|
this sort of saturation coverage has all kinds of unintended consequences.
first, it is always curious to feel as though the entire world has imploded into a single event. a good school shooting or high-speed chase--not to mention the motherload of information implosion, a presidential assisination or assassination attempt--erases all sense that anything else is happening on earth. obviously, this is not the idea.
second: saturation coverage really does cheapen your ability to feel sympathy i think. it's like the emotion is built into the footage by way of the voiceover in a way that does not leave you room to react for yourself. it often feels to me like you are not only being told infotainment, but also how you should think and feel about the infotainment all at once. again, i dont think this is intentional--it seems to follow from the saturation coverage itself.
then there is my friend repetition, which is another matter, more complicated and disturbing than either of the above. i'll just mention that an image experienced once or twice and an image experienced several hundred times are not the same.
i used to watch alot of tv but i stopped on 12 or 13 september 2001, once the black hat white hat interpretation of the trade center footage (not the attack--the footage) was in place. this seemed to me then (and still does) a defining moment for everything that is being complained about in this thread--its furthest extension, its most problematic instanciation. i didnt stop watching because i suddenly came to my senses about tv as a medium--i stopped watching because i was absolutely disgusted by what i was seeing and i remain so.
you can read stuff from newspapers. it doesnt actually take more time or energy than watching the tv-snooze and you have a much higher density of information in print than you get via commercial television. i think everyone knows this. but somehow getting information seems not to be a real priority for alot of folk. but that could be just a snarky judgment on my part, a projection--but on the other hand, there really is a hard distinction to be made between television infotainment and information, even in those situations where tv coverage is symmterical with what is being covered and when it does what it can do well.
it is so strange to me that so many of us interact with this medium as if it were not a really problematic form of information packaging and relay. it is really problematic--in ways that go well beyond the personal or personality shortcomings of any number of individual talking heads.
watch critically and turn it off often.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|