Ack, who is this person and what is wrong with him that he watches news from the time he gets home from work until midnight…who admits he’s watching the same thing over and over again? This is so the opposite of me that I can’t even fathom it. I feel compelled to ask questions in the manner of a bad essay introduction: Is he addicted to the flow of information? the experience of being imbedded by media in real-time war? just reality TV?
We all know that news is a lot more immediate since the inception of satellites and such, so that’s not it. Mr. Watch-TV-from-6-to-Midnight could get the same info online that he spends hours watching on TV.
I don’t get it; TV News drives me crazy. Yes, because it’s depressing; yes, because I’d rather be watching Scrubs. But also because all the war coverage is like watching a violent and badly-filmed home video, a “‘peek-a-boo’ world of disconnected images…featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction” (81).
And because we get this home-video effect, we get “the illusion of being there, right when something was happening” (85). I really liked the passage comparing war coverage to cubism, because it reveals something a little deeper about this type of news. It forces us (viewers) to fill in the blanks, to find meanings between the lines and symbols, bringing us even closer mentally to what’s going on…giving us that creepy “voyeuristic kick” while still providing “a ‘safe and secret’ stimulation” from the “faintly forbidden intrusion” (86).
If that’s really what’s going on, I think Mr. Watch-TV-from-6-to-Midnight’s wife has a lot more to worry about than her husband’s news-watching hobby.
Ew, and can someone tell me what “war porn” is?
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