The Television Event Everybody Will Be Talking About

[Cross posted at Reading the Spectacle]

“Did you see Idol last night?” … “Can you believe the Pats went for it on 4th and 2?” … “It turns out Lost jumped the shark in season one, but none of us noticed!” … Small talk and Monday morning quaterbacking around the water cooler are hardly human interaction. Although an utterance of, “There was nothing good on TV last night so I read this book in which the author says we no longer directly live, but experience a false representation of life through an endless succession of spectacles,” might be met with a slightly more authentic form of human contact: the blank stare.*

“The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.”

* The Blank Stare, once the weapon of sardons and malcontented comedians, (see: Bill Hicks,) has matriculated into common use and been commodified by the spectacle to punctuate and soften irony. A goofy “just kidding!” sung after every “insult,” (see: Jon Stewart.)