Thursday 25 March 2010

New Journalism

It's the last day of term and while everybodies minds were focussed on anything but uni today, we still had some unfinished HCJ business to attend to. Today we covered New Journalism. Now the main point to be made about the rise of New Journalism is that it was a new way to tell the story. There was a shift in the 1960's/70's from Digetic (telling the story) to Mimetic (showing the story). Mimetic is a way of illustrating a story - "painting with words" or "colour writing" Two of the main influences of New Journalism were Hunter S Thompson (self confessed user of LSD) and Tom Wolfe (accidental user of LSD... 'something in the water'). It's generally thought that the usage of this mind altering substance was key in the shift to New Journalism! Everybody was rebelling against power and it was an anti consumerism and anti Vietnam war era. The Beatles were at large and they too, were off their heads on drugs (Lucy In The Sky Of Diamonds and I believe Strawberry Fields were written about the effects of a trip on LSD). A new left wing emerged and it became 'cool' to be different - alternative society.

Officially interesting things are boring and officially boring things are interesting. Reality is just another type of fiction which is why new journalism was written in a story like manner, often describing minor details within a setting rather than the vital, relevant aspects.

"Everything is strange" idea adopted from existentialism.

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