Adam Abada wrote the following thorough and thoughtful review of The Medium Picture for Tails of Skateboarding‘s Skate Book Club newsletter:
In a mode appealing to members of any subculture, Roy Christopher’s dense but slim The Medium Picture charts the changes in culture as dictated by technology on both a personal and intellectual level. Like the history of our media itself, he first references large monolithic examples — radio/music and television shows — that have become embedded in our culture, then complicates and fragments our relationship to them. One example focuses on how the change from record to tape in the music industry helped to alter our cultural expressions and how we synthesize information. He moves through post-modern history and shows how more technology can create corrosive representations and information, like a copy of a copy of a copy.
A sort of punk rock luddite — Christopher has never owned a TV and hasn’t had a car since the 1990s — he draws from subculture crossover icons like Gang of Four, Laurie Anderson, and Ian MacKaye as well as well-researched academic theories from people like Marshall McLuhan to show how things like zines and mixtapes led to the tiny screens of today. The theory is sprinkled in references; I personally was drawn in with the often-cited works of William Gibson, a robust establishing of skateboarding’s relationship to his topic, and the dozens of chapter-opening quotations from films, poems, music, or authors like Kim Stanley Robinson.
This vast collection of references is supported by well-referenced theory and research that mesh with the book’s easily readable format. Christopher’s claim of lifelong journaling seems very likely given the easy, conversational manner in which he delivers so much information. It is our insights into his own relationships to the theories at hand that make this book most compelling, and Christopher exudes a real love for the things he talks about. I maintained interest through loftier, hard-to-grasp ideas with clearly illustrated connections between seemingly disparate topics like metaphor and technology, while receiving new insight into everyday things such as walking.
The Medium Picture probes many of the questions and desires that we feel as people and may not have words for. The extremely clever title gives a very accurate idea of what the book is about — a play on words that folds in on itself from multiple angles. There is even a nicely designed title page logo calling attention to these interlocking angles, not to mention the pleasing chapter and section headers. Importantly, at only 162 pages, Christopher makes a seemingly intimidating topic appear tackleable and packs a lot into his punch. Perhaps the best thing The Medium Picture does, though, is recognize that it is a piece of a larger whole — a very important and often forgotten thing for cultural theory to do. For that and much more, it is worth your read.
Many thanks to Adam, John Freeborn, and all at Tails of Skateboarding and the Skate Book Club!
The Medium Picture is now available from the University of Georgia Press.