The Hollow experience offers an explanation and an invitation very
early on: “McDowell County, West Virginia is the story of America. Of boom and bust economies. Of small towns facing changes beyond their
control. And of challenges and triumphs
of every size. Explore this corner of
America through the stories of over 30 residents who live here today. Hollow
is the story of their home.” These
stories unfold multidimensionally, as the spectator scrolls through hollowdocumentary.com at his or her own
pace, stopping to engage in the story through scrap-book-style photos,
interactive charts, video clips, quotes, and background information about the
people featured. One might perceive Hollow simply as the text it claims to
be—a story of home, of struggle, even of America—while ignoring the fact that
it uses a very specific medium to tell its story. Many texts, after all, claim to be the story
of America, struggle, and home, among other topics, but they might tell their
story in the form of a novel, a folk song, or a newscast. In McLuhan’s opinion, the content, or what we
typically consider story, of a text
is not nearly as important as the medium through which it is expressed; hence
the adage, “the medium is the message.”
To fairly consider the message of Hollow,
one must define its medium as precisely as possible: more than a movie,
database, or photo collection, it is a website.
 |
| Various options of hollowdocumentary.com: scroll through pictures, watch a video, read information about the person featured, or none of the above |
The fact that it is a website does
not make it any less of a documentary.
Alan Johnston—one of the first people featured—emphasizes his role as
documentarian in the project: “I felt that someone ought to document this area
now. So that’s what I have been doing
for the past couple of years.” A video
shows him driving in his truck, taking pictures of the community and the wilderness;
there is even a link that allows viewers to browse his photo collection. “The content of any medium is always another
medium,” states McLuhan, which proves true in Hollow documentary, be it Johnston’s photos, Nessie Hunt’s music,
or Josh Clevenger’s skits. The particular presentation of this
collection of documents, however, has a different effect than the same documents
would have in another medium. For
example, consider the same photos (but in physical form), the same music (but
burned onto a CD), and the same skits (on a DVD) bundled together in a
shoebox. In this scenario, one might
struggle to see the connection between each subject and his or her hobby. Organized as they are on the website, these
documents appear more united—more indicative of McDowell County’s rich
culture—than they might otherwise appear.
Like McLuhan’s explanation of movies, the website presents these
documents as “a world of triumphant illusions and dreams.”
This narrative cohesiveness is underlined by its un-web-like linearity
of stories. Despite the menu at the
bottom of the screen, seen when first entering hollowdocumentary.com, the viewer has little choice in the order of
what he or she watches. True, an option
is given at the end of each chapter to either go “Back to Start” or
proceed. Otherwise, one must go through
each chapter in the following order: The
Way it Was, These Roots, For Each Other, For the Land, When Coal Was King, and
Around the Bend. The key word, though, is “go through;” the
loophole this website offers to mandatory viewing is the ability to scroll past
any content. Consequently, the viewer
who doesn’t want to explore For Each
Other can go through it in a literal flash.
The effect of the viewer-centric
selectivity—an implication of its medium—clashes with the content message,
which, after all, is to call attention to a forgotten, poverty-stricken town
that is fast dwindling to nothingness.
How much is Hollow really
about McDowell County’s people when so much attention is given to the viewer’s
subjective quality of experience? Before
seeing anything else on hollowdocumentary.com,
visitors of the site are greeted with this advice:
Focus is given to the medium (and the importance of its
optimal setting) before anything is said about the 30 residents and their
stories. Along those same lines, can Hollow claim its subject’s stories are
important if the viewer can so easily skip them? Granted, Bogost’s (citing Battle) rebuttal
works well here, for “dipping and skimming” is not a phenomenon exclusive to
the web. However, one could also argue
that the scrolling feature of Hollow
lends itself to getting through the material quickly or picking and choosing
stories based on superficial page layout rather than watching all of the stories in a more traditional
documentary format.
No one
could argue that Hollow does not
“eliminate time and space factors in human association.” Its medium makes it accessible to a larger
number of people than any other digital media could; one need not buy a movie ticket
to see it in a limited release, nor is its primary medium the ever-alienating
written text. Anyone who spends time in hollowdocumentary.com sees a
portrait of a downtrodden yet resilient people—actual faces, rather than
unflattering statistics. The very medium
responsible for its accessibility might also be responsible for its ultimate
ineffectiveness in garnering interest, for the public may not be conditioned to dive deeply into a website. This is not to say that online discourse is impossible; rather, the way people interact with similar media (e.g., Facebook) might crossover in unexpected and detrimental ways when visiting this website. Hollow's ultimate success depends on at least one factor: does its interface encourage depth, selectivity, or something in between?
No comments:
Post a Comment