IJ study archive

Television's privileged, clinical mediation hides its own loss — the flattered viewer who cannot see what the screen…

echoes

From: DFW on Roger Federer — NPR Weekend Edition Saturday (August 19, 2006)

  • Early text: [scene] Wallace's defense of the video-porn comparison: televised tennis, with slow-mo and multiple angles, gives a more clinical perspective and makes the viewer feel so privileged that the loss goes unnoticed; what is subtracted is the sensuous physicality, mainly the speed of the ball [00:37–01:19]
  • IJ echo: E Unibus Pluram's account of TV as a medium that flatters the watcher while restructuring what watching is (e-unibus-pluram); the Entertainment territory only at the level of shared preoccupation, not mechanics
  • Weight: shared-preoccupation