Normal Media In the long run, everything becomes interesting; such is the fate of normal media. The only surviving Mayan text may reveal the deepest mysteries to us or turn out a department store ad: neither would make it any less fascinating. Normal media are characterized by the fact that they cannot be interpreted as cultural expressions during their time of appearance. It is only after they become a collection with the appropriate chronology or an object of study for the science of normal history that they acquire that little extra of a misaddressed letter or conversation at the next table. Only through such annexations can the imagination be stimulated to practice the hermeneutics of everyday life. Normal media, when planted into their natural environment, are so obvious that they exclude all metalevels. They are so much a part of their own space-time that they do not allow for the necessary distance to observe them in an anthropological sense, or simply for pleasure. They are like the tiny bone from which the whole dinosaur is deduced, or the one scene through which the entire movie can be reconstructed. As long as they remain submerged in everyday life, they are of minimal information value. But as paradigmatic splinters, they reveal the entire landscape in which they once figured. Untimely normal media can only be conceived of as the inconceivable. Normal media require no advertising. They are handed out uninvited in inescapable editions. Waste is a precondition. Direct mail has achieved its goal if three percent of the recipients react. Normal media institutions abuse the statutory obligation to receive mail. Thus, we find descriptions of stray cats, announcements for nextdoor parties, Scientology leaflets about Hubbard's latest, an invitation to the official opening of Harry's Butcher's, interior design catalogues, respectable students seeking apartments, a salsa dance class, supermarket special offers, various local papers, a book club catalogue, Chinese takeout and Italian delivery menus, the neighborhood newsletter, a personal message "to all those at the designated address," political flyers, and cultural teasers. A similar category survives in the news sphere in the form of personal ads and obituaries, personal announcements and readers' letters. The white and yellow pages, too, enjoy regular contact with average folks. Uninvited media ignore the contemporary consumer habit to compile one's own, personal media package. The classic unilateral model in which recipient B had no choice but to accept the message from source A has been renounced as undemocratic. The adage of "choose your own message" has turned reception into an act of volition. The media for the millions cut right through this conscious selection, sovereign to the extent that they are uninterested in market penetration or spiritual incorporation. They feel at home in a stack of old newspapers, down the hallway, out in the street, on top of a garbage can. Normal media design requires a certain period of incubation before it can be recognized as such. In their layout, normal media neither plunder the work of risqué avant-gardists nor make an appeal to nostalgia. They inadvertently succeed in short-circuiting the field of tension between folk and mass culture. Their problem is how to draw attention without becoming interesting. They must avoid their instant degradation into a message for a single market sector at all costs. They combine the amateurish clumsiness of the anniversary and marriage song with the professional charisma of the quizmaster and revue artist. Desktop publishing, handycamcorders and autozoom see to it that neither level is ever attained. They reveal a carefully edited normality in which there is room for everyone. This is where contempt fails. Average media may be copied, but they cannot be parodied. Letters by the city council or local industries may be a standard weapon in the Spaßguerrilla repertoire, but the first ironic mail order catalogue has yet to be written. To turn to normal media for innovative content is useless. They have turned McLuhan's brilliant analysis - that the content of the media consists of the preceding media - into their editorial policy. They are shopwindows in print, visual radio shows, screen adaptations of myth, digitized town criers, neighbors by phone, motorized billboards. Whereas sovereign media still manage to produce some alienating effects by broadcasting movies on radio, filming novels by the page, screening radio plays or word processing in cyberspace, watching the radio on television has become common practice, what with talk shows, game shows and the news. Tolerant media aren't necessarily conservative, just because they elaborate on the preceding situation. They do not long for the return of God, country and the family, but offer a new security. Vegetarians are not upset by horsemeat mailings. On the other hand, racist propaganda is instantly exposed by its display of prewar typography and Nazi palette. Normal media merely annoy us because of their overwhelming numbers and the certainty that this particular stream will never dry up. Dominant images may be scratched, stilled, or sampled, but they cannot be turned into camp. Normal media are distributed far beyond the reaches of kitsch. The only way to increase banality is through outdated pictures. For instance, there are no recorded instances yet of an ironic use of laptops or other mobile immaterials. Meanwhile, the solid wares that gave consumer society its material charm give one plenty to go on. Normal media are always one step ahead of the banality fans. Their emptiness is so much a product of its age that even the artistic avant-garde of durability radically overlooks it. Only as foundered cultural values can the maxima normalia become discourse carriers, and thus fit for artistic recycling. ??