getthebubbles
at the Chinese buffet
“Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device.”
The physicist Charles Percy Snow said that in 1936. It was a clever thing to say and it remains a popular attitude to voice, but I have to politely disagree. I like television. Television brought us The Wire and Jennifer Ehle as Miss Elizabeth Bennett. Television showed humankind taking that giant leap on the surface of the moon and the assassination of an assassin in Dallas. Without television we wouldn’t have seen President Richard Nixon claiming “I am not a crook” or the Congressional hearings that showed he was, in fact, a crook.
Yes, television is a passive experience and yes, it often discourages thought and yes yes yes, it can isolate us from other people–even people in the same room. But it also teaches us and inspires us and shames us and amuses us. The beauty of television is that it’s half brilliant and half horrible, half heaven and half hell, half dream and half nightmare. Half Greek and half Latin.
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