Men seem to flip around the television more than women. Men get that remote control in their hands, they don't even know what the ...hell they're not watching. You know we just keep going, "Rerun, that's stupid, he's stupid, go, go, go." "What are you watching?" "I don't care, I gotta keep going." "Who was that?" "I don't know what it was, doesn't matter, it's not your fault. I gotta keep going." "I think that's a documentary on your father." "Don't care, what else is on?" Women don't do this. Women will stop and go, "Well let me see what the show is, before I change the channel. Maybe we can nurture it, work with it, help it grow into something." Men don't do that. Because women nest and men hunt. That's why we watch TV differently.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The children [on TV] are too well behaved and are reasonable beyond their years. All the children pop in with exceptional insights.... On many of the shows the children's insights are apt to be unexpectedly philosophical. The lesson seems to be, "Listen to little children carefully and you will learn great truths."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not f...or the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I believe that organic sex, body against body, skin area against skin area, is becoming no longer possible, simply because if anyt...hing is to have any meaning for us it must take place in terms of the values and experiences of the media landscape.... What we're getting is a whole new order of sexual fantasies, involving a different order of experiences, like car crashes, like travelling in jet aircraft, the whole overlay of new technologies, architecture, interior design, communications, transport, merchandising. These things are beginning to reach into our lives and change the interior design of our sexual fantasies. We've got to recognize that what one sees through the window of the TV screen is as important as what one sees through a window on the street.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wouldn't be above brainwashing your child about which shows you think are good and which you think are just awful. Nor would I h...esitate to enlighten a child about products that are advertised on TV. If you watch a commercial with your child, say to him, "Remember when we saw that toy at the store and it was just a piece of junk? You can't always tell when you see it on TV, because there are ways of filming it at different angles to make it look bigger and more powerful. Keep that in mind when you think you want all those toys they advertise."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any cr...iterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a wo...man standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One should speak of television's cold light, and why it is inoffensive to the imagination (including the imagination of children).... It is innocuous because it no longer conveys an imaginary, for the simple reason that it is no longer an image. Here it contrasts with the cinema which (though increasingly contaminated by television) is still endowed with an intense imaginary--because it is an image. This is not simply to speak of film as a mere screen or visual form, but as a myth, something that still resembles a double, a mirror, a fantasy, a dream, etc. None of this is in the TV image. It doesn't suggest anything, it mesmerizes.... It is only a screen or, better, it is a miniaturized terminal that immediately appears in your head (you are the screen and the television is watching you), transistorizes all your neurons and passes for a magnetic tape--a tape, not an image.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The function of the hero in art is to inspire the reader or spectator to continue in the same spirit from where he, the hero, leav...es off. He must release the spectator's potentiality, for potentiality is the historic force behind nobility. And to do this the hero must be typical of the characters and class who at that time only need to be made aware of their heroic potentiality in order to be able to make their society juster and nobler. Bourgeois culture is no longer capable of producing heroes. On the highbrow level it only produces characters who are embodied consolations for defeat, and on the lowbrow level it produces idols--stars, TV "personalities," pin-ups. The function of the idol is the exact opposite to that of the hero. The idol is self-sufficient; the hero never is. The idol is so superficially desirable, spectacular, witty, happy that he or she merely supplies a context for fantasy and therefore, instead of inspiring, lulls. The idol is based on the appearance of perfection; but never on the striving towards it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »