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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

No TV/cable

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16:47 / 13.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Zen Master Ria:
at the moment NPR substitutes for television. I both hate it and love it. for those who don't know it has a smarmy liberal attitude and middlebrow sensibilities and has the same crap-good stuff ratio as television

I totally agree. Like when the alarm went off this morning, Bob Edwards (or whoever) said, "SPEED SKATING! IT'S NOT JUST FOR WHITE PEOPLE ANY MORE!"

What??

I'm sure that Hiroyasu Shimizu is bathed in relief.

Though the local TV news and, sadly, the local papers are that much more shockingly bad. (Actually, the reason I don't read the paper is because I hate them piling up in the house.)

grant: you can listen to TAL online, do you have the link?

[ 14-02-2002: Message edited by: Persephone ]

20:10 / 13.02.02

quote:that tv is free, and failing that, relatively inexpensive - you certainly get what you pay for. And usually when you pay for it, the content is a bit better and a commercials are not included.

Do we live on the same planet?

Having our (one) tv never hooked up to cable when we moved a few years ago was the best decision we made. my girls have become pianists in a way i can't imagine had they had the easy sedative of tv readily available.

got nothing against most shows perse, its the ads and they are increasing. as are the costs of cable. skyrocketing. and most cable programs have ads. and that first fix is free phenomenon irritates me: anybody else remember the days when cable had NO ADS?

And we just accept it. I think ads have doubled in % of any broadcast in my lifetime.

Got better ways to spend my time, and I really can be a junkie. We can watch programs on local channels, but we have to plug in the rabbit ears. In other words, we have to really want to watch--make a conscious decision.

yay bitchiekittie: love aquariums.

I have another rule: no tv in the bedroom.
(sure you might watch hot videos with your lover, but my money's that the nightly news or WWF would be on much more often and you'd not be talking, fucking.)

20:29 / 13.02.02

I also sometimes sleep to an acompanyment of BBC news 24... which does provide me with some wonderful dreams...

Matthew Fluxington

00:36 / 14.02.02

The difference between TV and other media is that TV is a completely passive activity...
TV is an inherently mindless medium. I have no qualms about saying that... TV doesn't so much grab your attention as caress it. ...when you just sit there taking in information with your mind on "shut-off" mode...isn't that a lot like what they used to call brainwashing?

Okay - now since cinema (as well as a great deal of theatre, music both live and recorded, and still images) operates on similar principles, are you willing to continue with your logic and put that down as well?

It's also vastly insulting to a wide range of writers, both fictional and non-fictional to imply that their work is utterly mindless and does not engage the viewer while watching a program. I'm especially not about to let someone imply that all cinema is inherantly mindless, or that somehow, when the cinematic form is transmitted through a cathode ray tube it is suddenly stripped of all artistic and intellectual merits.

I don't think that all forms of entertainment need to work the same way and have the same level of audience involvement - a well rounded diet of different forms of media and communication can be a very good thing, it's not as though exposure to passive entertainment and information will dissolve a person's mind immediately upon contact.

14:17 / 14.02.02

Two things:
* 1. Yeah, I know about the TAL archives, but can't listen at work and the home connection is frustratingly slow.

* 2. Television is passive, and so are movies and plays... but the *technology* of TV is based on fast pulses of light (the raster moving across the phosphorescent grid) which has a fairly hypnotic effect on its own. It's quite possible to fall into a light trance with just static on.

02:23 / 15.02.02

i have a swanky tv that an antenna doesn't work on... i can't afford cable but i can afford the ocasional DVD... i don't miss tv at all... if i got cable i know i'd only get it to watch the daily show, the simpsons and special unit 2... the later two i could watch if an antenna would JUST WORK!.. oddly enough my job is makin' commercials at a local tv station...

18:04 / 15.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Flux = Rad:
The difference between TV and other media is that TV is a completely passive activity...
TV is an inherently mindless medium. I have no qualms about saying that... TV doesn't so much grab your attention as caress it. ...when you just sit there taking in information with your mind on "shut-off" mode...isn't that a lot like what they used to call brainwashing?

Okay - now since cinema (as well as a great deal of theatre, music both live and recorded, and still images) operates on similar principles, are you willing to continue with your logic and put that down as well?

It's also vastly insulting to a wide range of writers, both fictional and non-fictional to imply that their work is utterly mindless and does not engage the viewer while watching a program. I'm especially not about to let someone imply that all cinema is inherantly mindless, or that somehow, when the cinematic form is transmitted through a cathode ray tube it is suddenly stripped of all artistic and intellectual merits.

I don't think that all forms of entertainment need to work the same way and have the same level of audience involvement - a well rounded diet of different forms of media and communication can be a very good thing, it's not as though exposure to passive entertainment and information will dissolve a person's mind immediately upon contact.

Nice one Flux...you managed to take those statements completely out of context and leave out any mention of NEURAL ACTIVITY while watching Television. What makes it a fundamentally different medium from others (except cinema, I'd say that's a close correlative) is that while it won't dissolve your mind "on contact," it will certainly do exactly that over a prolonged period of time.

TV certainly does engage the viewer, that's the problem. And I didn't say anything about the quality of scripts these days, either.

Check out some other sources:
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1149/pg1/

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/health/articles/010528/health/memory.htm

http://health.medscape.com/cx/viewarticle/217432_print

I didn't claim to never watch TV or films; I certainly didn't say I don't enjoy them; but I did say Take TV in moderation, because studies show that TV ROTS YOUR BRAIN. It's endemic to the medium.

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