reply to Emily

[Phillip P. Muth]

Dear Emily:
Is there any way that the tube, in either of these stories is, if not
redemptive, then at least less than evil.  Think of the opening
of Lot 49; Oedipa mentions God as she tuns off the tv (I don't
have my copy in front of me but that's the way I remember it).
Given Leyner's and Wallace use of popular culture in their
stories are they not indulging in a complicitous critique of
the medium of t.v.  In other words, to understand Jeopardy one
must watch it.  To simply condemn watching it is to condemn
oneself.  
The easy distinctions highbrow critiques make between art and
commercial trash is not easy to draw these days.  Pynchon, in
Vineland, gives to popular culture and the tube a certain
firelike warmth that provides if not safety and community, then
at least a form of refuge that might be called a mindless
pleasure (without all the negative connotations).
Certainly since Plato's fear of poet's and more recently in
Oscar Wilde we have known that life imitates art.  Since
Baudrillard we have known, again like Plato that the world we
live in is an image of an image (what he calls a simulacrum).
We not longer have access to the Real world nor do we want it,
since the simulacrum is more interesting that the Real thing.
Baudrillard celebrates, sort of, this world. And Leyner too in
his demotic voices, jump-cutting across genres would not be
possible without t.v.  The symbolic system of language, to be
theoretical about it, has changed since the advent of tv.  It
speaks us, in the way that people will simply mouth the current
cliches (I love you man) as responses to issues in the real
world.  My final question to you would be: if tv weren't there to
allow us have some sort of global mcDiscourse, would there be
something else in its place?