Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> > >> Besides, it doesn't all suck.
> >
> > Oh, you mean one need only view the superior productions to understand
> > american culture. The culture of those who watch or produce the tve that
> > sucks doesn't count???
> >
>
> do you always read what people say in the worst way it's possible to
> read it?
To understand this part you have to looke at a part of Doug's original post which you deleted:
> you don't
> know what makes people tick. Which may be fine with you, but it's not
> with me.
I'll admit that interpreting what people say "in the worst way it's possible" does not contribute to very illuminating discourse, but neither does attempting to read motives not expressed (as Doug does here) help out very much.
On the other hand, my first post asked Doug to think about the implications of his statement, and that statemnt had to do with "understanding people," not with enjoying or not enjoying tv, so his remark that some didn't suck seemed at best irrelevant.
If one is analyzing culture and/or politics, it is a _very_ serious intellectual fault not to recognize the limits on any one person's time relative to what "needs" to be known or experienced. This fact, I believe, was first (at least implicitly) recognized by John Milton in the Temptation of Athens in _Paradised Regained_, and lies at the heart of the great satires of Pope and Swift. (Pope, after all, was the first serious analyst of popular culture.)
I've been working on the question which I think Milton and Pope posed for nearly 30 years -- but I just don't know enough (i.e., I need to have read about 5 times as much European literature of the last four centuries than I've read) to work it out. I think one could write a history of English/American literature from about 1650 to the present strictly in terms of the way that literature (and the commentary on it) has struggled to avoid this issue. _All_ the major critical movements of the 20th century have, in one way or another, focused on reducing the amount of reading required. (I suggest you read Cleanth Brooks, _The Well Wrought Urn_, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren [eds.], _Understanding Poetry_, I.A. Richards, _Principles of Literary Criticism_, Ezra Pound, _Guide to Kulchur_, Matthew Arnold _Culture and Anarchy_ and, most especially, his essay, "The Study of Poetry" with its infamous touchstones for "high seriousness." That's just a mere start to gaining an elementary appreciation of the issue involved here. Oh yes, you should probably also read and reread several times William Wordsworth, _The Prelude_, Book 5 "Books." Wordsworth there is wrestling with the intolerable problem of wanting one's own book to be read when one knows but can't quite admit to oneself that there are too many _good_ books for anyone to read. And this was from a radically eurocentric, not to say anglo-centric, perspective.
Carrol
P.S. Note that I've corrected a typo in my original subject line, from seat to sea; that image of an icarian fall into the sea of matter comes from some essay on either Swift or Pope that I read 30 or 40 years ago -- I think.