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Thanks for the reply, Haus, and thanks for also importing some text from the thread I linked to. When you looked at the off-barbelith threads, you must have seen my posts encouraging the discussion to move onto barbelith, as I don't think 'marmots' are a particularly good format of discussion (although the html has since been editted to make them easier to read/write). So I wasn't really basically saying "Don't discuss this on Barbelith - look at my blog and my mate's blogs instead", but in fact the reverse (although we do like new people visiting blogs, i for one am still incredibly narcissistic). I think if there's a decent discussion board like Barbelith, it is much more preferable to use it than to use the reply funtion on blogs. Apologies for any misunderstandings. And since you've shown you're reasonable (i came online prepared to rant and rave at your 'is it spam?' post after having not slept all night, and that was one of the things festering in my brain  ), I'll cut and paste some of the interesting stuff re:TV now i have the time, just to make sure this post isn't entirely off topic (hope we're not scaring anybody off the actual juicy bits of the discussion).
mannin: I wish people would stop all this tv bashing, there are bad programmes on there but thats no reason to discredit it. You just have to know that your watching a show that was commisioned or written for a reason, potentially political. Its a fiction based on what people think and probably not what they know. R4 I think only does its weirder shows well, I learnt about the difficulties of farming sheep on seaweed. The plays have gone mostly ass but when hasnt there been too many stories about blossoming love (its what old ladies live to read/hear about), the rest of R4 is the political shows and children bickering.
My reply: The TV bashing isn't about to stop anytime soon, Manning. I wish people would stop trying to defend it! Real people are more important than TV, and yet their arguments get discredited and ignored because that thing seizes a monopoly on expression. The television bashing will stop when the TV reduces its effect on my life to nil, or at least affects me only on my own terms. TV has infested every corner of life, and is constantly pushing offensive ideology onto us (like that idea of 'balance' you brought up in a previous post), whether one ever goes near a TV set or not.
D&J atplay Ronan is quite right. TV is the most socially damaging & controling piece of technology that we have yet to come up with. MacCluhan in the '60s stated that the medium was both message & massage. As soon as the media magnates realised people were onto them, the whole mega tyranny became even more subtle. Where I disagree with Ronan is that he would throw the baby out with the bath water. He probably reckons there is no baby in there, I think there is but it is very small! In the 50's TV united families and people in a very democratic way. Most people couldn't afford, or felt too socially inept, to go and watch plays. Miillions however watched the mid-week play, or Hancocks half hour, and talked about the issues raised at work or school the next day. There was only 12 hours screened a day, split between two channels. One such play "Cathy Come Home", was a huge step in the creation of the homeless charity "Shelter". What the present generation must watch out for & guard against, are changes to the inherent democracy of the internet. Hackers are already treated as being terrorists. Who owns cyberspace? The world G8 governments certainly don't want it to be you.
The T: Previous experience should tell me to decline to post the entirety of my pro-24 case on here. But I will say the following in agreeance with mr manuel and owl: TV is fiction, just like anything else be they plays, books, movies, comics, animations, etc... Just because the Tv is easier to get to and more absorbing than some of the others does not necessarily make it bad. Nor does the fact that it has low-brow entertainment not containing any platty pretensions of art or serious issues. If you don't like Tv you don't have to watch it.
Hope this piques the interest of a few of you. Happy chattin'! |
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