Vineland

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Thu, 1 May 1997 andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
> What we are not able to do is i)  ensure that most people are aware of how
> rotten things are and ii)  present radical arguments against the status
> quo in place of the tired, formulaic dichotomies the media recycles
> whenever any such question is raised. The debate is already preprogrammed
> in the intellectual climate of our culture and may only develop along
> sanctioned lines (the UK is no better in this respect - witness the
> political muzak which we have had by way of an election campaign here in
> the lCast few weeks). Any attempt at an expose or a revision of
> fundamental principles is rapidly rerouted by the media treatment it
> receives into the simplistic and familiar formats of TV news/current
> affairs/commentary, formats which deracinate any radical elements of the
> debate thanks to the self-censorship achieved by by donning such a formal
> strait-jacket, the humdrum monotony which an argument acquires when
> clothed in such media garb. 

Yes.  In the U.S., the most advanced form of political discussion we have on
TV is the "shouting shows" such as the McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire,
in which commentators of different political stripes (token liberals, token
conservatives, token centrists) yell at each other for half an hour about
current events.  This is presented as "political debate."  It is actually
little better than the "presidential debates" we have before elections, in
which candidates present 2-minute sound bites in alternating rounds.

Basically, I am driven to conclude that TV is not at all suited to serious,
in-depth discussion of intellectually complex issues.  The op-ed page of a
decent newspaper can do loads better than all the TV pundits put together.
Of course the print media has its equivalents to the predigested political
commentary which you describe...namely, _Time_ and _Newsweek_.  I have come
to abhor both magazines.  They have big, increasingly tabloidesque covers
(anyone remember the CYBERPORN! scare story a year or two back?), and
stories which are a mishmash of common knowledge and conventional wisdom,
that never end up really taking any sort of position on anything (even when
they cleverly pretend to).

> media-savvy these days. Except in reality everyone just thinks they
> are media-savvy. But TV still manages to run rings round people no
> matter how much they think they are in control. This is the real
> battle, not conning people about particular matters of fact but
> conning them about the quality of the information sources they rely on
> to the point that they no longer question (know how to question) the
> validity, coherence and completeness of the information and opinions
> on which they are asked to base their judgements. You don't need bars
> when people lock the doors in their own minds.

There is a school of thought called "public choice economics," which I don't
know much about, but which seems to have some interesting things to say in
this regard.  Public choice economists speak of the "cost of knowledge"... 
in the media fog most people live in today, the cost of finding reliable
knowledge about current events is more than most people want to pay.  It
would require regularly reading one or more good periodicals, listening
to/watching quality, in-depth broadcast journalism (NPR, PBS, or C-SPAN),
and having serious discussions about issues with other people.  Most people
don't feel they have the time to do this.  They also lack the intellectual
savvy--due, I think, to a mediocre educational system that is mostly
concerned with housing workers' children for 8 hours a day and making sure
they have the bare minimum of skills to become the next generation of
workers. 

There's one more obstacle:  consumerism.  The various pleasures of the
consumer lifestyle are presented in a way that encourages us to comfortably
anaesthetize ourselves, rather than worry about a confusing, complex world.
This, truly, is the corporate/government System's greatest weapon against
dissent.  Witness how political activism has declined in this country since
WWII.  Prior to that (as chronicled in _Vineland_) there were all kinds of
vigorous political opposition movements, especially labor-oriented ones, and
a variety of socialist groups which broadly rejeted the capitalist/
corporatist agenda.  In the end, the workers were defeated, but not by
force...by television, and all the consumerist pleasures it piped into the
homes, hearts, and minds of America. 
 
> If you question whether the war is won consider the number of hours
> people watch television, the lack of control people exercise over what
> they watch, the lack of alternative sources of information and
> commentary, the dramatic behavioural shifts which people undergo when
> viewing, the frightening passivity with which people absorb TV and
> advertising input, its terrible effectiveness in selling product from
> politicians to perfume to life-styles.

I watch TV quite rarely nowadays...perhaps once every 3-4 weeks, at most.
(If I bothered I'd keep up with _The X-Files_ and _The Simpsons_, which
I like for their at least mild subversiveness.)  Every time I catch a
few minutes of tube, I am struck anew by the IDIOCY of it.  The commercials
are so crass and ridiculous; the shows are mostly poorly-written junk.

But TV's power is in the structure of the medium: in its all-pervasiveness,
its niche as the "electronic hearth" in the middle of the home.  We have let
a monster in over the threshold, in the guise of a technological gift.  I
see television as a creature with a hundred million tentacles, reaching into
every home and extracting money, willpower, and ultimately basic mental
ability.  How can parents see putting a TV in their childrens' room as doing
them a favor!?  Hitler said that the key to propaganda is to have a very
simple message and to repeat it over and over and over.  In this respect, TV
programmers have followed in his footsteps.  And they have proved him right. 
 
> forget which). In both cases these are poeple in extremis. They are
> cracking up, breaking apart. And in both cases TV, the glitz and
> glamour of TV, TV characters and locations, the possibility of
> entering into TV's fairyland world have become central to the
> character's worldview, have begun to seem more real than their `real'
> world, have begun to invade not just their fantasies but their
> decision making processes and desires. TV has become their touchstone
> of familiarity, security, wisdom and justice, presents the paradigms
> which they aspire to and judge by. 

Good examples.  It definitely seems to be the case that TV is the primary
arbiter of larger reality for most people now...scary and twisted, but true,
and the scariest thing is that people don't even realize this.  The spread
of TV has also induced a sense among people that having a good external
"image" is more important than inner development.  Indeed, most people don't
understand what inner development and the life of the mind are...they see
self-improvement as a question of being hip, funny, and well-dressed.  The
films of Quentin Tarantino exemplify the self-consciousness and narcissism
of a country whose entire reality is television.  Tarantino's characters
speak clever slang, dress well, and coolly commit acts of random violence,
but have absolutely no souls, no internal dimensions at all. 

Max

 M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | The junk merchant doesn't sell his
          http://www.afn.org/~traveler | product to the consumer, he sells
                 "Surrealist-At-Large" | the consumer to the product.
                      traveler at afn.org | --William S. Burroughs