Media Convergence and Criticism: A Brief Survey of U2's Zoo Tv Concert Series

Mass Communications and Society Tuesday, April 18, 2006

University of South Florida BSN 1100, 8am - 9:15

Guest Speaker: B.E. Johnston

Title: Media Convergence and Criticism: A brief survey of U2's Zoo TV Concert Series

INTRODUCTION

This show is a critique of postmodern culture's primary delusional artifact, Television. It is also an excellent example of what we've studied in here, called "Media Convergence." Thus, this brief lecture about U2's Zoo TV concert series serves as a good review of "Media Convergence" and it foreshadows this course's concluding section on Media Criticism.

Excerpt from my treaties: U2 Into The Labyrinth: A rhetorical analysis of U2's Zoo TV concert series:

"U2's Zoo TV concert series (Feb. 1992 - Nov. 1993) was a unique rhetorical event that dramatically engaged the social fragmentation and technological embodiment of contemporary life. Critical responses celebrated Zoo TV's parody of the postmodern condition. However, within the show were some elusive elements that served a narrative purpose as much as they supported a sophisticated social commentary. In Zoo TV, U2 project themselves as a technologically re-configured rock band, lament their own simulated and objectified forms, and then try to deconstruct what they have become by recovering some repressed spiritual moorings. This tension between spiritual grounding and postmodern fragmentation is an aspect of Zoo TV that critics have failed to reconcile. This analysis demonstrates how U2's stage characters, theatrics, video montages, and lyrics work inter-textually in Zoo TV to narrate a spiritual space from within a postmodern scene."

I.

Who is U2?

What is "The Postmodern Condition"?

What does "Zoo TV" have to do with this cultural theory?

II.

What did U2 say with "Zoo TV"?

Spectator Culture, Mass Media, the Masses