Chrononautic Log: Water in the aquarium

Water in the aquarium

12 o'clock, February 10, 2004

From an interview with William Gibson:

Q: You say you spend maybe 12 hours a year watching television. Does maintaining a certain distance from mass culture give you an advantage in writing about it?

A: Absolutely, because when I am exposed to it, I react to it to some extent as though I were a stranger. If I were swimming in it constantly, it would just be the water in the aquarium. It is anyway, but I get a little bit of insulation from it. Anytime I turn on the television, it’s one moment after the other of, “That is so weird!” That alone is worth restricting one's media diet.

It’s true. Try it some time.

Another nice bit:

Q: In academic circles, you’re a poster boy for “postmodern science fiction.” Do you consider yourself a postmodernist?

A: There are academics out there who have written extensively about how I’m somehow a pillar of that sort of stuff, but I don’t think it actually has very much to do with what I’m doing. It’s strange to me. I mean, I think we are somewhere else — we’re not in Kansas anymore — but I don’t think that discourse necessarily describes it. It’s based on the assumption that language is fundamentally inadequate for the description of reality, so that ordinary folks who haven’t been indoctrinated by this philosophy don't have a hope in hell of figuring out what's going on. And I’m just way too much of a populist to buy that. To go way out on a limb, I think in 30 or 40 years, it’s going to be looked back on as something akin to Stalinism.

Or, as Alan Sokal put it: “I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class.”

When I first moved to California, I lived in a commune where we weren't allowed to have a television. After only a month or two, I was so unused to TV that when I came across one, I was instantly mesmerized by its flashy, flickering, brightly-colored gaudiness. I had the strange experience of being unable to hold a conversation in a bar that had a TV on (even with the sound turned down), as I was constantly distracted by the dancing colors.

Now we have an apartment that gets free cable and I have to say I'm much better at ignoring the TV when I have to. Not that this is a good thing.

Twice in the last week i have had the surreal experience of watching a mediocre hollywood film dubbed into Turkish. Both times i have been startled to discover that the gist of the plot, and the emotional state of the characters, ıs easily discernable without having the first clue what anyone is saying.

I guess I have a hard time relating to that phenomenon.

I lived two years in Japan where I lived on a very sparse diet of televised or movie media. I'd go weeks without watching TV (it was all in Japanese, which I wasn't fluent in, and most of it was horrible anyway).

When I returned to the U.S. it was very much like being dropped back into an aquarium, but I didn't have the sense of strangeness Gibson refers to.

It took about 3 seconds to reacclimate. It was like I'd never been gone at all.

You have to remember, too, that Gibson is from a different generation than us. I think it's safe to say that us GenXers were pretty much raised on TV, and TV with more than three channels for the most part. We were desensitized by age 5.

I really, really hate TV. And when I do watch it (okay, I like "Scrubs"), I about go crazy when there are commercial breaks. Why do we put up with them???

I don't watch commericals (usually). I tape a lot of stuff with our digital recorder, then blast by the commercials. Every press of the FF button skips you up 30 seconds. We'll even pause live stuff that's about to start, take a few minutes and catch up to real time.

Ha ha! Screw you, Madison Avenue!

Yes, it's people like me that are actively encouraging product placements and those little on-screen promos.

TiVo, Mike. It's all about TiVo. I don't watch commercials anymore. Even when we're watching television shows at their proper times, we start fifteen minutes late so we can skip the commercials. The problem, of course, is that commercials irritate me even more than they used to on those rare occasions when I do see them.

And Heather, I totally know what you mean about the television transfixion thing. Before I moved in with Matt, I had no functional television (watching Buffy with y'all was about the extent of my TV for three years) and I was completely unable to ignore them when I came across them in restaurants or bars.

I grew up without a TV (except for a couple years of PBS as a small child, and a couple years of Hill Street Blues in high school), and I've never owned one that received broadcast or cable channels. When I lived with a housemate who had one, I found it frustrating; he was much more interested in watching it than I was, and particularly in watching stuff he didn't actually like, as a relaxation technique. I found it impossible to concentrate anywhere in the house when the TV was on; even if I couldn't see the flickering lights, words distract me. And it was impossible to get my housemate's attention when the TV was on (pre-TiVo, so no pausing), even if we were running late and had to leave the house.

On the other hand, I've recently been watching recorded episodes of a few particular shows, and I've been finding the quality level (and my interest level) to be pretty high. I've never had the feeling of strangeness that Gibson describes.... Though I do watch a bit more than he does; sometimes as much as an hour or two a week, when there's a series I'm interested in (like B5 or Buffy) that a friend holds group showings of.

Chrononautic Log

Water in the aquarium

12 o'clock, February 10, 2004

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