'Tutelary' review: Part 1 - Theory

I am going to look at a podcast fanfiction (an interesting form - a sort of radio play or book-on-tape - that intrigued me when I came across it) titled 'Tutelary' by the writer Bowles.

Here are the links to both the podcast and the written story:
http://www.harrypotterpodcast.net/
http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?chapterid=188003
However, I will mention that I will base this 'review' of sorts purely on the podcast version and not the written one.

First, some introductory jargon: Fanfiction writers post most of their work on the internet in written form. Some fictions combine different media - for example, visual art and writing - but still contain an element of text. With podcasting, the text becomes audio - a whole different medium with different strengths and weaknesses.

As a side note, (just to show that the podcast form itself isn’t ’numbingly’ new) I’m actually listening to a podcast (CBC Radio 3) while writing this.

Let’s see what McLuhan has to say about the written word:
The written word “has nothing to do with the content of the alphabetized words; it is the result of the sudden breach between the auditory and visual experience of man [sic]. Only the phonetic alphabet makes such a sharp division in experience, giving to its user an eye for an ear, and freeing him from the tribal trance of resonating word magic and the web of kinship.” (McLuhan 84)

Phew! Okay, so that’s quite a bit to unload, but let’s just quickly (and very informally) go over what McLuhan is getting at here with writing. Not surprisingly, McLuhan immediately strips text of its content; it‘s not what the text says but what the physical placement of ink in specific shapes does to the audience. In this case, the embalming (if you’ll bare with me waxing poetic) of speech - an auditory medium - into text - a visual medium - metaphorically strips the audience of shared (heard, tribal) experience for personal interpretation (read, individual).

So that is what’s happening with text but what does McLuhan have to say about radio (which is the closest to podcast form that I can surmise)?
“Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience.”(299); “All those gestural qualities that the printed page strips from language come back in the dark, and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the senses, not just the sight of the action.” (303)

Two key differences of radio compared to text are that 1) rather than being indifferent (text as readable for anyone/everyone), radio is an intimate exchange from speaker to listener, and 2) Radio provides a ‘second sight’ where the sound does not take place of sight but fills in sight and physicality.
I didn’t anticipate how much I would write within this, so what I’ll do, just so the post doesn’t take up an intrusive amount of the page, is I’ll split it into two sections. You’ve just read the ‘theory’ section and I’ll post the ‘review’ section right after!

End of Part 1