Sunday, December 5, 2010

Hyperreality and Mass-Media in "Network" (1976)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTN3s2iVKKI

"[...] The tube is reality and your own lives are unreal[...]"

Howard Beale's ramble echoes mass media as depicted throughout the various readings. The erasing of Clementis (p.10) in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting both from the photos and from people's minds as they are bombarded by more news of different events. It rings of Baudrillard's "The Ecstasy of Communication" in that anything that comes from the television has the power to alter society while never having to be real.

The mentioning of corporate control is similar to Foucault in the sense that he reveals that television serves power.

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