Re: Adorno on TV

[Matthew Levy <mlevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, simon smith wrote:

> In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.990607094236.10244A-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Matthew Levy <mlevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
> >
> > An aesthetic and political-psychological critique of what it is
> >that "happens to me" when i watch television has to go beyond these
> >simpleminded skinnerian ideas of passive conditioning to offer any insight
> >whatsoever ... what the discourse of addiction does is just replicate a
> >longer tradition of protestant guilt, not give me any critical ammunition
> >to understand my situation.
>
> Well clearly we have to understand *why* people become addicted to
> things, but I don't see why addiction should not be a good description
> for what is going on.

because you haven't investigated the cultural meaning, history, or
political or moral significance of the term addiction, and it's a very
problematic term.  Addiction has become a catchphrase in our popular
culture and gets slung around in all sorts of casual ways, but it also is
used as a category by medical science and the state which has pretty huge
consequences for how certain folks live their lives and understand the
meaning of their own existence.  I think that casually talking about TV
addiction without investigating what addiction means obfuscates a whole
lot of important issues.


 I tend to believe people when they tell me they
> are soap-opera addicts, and addiction to me is not a moral category.

that is bullshit.  addiction is a category by which we label behavior that
we find undesirable (whether in ourselves or in others).  how can this not
be a moral issue?  and what is it that people are saying when they call
themselves soap opera addicts?  is this the same thing as being an
alcoholic or a drug addict?  in what way is it the same?  do you know
anyone who is a recovering addict?  how does their experience differ from
the flippant way you use the word?  if you are going to use this term as
the centerpiece of an aesthetic critique you'd better be able to explain
what it means.

> >
> >
> > I really don't
> >believe addiction is too strong a word for
> >the > need one may have for that kick or thrill to punctuate their working
> >> week.
> >>
> >> When someone regularly watches MTV and tells everyone what crap it is, I
> >> cannot believe that what must be the most violently authoritarian pop
> >> cultural form yet created is not damaging their ability to think in more
> >> than spasmodic jerks.
> >>
> >
> >Now I am irritated and am going to borrow one from Ralph's book ...please
> >demonstrate to me what sort of thinking you are capable of and if
> >sufficiently impressed I will consider switching to your favorite cultural
> >forms.  Or are you implicating yourself in this?  Why is it that you see
> >audience participation in popular commodity culture as a greater danger to
> >enlightened democratic thinking than your self-righteous alienation?  And
> >what do you know about the way the human mind works that I don't, that you
> >can actually describe anyone's thinking as "spasmodic jerks" and mean
> >something by it other than a pointless insult?
>
> Discussion as challenge... no.

huh?  you are the one talking about the stupidification of others ... even
if as you say you mean to implicate yourself in this, i still have every
right to interpret such remarks as a denigration, and to call you on it
... you need to be able to back up such allegations, or don't make them -
the burden of proof is on you.

Also I am not self-righteous - I hardly
> believe that I am one of the 'alienated' few, railing red-faced, brow
> furrowed, at the ignorant masses. Of course I am absolutely implicating
> myself in this. I only know about these things from experiencing them
> myself and through self-reflection. As I said in another post, all I'm
> interested in is understanding my own experience of the world.

but so far you haven't done that, you've only repeated an easily
reproduced but essentially meaningless discourse about how the boob tube
"enslaves" us.  i have yet to meet anyone who offers up such an analysis
who can offer me a really convincing introspective, experiential
explanation ... because there is a paradox here:  if watching such images
really made you stupid, you would not then be able to explain
experientially what it was that was occurring to you, since in your
stupidification you would presumably lose the capacity to recognize your
own stupidity.  so the only way you could understand and explain such a
process would be if no such process was actually occurring ... kind of a
catch 22, no?

 I feel
> physically ill when sat in front of a music video, so I do it only about
> once a year. When I do, I feel reduced exactly to the status of one Of
> Skinner's poor rats, responding in spasmodic mental jerks to the
> overwhelming assault on my senses - the desperate fast cutting, the
> techniques of disorientation... These videos are a war on consciousness.
> (I think this is a banal observation, to be honest.)

yes, very banal.

This is very
> frightening to me when so many millions of people watch them, with the
> advertisements and the films made by the people who learned their trade
> on the videos and the adverts.

because, unlike you, those millions have no capacity to overcome the
images?  or because in spite of your knowledge or theirs, it is impossible
to overcome the images?  is your view of life really this bleak?

>
> I have no favoured cultural forms to give you.
> >

i guess it is!  actually, i just think you haven't thought through what
you are saying.  if you really believed what i am hearing you say, you'd
have killed yourself by now.

look, we all know that we live in a culture where forms of entertainment
are controlled by concentrated capital, and where all kinds of thought and
energy goes into planning what's in those forms in the idea that they can
be used to manipulate us in certain ways.  Also, our culture itself, like
cultures which preceded the development of concentrated capitalist
control, has various images, meanings, myths, rituals, whatever which we
somewhat unconsciously reproduce, and which affect the organization of our
desires, our social relationships, our very lives.  I would never deny
these basic conceptions.  What I am arguing is that if we are going to
critique these forms in any useful way ... either as unconscious myths or
as capitalist manipulations or both ... we need to address exactly what it
is that's going on in the myths or images or narratives or whatever.  just
saying that fast-cutting videos make your head spin is still not an
analysis ... it's no more useful to me than knowing that you get seasick
easily or that you are afraid of heights.  and since i don't react in the
same way that you do, yet am pretty damn certain that i am a conscious and
thinking being, i can only imagine that you have a weak and easily
disoriented consciousness ... which doesn't really make any sense.  So I
choose to disbelieve that this is what's going on with you, and I see you
as basically one of those cranky bastards who has to establish his
identity through what he doesn't like.  If you can give me some more
useful explanation, I'd love to hear it.  Meanwhile maybe I'll go watch
some MTV.

 > >
> > I essentially don't believe that the word
> >"stupid" has any useful meaning.
>
> The loss of the ability to think, to let the world speak, to not be
> merely self-identical - those things we have to do every day to keep
> ourselves vaguely human.
> --

i've never seen a human being suffer from any of the afflictions you list.
i have from time to time seen people whose thinking was caught in patterns
they could not escape from, or was involved in ideological distractions
that (IMHO) detracted from their ability to live a life that I would call
full ... sometimes I have even seen people who were so driven by their
desire for power over others or their fear of seeing themselves in ways
that did not accord with their narcissistic projections that they could
not have reasonable and calm conversation about topics they found
threatening (i've seen myself do this), and i have also seen people who
simply lacked the requisite vocabulary or confidence to put themselves
into discussions with those from a different educational background ...
but I've never met a truly stupid person and I still don't understand what
you can possibly mean by this term.


later,
matt