INPUT / … / … / Is there life after TV?

Has television degraded democracy? Has Western television undermined foreign cultures? Will television eliminate itself? Three serious questions are raised by three hilarious, wickedly imaginative programs. Drink Coke, vote Tory. In this United States election year, we start with sophisticated television marketing experts. Can stodgy, old-fashioned Labour ever win again? Does television effectively eliminate political choice? Television in Kuwait must strictly conform to Moslem law and custom. But so what? It hardly matters when every citizen owns at least one video cassette player and avidly watches Bruce Lee kung-fu movies, Clint Eastwood westerns and forbidden sex. There is a little left of the nomadic desert culture, and the glut of seductive Western television images numbs the contemporary Arab political imagination. How much passive consumption of television can we take, before we have nothing left but television? It’s 1984 and IT’S ALL TRUE has seen the future: We no longer just “watch” television; we are television.