation bar and the whole website stands for seriousness and not cheap advertisement that just wants to make you buy something by clicking on a big red “buy now” button. The site wants to give you facts, interestingly written and argumenting articles – it wants to make you read and think – something that Bauerlein says the “digital age” does not do. Thus this page shows how it can be done differently compared to pages like wikipedia which “…is criticized for its superficiality, erroneousness, and amateurism, but, in fact, Wikipedia provides ready access to a fact, definition, or overview.”*
The robot image is a sign vehicle and alludes to Joe Rosenthals photograph “Raising the flag on Iwo Jima”, because the composition is similar. It was shot during Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II and shows five United States Marines and a U.S. corpsman raising the flag of the United States on top of Mount Suribachi. It is a symbol for the democratic spirit and hope. The robots signify the young Americans – “the dumbest generation”. They are not humans like in the photograph and they look aggressive and pushing – they do not stand for hope, but for destruction. The big words together with the iconic image look like they are promoting a new kind of action figures. These robots are stupefied and controlled by the digital age proudly presenting the American flag – not in the process of raising like in the photograph. We can say that the flag represents a synechdoche in which the flag is the part and the whole are the young Americans. The three robots represent a synechdoche too. They are the part that stands for the whole generation. In addition the robots stand for the “…blind celebration of youth, and an ill-informed optimism about technology…” .*
The design of the “*OR DON’T TRUST ANYONE UNDER 30” tag is a reference to the parental advisory logo that is put on CDs with content that is better not presented to kids. This is Bauerleins “parental advisory“ or at least for people over 30. It alludes to the famous slogan of Jack Weinberg, the leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s. Weinberg said “Don’t trust anyone over 30” – so Bauerlein reversed that popular phrase. The phrase and the tag could be seen as an analogue opposition (antonym) which is a pair of oppositional signifiers in a paradigm set representing categories with comparative grading on the same dimension. In a news release distributed by a Chicago public relations agency Weinberg said “I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.”* His connotation is that the new generation does not pull its own strings and is the opposite of the “Weinberg generation”. The National Conference of State Legislatures recently announced: “Young people do not understand the ideals of citizenship … and their appreciation and support of American democracy is limited.”* This quotation is from Bauerleins article “Decline of the Literate Culture”, it goes on: “We must remember that the heritage of democracy is understandable mainly through reading, for we are a nation founded upon ideals expressed in documents.”*
As we can see the website includes a lot of different sign vehicles, which all symbolize and support the main facts of Bauerleins book: the digital age stupefies the new generation.
List of References:
- http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/
- http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18845104.html
- http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b01001.htm
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/12/EDG8B8M7EI1.DTL
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/digitally-addicted-kids-threaten-to-return-civilisation-to-the-dark-ages-966660.html
- http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/14/news/letter.1-407193.php
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90755433
- http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/is-stupid-making-us-google
- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/education/edlife/books.html?_r=1&ex=1209268800&en=129e4f750e5067d0&ei=5070&emc=eta1
- http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-04-06/article/759?headline=Don-t-trust-anyone-over-30-unless-it-s-Jack-Weinberg
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima
- Daniel Chandler: Semiotics: The Basics
- Anne Cranny-Francis: Multimedia
- Gunther Kress and Theo Va Leeuwen: Multimodal Discourse
