Re: Adorno on TV

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

Not to give you a conniption, but I'm afraid I'm closer to Simon on this
one.  But since you demand greater precision in use of terms, I'll see what
I can do.

First, I'll replace the word addiction by "compulsion".  Also, I'll
relocate the cause from TV to us or our lifestyle.  A lot of TV watching is
compulsive behavior; it's a way we deal with nervous tension caused by the
way we live without really reducing the tension.  When I say we, I include
myself int he front ranks.  My years without TV were spent very
differently: I would do yoga on a daily basis, take classes in yoga, dance,
music, and I was oriented towards a whole different thing than the American
mass media and distraction in general.  Aside from the entertainment value
of TV, whatever that may be, I'm sure that much of it is compulsive
behavior, esp. when one is perversely fascinated by offensive programming.
I remember watching THREE'S COMPANY, the most militantly banal sitcom in
human history.  I could only do this as a neurotic compulsion, to avoid
doing other things or nothing at all.  I don't think I'm far wrong about
this, for much of what we watch we do not truly enjoy, we are not really
satisified, but we've got to have more and more, like a craving for salty
junk food.

This is somewhat of a different question from just being entertained by
superficial crap.  How does one derive the distinction?  Is it a matter of
my superior judgment, that I know what's acceptable and what's not is a
sickness?  It's hard to judge, but it might be worthwhile attempting a
taxonomy.  I'm convinced that Jerry Springer is without question a severe,
severe sickness.  But then I have an extreme revulsion against what others
consider "normal" forms of entertainment.  If someone tells me he likes
boxing, that's almost enough for me never to speak to that person again.

The question of stupidity is distinct from the question of compulsion and
perhaps even from the question of entertainment.  An African friend of mine
once advised me: don't call someone stupid, just say that person is
undertheorized.  I'm sorry, there are some real dolts out there.  Is it
genetic?  No, it's not.  But dolt is as dolt thinks.  Have you ever spoken
to a person who enjoys TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL?  The very existence of such a
show is a sign of a society teetering on total collapse.  But to find
somebody who can accept and enjoy this filth?  That's not hard to find down
here in the Bible Belt, that's for sure, and it correlates with the
extremely degraded quality of life of the person concerned and the whole
society.  Now do I need to specify which demographic group I'm alluding to?

Human degradation should always fill us with instinctual disgust,
regardless of how we intellectually absolve those concern for the
responsibility for their own degradation.  It's really a question of the
quality of life.  We all make different judgments and draw the line in
different places, but differences in taste aside, there's something
objective too in what is happening to us and how it is getting reinforced.
It's not easy living in a culture of hate without the pervasive viciousness
seeping into your emotional structure.  The ubiquitous meanspiritedness has
reached lethal proportions.  I know I'm not the same person I was when the
Reagan era began.  And living in the nation's capital turned me into a
raving maniac.  The turning point for me was 1988.  And that year was also
a year of unparalleled hatefulness on TV as well.  Day after day of human
degradation: on TV, Geraldo's broken nose, the constant presence of
neo-Nazis and Farrakhan on talk shows, George Bush's presidential campaign;
in real life: the year DC became known as the murder capital of the nation,
hearing someone shot to death outside my window, knowing an old man with a
walker who was stabbed to death in my apartment building, having to
organize against a vicious slumlord, having to deal with Marion Barry's
inferiocracy, dealing with a younger generation of monsters that somehow
snuck up on me.  We used to have contests to see who could best describe
the hate: the hatred is so thick it rolls down the streets like tumbleweeds.

"They became what they beheld." -- William Blake

At 08:45 PM 6/7/99 -0700, Matthew Levy wrote:
>you haven't investigated the cultural meaning, history, or
>political or moral significance of the term addiction, and it's a
>very problematic term.