Who likes to watch?

Many times when this blog goes through a posting drought like the past week or so, it's not for lack of ideas, but for lack of execution. For example, upon watching the outstanding satire "Being There" starring Peter Sellers (see clip up top) my mind immediately began making comparisons between it and Don DeLillo's White Noise, which I finished reading a couple weeks ago.

Granted, I should have tried to put something down at the time. Now I forget it all, except that there was television. Also a funny scene where Sellers refers to an elevator as a very small room. No specifics, but I'm going to attempt an exploration of the ideas that I can think of, fruitless as they may prove. As an old editor of mine used to say: "Hack it out." Good advice for any writer.

The plots are dissimilar -- "Being There" is about an television-obsessed idiot leaving the house for the first time and becoming a top economic adviser to the president; White Noise is about Jack Gladney, director of a college Hitler Studies department, and his family as they deal with among other things, an "Airborne Toxic Event" and a drug that supposedly cures the fear of death. It also has television, especially commercials as a background constant -- white noise I guess you could say.

There is an outstanding article on White Noise here, in which the author writes:

Now that people everywhere in America have seen the same television shows and movies and read the same books and articles, they share a wealth of common memories - but unfortunately, these are not memories of actual life, but memories of media manufactured situations and characters. Our collective unconscious is tainted, cluttered with media images and advertisements, catch phrases and jingles.

How does this relate to the scene in Being There where Sellers watches Basketball Jones? It's hard to say. But I think the nut may be how Sellers character, Chance the Gardener (or Chauncey Gardener), is so focused on TV over all else. Threatened by a hood with a knife, he responds by trying to change the channel. His ignorance to everything outside of television makes him an idiot savant when it comes to dealing with economic policy.

Ah god, this is such a failure. Should have known it was totally fucked when I referred to a "former editor." But whatever, its a blog, not serious. Publish post.