Your television, a small or not so small black box is enshrined in your lounge. Even though that box is beleaguered with a litany of possible distractions it commands your full attention. None of the ornaments that surround it, none of the books, lights, movement, noises or conversations beyond the frame can withdraw your attention when you are locked in the television’s gaze. Today, the smaller yet more effective black screen in your hand, competes with even more objects of distraction, but it also succeeds in drawing you into the abyss.
That pernicious black mirror needs to do something magical to keep your attention. This means that a politician who wishes to step inside that small black box will not be able to sustain your attention with a protracted, well articulated and nuanced argument. In a minute or two his supplications will be interjected by a thirty second sensational, enthralling and entertaining TV ad, for washing powder.
The politician has to compete by the rules of television, that being entertaining, sensationalist or controversial, else, with a light press of your thumb on a button, he or she is eliminated and forgotten. The same applies to the tele-evangelist, the teacher, the sitcom comedian, the movie star or anyone that wishes to use this medium to instruct and influence.
Into the frame steps the entertaining, provocative and shrewd Donald J. Trump…
…and his political ascendency in a world ruled by sensation and outrage is immanently inevitable.
Conversely, a book or a novel merely offers the reader letters on a blank page. Everything else has to happen in the mind of the reader. I.e. the reader must engage with the work, must work for her entertainment and/or instruction. The entertainment or instruction does not usurp her consciousness and does not deliver it to her on a silver plate.
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke explores this in great detail in a number of his films, but especially in Funny Games (1997), The Seventh Continent (1989) and Code Unknown (2000). In Code Unknown he juxtaposes the escapist techniques of Hollywood with a technique of restraint, which requires engagement from the viewer (to do the work like the reader of a novel would) instead of merely allowing the viewer to sit back and receive (and escape). [Weys 2016] The form of presentation, not only the content, alters how the content is received and processed by the viewer. Haneke encourages, and perhaps even empowers his viewer, to not merely receive, but to engage and question the meaning of that which is being proffered by the flickering images.
Considering the challenges associated with maintaining the viewer’s attention, Haneke’s way of making films results in box office suicide, but it also exposes the pernicious and inescapable truth of this medium of entertainment.
Another film that directly addresses this unfortunate truth, is George Clooney’s elegant black and white Good Night and Good Luck (2005). The film explores how CBS News television journalist Edward R. Murrow utilizes the platform of television to investigate the atrocities being committed by senator McCarthy in his anti-communist investigation. Murrow’s shrewd investigative work is successful in helping to expose McCarthy who would eventually be disciplined.
Regardless of his meaningful impact as a journalist, a decline in viewership causes CBS to cut Murrow’s airtime and moves it away from its prime time slot to make space for more entertaining and popular programs. The film ends with a speech by Murrow, wherein he admonishes his audience…
But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television, and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and, yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends.
Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights -- in a box.
Good night and good luck.
With love,
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If you’re looking for something more instructive, yet engaging, consider The Wire, a crime drama from HBO. Perhaps “the greatest television show of all time.” (South Africans will find it on ShowMax.) When you press play on Episode 1, be patient… it’s not playing by the rules of Hollywood.
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Image: Featuring Lera Korytska by Pierre F. Lombard.