Reality TV
This artwork feels like a commentary on society with the introduction of television. I sense the group of 5 couples are staring at a television screen, where we, as the art viewer, are actually the show they are watching. The adults are void of emotion and have little engagement among themselves. Only one man, his back to the television screen, is engaging with a child. Obviously, as art allows, I am interpreting the work, and have no clue what the artist’s original intention may have been. The piece is signed “La cobra” and is an etching print done on heavy paper, likely in the 1960s. In many cultures, the cobra snake symbolizes danger, cunning and transformation. So possibly I am not far off.
The modern television was a long-term invention, starting in 1872 when an English telegraph operator Joseph May discovered how to transform light into an electrical signal. By 1927, Philo Farnsworth “made a successful electronic television transmission and filed a patent for his system” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philo-Farnsworth). He was 22. Then followed a remarkable jockeying of corporations trying to undo his patents and eventually he suffered a nervous breakdown and died bankrupt. After World War II, the television became the primary source of information and entertainment in American homes, replacing the radio. By 1955 half of all homes had a television set, often a piece of furniture, encased in a wood display box, weighing between 50 to 200 pounds due to the cathode ray technology. Reception was aided with “rabbit ear” antennae, often wrapped in tinfoil. As a child I recall dashing up to the set to fiddle with the antennae when reception was wonky. Sometimes this required standing in a certain spot, or holding the darn things in a specific direction. Hubby and I had a large antennae in our first house in Libertyville in the 1990s, so really not that long ago antennae still worked to receive transmissions.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, my parents were concerned about the dangers of television, and we were restricted to only a few hours of watching a week (I believe 2 hours though I cannot recall how this was enforced). While my family had some televisions, they were tucked away. One hidden in a cabinet in the den, and one in our basement rec room, with its linoleum floors, spider infused cellar walls, and storage areas. I recall the rec room specifically as I would sneak down to the basement late at night when my parents were asleep and binge watch all sorts of old shows (so much for two hours).
Oddly, we had a “Pong” game console –likely a gift for one of my older brothers. I recall sitting on the floor in front of the television, playing the remarkably boring game with my brothers. This was a process of placing a clingy film “board” onto the television screen, and using a console, attached by wires, to make the ball bounce back and forth across a net. I am sensing the beginning of my boredom with both video games and tennis style games. Likely it was a gift in 1975 as that was when Atari launched a “home” version of their hit arcade game, marketed through the Sears stores.
Our country enacted a Fairness Doctrine, enforced by the FCC, in 1949. “Lawmakers became concerned that the monopoly audience control of the three main networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda. The Fairness Doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. Congress backed the policy in 1954 and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the ‘single most important requirement of operation in the public interest’” (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine).
The Reagan administration worked to dismantle the Doctrine, and, in 1986, Judges Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia of the US Court of Appeals ruled the doctrine was not enforceable by the FCC. It was repealed by the Republican congress in 1987, and that same year Rush Limbaugh was signed to a nationwide syndication contract for ABC Radio.
So here we are in a country soon to be run by a Reality Television star. Picking cabinet members from a broadcasting company that lost a massive legal case against it for peddling lies to its audience (Dominion’s $787million settlement). I acknowledge there are likely other viewpoints, but our incoming administration seems to be focusing on entertainment and ego, not earned respect and capability. It seems the reality of television has migrated to politics. To sit and stare at our screens, to be entertained and not have to think, to allow others to provide you with facts, seems to be the way of the political leaning of a vast amount of our country. Besides the danger to our political structure, the underlying danger is the lack of independent thought. Without education, without open minded curiosity, without a reliance on what is fact or truth, our society is careening in a direction that worries me. I do hope I am wrong, but damn it, I seem to be participating in a Reality TV show I cannot turn off.