I walked into an elevator in downtown LA and was shocked to find a flatscreen panel showing headline news items and even giving viewer polls to people who are not in front of keyboards. I thought that was really weird.
But maybe not as weird as seeing a TV in the Post Office.
That’s right. While waiting in line, you can now be entertained, or disgusted, and blech, advertised to, while you are held captive.
But here’s the real capper. I took the bus today. Al Gore has shamed me into ditching the car when possible. So I took the bus. Not just the commuter bus to work, or the subway across town, but a regular two-blocks-then-stop city bus.
And that’s where it got real weird.
There was a TV screen in the bus.
Two screens, actually: one behind the driver’s seat, and one behind the back exit.
Transit TV, it’s called. Yep, they have a Web site.
How bizarre is that? I feel like we’re becoming the world depicted in the film Minority Report, although thank goodness the ads aren’t personalized to my retina yet.
I still remember “silent radio” in the gym, which was bizarre enough. But TV in Buses? Post Offices? Elevators? I think I even saw one at a checkout counter in a store somewhere, but maybe I’m just fantasizing, or is that nightmaring?
Where have you seen flat panels lately, not counting in a private home?
I’m used to seeing large tv type panels at baseball stadiums. Angels stadium in Anaheim will bombard you with advertising in between innings in addition to the usual hokey audience cam footage.
Personally, I’m of the “kill your tv” persuasion, though I have yet to convince my family that this is a good idea.
I’m left instead with one of my favorite Marxist quotes (yep, from Groucho himself): “I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.”
Good ol’ Groucho. Great quote!
Last summer, I turned off cable for a while and it was wild. I read. I read and read and read. But then fall season was starting up, and I wanted to see what was on. It’s a powerfully addictive substance, TV. But this last year, it’s also been wonderfully affirming. I’ve never seen such a blossoming of highly political (overtly so) storylines in shows both popular and little known. Boston Legal took on the Iraq war like nobodies business. So did JAG, in their last moments on the air. 24 resurrected Nixon and Martha Mitchell, and didn’t even try to disguise that. This is actually one of the few periods I’ve found that it’s worth watching TV. Some amazing things are coming out of popular characters’ mouths!
During the late 1980s and early 1990s I think I switched on a television a grand total of once. It was interesting to note how differently I viewed the world compared to, say, my parents. Somehow, I could go into South Central (there used to be this cool communist bookstore in the area) and feel perfectly okay. My folks were convinced I was going to be shot – after all the first few minutes of news coverage on LA television tends to focus on all those “dangerous black men” car-jacking and doing drive-bys. I began gaining an understanding – at least on a gut level – that somehow mass media tended to breed a sort of world view in which one felt like there was threat lurking everywhere. Years later I’d learn of the social psych research demonstrating in the lab what I was seeing firsthand.
Of course I have my own televised pleasures – Boston Legal being one; South Park and the all-too-short-lived Chappelle’s Show being a couple others. There is some comfort to be had in finding some socially conscious mass-media. And although I still don’t much care for televised news, I do get some pleasure in being able to show my kids how such programs try to manipulate their respective audiences.
Good use of the tube – educating your kids on propaganda techniques. We definitely need a much higher level of media literacy in our country.
I just finished trimming out a new resturant, abit upscale or they think they are.
If male you go into the mens room and while standing at urinal, there’s two, you’re facing a little TV, on Cable, so one can watch while taking a leak. Sorry though if sitting on the can in the regular or handicap toilet stalls all you get is the toilet roll dispenser to stare at!
Now if female you can watch the One small TV, on the wall, while waiting. if there’s some backup. But if you gotta leak Sorry no TV’s in any of the five stalls or handicap stall!
I call this Disgrimination and if I were a women and found out what was in the mens room I’d Raise Caine, you should be able to watch Cable TV while leaking also!!!!!!
I think the movie Brazil was the most prophetic movie of all time. We get terror alerts even when urinating. The men, at least.
Seeing while peeing – that’s really weird. I mean, how long does it take you all to leak?? 😉
are you gonna lecture us men about how much time we spend in the bathroom? 🙂
As a woman, I wouldn’t dare!! 😉
That’s….
What I asked.
Than kept shaking my head.
We Live In A Very Strange World!!
Long enough to be hypnotized.
Talk about being a “subject”!!!
Hypnotists want their subjects in a position of weakness.
How much more vulnerable can you GET?
AG
There’s apparently a TV set in our movie theatre screen. Something that shows commercials, anyway.
I agree completely about Boston Legal. Dipped back into cable (mostly to see the new Dr. Who on SciFi), amazed at how homogenuous it’s all gotten. A&E (the Arts & Entertainment), Bravo (performance arts) AMC (American Movie Channel, whch used to have old movies and one original series, Remember WENN, about a 1940s radio station in Pittsburgh)—and now they all show the same kind of so-called reality series, and Law & Order reruns. Plus commercials on AMC and no old movies.
Three channels of ESPN, all showing poker! There are still four news channels, but no news on any of them. No headline news on Headline News!
The only good thing about TV in public places is that usually you can’t hear it.
Haven’t you ordered your TV-B-Gone yet?
GREAT!!!
Thank you thank you thank you.
Ordered mine immediately.
Hope it works.
Talk about weaponry!!!???
Thousands of us, turning off TVs everywhere we go?
PRICELESS!!!
The revolution approacheth.
AG
They put tvs in places where people are apt to get impatient and start complaining about lines, bad service etc., to sedate them. Just look around at all the slack jaws and glazed over eyes…just staring at whatever happens to be on.
At the gas pump where a small screen plays the Weather Channel while you put gas in the car.
Oh my gosh! At least I get NPR when I go to my gas station….
They are only “weird”, these places, if you think of TV as an entertainment/information medium.
It is not.
Not anymore, it isn’t.
Not in America.
It is a trance-producing, hypno-propaganda machine.
Its controllers’ motto?
You can trance some of the people all of the time, and that’s enough to win elections.
End of story.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIA STRIKE!!!
Goddamnit.
Find a restaurant/bank/doctor’s office/any other goddamned place that is twentyfour-sevening the cultural poison of mainstream TV directly into your brain while you’re just trying to take a piss or order a donut and some coffee?
DON’T GO THERE.
Duh.
Old vaudeville sketch.
Comic doctor and comic patient.
Doctor: Don’t DO dat!!!
Duh.
SUBLIMINAL PROAGANDASTRIKE!!!
Duh.
Don’t DO dat!!!
AG
See Alice’s TV-B-GONE comment above.
Order one.
Now.
This is going to be FUN!!!
AG