[lit-ideas] Re: Thousands Die in Papua, New Guinea

  • From: carolkir@xxxxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:26:47 -0800

Eric: "...nihilistic blank-angry stare at TV can only arise in third
generation TV viewers"

Bone up on your Oprah, fella! Weep with the masses on daytime (or
ultra late-night), and share your tragedies on TV, like the rest of
self-exploiting, hyper-emotional America. Or just look at YouTube for
a while. (In "America" I include Latin America, or Meximerican TV.
Same type of stuff, only the live audiences are in their 70s and
haven't practiced  working out since their last baby. Makes you wonder
how they fill up studio audiences with youthful people in the U.S.)

I'm sort of differing with you, I guess. News cameras often capture
plenty of blank awe right after a tragedy strikes the person. The
babble comes later. Onlookers' babble and anger comes after that, and
organized rallies have usually depended on participants' belief that
they'll see themselves on TV tonight, if they're loud enough (this
said by an old Berkeley survivor). The horror of a blank stare from a
hungry, near-dead child isn't a feint, though, and if we saw our own
faces in theirs, on TV, we wouldn't casually flip the channel--not
even today. That's why the Bush admin hasn't allowed corpses of OUR
guys shown on TV, as during Vietnam. It's all pretty much sanitzed for
us, and the war marches on. Those starving children don't look like my
kids or yours, so although I'm not exactly okay with it, what can we
do way off in whereverville? Pass the guacamole.

>ck



On 1/11/08, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Carol writes, "Where would the commercials go? Now they're usually
> slipped in (for 4 minutes) after pannnig the corpses, after the wailing
> scene, and a smidgeon after the obligatory "damned shame" on-site
> comment from some bureau-military expert.
>
>
>
> The obligatory "damned shame on-site comment" sets the stage for an
> assortment of appealing escapist commercials. The "damned shame" is
> everything nobody wants to think about. It's a dead stop, but a dead
> stop can also be a good opportunity. Anything that follows a dead stop
> feels like canonical TV by contrast.
>
> Why sit and worry alone in your room? Come hear the commercial play
> Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini (Six Duets for Two Violins) while selling
> marinara sauce by urban pathos scenarios with bald men.
>
> Any escapist commercial would fit, steal the show, and work well. Nobody
> wants to ponder death in public media, unless it's "spooky" or
> "supernatural" or in another controlled setup.
>
> Back to Mike Geary's Zoot Suit, badly the worse for time travel. TV
> commercials would probably sell War Bonds.
>
> Or not.
>
> I can't really imagine our postmodern electronic milieu in WW2.
> First-generation viewers have more trust. The attitudes of every time
> are inviolate.
>
> Even if we tried to reset the clock, we wouldn't have the right time.
> Our contemporary nihilistic blank-angry stare at TV can only arise in
> second- or third-generation TV viewers. Disappointed. Angry. Untrusting.
> Tube trained. Viewers with attitude. Viewers with zero awe. Viewers in
> channel-surf mode. Can't have those back in WW2.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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