“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn't there something reassuring about it! -- that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another's eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms -- nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?” -- Joyce Carol Oates
I stumbled on this quote while working on another project and thought it was interesting in light of many of the things we have discussed this semester. I think that her cynical approach is in line with many of the media critiques we have learnt about. The TV did reduce ppl to these simple forms that could be entirely understood within the constraints of a television screen. The TV is the ultimate essentializer - it communicates the messages it needs to get across and if we get tired of hearing it, we can change channels or tune out. Additionally, I think that Oates' critique comes down on this baring down of human beings fairly. I think she realizes the destructiveness of TV and has seen how it has changed people and the nature of social interactions - to the point where some people hardly socialize at all, they spend hours in front of the tv instead. This is just like w/ the whole second life phenomenon, only here, people are putting themselves into the monitor in pixelated formats in lieu of living actual lives. I think that this is what Oates was fearing all along (as I am discerning from more of her work.) She's a very interesting author... I suggest you check her out.