Media missionaries 3
Feb26
Yesterday I saw a film at the MoMA (Tailenders) about evangelical Christian missionaries’ use of technology to spread ‘the word’. They travel to isolated villages on all continents handing out cardboard record players, cassettes and cassette players from a company, who have recorded bible stories in an astonishing 5500 languages. They call it “audio evangelism”. The film was pretty critical of the missionaries, and concluded that people were probably more attracted to the technology and the sound of their own language, than the actual content of the tapes.
I’m intrigued by the idea of cardboard record players. Is the record made of cardboard or is the player? Though I live in a large English town, perhaps I could pretend to be some gullible yokel living in an isolated village just to get my hands on one of these cardboard record players.
What next? Origami mp3 players? :-)
Hello! Here is a video of a cardboard record player being played.
Missionaries in Adele’s Horne’s film The Tailenders sell these or give them away free. The player does in fact look a little like origami…
http://www.adelehorne.net/Assets/Cardtalk%20player%208.mov
Interesting video. I see you’ve got to spin the disc manually, so must ensure that your arm moves at 33 rpm. :-)
I imagine great fun can be had slowing down the record so that the religious message is spoken a slow deep demonic kind of voice. Or speed it up and get your message rattled out in a pinky and perky voice. Excellent stuff. :-)