Paper, glass, algorithm: teleprompters and the invisibility of screens

The teleprompter, invented in 1948 as a memory aid for show business, has become a ubiquitous technology in modern politics. Yet, the hidden ways in which this device shapes our understanding of performance, newscasting, and political rhetoric are rarely studied by media scholars. Recognizing this lacuna, this article traces the evolution of the teleprompter from a cumbersome, human-operated device to an invisible system of screens designed to conceal its own existence. The teleprompter has not only shaped the standardization of speech, but also restructured the televised spectacle by collapsing the sonic, the tactile, and the optical. By focusing on teleprompter fiascos and moments of breakdown from President Eisenhower to President Trump, we make a broader argument regarding the importance of failure and the accidental to the study of visual culture.

Download Full-text

After tragedy: Melodrama and the rhetoric of realism

Journal of International Political Theory ◽

10.1177/1755088218790987 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 316-331

Author(s):

Daniel J Levine

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Political Rhetoric ◽

Modern Politics ◽

Narrative Mode ◽

Late Modern ◽

Nuclear Condition

Responding to renewed interest in political rhetoric among contemporary International Relations (IR)–realists, this article advances three main claims. First, it suggests that tragedy—the dominant aesthetic-narrative mode to which these realists have turned in their rhetorical considerations—is ill-suited to the contemporary political moment. In the context of a late-modern “nuclear condition,” the turn to classical tragedy seems set to reproduce the resentful, anti-realist hubris that its promulgators hope to dispel or disenchant. Second, it suggests that late modern politics is widely experienced not in tragic terms but in melodramatic ones, and that contemporary reflexive realists would do well to alter their rhetorical approaches accordingly. Third, it explores rhetorical frameworks that might better meet the challenges posed by politics experienced in such terms.

Download Full-text