September 1, 2007

Overhead last night while at the ballpark: "This is like watching a really wide high-def TV."

The idea that the person who said this--without any hint of irony, mind you--identifies physical real experience (ie, being there) in terms of the virtual, distanced two dimensional image that television offers seems symptomatic of the Benjaminian language of images (the image divorced from the context), coupled perhaps with some Chomsky media theory (accepting a shaped and edited presentation as true/real).

This reminds me of when Sha and I saw the movie Dreamgirls and were both amazed that the folks in the Grand Lake Theater were actually clapping after musical numbers, as if it were a live performance and the actors on the screen could hear the people in the seats clapping.