Labor, Sex, and Media The greater the belief in media supremacy, the more compelling the "question" of media becomes, and the louder the demand for a comprehensive theory to cover the media and provide them with the necessary terms and concepts upon which to base policy. The lack of clear analysis is seen as the main cause of technological and commercial proliferation. However, it remains to be seen whether it is possible to formulate a total analysis of media power. In the early twentieth century, attempts were made in several fields to get such a determinant discourse machine off the ground. In the fields of sexuality and labor, the attempt proved succesful. Psychoanalysis and Marxism have not remained marginal phenomena, but have left clear marks on history. They have not only interpreted the world, but unmistakably changed it and rendered it debatable. The mutually incompatible absolute demands made by both theories gave rise to endless debates within metatheory. On the street level, this clash of discourses corresponded to a revolutionary violence that proved fatal for the democratic nations. Still, the misunderstood forces behind the totalitarian movements could afterwards be explained from a Freudo-Marxist perspective: Linking sex and labor made it obvious that the two together had constituted prewar psychosocial identity, and that the workers could be roused through sexual appeals. The disastrous consequences of this belated insight currently hover like a dark cloud over the media theory under construction. If we fail to answer the question of media now, then the Gulf War makes a fine example of what is to come (or so our intellectual discomfort tells us). That is why Hussein is worse than Hitler. Just as Freud did not take notice of Marx, so media theory does not heed Freud or Marx. Communication experts suggest that the old theories are not equipped to describe or analyze media society. If before, sex and labor themselves were the determinants, now they are considered to be derivatives of a theoretical, not (yet) understood "media reality." Both superseded social quantities still make their appearance in the media, where, however, they are of limited validity. They do not contribute to an understanding of the coordinate patterns thought to propel the media. In fact, psychoanalysis and Marxism aim at nothing of the sort. Through the recognition that the factors of sex and labor have been incorporated into media, these theories have long since put their general claims into perspective. Thinking no longer has totalitarian pretensions. In theory, democratic Taylorism has triumphed, and it is far from clear what product the research underway is going to come up with. Theory's little stories are half-products that appear in the media under the sign of expertise. Since the latter results from a successful marketing strategy and is always looking out for fashionable trends, it is doomed to perish. This sort of virtual condition remains bearable as long as it is compensated for by material security. The surrender of research institutes to the media is one more proof of the unbridgeable gap between media practice and media theory. Even the marginal experiment, which does still stake a general claim, operates in a field that is carefully defined by the media. Labeled art or underground, subculture or lifestyle, renounced for reasons of business risk - once form and content have been crystallized, it will be condensed as a story to further enhance the media package. The business economics of the multimedia spectacle thus control the entire field of research and take on an aura of inescapability. Even the scientific ivory tower has been furnished with King Media's loudspeakers, where King Labor and Queen Sex blared before. This shows that we are still used to thinking submissively in terms of absolute monarchy and universal power. We await the coming of the Sigmund Marx or Karl Freud of the media age who will offer us a vision of a postmedial Empire of Freedom. She or he will put an end to intellectual rigidity and parochialism and topple the tables of the postmodern concept-traders so that theory may once more become the guiding principle of nations. Media philosophy, like quantum physics, should formulate a Theory of Everything under which all kinds of disparate questions can be grouped. The concept of "media" originates in the modern age with Hegel's phenomenology. His principle of the spirit as medium rendered bourgeois society a practicable entity. The spirit medium enables a qualitative leap, as with the childishly innocent body when it becomes the sexual body and yet remains the same. On the other hand, "media" means that from the viewpoint of power, the body becomes controllable, productive. The medium creates unity by mediating between power and the body, so that both poles forever share a relationship of mutual dependence. Power needs the body, and the body needs power. Thus, the question is never: power or not? but rather: what form of power is at work (as Foucauldians put it). The twentieth century is characterized by a form of power consisting of the coupled media of labor and sex, which ingeniously interwove the organization of public life with private life. Sex and labor are media in the sense that they mediate between the body and the social. Just as sex mediated between the sexes, so labor mediated between classes. The reason sex and labor as an identity-inducive pair were such an unbeatable medium was that both media, within a cooperative bond, gave productive potential to the division between public and private. Socioeconomic questions could thus be translated into psychosexual terms so social contradictions could be experienced on the psychological level as sexual conflicts. Since the masses thus understood themselves to be psychologically dependent on socioeconomic reality, they were open to irrational demands on matters of national interest. This has been one explanation of National Socialist hysteria. History can be divided into periods of subsequent power types, with the predecessors invariably incorporated by the successors. If the current type is defined by "the media," then it carries with it the psychosocial complex, without being dominated by it. This explains why the media cannot be overthrown by any offensive (combined or otherwise) from a sexual disposition: the media will effortlessly defuse any revolutionary sexual movement. The same can be said of the social. Whereas the unemployment rate of the 1930s immediately created a revolutionary situation, this is unthinkable under the media reign. All (sex-pol) resistance is highlighted, not in order to root it out, but to test its item potential. The old powers can undergo fundamental changes without threatening the new power type. The psychological bodily complex is no longer directly linked to sex and labor; instead, it mirrors itself on the media's ever-changing images and programs. Inasmuch as the old media had no option but to equip the body with a fixed and definite identity, the new media are dependent on polymorphously perverted identities. That is not to say that the media do not create an entity. Diversion unifies and occupies the millions. The diversity overload is productive, in that the various elements can be instantly connected. This unlimited potential of combinations has abolished the fixed coordinates of time and space that old labor and sex still depended on. Moving through time and space is pretty cumbersome if one has to drag along blood and soil with each step taken. Many of the accusations against the media result from adherence to a power type that has lost its function. Media are considered far too shallow to properly shed light on the context of reality. Superficiality can only be perceived as a disturbing element if one adheres to firmly fixed identities accorded such importance that it is forbidden to treat them lightly. The idea that the real forces behind or underneath the screen can be revealed is likewise based on the presumption that the media themselves do not have power, but instead are tools in the hands of manipulating third parties. The invisible links render power itself invisible; the quest for hidden power not only underestimates this feature of media power, it also sticks to the rules of old power, which has in fact disappeared within the media. The same goes for complaints about the overload of information and entertainment and their synthesis, infotainment. The diagnosed overkill is experienced as a waste of energy, time and money that could have been put to much better use. This waste metaphor is a relic of the sexual disposition, according to which energy must be spent either on labor or on sensitivity. Back then, waste was considered a problem because it threatened the logic of (the division of) family labor and factory labor and laid an inordinately high claim on vital reserves. But what is waste to the media-ecological mind becomes a test pattern on the media level. Whereas waste is based on scarcity - to which it is itself the exception - abundance is an existential prerequisite of media. If waste once was a devastating explosion, in the media it becomes the productive implosion par excellence that raises the switch potential to the power of n. The media ecologists' real desire is to reduce the media to a single prime-time quality channel, betraying their yearning for the subjection of media to a past order offering fixed guidelines for a life of responsibility. All this discomfort seeks a way out, so media theory is assigned the task of finding therapeutic treatments for all the discontent, which will restore the user's balanced mind and prevent frustrated contact with the media. When therapy presents itself as theory, it will have to eliminate technological fears, to which end it can basically either express or trivialize them. In contrast, any theory that wants to avoid the social demand for media therapy will have to look beyond the boundaries of media reality. Whereas therapy cures the medially insane, theory ought to treat them as borderline cases that enhance our perception of media power. The media heretics and perverts reveal normality in their aberration. So far, media theory has done little more than to formulate the concepts to guide the introduction of the new technologies. This is usually done by describing the machine's grammar from within, so that we may understand and communicate with the media using their own language. Media are provided with a history and a future. What remains unexplored this way is the reality production of the new power type, here and now. The paradox any media theory has to face is that it can only define (hyper-) reality according to criteria that are beyond the media. Theory must absorb resistance; rather than eliminating discomfort, it must reinforce it. It must not oppose the media, but move beyond them. In contrast, to presume the omnipotence of media is to try to summon the impending disaster of a Brave New Media World, in order to exorcise it through the exclusion of subversive elements. The same can be said of the attempt to put the media into the proper perspective to the point where they become insignificant data liquids. Again, to trivialize is to deny (virtual) reality through the emancipation of the virtual as virtuality. This approach, too, does little justice to the present, with all its paradoxes and absurdities. It renders the careful study of media microphysics redundant, as media are only virtual after all. Media theory tends to lean towards one of these poles; it prefers to make grandiose gestures rather than to record the small stories, a lousy job best left to everyday journalism. It is only when the media twilight falls that media theory begins to blossom. The theory of fascism needed an entire Cold War before it could fully mature. The ecologists' call for a media freeze is a forced attempt to contain the excrescences so that research may flourish. However, they forget that this can only succeed if it is preceded by a catastrophe. To cancel ISDN, HDTV and VR and stop the necessary permanent innovation would be to rob the global economy of its motor. Ecologists advocate an unprecedented crisis that would make the stock market crash look like a day at the beach. In an attempt to impart an air of reasonability to their apocalyptic yearnings, they propose precautionary reforms to curb the media (so that the book may witness its comeback). The question remains whether media theory can survive without a global crisis. Will the media walls be made to crumble as the iron curtain did - unexpectedly, and without bloodshed? The dyad of annihilation and modernization that served as the driving force behind the twentieth century can remain operational in the media age without resorting to violence. On the contrary, violence is released, itemized, and finally expelled as the primitive means of communication of the unconnected social wastelands. Media neither feed nor feed on violence. But under the media ecologists' command, they do make a prime target. Their vulnerability compels them to plead for a world government that will exclude violence and render it unthinkable within the networks. No matter how justifiable this eerie media premonition, it still testifies to their continued belief in the (political) power of the labor-and-sex age. Any media theory that wishes also to be a power analysis is doomed to be outdated the moment it appears. If media theory is to analyze the media without resorting to holocausts or conspiracies within the military-electronic complex, it must abandon the idea that media have anything whatsoever to do with power. Accusations of superficiality are the media's greatest compliment. ??