Writer's Block: Revolutionary Thought

[eumelia]

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Teevee.
Television.
As a sampler and some-times addict of that potent drug I can't help but try and explain.

Commencing academia babble now:
Benedict Anderson wrote about Imagined Communities, the idea that through a non-existent or imagined commonality we establish the community in which we live.
He speaks mainly about the print and literature in order to exemplify this, because News papers are the most reproduced form of literature in the world today - think of those scenes in 1940's and 50's movies in which the frame is filled with men in fedoras and all of them reading the New York Time or the London Times, etc. Are they looking at one another? Do they communicate with each other? Most likely they can barely recognize each others face, but they are reading the same thing and they imagine or consider what they think about they are reading to be social consensus, despite the fact that they most likely would never talk about what they are thinking to another person.
That's an imagined community.

Television takes it one step further in my opinion.
News papers are relevant until the next edition and it takes conscious thought to read and absorb the information and data printed on a page.
Television by its nature, allows you to switch off your cognitive operations and just sponge in what is going on as you watch the screen.
Television has replaced religion when it comes to values as well.
Once in order to know what was right and wrong you listened to pulpits to tell you who was good, who was evil and what one should believe.
Now television tells us who is vilified, what is beautiful, how we ourselves can be like the idols which we worship on the flat screened alter.
Instead of family prayer, a family will congregate around the television and watch the episode of whatever programme we are addicted to at the moment.
And we obsess about it, no less than people used to obsess about god while those who control and create the discourse make some kind of profit off us "sheeple".

Comments

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean.

I started my geekery when I was seven and saw Star Trek:TOS for the first time, but felt really alone in it with only my big brother to talk to about it.
Then when I was 11 a teeny tiny two day con began and it eventually morphed into the big local con of five days and over seas guests
but only when I was about 16 did I feel a part of something and not like a freak with a bunch of other girl freaks.
And to remind you, I'm only 23.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

About 7 years ago. Yeah, that sounds about right. I was thinking 7-10 years.

I know a fair few women who were converted by Star Trek ToS, but as with you, they never really felt able to talk about it. Or come out of the closet as a sci-fi fan.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I've been reading X-Men comics for 19 years and started playing D&D in 1986. While there weren't many girls, there were always some of us, and I lived in a tiny little conservative rural town in Australia with no cinema or bookshop - we had to make our own fun, I suppose! But there was no shortage of Dragonlance fanfic in notebooks... When I got to university in 1994, there were geek girls everywhere, running most of the fan clubs with the exception of Doctor Who.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

"Who" fandom (within it Torchwood) is so underdeveloped here!

Boo.

Fandom and Geekdom in these here parts are equal in men and women, girls and boys, though to me it looks like girls start geeking out in public a wee bit later, but that's beside the point.
At the con I mentioned there are def. eqaul amounts of girls and boys now more than ever. When I was 11, 12, 13 there weren't that many. Only later did I notice a surge in fangrrl and girl!geeks.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Spock was my first fandom crush at the tender age of seven,
It's tragic, I think I was ruined even then.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Spock? Really? :)

I think mine was the Princess from Flash Gordon, played by Ornella Muti.