Pontypool - Silence, Salvation, & Space-Biased

 

    When analyzing Pontypool from the lens of Harold Innis’ concepts of time and space bias, I believe the film is a better example of space bias. Time-biased is about preserving culture and knowledge over long periods of time, and frankly, the residents of Pontypool do not have time on their side. This is as opposed to space-biased media, which allows for information to spread across large distances, often doing so through common communication technologies. While the virus in Pontypool spreads through the words one speaks, it is ultimately technologies, such as radio and telephones, that allow it to amplify its destruction. Although speech is typically associated with time-biased media, it is the technologies and scale of which the virus is able to spread that makes the vector of infection more likely to be classified as a space-biased.

    As for the film's connection to orality, the way people communicate and get infected is through speaking and listening. While the radio and telephone are forms of modern technology, the communication done is still happening in real time, just over larger distances. Therefore, the contemporary forms of orality are simply being amplified. One way to look at it is how the way we communicated through speech used to be very intimate. But now, because of technology, it is easy to get what one is saying/thinking out there to all who are able and willing to listen. Thus our speech has been able to spread all around the world, just like the virus spreading through Pontypool.