I have to say I wasn't raised in a family without television. Like almost everybody else of my generation, I was "raised" by television. I've always been kind of a loner and spent all of my Wednesdays in front of the telly, watching cartoons, mangas, TV shows and everything that was on. But as my awareness about the world developed these last few years, I came to realise I was watching it automatically, passively, and that I turned it on when I didn't want to think or have any kind of cerebral activity.

The more I rejected materialism and superficiality, the more I was fed up with TV. I think it reached a climax between March 2006 and May 2007. Why? Because I was utterly disgusted by journalists and the way they dealt with the French presidential elections. Between September 2005 and March 2006, I was studying in Australia. So I was pretty much cut off from what happened in France. For two main reasons : 1/ Australian newspaper don't really talk about Europe, in fact, they barely talk about the rest of the world, at least in the printed version of the West Australian 2/ I was really sick and tired of France and wanted to be away from this country and completely block it out. As a matter of fact, it's a classmate who told me there were riots in France, I didn't even know it!
And so, when I came back, I discovered Ségolène Royal (running opposite the prick that turned out to be elected, she was the runner for the center-left party), who I never heard of before, not even before September 2005, which was only 6 months before I came back. So I asked my parents who she was, what she had done, why TV journalists were suddenly this interested in her, making hundreds of stories, articles and reports about her. Their answer: she hadn't done anything in particular, journalists simply started to talk about her, and now she's the front-runner opposite Sarkozy. I thought it was appalling. She was there because journalists decided so. All of the following events up until the elections were as appalling as this. No one cared or talked about politics and real issues. It was just "Ségo in her bathing suit" and "Sarko and Cecilia [his wife, they're now divorced] are breaking up". The rest, what they had politically achieved, what their views were, especially Royale's, no idea, no one knew and no one gave a shit. The only thing that mattered was their private life. And this was fully exploited by Sarkozy, as long as it served his purposes. His closeness with journalists was disgusting.
Servile journalists shouting everywhere they are objective and proud of doing their job abiding scrupulously by their professional code of ethics but who don't even dare confronting Sarko by asking him questions he didn't approve of beforehand, it really makes me sick. Not a single journalist in France would have asked a question about his divorce the way the CBS journalist recently did for the American TV show "60 minutes". The French president getting divorced, that is kind of something, though a small event. And he so put his private life forward to win the election, he should have expected something about his divorce and have a prepared answer, like "I'm over 50, I'm not the first one or the last one of my generation who's going through a divorce, it's simply the end of a story, that's all, life goes on, in no way will this affect my abilities as a president". Instead, he went mad; I admit that being dumped publicly is no easy shit, for a president or any human being, being dumped hurts and we don't necessarily want to talk about it. But if a public person isn't able to answer a question this simple about something this common, it's pathetic. Pathetic mainly because it was the first time he wasn't talking to a journalist afraid of him or his acquaintances, a servile journalist he could manipulate. His going ballistic when he's not in control is really a beautiful reaction...
About Sarko having the director of the French magazine Paris Match fired for publishing photos of his wife Cécilia with the publicist Richard Attias, it's simply unspeakable.

There are other things that make me mad about TV, including how important it has become. It's a new member of the family, sitting with everyone else at the dinner table, the living room furniture are directed at it, and everything that comes from it is considered like the words of the gospels. I like this comparison because it perfectly reflects the fact that more than a member of the family, more than the patriarch of the family, it's becoming more and more like a cult or a religion. It formats tastes, desires and needs, and reduces the individual to nothing (let me quote Patrick Le Lay, president of TF1 [the number one TV channel in France, the most watched, the trashiest one] describing the selling of commercial time to publicists : he said he was selling "available brain time". I actually can't believe that such a phrase that denies the person itself didn't lead to more fuss. That says a lot about the audience's apathy... Viewers were insulted by the boss of the channel they worship the most and don't even react. Once again, appalling.). TV leads to exclusion of people not watching it. If you don't have a TV, then you can only be an alien coming straight from mars. The link I have with people from my generation is made of cartoons, mangas and TV shows I abundantly watched when I was a kid or a teenager. We have this culture in common. Now that I don't watch it anymore, the gap between me and others is widening. It could widen faster if I weren't watching American TV shows, taking them for what they really are, ie 45 minutes of entertainment, nothing more, clearly not the reflection of any reality, and I watch them in English so as not to lose too quickly my abilities to understand this language, given that it's my job. I won't go as far as saying I watch ER for my job, it would clearly be exaggerated, but telly has become an exception in my daily life, not the main focus of it. TV also influences every field, written journalism, science, privacy, everything.
We consume TV, we watch shows one after another like we would drink our beverages one after the other at a party with friends in a pub. It's just automatic, we don't think about the taste of our drinks or of the TV show we are watching. The results on our brain are the same: we are no longer able to react correctly, conscience fades away.

Another appalling aspect, discussed by Noam Chomsky in his book "Manufacturing Consent", or by  Pierre Bourdieu (a French sociologist, now dead), is the fact that there are no debates on TV. What we call "debate" is actually something different. One of the basics of TV is time: it's extremely short. So there is no time to say anything. At least, anything interesting and most importantly anything complex or revolutionary, only commonplaces.
Imagine a science debate on television at the time of Galileo, opposing him to his colleagues. One expresses the fact that the Earth is flat. No need here to go into further details, to explain anything, that's something everybody knows and accepts, viewers are on a ground they completely understand and agree with. Then Galileo starts to speak, explaining that it is in fact round. How could he prove his affirmation when the time allotted for each intervention is less than two minutes, if you get lucky? On TV, producers and stuff consider that after a short period of time, the viewer loses his ability to focus. One again, that's a great proof of the amazing consideration towards the viewer... The job of the journalist leading the debate is to maintain it very lively, punchy, active, but a thought off the beaten tracks needs time to be explained so it's not misinterpreted. And I've never found that in any show on TV. The only show that was close to this, leaving maybe 5 minutes to each participant, was a show broadcast on France 3 [a French public channel] called "Ce soir ou jamais". To sum up, there's no debate, no in-depth analysis on TV, just commonplaces said repeatedly, and sometimes contradict in such a way the contradiction can't be understood and/or agreed with.

Another proof of the way French audience is considered that particularly concerns me in my job, translation. How many times in an English show do you hear "Oh my god!"? This is so common there's even an abbreviation of it for use in message texts and instant messages on the Internet: "omg". But translator are invited not to translate it literally [for those who are interested, the translation is "Oh mon dieu !]. And why is that? Because, we do use it in French too, though not as often as in English, and everybody uses it without necessarily being of the religious kind. A perfect example of that would be me :-) (even though I prefer to use other words like "putain", kinda like "fuck" in English). We soften original dialogues, "fuck" is translated by "mince" instead of "putain" or something equivalent, it's perfectly absurd. Usually, the subtitled version is more faithful to the original version than the dubbed version. I know that there are some imperatives that make the translation quite difficult, besides references to celebrities or products unknown in France. Among others, there's the number of characters of the subtitle which is limited or, as far as dubbing is concerned, lip-synching. But to me the changes are disrespectful to the French audience as well as to the writers and the cast of the show. Besides, quite often, in France, episodes are not broadcast in the correct order, or scenes judged offensive for the audience are cut. Thanks guys, but we're adults and can decide for ourselves if the scenes are bearable or not! This is another proof of the immense consideration for the audience, the writers and the cast of the show butchered.

Is actually all of this that important? No, given that, in fact, TV is nothing more than entertainment. It could be used to make one think of course, but when you go to Disney World, it's just to have fun and get out of your everyday life, not to think about how superficial and consumerist the place is.
The only problem is that, being this important in our society, and almost unavoidable, and sometimes a goal in itself as many teenagers dream of becoming a celebrity, a TV star, hence the success of "reality shows", that are clearly as far from reality as Sponge Bob, given that the mere presence of the camera changes the behaviour of the observed subjects (a phenomenon well know in science), but I digress, I'll come back to that in another article about this specific topic, it has some responsibilities. It has to be honest and openly declare itself a mere means of entertainment on the same level as playing soccer or footy with friends, reading a novel or going to a concert, and not go beyond that point. Alternatively, it could help develop consciousness of the surrounding world and knowledge, and then watching TV would be similar to reading a book explaining psychological or sociological phenomena or to listening to political lyrics. In other words, it has to really be educational and take time to be so.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, it acts like being educational (the weather woman on TF1 tells us what is "good for the planet"), open, honest, upright, the mirror of reality, but the truth is that the only thing that matters to managers is to "sell available brain time". This behaviour is particularly dishonest, pernicious, and vicious. TV should go back to what it is, ie only TV, a mere piece of furniture, not the center of our society.

Here's the translation of a text taken from the website nopasaran.samizdat.net. It expresses my views about telly perfectly.

Working, sleeping, and... watching TV! After working and sleeping, watching TV is the third activity of Westerners. It is by far the first domestic activity. On average, people spend three hours in front of the TV in France, four hours in the United States. Decade after decade, television has equipped more and more households. In 1970, in France, 32% of households didn’t own a television set; in 1977, they were 13%; today this number has plummeted to 5%. No other appliance has ever equipped households this fast, this overwhelmingly. Besides, its presence is absolutely not surprising; in the contrary, its absence astonishes, even worries sometimes. The vast majority of the population doesn’t even wonder what the point of owning a television is. Most of the questions are focused, for a small minority, on the reasons for not owning one. This mind conquest also leads to a particular physical position. In most households, television has a particular status. It sits at the best place in the main room. The living room is organised according to the television set, not to form a friendly circle. This room, originally a meeting place structured to enable communication between individuals, has become a film theatre. This configuration can be found wherever television dominates. Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, philosopher, noticed (1): “as the first agent of globalisation of habits, it induces an almost ritual set of uniform behaviours, whatever the environments and visual messages: furniture organisation, audience oriented towards the light source, timetable depending on a show usually scheduled at a set time, etc. Most people turn their TV on like they turn a tap to open it, simply from force of habit. In 1990, a study revealed “it was such an important part of everyday life that turning it on doesn’t seem, in the majority of cases, to be a real decision corresponding to a real choice.” Besides, even times supposed to facilitate discussion are affected; 62,8% of children declared in a survey that TV was on during dinner. Sometimes, television stays on all day long, people watching it without any will, automatically. Centrality, omnipresence, diktat, the place of the small screen has tragic consequences. Television cuts off, leads people to withdraw into themselves, alienates It largely contributed to the withdrawal phenomenon that developed since the beginning of the consumption society. However, we can’t consider it the sole responsible of this atomisation. The victory of liberalism, and its effects on the place and the part of individual in the society, explains this withdrawal into the sphere of private life. The effects of these explosion processes reduced social links, which are now only forged at work, and which, with the emergence of post-fordism production, completely disappear. Most individuals withdraw into their shell, protected from the rest of the world; as Daniel Bougnoux, sociologist, explains (2): “We ask from our television to put us in a relaxation state allowing us, without moving from our home and without having to face the horrible world and horrible “others”, to live together but apart, to have the world at home. This vitrification of everything that can happen (television is originally a window glass) allows to enjoy sensory stimulation, but in a filtered, dampened way.” Locked inside our comfort, mesmerized by television, passivity increases. The nature of the link between the audience and their television set is hypnotic. Watching the small screen puts intellect to sleep, puts us out of condition, and, despite what is commonly believed, doesn’t relax at all. It works like an anaesthetic, to which we get quickly addicted. The viewer loses their ability, their personal capacity to think. If we look at the definition of the world “alienating”: “the individual loses the ability to freely own and control themselves” (Petit Robert dictionary), we can definitely say TV alienates. Its operation systematically cuts off the individual from their capacity for thought. The never-ending flow of images stops and prevents communication and thinking. The unceasing pouring of shows leads to immediate adherence, creating silence. Marie-José Mondzain explains this process (3): “When we are deprived of the ability to distinguish what we see and what we are, the only possibility left is overwhelming identification, ie regression and submission.” Reality becomes what we see. But if there isn’t any distance between reality and what’s seen, it's impossible to make any judgment, therefore there is no need for politics anymore. Reality becomes ours, so why bother changing it? Because, as M.J. Mondzain explains, it is precisely “this resistance to reality that creates thought and prompts human beings to gather”. So television depoliticise the world. Individual is reduced to a consumer and viewer, as Guy Debord had foreseen in Comments on Entertainment business (Commentaire sur la Société du spectacle) when he wrote: “the one who always watches in order to know what is next will never act.” Individual is convinced of their helplessness in their time. The reality of the established order establishes itself, unchanging. A vicarious life All these long hours spent in front of the television give the audience the impression to be in the reality. The more channels there are, the more they feel to be able to access the world. In The commercial image on television (L’image publicitaire à la télévision), José Saborit goes even further (4): “The way we look at things has been altered by the unavoidable weight of television experience and checking mechanisms have been reversed.” Real experiences - in other words life itself - would invalidate or confirm “truths” heard on TV. It creates reality, as Jacques Ellul explains in Technological bluffing (Le bluff technologique): “There’s not really information on TV, just TV. An event becomes news only if television takes hold of it”, and “as soon as TV stops showing images about a particular matter, there is no matter anymore. This clearly shows television itself is the message [...] and that we are only information consumers.” Nowadays, television has become so important in our societies that, for the vast majority of the population (for 70% of people, TV is their only source of information) what it broadcasts reflects reality. For an event to exist, it has to be broadcast; this has some consequences – as we’ll see later – on the event itself. So is visible, and as we’ve just demonstrated, real, only what TV wants to show us. Images, despite what they want us to think, are the results of a series of choices, from the journalist who decides where to go, to the camera operator who shoots one scene or another, to the editor who selects one part or another, etc. These choices are made according to opinions and the aim of the journalist, as well as the structure he works in. The meaning of an image can only be understood when placed back in a specific context. However, images are said to be objectives. They give the audience the illusion they are able to see the event live and that what they watch is reality. There is no possibility for distancing themselves from messages they’re dealt out. Television image doesn’t leave any space for distancing oneself and for thought. The danger doesn’t lie much in giving a subjective vision of the world than presenting itself as being objective, even sacred. As M.-J. Mondzain explains: “Everything is transmitted according to the mode of participation to reality, hiding the fact there are devices, editing processes, and constraints on account of which we probably wouldn’t have seen the same things if we physically had been at the scene of the event.” She calls this the “balcony effect”. It is defined as an effect that makes one believe what they see through the small screen is a reality the audience would be witnessing. In no way do they witness the event, but only one of its many representations. And because of images, the process of understanding the hidden part becomes extremely difficult. Because of its core principles, television hides analysis. The audience soaks up what they’re presented with all the more easily than they don’t have the means to form a thought, hence another speech. Seeing something doesn’t enable to understand it. The abundance of information, the pouring of images distort reality much more than they enable to seize its complexity. M.J. Mondzain sums up this idea: “The practice of freedom doesn’t come from accumulation. It has nothing to do with: the more things I see, the more I understand. It’s always been: the more I think, the more I understand.” An hegemonic model In a few decades, television has become the prevailing media. Gradually, it has occupied the space, relegating other media to subordinate functions. But its strength and its hegemony go way beyond this competition. Its vision of information – even of the world – has established itself and now prevails. Other media and fields have integrated, sometimes to survive, the values and standards of the small screen: fascination for images, entertainment, show, urgency, search for scoops, briefness, superficiality, conformism, received ideas, playing with emotion, etc. Pierre Bourdieu [a French sociologist], describes these mechanisms in his book entitled “About television” (Sur la télévision). He demonstrates how “thanks to its power of distribution, television raises absolutely terrifying problems to the written journalism and cultural universes[...] Because of its importance, its absolutely amazing weight, television has consequences that, although not unprecedented, are brand-new.” If we consider the case of the written press, we can realise the impact of television. Press relinquished its intellectual role to position itself on TV ground. It favours spectacular, emotion, trivial events, and questions about everyday life problems. No theme will become a priority unless TV takes hold of it. Bourdieu worries about this: “What’s most important is that through the increasing symbolic weight of television and among competitive televisions, the ones that sacrifice the most cynically and successfully to the search for sensationalism, spectacular, extraordinary, it is a vision of the information, up until now relegated in so-called “trashy” newspapers, dedicated to spots and trivial events, that tends to establish itself to the whole journalistic field.” The political class quickly figured out all the benefits it could get from exploiting TV appropriately. The small screen has become the central element of political life. It dictated its rules. Political debate, that a minority already took hold of, is now reduced to almost nothing, made of little phrases, of thundering statements, of behaviours staged to please and attract. You have to convince in front of the camera, have simple, easy to explain ideas... Political strategies are mainly developed according to the television constraints. Worse, television pretentiously claims to occupy the whole space dedicated to debates. It discusses every matter with gravity. It would conquer every field of society. Bourdieu stresses this point: “the most important phenomenon, which was quite difficult to predict, is the amazing increase of the hold television has on all the scientific or artistic creation activities.” Its hegemony can also be found in movie production. Now, fiction directors, and most of all documentary directors, have to take into account the broadcast of their film on television. Most of the time, the survival of the project actually depends on it. This grip leads to a frightening standardisation and strengthens the power of television and its rules on the whole society. Every recording device affects what it records. Now, TV, becoming the only reference, is the “referee to the access to social and political existence.” Which makes it extremely dangerous.

Fushichô

Novembre 18, 2007