{"id":2271,"date":"2009-12-11T12:18:22","date_gmt":"2009-12-11T18:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tancos.net\/wp2\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2009-12-11T12:18:22","modified_gmt":"2009-12-11T18:18:22","slug":"is-television-finally-worth-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/is-television-finally-worth-watching\/","title":{"rendered":"Is television finally worth watching?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Joe Carter’s weekly list<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Over the past ten years television\u2014long considered the most embarrassing form of mass media\u2014has come to surpass films and novels as the dominant form of narrative fiction. The advent of the DVD revolutionized television, making it possible (and profitable) to combine the depth of novels with the visual storytelling of film. The result was the greatest period of quality and innovation in the medium\u2019s history\u2014and some of the greatest works of pop culture produced in a hundred years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm. I quit watching teevee decades ago, when I realized that I could watch the first five minutes of any action\/adventure show and accurately predict the rest of the episode. I have not lived in a house with a working television set since 1982. Aside from an occasional Simpsons<\/em><\/strong> episode at a friend’s house, I’ve seen very little American television since the first generation of Star Trek<\/em><\/strong>. ((I have watched a lot of Japanese animated television these past few years \u2014\u00a0see my other weblog<\/a> \u2014 the best of which is very good indeed. (I’m tempted to remark that the Japan may be a strange, foreign place, but Hollywood is downright alien.) Most, however, is of no interest whatsoever, just like most American television.))<\/p>\n

I gather that things have changed, a little. I’ve heard good things about Babylon 5<\/em><\/strong>. No less a critic than Barbara Nicolosi<\/a> has praised Battlestar Galactica<\/em><\/strong>. I did have a chance to watch the first few episodes of Firefly<\/em><\/strong> earlier this year, and it does merit further investigation. However, Firefly<\/em><\/strong> was cancelled after fourteen episodes \u2014 perhaps things haven’t changed all that much, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Joe Carter’s weekly list: Over the past ten years television\u2014long considered the most embarrassing form of mass media\u2014has come to surpass films and novels as the dominant form of narrative fiction. The advent of the DVD revolutionized television, making it possible (and profitable) to combine the depth of novels with the visual storytelling of … Continue reading “Is television finally worth watching?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[559],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-anti-culture","tag-television"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-AD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}