In your summary of Wallace's critical essay, focus on the main points of each section. In response, consider if Wallace's overall thesis applies to recent American fiction you've read. Do you agree with Wallace? And might this piece of criticism itself be considered "literary"?
Posted by Benjamin at October 15, 2005 03:15 PM In Wallace’s essay “E UNIBUS PLURAM”, he explores the relationship between media and literature. In the first section Act Natural, we become aware of the irony of the phrase itself. Second he points out that the average person consumes six hours of television per day. This is an astonishing number when you consider that this is more time than you do any other thing other than sleep. He also argues that fiction writers of today are influenced by television. I think that this has a large part to do with the “novel” definition we discussed in class; in order to mass-produce you must appeal to your audience and this means writing things that can keep their attention. (Not that many of them are able to do this for six hours a day)
In The Finger, Wallace introduces the watching of the watcher. In the 70’s there was a large uprising of shows about shows. Murphy Brown as an example went into the behind the scene detail about how news telecast was produced. I myself am at fault for this craze because I am a self proclaimed people watcher. This I think also can support why today you cannot turn on the television without flipping to some type of reality show. People love to watch other people. The problem is that we are watching shows like the “Real World” which is not that at all. It is developed from a cast that has been filtered through thousands of people to find the most perfect and entertaining people. But we as society would much rather develop “relationships with them as characters and feel worse about ourselves because we are told that that is real when very few people I know look like that ones on that show.
Metawatching was by far by favorite section. Here we are introduced to televisions classic irony. The shows like Saturday Night Live that seem to make fun of everything in our world that may not be funny unless said by a man in a wig with stilettos. Wallace also compared television to those Special Treats like alcohol and candy that has serious side effects if too much is consumed. I also want to add that I loved his definition that he openly admits was made up and sounds great so he used it, if this is not irony I am not sure what is.
In Guilty Fiction he talks about the “guilt” in modern day fiction as the constant reference to pop culture and items we can associate. It is sad that the only way some can feel associated is by the Wendy’s symbol you see in a movie or the brand of coffee you read about. Then again I guess all of these products can make people relate to a time in their life when these products were popular.
His thesis, that recent fiction has come along and tried to rearrange a world that has been formed by irony and ridicule in today’s televisual culture. He also feels that this is a shame in the sense that he repeats over and over that SIX HOURS A DAY IS JUST TO MUCH!
This essay is amazing in the sense that it is very different from the last work that we read from him, and that it points out some great details. I really enjoyed it because it was almost like you were sitting down and listening to him having a conversation with you. It is also very interesting I the sense that we all have a grasp of how important media is now a days, but I do not think that we realize the impact that it has in the rest of our lives. Good authors like Wallace are aware of the seven-minute attention span and are able to work around it, or does he?
David Foster Wallace, in his essay, “E Unibus Pluram,” discusses the downsides of watching too much television, and its effect on the psyche of the American public, and most notably of fiction writers. He says that television seems to aid the lonely person by acting as an artificial friend; a way to socialize, artificially. He says that watching six hours of television a day is not healthy, that’s it’s malignant in its addictiveness because watching television only propagates more television watching —-it’s a cure for itself. Then he goes on to talk about how irony in television is not healthy either. He says (if I understand it correctly) that irony in television only seems to be good for degrading one’s outlook on society, that it doesn’t serve much other purpose, and modern television is based solely on irony, therefore television can only serve to lower one’s expectations of society.
While I agree with David Foster Wallace in that television—-especially at the rate of 6 hours a day—-is not good, I don’t agree with him in his premise for why it’s not good. He says that it’s not good because it is “malignantly addictive,” with the conditions of a malignant addiction being that “(1) it causes real problems and (2) it offers itself as a relief from the very problems it causes.” If this is, indeed, a sound definition for a malignantly addictive activity, it is certainly not a good thing, ever, and the reason for that being the first condition: that it causes real problems. However, I’m not sure if the threshold of “real problems” is quantitative, scientifically, but if there are any real problems involved with watching television, it would seem to me that most Americans can cover it up fairly well. It seems unfair to me to say that most Americans are taking what they see on TV and implementing only those scenarios or dialogues into their real lives. And if that’s true, what would be the point in fiction writers “perspiring creepily on the subway” in order to glean just a little bit of realism in character if everyone’s character is solely based on what they’ve seen on television. It seems to me just another pessimistic outlook on the world from the perspective of someone that misses the old days; another one of those “Back in my day” kind of stories. Human beings are too adaptive for that. While television and such “low art” can, and probably does, take away from the popularity of high art, such as literature, I don’t see how it’s a problem to anyone but the writers of literature and those in that business (or those in the business of selling other “high art”). It’s disappointing, yes, but is it a real problem? I don’t think so. And on that basis, the second condition doesn’t seem to be viable either. Television does offer relief. There’s a reason we sit down every Sunday night and watch our favorite sitcoms. It’s therapeutic, or at least it seems that way, and undoubtedly cathartic. But, to say that it’s television that is causing the problems we alleviate by watching it can’t be altogether true. Wallace dismisses the notion that watching television is unhealthy in a physical sense, but plays up the idea that it is unhealthy in a psychological sense. Were people, though, really that much happier in the days of radio and before? Did they take a trolley and talk to everyone on board because they weren’t fulfilling their social needs through TV? I doubt it. It’s true that for many of us, television is addictive, I’m not disputing that point, and that has to cause some concern, if only just for the principle of it all. But to say that it’s a malignant addiction--to lump it in with such addictions as alcohol and even heroin—-seems to me to be way off base. That said, I can only hope my future children don’t watch half the television I watched when I was a kid. What a waste of time! Ooh, is Seinfeld on yet?