Will's Students -- Johnson

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/15/96
Subject	Will's Students -- Johnson
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List, Wallace List

Will's Students -- Johnson
Dear Listers,

Here's another from my high school seniors.  Emily's post is about TV and how it
is presented in a David Foster Wallace story "Little Expressionless Animals" and
in a story by Mark Leyner, "Oh, Brother," which is a parody/exaggeration of the
Menendez "imperfect self-defense strategy (the brothers believe -- from TV --
that any normal parent is abusive, so their perfect parents must be insane and
about to kill them).  Even if you haven't read these stories, please feel free
to respond to her, and feel free use other works in your response, particularly
"The Crying of Lot 49," which the students also read. I'd note that Emily hasn't
read TRP's "Vineland," though you might also find some connections there she
would find interesting.  Again, I plan to collate the various responses and
discuss them with the students in a seminar.  Thanks for your help!

-- Will Layman

********************

In his short story, "Little Expressionless Animals", David Foster Wallace
humorously jabs at our television saturated society.  Alex Trebek, the sort of
dweeb of the game show industry, takes considerable abuse from Wallace, and with
this the story addresses the idea that there's something ridiculous and phony
about t.v., that it's the junk food of entertainment.  Of all the inane things
on television he chooses Jeopardy as his focus, and as a protagonist, a girl who
has memorized the encyclopedia.  Both of these things represent pointless
flaunting of facts and memorization abilities that the normal ones of us
couldn't even conceive of.  But because they're that way, just that far beyond
us, the knowledge of these facts is also admirable.  Memorizing the encyclopedia
is an impressive feat, but Julie and her brain and her enigma are all cheapened
by the fact that we know about it because of Jeopardy, because of t.v., because
of Alex Trebek.  There is something so immense and important about knowledge
that I wince at the idea of constraining it to questions and answers.  So is
that the analogy?  Jeopardy does to knowledge what t.v. does to our lives. 
Sitcoms with their thirty minute conflicts and resolutions serve what purpose
for us?  Entertainment?  So when Arthur from across the street sits down with
his wife after dinner to get his fill of "must see t.v.," he knows he's
devaluing life, he simply finds the entertainment worthy of such an
accomplishment.  I don't think so.  He just doesn't realize what is being
accomplished, aside from his being entertained.  So where does the problem lie? 
Is it just stupid people, uninformed people who watch their t.v.'s like a
teenaged girl might watch a mirror while contemplating not eating dinner?  Or is
it t.v. that makes them that way?  Certainly in Mark Leyner's "Oh, Brother" we
hear of a story is which t.v. takes kids beyond stupid to deranged.  So the
excessive violence that results, the elaborate patricide, is due to, according
to their lawyer (ironically, law being a profession specializes in
oversimplifying) the television they mistook for a mirror.  If it's really that
evil then how can we just plunk down multiple t.v. sets in every American
household?  Oh, right Ñ for entertainment's sake.

-- Emily Johnson