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

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

My point is that there's a difference between beginning to emulate/think like a person and feeling part of a large group. There are texts that prompt the former (Uncle Tom's Cabin comes to mind), and there are texts that give people an intellectual reason to want to form or maintain particular large groups (Paine's Common Sense comes to mind), but as for texts that foster *feeling* part of a large group, I can't think of any examples from pre-T.V. times or since whereas there are plenty both in the spoken word (JFK's inauguration speech, for example) and in television (American Idol).

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

as for texts that foster *feeling* part of a large group, I can't think of any examples from pre-T.V.
Soviet lit played this role for many people for a long time. For Russian intelligentsia the books on the shelf are to this day a very clear status marker (which already has to do with the iconic and symbolic meanings of the book, not with what it says).

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

But if that was just the case for the intelligentsia, then it confirms my argument!

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

In pre-tv times it wasn't an elite. Of course, there was a layer of the population that didn't read (much) and was harder to reach, which, one is to suppose, is precisely why the communists set literacy and cheap book prices as top priorities. The way I see it, the audio-visual language of tv is simply more accessible to the average brain, and is hence more utilizable for any sort of broad-scale mind control.

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

In the U.S. context radio was more important during t.v. during the second quarter of the 20th century. What role, if any, did radio play in the first couple decades of the Soviet regime?

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The role of the party's herald :).

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

What role did radio play relative to texts? Which was more prevalent among "everyday people"?

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

I цame across such hilarious soviet statistics texts trying to find a rigorous answer. The truth is I'm a bit lazy and not geeky enough to dig for relevant research. Maybe if I feel like it later I'll get back to you, if you're interested.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The last sentence sounds a bit off, sorry. I was trying to articulate that I feel now I have to (research radio vs written press) but at the same I don't want to do it right now :).