IS FICTION DEAD? II

IS FICTION DEAD?

(PART II)

The Poetry of Information

Visual media - best feed for that beast?

Media can, and sometimes do exploit this reflex in commercials, video clips and movies. (Consider how many commercials contain movement? Action is eye-catching, even if the viewer is not consciously interested in watching). Many American movies -- such as horror films and action movies -- take advantage of this reflex. The fast action rivets the audience's attention.

What is the outcome of such movies? For two hours our brain are under fast-changing pressure from new impulses. Most of this time we are tense, sometimes under stress. Finally, we realize that all this is only a game, and we feel a sense of release or relief. The experience is, of course, training for us if such situations, God forbid, ever occur. Compared with films, however uncomplicated, the permanent stream of information from, let us say, 30 television channels is more alluring and an easier source for consuming information. Here, again and again, appears a provocative demarcation between peace and conflict -- your immediate environment and the action on the screen. Genetically coded reflexes for evaluating information connect us with primitive, historical man. It helped our forefathers stay alive, while for us it is hypertrophic appendage, which we generally can't use. Likewise, our musculature, which we use mainly for sitting in the comfortable environment of post-industrial civilization. How we must push ourselves to train our muscles in fitness centers, the same way we use mental "jogging" every night in front of our television set. And with complete pleasure. An important question is if television -- window to the world, forming our illusions of dramatic events and emotions while we immutably sit in the chair -- isn't an inevitable "biological" need of contemporary society? Our forefathers had somewhere to expend their energies; they had, no doubt, a larger physical space for motion. For us, it is mostly in the evening and in cities in a living room (surely quite little) that we have space for our existence. If we are not fascinated by the illusion of televisual events, not frozen by them, where can we (and moreover our kids!) expend our yearning for motion? Instead, we can only collide with one another within our four walls! Notice how many people, in very little space, are able to sit motionless for many hours, for example at the cinema. If we cancel the film and leave them in the same space, in a moment comes a crisis from distress. And our living room and television, is our home cinema. To intrigue against television -- the easy-sleazy intellectual Crusade against the slippers culture -- means these critics are unable to be aware of all the implications. Previous times the space for mental escape were books and fiction created another worlds as an asylum for dreamers.

Second conclusion: In their spare time people do not want to be informed; they want to consume information.
This need for information persist to our later age and is probably a reason of pre-mortality of some individuals, who as elderly lose their communication channels, e.g. minimal daily-dose of information.

(to be continued)