Let’s not even contemplate the fact that I’m streaming this days afterwards . . . from the web
One more Postman quote:
In any case, the point I am trying to make is that only through a deep and unfailing awareness of the structure and effects of information, through a demystification of media, is there any hope of our gaining some measure of control over television, or the computer, or any other medium. How is such media consciousness to be achieved? . . .
The nonsensical answer is to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate, religious thought, etc. I imagine such demonstrations would of necessity take the form of parodies, along the lines of “Saturday Night Live” and “Monty Python”, the idea being to induce a nationwide horse laugh over televisions’s control of public discourse. But, naturally, television would have the last laugh. In order to command an audience large enough to make a difference, one would have to maket he programs vastly amusing, in the television style. Thus, the act of criticism itself would, in the end, be co-opted by television. The parodists would become celebrities, would star in movies, and would end up making television commercials.
Not so nonsensical, Neil, and perhaps more effective than you’d like to think:
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