tube and tubal

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Back in the 60s, anyway, TV was a family activity.  Everyone gathered around the tube to watch Ed Sullivan, Laugh-In or whatever.  Echos of families sitting around listening to FDR and serials on the radio?  It even brings Zoyd and Prairie together.  Now my kids watch TV on their computers(spoiled brats, I know), combining couch-potato-ism with isolation and alienation.  Wait 'til the brain implants get here!

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jan 14, 2009 1:18 AM
>To: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: tube and tubal
>
>This is a good point. There's a very strong stigma about TV watching
>as a passive, non-productive activity. The couch potato is certainly
>not a fertile rhizome. But I don't know if P wholly subscribes to this
>view... the Tube itself is so pervasive, and sloth isn't necessarily a
>bad thing. When its co-opted by the State and various systems of
>power, on the other hand...
>
>On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 1st  some high tech questions. I converted to Plain text as Tim requested
>> but notice from my end that I am not getting posts from Henry Musikar or
>> Robin Landseadel. ???
>>
>> Of course tubal detox sounds funnier than tube detox , but it is also a term
>> for a procedure to prevent pregnancy called a tubal ligation, or tubal for
>> short ((having the fallopian tubes tied to prevent gestation).  This sense
>> of being cut off from life, from the exchange of chromosomes and the
>> unpredictable and uncontrollable results seems like part of the 1984 TV
>> theme. There is even a scene where Frenesi masturbates while watching the
>> cops on CHiPs. Zoyd has to change venues so his craziness can be televised
>> and the window is faked. Nothing is real unless it is mediated by the media,
>> so that fake becomes the measure of authenticity. Hector's sense of failure
>>  is all about a failure to become real and reveal his weird truth about  the
>> dangers of addiction  through TV to which he is pathologically addicted.
>>
>> On a personal level I remember a point in my family when people began to
>> watch TV when they ate, and having an intense feeling that we had been
>> invaded and had surrendered.  Partly this was, in retrospect, an avoidance
>> of pain around family issues and around  the Vietnam war.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>