Televisionization: Enactments of TV Experiences in Novels from 1970 to 2010

Abstract

TV´s conquest of the American household in the period from the 1940s to the 1960s went hand in hand with critical discussions that revolved around the disastrous impact of television consumption on the viewer. To this day, watching television is connected with anxieties about the trivialization and banalization of society. At the same time, however, people appreciate it both as a source of information and entertainment. Television is therefore both and:´ entertainment and anxiety; distraction and allurement; companionship and intrusion. When the role and position of television in culture is ambiguous, personal relations with, attitudes towards, and experiences of television are equally ambivalent, sometimes even contradictory, but the public and academic discourses on television tend to be partial. They focus on the negative impact of television consumption on the viewer, thereby neglecting whatever positive experiences one might associate with it. By analyzing a selection of novels, this study explores how narrative texts which are published between 1970 and 2010 enact ambiguous TV experiences, and how they, by doing so, enrich the public and academic discourses on television. It argues that the chosen works do both: they encourage and discourage the readers to experience what is here suggested to be called televisionization of everyday life without prejudice.