'Television is the first truly democratic
culture - the first culture available to
everybody based upon what people want.
The most terrifying thing is what people
want...'
Clive Barnes
a somewhat short rant:
MOST AMERICANS UNDER THE AGE OF 50...
culture - the first culture available to
everybody based upon what people want.
The most terrifying thing is what people
want...'
Clive Barnes
a somewhat short rant:
MOST AMERICANS UNDER THE AGE OF 50...
HAVE NOW SPENT THEIR LIVES ABSORBING television; that is, they've had the structures of drama pounded into them. Drama is always about imaginary conflict. So news shows, advertising, and politics are now shaped by these structures. Nobody will pay any attention to anything as complicated as the part played by Third World Debt or the expanding production of drugs and slaughter along the Texas-Mexico border; it's easier to focus on The Big Bang Theory or The Simpson's, characters born out of escape rather than imagination and avoid the reality that there actually is evil in the world; and as far as the threat of ISIS is concerned, that too is not an immediate reality for most of us to truly care about until it happens here.
As a result of living lives in an unreal world, no other people on earth spend so much time whining and talking about their feelings; hundreds of thousands go to shrinks, they buy self-help books by the millions, pour out their intimate confessions to virtual strangers in bars, and our political campaigns are about emotional issues of gridlock and hatred, with the simplicities of adolescence. Even alleged statesmen cannot start a sentence without criticism of the other side without saying something stupid like the ever-annoying Donald Trump, Our President is not actually an American and I am still on the hunt for his birth-certificate or something equally asinine like eternally stupid Louie Gohmert who supports the trans-Alaskan pipeline because it would allow the caribou to have more sex.
But the point of what follows is not about stupid men.
It is getting almost all of our news and information from our television sets. For example, this is simply not the same experience as reading it in a newspaper. Reading is active. Watching television is passive. The reader must decode little symbols called words, then create images or ideas and make them connect at its most basic level, reading is the act of the imagination. But the television viewer eliminates that process. The words are spoken to them by Rachael Maddow or Wolf Blitzer. There isn't much decoding when watching television, no time to think or ponder before the next set of images or spoken words appears to displace present time. The reader, being active, works his or her own pace; the viewer, being passive, proceeds at a pace determined by the now. Except at the highest levels, television never demands that its audience take part in an act of imagination. Reading always does.
In short, television works on the same imaginative and intellectual level as psychoactive drugs.
If prolonged television viewing makes the young passive, it also coincides with the unspoken assumption of most television shows: Life should be easy. The most complicated events should be summarized on TV new in a minute or less. Cops always confront murder, chase the criminals, and bring them to justice within an hour. In commercials, you drink the right beer and you get the girl. So why should real life be a grind? Why should any American have to spend years mastering a craft or skill, or work 8 hours a day at an unpleasant job, or endure the compromises and crises of marriage? Nobody works on television except Cops, doctors, and lawyers. Love stories are about falling-in-love or breaking up; the long steady growth of marriage - its essential dailiness - is seldom explored, except as comedy. Life on television is almost always simple: good guys and bad, nice girls and whores, smart guys and dumb. And if life in the real world isn't that simple, well, hey man, take a snort marijuana or a shot of whiskey, man, be happy, feel good.
For years, the defenders of televison have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel...
As a result of living lives in an unreal world, no other people on earth spend so much time whining and talking about their feelings; hundreds of thousands go to shrinks, they buy self-help books by the millions, pour out their intimate confessions to virtual strangers in bars, and our political campaigns are about emotional issues of gridlock and hatred, with the simplicities of adolescence. Even alleged statesmen cannot start a sentence without criticism of the other side without saying something stupid like the ever-annoying Donald Trump, Our President is not actually an American and I am still on the hunt for his birth-certificate or something equally asinine like eternally stupid Louie Gohmert who supports the trans-Alaskan pipeline because it would allow the caribou to have more sex.
But the point of what follows is not about stupid men.
It is getting almost all of our news and information from our television sets. For example, this is simply not the same experience as reading it in a newspaper. Reading is active. Watching television is passive. The reader must decode little symbols called words, then create images or ideas and make them connect at its most basic level, reading is the act of the imagination. But the television viewer eliminates that process. The words are spoken to them by Rachael Maddow or Wolf Blitzer. There isn't much decoding when watching television, no time to think or ponder before the next set of images or spoken words appears to displace present time. The reader, being active, works his or her own pace; the viewer, being passive, proceeds at a pace determined by the now. Except at the highest levels, television never demands that its audience take part in an act of imagination. Reading always does.
In short, television works on the same imaginative and intellectual level as psychoactive drugs.
If prolonged television viewing makes the young passive, it also coincides with the unspoken assumption of most television shows: Life should be easy. The most complicated events should be summarized on TV new in a minute or less. Cops always confront murder, chase the criminals, and bring them to justice within an hour. In commercials, you drink the right beer and you get the girl. So why should real life be a grind? Why should any American have to spend years mastering a craft or skill, or work 8 hours a day at an unpleasant job, or endure the compromises and crises of marriage? Nobody works on television except Cops, doctors, and lawyers. Love stories are about falling-in-love or breaking up; the long steady growth of marriage - its essential dailiness - is seldom explored, except as comedy. Life on television is almost always simple: good guys and bad, nice girls and whores, smart guys and dumb. And if life in the real world isn't that simple, well, hey man, take a snort marijuana or a shot of whiskey, man, be happy, feel good.
For years, the defenders of televison have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel...
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