A long time ago (1959) in a land far, far away (France) a playwright named Eugène Ionesco wrote The Rhinoceros. In the play, the citizens of a provincial French village turn into rhinoceroses. The most common interpretation of the play is the Nazi takeover of France in the 1930s. The Rhinocerisation of the citizenry in the play symbolizes that takeover. When I was watching TV news last night, I had the weird sense that the United States is currently undergoing its own process of rhinocerisalion. While we watch our friends and neighbors become rhinos, we exclaim the equivalent of the . . . → Read More: The Rhinoceros
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 Comments are closed  Blog  Al Wilson, bazarre, china shop, Eugene Ionesco, France, French village, king of hearts, madness, military rank, play, rhinos, snake, snakes, The Rhinoceros A long time ago (1985) a New York University professor, Neil Postman, published Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. One of the principal ideas is that television is “entertainment,” even when the subject is serious. The “news” becomes just another “show.” From time to time I have wondered what Professor Postman would have thought about social media. His principal complaint about television was that it turns “news” into “entertainment.” Rational discourse was replaced by video and sound “bites,” with the focus of attention increasingly fleeting and fragmented. I remember the history of television . . . → Read More: Social Media and Our Collective Well-being Comments are closed Blog A.M., ABC, actors, addiction, addictive behavior, Amusing Ourselves to Death, ARPANET, BITNET, broadcast media, Cable, CBS, Civil Rights, college, consumers, contacts, Dancing with the Stars, DWTS, entertainment, F.M., Facebook, generations, go outside and play, Google+, gossip, high school, history, horse, horseback, information, Internet, Istagram, letters to the editor, LinkedIn, NBC, Neil Postman, New York University, news, newspapers, newsweeklies, online gaming, PinIt, play, publications, radio, reading, riding horses, Selfies, Snapchat, social media, soldiers, sound bites, texting, texting while driving, TV, Twitter, Vietnam, Vietnam War, voting by text message, walking, war, Web sites, World Wide Web, www |
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