E Unibus Pluram

So I just read “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” an essay written it the early nineties by David Foster Wallace. In it, Wallace writes about the pervasiveness of television in U.S. homes (citing evidence that a TV runs for six hours a day in an average household) and how that pervasiveness shapes modern fiction – and not in a good way.

But more importantly, Wallace argues that television’s ability to spread pop culture without restraint has created a new generation of writers who are constrained by a sense of cynicism and irony. This is because, Wallace writes, a fiction writer must be an honest voyeur of the human condition to create characters, plot and dialogue that are an accurate reflection of culture; television is an artificial sweetener, a poor substitute. Yet, that’s what today’s fiction writers use to observe, and work with to create. The end result is a copy-of-a-copy reflection of culture with an unmistakable “too cool for school” attitude.

Even more prescient is that Wallace takes this stance before the advent of reality television, which is about as insincere, ironic and cynical as it gets. I say “ironic” because what we’re seeing is supposed to be “real,” but everyone – everyone – knows it isn’t. Even when the cameras in a reality show are hidden – like Big Brother – nobody forgets they’re there. So what’s being said and done is really real at all.

Occasionally, media like “The Truman Show,” “Secret Cinema,” and even an old episode of The New Twilight Zone, “Special Service,”  (written by  J. Michael Straczynski, and starring the guy from “American Werewolf in London,” no less) play with this idea to an extent, “The Cable Guy,” take on this idea; that television is an ironic reflection of reality and that it would be a twisted person indeed whose socialization occurred entirely through television. Wallace argues that we’re all a bit twisted. His point is that true revolutionary writers would eschew pop culture references, inside jokes, self-deprecation, cynicism, and irony and write dangerously sincere works.

It’s an interesting idea, and reminds me a lot of a quote I heard Ben Harper say in an interview once that he’s never been afraid of being too sincere in his music; in fact, it’s when he’s not sure if he should put something in a song because it’s too personal, that he knows he’s writing well.

Along the way, incidentally, Wallace discusses advances in HDTV and interactive television that make him seem at times prescient (for example, his ideas that television will become more personal and specialized as the viewer gains more options and control over playback) and a little shortsighted (for example, his arguments that the commercial will become obsolete after this control becomes commonplace).

Less incidentally, this essay was written before the internet, which distributes pop culture oh so much faster and more effectively; Wallace writes that the viewer will “create their own reality” through interactive media. Combine that with hundreds of channels and a niche market opens up for exactly the sort of sincerity and depth Wallace demands of his revolutionaries. Web sites such as postsecret and futureme allow people to make what appears to be achingly sincere media, albeit anonymously. As a true interactive medium, the internet allows people to be sincere, but with training wheels; they can walk away from the keyboard and let an internet romance die, or they can be one of the thousands of internet couples married in real life. I remember when an internet romance was stigmatized; like many such stigmas, it’s at the single-eyebrow-raising level and fading fast.

Three of the most popular television dramas of the last few years are an example: “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” and “Breaking Bad” all feature protagonists that face serious ethical issues on a near constant basis – and often make decisions that the viewer simply would not make.

Nevertheless, as I admit earlier, even “Breaking Bad” – a show so stunningly well-plotted that it has caused me to pause the DVR and have a breakout discussion of what I might do were I in the main character’s shoes – is a copy of a copy. Dialogue is always snappier than a real-person conversation. Life is rarely episodic, and even when it is, it is only so upon reflection. There is no 30-second skip when life drags. People go to the bathroom. Etc. Wallace’s main point – that artists should risk embarrassment and ridicule by the blinded-by-ironic-media masses and choose sincerity – is not lost today. If nothing else, it should be read by artists to remind them that, to the extent they build their art on the socialization fed to them by TV, their art can only reach a certain level and go no farther.

When Curtis Granderson slipped and fell in centerfield during game four of the 2006 World Series, essentially rendering my tickets to game six of that series useless, I fell to the floor, pounded it, and did not get up for half an hour. It was, in effect, a temper tantrum. It remains the worst feeling I’ve ever had watching television that didn’t involve live coverage of a natural or man-made disaster in which people were injured or killed. (Tigers fans may argue that the bunts to the pitcher during that series were, in fact, such disasters).

As bad as that feeling was, it really was a copy-of-a-copy of the breakups, funerals and disappointments in my life.

As Wallace points out, more or less: TV can make you laugh, cry and kiss six hours a day goodbye, but you have to actually talk to people to get your heart broken.

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