TV as vapid comfort — "a womb with a view," the entertainment you've already seen, watched as the only escape
echoes
From: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (in Girl With Curious Hair)
- Early text:
quote Sternberg on rerun TV: "Incredibly comforting. You know just how the universe is going to be for the next hour. Totally secure. Detached but connected. A womb with a view." [westward-the-course-of-empire-takes-its-way:p536]; "That's why entertainment's so important. That's why TV's the total balls. When it's vapid. Like it's meant to be." [westward-the-course-of-empire-takes-its-way:p528]; Mark: "It is pretty much the only escape" [westward-the-course-of-empire-takes-its-way:p529].
- IJ echo: The Entertainment as the asymptote of exactly this comfort-viewing — passive, regressive, total (the Entertainment as EUP's malignantly addictive television carried to its limit, continuous with real TV). The televisual/ad-industry history dramatized in Mario's puppet film (scene 087, pp. 410–418); the Medical Attaché's comfort-viewing that becomes catatonia (scene 007, pp. 33–37).
- Weight: shared-preoccupation