Regarding what you say below and some of the themes on this thread, without being dogmatic, I still think The Lost Poets idea that "the revolution will not be televised" still has some validity just because of the obvious reason that television is the main modern mindcontrol system , along with movies. There is no way the bourgeoisie is going to let there be some fair competition for left television shows ,comedic or tragic.
It seems to me that history has sort of done the novel _1984_ in reverse. Mind control has been accomplished not by Big Brother watching us, but by getting us to passively, in a coma, watch and receive uncritically into our minds Big Brother, the revenge of the electronic Cyclops.
I don't mean that the struggle to get on tv shouldn't be fought.I applaud assaults on television and movies by Moore and others. But I don't see us winning a frontal assault. Is this Gramsciism ? War of position ? I won't write out now how to search for an alternative mass medium , and how to get the masses off of tv a little ,but the Lost Poets' caveat is not passe and must be emphasized in all discussion of propaganda on tv and in the movies.
The working class party will never equal the ruling class's ownership of hardware. Somehow we must develop such superior software that will overmatch their material advantage.
Charles Brown
>>> Carol Stabile wrote:
Granted that Seinfeld was well-written. Personally, I despised the show (felt that it was deeply misogynistic, among other things), but then again I dislike most sitcoms. I think the more important point, though, is not defending what we like -- I watch a lot of TV that people would describe as "crap" -- but thinking about what kinds of meanings TV programs establish (and not just for us). And I have to tell you that Moore's _TV Nation_ was one of the most exciting programs to appear for a long, long time, even though from the beginning it seemed like the networks were sabotaging it. For example, except for a brief moment on NBC, it never had an established time slot, which made it difficult for it to establish an audience in the terms the industry sets forth.
But the program offered a vision of a society you just couldn't see anywhere else on TV or cable. Maybe all of the segments weren't perfect or were inconsistent, but it seems to me that that's splitting hairs. For a moment, the program opened up a tiny space on network TV in which class and class antagonisms (not to mention the police state) were visible.
carol