ISBN 978-91-7447-979-9 Department of English Doctoral Thesis in English at Stockholm University, Sweden 2014 Claudia W eber Television ization Televisionization Enactments of TV Experiences in Novels from 1970 to 2010 Claudia Weber Claudia Weber pursued her doctoral studies both at Stock- holm University, Sweden and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany. She is now employed at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany where she works in higher education didactics. T e l e v i s i o n i z a t i o n : E n a c t m e n t s o f T V E x p e r i e n c e s i n N o v e l s f r o m 1 9 7 0 t o 2 0 1 0 Claudia Weber Televisionization Enactments of TV Experiences in Novels from 1970 to 2010 Claudia Weber © Claudia Weber, Stockholm University 2014 ISBN 978-91-7447-979-9 Printed in Sweden by Stockholm University Press, Stockholm 2014 Distributor: Department of English 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; compan- ionship 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 experi- ences, 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 “tel- evisionization of everyday life” without prejudice. Keywords televisionization, television culture, TV experiences, Tichi, teleconscious- ness, Deuze, media life, reality TV, validation, Baudrillard, hyperreality, telemorphosis Meinen Eltern Acknowledgements During the last years of writing my doctoral dissertation, I have been looking forward to writing this very last bit: the acknowledgements. I would not have been able to finish my work if it were not for some wonderful, inspiring, and supportive people that I have been lucky enough to encounter in this period of my life, a period which was of course challenging but also unique and enriching. As a member of the European PhD-Network ‘Literary and Cultural Stud- ies,’ which is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), I have had the privilege to pursue my PhD studies at two European universi- ties, Justus Liebig University in Giessen/Germany and Stockholm University /Sweden. I am grateful for all the support I have received from the represent- atives of both universities, first and foremost my wonderful supervisors, Greta Olson and Claudia Egerer. With their professional expertise, their ex- tensive knowledge, and their empathy they supported me in times of doubt and, sometimes, crisis. They discussed my ideas with me on an eye-to-eye- level, believed in me as a young scholar, and encouraged me whenever I found it hard to do so myself. I had the opportunity to work with and learn from two inspiring and extraordinary women. Claudia, Greta, I am grateful for your unconditional support and for your faith in me and my project; I could not have wished for better supervisors than you. As a member of the International Graduate Center for the Study of Cul- ture (GCSC) at Justus Liebig University Giessen, the International PhD Pro- gramme ‘Literary and Cultural Studies’ (IPP) and the European PhD- Network ‘Literary and Cultural Studies’ (PhD-Net), I have been lucky enough as to write my doctoral dissertation in an excellent, international, thought-provoking, professional, and altogether friendly academic environ- ment. I am indebted to quite an impressive number of people, all of whom contributed to my project in different but equally valuable ways. I will start the journey of gratitude where everything started for me, at the GCSC in Giessen, and then move to Stockholm University where I had the honor to be employed as a doctoral student in the second part of my time as a young researcher. I would like to thank Ansgar Nünning, Director of Graduate Studies at the GCSC and initiator of the PhD-Net, who encouraged me to do a PhD and supported me greatly in many respects throughout the years. I would also like to thank the GCSC, the IPP, and the PhD-Net for the support I received as a member, be it financially, academically, or personally. I profited greatly from the meetings with the doctoral students in the IPP IX Postgraduate Col- loquia and the stimulating feedback I received from Ansgar Nünning, Wolf- gang Hallet, Robert Vogt, and Christine Schwanecke. The possibility to dis- cuss my ideas in Greta Olson’s colloquium, which I appreciated for its open, warm, and thought-provoking atmosphere, proved equally invaluable. Even more so, I am grateful for the time and thoughts the following PhD-Net members invested in reading and discussing my work: Ansgar Nünning, Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, Angela Locatelli, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Isabel Cape- loa Gil, Claudia Egerer, Heta Pyrhönen, Ingo Berensmeyer, and Nora Berning. This is, of course, also true for my fellow PhD-Net students – Angi, Tilly, Nina, Fabí, Polina, Bea, Elise, Matti, Gül, Jonas, and Lisa – whose support was not limited to academic discussions. As for the PhD-Net, I would like to dedicate my last words of gratitude to Kai Sicks, coordinator of the program at the time, who supported us, the doctoral members, in aca- demic and organizational regards. Kai, I am convinced that I would not have been able to finish this project without you, my colleague, mentor, and friend. This journey of gratitude is now taking me up to the North. I had the priv- ilege of spending the most wonderful time at the English Department of Stockholm University where I was cordially received and felt at home im- mediately. The eye-opening and enriching discussions with my colleagues in the Higher Literary Seminars have been an invaluable support and encour- aged me to trust my judgment as a young scholar. I am particularly grateful to Paul Schreiber for his extraordinary dedication and support. My time in Stockholm would not have been such a great experience without my ‘room- ie’ and very good friend Hannah who took care of me in the final stages. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank yet another amazing wom- an who helped me solve my practical problems and made living in Stock- holm so easy for me. Ingrid, I will always remember your hospitality, your extraordinary support, and of course laughing with you. Cecilia Tichi also deserves my sincere gratitude. The brilliant thoughts she articulates in Electronic Hearth inspired me immensely. She even did me the honor of acting as my opponent in my mock disputation at Stockholm University. There are no words that can give justice to her commitment and her invaluable feedback. Looking back at my time as a doctoral student makes me realize that old friendships have lasted and new have begun. I would like to thank Angi, Fabí, Polina, and Judith, for whose qualified feedback and emotional support I could not be more grateful, and Lisa, Franzi, and Yasmin for spending their precious time on assisting me. I am also indebted to Jenny and Ezra who proofread my thesis so carefully. Von ganzem Herzen möchte ich meinen Eltern danken, ohne deren be- dingungslose Unterstützung über all die Jahre ich diese Arbeit nicht hätte verfassen können. Ihr habt nie an mir gezweifelt und mir die nötige Sicher- heit gegeben das zu erreichen, was ich zu erreichen versuchte. Deshalb wid- me ich diese Arbeit euch. Finally, I would like to thank the person who accompanied me on this journey from the beginning to the end, even though that meant spending lots of time apart. He ensured clarity when I felt lost; motivated me when I had doubts; and felt happy for me when things progressed. Nils, your faith in me was the greatest encouragement I could have received. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Televisionization of Everyday Life ...................................... 29 Chapter 3: Dreading the Human Adaptation to Television: Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (1970).......................................................................... 81 Chapter 4: Living TV Life in Times of Indetermination: Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) ................................................................................. 103 Chapter 5: The End of Reality and the Disappearance of Fear: Ben Elton’s Dead Famous (2001) and Chart Throb (2006) ................................... 131 Chapter 6: Anxieties Reloaded and Fears Overcome: Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010) ................................................................................ 161 Chapter 7: Final Conclusion ............................................................ 183 Works Cited .................................................................................. 199 Abbreviations BT CT DF GO R TC WN Being There (1970) Chart Throb (2006) Dead Famous (2001) Going Out (2002) Room (2010) The Circle (2013) White Noise (1985) 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Today, television is both dispensable and ubiquitous. It is both a medium long replaced by other media technologies and one of the most important media we have. Television is both attraction and anxiety; it is both appreci- ated and condemned. In times, then, when the role and position of television in culture is ambiguous, personal relations with, attitudes towards, and expe- riences of television are equally ambivalent, sometimes even contradictory. But then again, has this not been the case right from the start? TV’s con- quest of the American household in the period from the 1940s to the 1960s went hand in hand with critical discussions, with these discussions revolv- ing, first and foremost, around the disastrous impact of television consump- tion on the viewer. To this day, watching television is connected with anxie- ties about the trivialization and banalization of society. At the same time, however, people appreciate it both as a source of information and entertain- ment. In the so-called post-TV era,1 critics and scholars alike consider quali- ty TV2 to be an art form comparable to literary elite fiction. Renowned tele- vision scholars like Robert J. Thompson speak of series such as The Sopra- nos as something that “went beyond anything imaginable in the old network era in terms of content, narrative complexity, language and lots more” 1 Like Milly Buonanno (11), for instance, I think of the era of television as the second half of the twentieth century and the post-TV era as the period following that. Although it is of course impossible to pinpoint a date when the age of television ends and the post-TV era begins, scholars usually agree that there is a significant turning point at the end of the 1990s (see Robert J. Thompson’s preface to the volume Quality TV: Contemporary American Tele- vision and Beyond). The consensus that the post-TV era started approximately at the turn of the century is suggested by books entitled Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transi- tion by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson from 2004 or Television Studies after TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era by Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay from 2009. In the former, Spigel argues that there is “a new phase of television – the phase that comes after ‘TV’” (2); in the introduction to the latter, Turner and Tay summarize the many changes in TV from an international viewpoint: “Globalizing media industries, deregulatory . . . policy regimes, the multiplication and convergence of delivery platforms, the international trade in media formats, the emergence of important production hubs in new ‘media capitals’ outside the United States/United Kingdom/Europe umbrella (particularly in East Asia), and the frag- mentation of media audiences – as what were once national audiences slice up into more and more taste fractions – are all changing the nature of television: its content, its production, how and where it is consumed” (2). 2 As indicated by the slogan “It’s not TV. It’s HBO,” new forms of television are generally considered as high-quality entertainment that differs considerably from television of the TV era. 2 (xviii). Suggesting that we are now entering “the era of TV after TV,” Michele Hilmes argues that “television is becoming respectable, even ad- mired” (452). In reference to Charles McGrath, “respected literary figure and longtime editor of the New York Times Book Review,” Hilmes speaks of contemporary American television in terms of its rise as an art form and quotes the title and header of McGrath’s article that, in her opinion, “say it all:” “The Triumph of the Prime-Time Novel: More than movies, theater, or even in some ways books, television drama is a medium for writers. They use its power, weekly, to tell us how we live.” (Hilmes 453) According to McGrath, “TV is actually enjoying a sort of golden age” and is becoming a medium “for enlightenment” (qtd. in Hilmes 453). In order to demonstrate that McGrath is not the only critic who compares dramatic se- ries such as ER and Law and Order with novels by Charles Dickens, Hilmes refers to the author Steven Johnson, who compares the series 24 with George Eliot’s Middlemarch: Johnson describes a recent episode of 24 that in its 44 minutes of screen time contained, by his count, more than 21 central characters and 9 distinct but in- terweaving narrative threads, all dependent for their meaning on the viewer’s understanding of a complex set of details from previous episodes. He argues, like McGrath, that this level of diegetic elaboration comes far closer to a liter- ary classic like George Eliot’s Middlemarch than to the simplistic episodic television of yesteryear. (455)3 And yet, despite the quality TV-movement, the reality TV formats that con- tinue to emerge are time and again made responsible for the low standard of contemporary television. The president of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, for instance, is only one among many critics who condemns what he calls the loss of quality in German television (qtd. in Spiegel Online).4 Thus, television has always been an ambiguous (pop-)cultural phenomenon: it alienates and fascinates, educates and stultifies, is rejected and is valued – which is more true today than ever before. 3 Other authors and critics also draw attention to the narrative richness of American television series. In an article in the German magazine Stern, Hannes Ross reflects on what he calls the new forms of television which he compares with the social novel and which he thinks meet the standards of the cinema (Ross 116-17). In an interview by Richard Kämmerlings in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the authors Martin Kluger, Ulrich Pelt- zer, and David Wagner discuss whether such series already have the quality of the cinema and consider them to be as narratively rich as the novel (Kämmerlings n.p.). 4 Hilmes’ comment implies that this accusation is not necessarily specific to the German context: “In fact, American television, after years of being regarded as the global McDonald’s of media, has finally gotten some respect not only from its own critics . . . , but from other nations around the world” (465). 3 Literary fiction is a space where these highly ambivalent, often contradic- tory, if not to say paradoxical, relations to and experiences of the TV appa- ratus, televisual products, and the TV environment are articulated. Novels, according to the basic assumption of my study, disclose collective attitudes towards television, because they enact experiences with and perceptions of television in an environment in which television is both omnipresent and obsolete. By analyzing a selection of what I claim to be representative TV novels – Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (1970), Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985), Ben Elton’s Dead Famous (2001) and Chart Throb (2006), as well as Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010) – I aim to show that these literary works dramatize, produce, discuss, and enact the many contradictions individuals living with TV encounter in their everyday lives. I argue that the analysis of TV novels throws into sharp relief ambiguous and contradictory TV experi- ences to which the readers can connect. My study therefore starts with the question of how TV novels enact experiences of and relations to television in the TV environment. Using an inductive approach that positions the novels center stage, I attempt to demonstrate that TV novels inform both the read- ers’ personal TV experiences as well as the public and academic discourse on television. Approaching Ambiguous and Contradictory TV Experiences through Novels In the foreword of Milly Buonanno’s study The Age of Television: Experi- ences and Theories, Horace Newcomb calls her approach to TV a “‘both…and’ approach” (Newcomb qtd. in Buonanno 8). Acknowledging the different perspectives Buonanno adopts, he expresses his appreciation of her construction of a multi-dimensional theoretical map of television (7-9). Newcomb’s labelling of Buonanno’s approach brings to the fore something which is also true for how the selected novels enact TV experiences: they are full of contradictions and therefore ‘both…and.’ DeLillo’s White Noise, for instance, contrasts characters arguing that “TV is a problem only if you’ve forgotten how to look and listen” with others that consider TV “just another name for junk mail” (50). Donoghue’s Room opposes a child who would love to “watch TV all the time” to a mother who teaches him that “it rots our brains” (11). Kosinski’s Being There articulates complaints about televi- sion’s absorbing power, whereas Elton’s reality TV satires overlook the viewer in front of the television set, focusing instead on the viewer as a par- ticipant in a reality show. The novels are, in themselves, ‘both…and:’ they enact different sorts of TV experiences that seem to be inconsistent with one another. More than that, as a selection of fictional texts, the novels are both supportive and contradictory towards commonly expressed views in that discourse. Whereas Kosinski’s novel reinforces critics’ concerns over a 4 downfall of cultural values by offering an entirely negative portrayal of American TV society, Donoghue presents her readers with a world of en- chantment and ease. Moreover, as a selection, the novels both respond to and establish distance from one another. As I have just suggested, Being There and Room differ in their depictions of TV culture and their enactments of TV experiences, but they also agree upon many aspects, such as the collective fear that humans are slowly, but irresistibly turning into half human, half machine-like creatures. The ‘both…and-frame’ of the selection suggests that the attempt to come to terms with TV experiences is a highly complex and bemusing endeavor. A look at TV cultures worldwide confirms that contemporary television is characterized by seemingly opposing trends. While there are (still) com- plaints about the low quality of television and, due to that, the trivialization and banalization of society, scholars agree nevertheless that TV is (still) one of the world’s most powerful media for communication – despite the un- precedented expansion of the Internet (Thussu 2).5 Furthermore, people re- gard television either as a positive form of diversion, a friend, a family member, or, in contrast to that, a source of fear, which is why it is generally agreed that we had better consume it with care or not at all.6 Also, today, the conventional, conservative anxiety about television’s dangerous impact on the viewer seems to be outdated. Yet, new anxieties seem to have emerged that revolve around losing TV. Emma Brockes articulates concerns that the collective streaming of shows on devices other than television means an end of a shared culture where family members gather in the domestic setting 5 Underlining her argument, Daya Kishan Thussu writes: “The number of television sets in the world has more than tripled since 1980. . . . Industry estimates show that more than 2.5 billion people around the globe watch on average just over three hours of television a day, on more than 4,000 mostly private channels. Since visual images tend to cross linguistic and national boundaries relatively easily, television carries much more influence than other media, espe- cially in developing countries. . . . In Europe, television remains the primary provider of information for most people, according to a report on European television produced by the Open Society Institute (Open Society Institute, 2005)” (1-2). Unfortunately, Thussu draws on sources on the verge of being out of date, and she only refers to European television. Alt- hough Thussu’s argument is therefore vulnerable, I support her claim that TV still holds an exceptional position in today’s world. Taking the same stance, Volker Roloff argues that, despite the expansion of the Internet, TV is still the most important stage of and for society (18). Confirming this claim with regard to Finnish TV viewers, Jukka Kortti even goes as far as arguing that young people, who are believed to have dumped television for the Internet, watch TV more than ever (309). Television news especially is still considered as most trusted and most important source of information worldwide (Hill, Factual 8; Hill refers to an opin- ion poll conducted for the BBC in 2006). I therefore believe that Buonanno’s prediction from 2008 that “television is destined to remain paramount in the daily lives of many individuals in many and varied parts of the world” (32) remains true. 6 Interviews with television viewers conducted by David Gauntlett and Annette Hill attest to this claim. Based on the interview material, they confirm that television “can be a source of pleasure, providing companionship, especially for people who are living alone, and it can also be a source of anxiety, or guilt, creating tension in the domestic space” (110). http://www.theguardian.com/profile/emmabrockes 5 (n.p.). The fact that, in the post-TV era, people have started to look at televi- sion from a nostalgic angle (Brockes speaks of the decline of the “golden age of family togetherness,” n.p.) proves what Christian Von Tschilschke calls a tradition in cultural critics’ attitudes towards new media which are usually met with skepticism (37-38). It is rather paradoxical that the characteristics of television, that were criticized for so long, have started to be cherished now that new technologies are taking over its position and role in culture. Equally paradoxically, one can nowadays watch television without using it. People speaking about watching TV must nowadays anticipate the ques- tion of how and where they consume it. Do they sit in front of the good old TV set, or do they prefer the Internet and a technical device other than tele- vision? And can watching quality TV series still be considered as a form of television consumption if one puts a Blu-ray Disc into the laptop? More than that, television is both global and local.7 Arguing that, in times of globaliza- tion, “local, national or regional conditions are still powerful determinants” and that, despite the rise of digital media, “the ‘old’ media such as television remain dominant in most locations,” Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay draw attention to the fact that television (and thus television studies) in the post- TV era is far more complicated than ever (3).8 With regard to the novels’ ‘both…and-mindsets’ I will focus my analyses on the novels’ enactments of the characters’ various and often conflicting TV experiences. Early American TV novels from the 1940s and 1950s, like later novels from the 1970s and 1980s, focused on the threat of television and on issues such as surveillance and the invasion of TV into people’s pri- vate lives (Tichi, Electronic 130). Somewhat surprisingly, this is also the case with novels from the post-TV era. By expressing the same concerns as their ‘predecessors,’ these contemporary texts make it clear that such anxie- ties are long-established but unresolved. Thus, although the acculturation and naturalization9 of television appears complete, and although people are now directing concerns about such issues as public surveillance towards newer technologies and media, the fear of the power of television is still noticeable. Jeffrey Sconce is only one of the critics who supports this claim; as recently as at the turn of the millennium, he wrote that “television re- mains, even forty years after its introduction into the American home, a somewhat unsettling and alien technology” (qtd. in Buonanno 16). The tele- vision-phobia Sconce refers to is also articulated in recently published nov- els. Thus, despite their different historical and cultural contexts and their 7 See Buonanno’s overview of the seemingly opposing current developments of television which she conceptualizes as two different paradigms: imperialism vs. indigenization (chap. 6). 8 Sharing the same view as Turner and Tay, John Hartley refers to both the continuity and change of television in his article “Less Popular but More Democratic? Corrie, Clarkson and the Dancing Cru.” 9 Other scholars who have elaborated on TV’s acculturation, naturalization, and domestication include Buonanno; Postman (Amusing); Tichi (Electronic). https://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ProductList.php?viewby=author&lastname=Sconce&firstname=Jeffrey&middlename=&aID=376&sort= 6 generic diversity, the works selected for my study raise television-related questions that have occupied people’s minds in the TV era and, as the anal- yses will prove, continue to be pressing. They enact TV experiences that are emblematic of both the TV age and the post-TV age. The selection of TV novels responds to and nourishes what Neil Postman, one of the most prominent television critics of his time, complains about in the mid-1980s: that “television has gradually become our culture” (80; origi- nal emphasis).10 Today, Postman’s statement seems highly nostalgic, or does it? In the 1980s, it was representative of Western societies that – while still getting used to living with television – suffered from a fear of TV in which the medium had been “demonized” and provoked “worry, anxieties and dis- content” (Buonanno 16, 15).11 Condemning television for attacking literate culture and for directing knowledge and ways of knowing (Postman 86, 80), Postman expresses his regrets that, in a culture “whose information, ideas and epistemology are given form by television,” every subject of public in- terest and the public understanding of these subjects is shaped by the biases of television (28, 79). Speaking of “Our culture’s adjustment to the episte- mology of television,” Postman points out that TV is now “taken for grant- ed” and “accepted as natural” (81, 80). Postman’s representative critique of television in the 1980s draws attention to and cautions against the omnipres- ence of television which he perceives as an integral part of everyday life and thus as a threatening invasion.12 From a culturally pessimistic viewpoint that seems to be informed by crit- ics such as Postman, the selected novels express a television-phobia that 10 In reference to Postman, Manuel Castells also speaks of “the intellectuals[sic] frustration with the influence of television,” claiming that this frustration still dominates the social cri- tique of mass media (356). Knut Hickethier also remarks that the threatening obliteration of culture through television is an abiding topos in the discourse on television (192). 11 Tichi (Electronic) is able to demonstrate that all sorts of articles published in the TV era with headlines such as “Be Good! Television’s Watching” by Robert M. Yoder from 1949; “The Real Menace of TV” by Jane Whitbread and Vivian Cadden from 1954; “Oh, Mass Man! Oh, Lumpen Lug! Why Do You Watch TV?” by Wallace Markfield from 1968; or “The TV Addict” by Michael Tennesen from 1989 are indicative of the highly skeptical attitude towards television in the U.S. The fact that this attitude does not seem to have changed in times that are considered to be post-TV is proven by books such as Cheryl Pawlowski‘s Glued to the Tube: The Threat of Television Addiction to Today’s Family from 2000. 12 Other TV critics who argue (more or less) along the same lines as Postman are, as Kathrin Ackermann and Christopher F. Laferl point out, Theodor W. Adorno, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, or Botho Strauss (Vorwort 7). Ackermann and Laferl refer to these critics in order to underline their claim that “TV bashing” is still a commonplace of intellectuals within and outside of academia. This implies that they also recognize that this sort of TV-era critique is still practiced. Von Tschilschke even goes so far as to say that the hostile attitude towards television that critics such as Barthes or Deleuze express (he even speaks of their “intellectual contempt;” my translation) is one reason why (French) literary fiction deals with television only very hesitantly (36-38). http://www.google.se/search?hl=de&tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Cheryl+Pawlowski%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=4 7 responds to the invasion of television in all areas of human everyday life.13 The fear of the invasiveness of TV is, as the readings of the novels make clear, a human fear of the convergence of life with television. From the char- acters’ perspectives, the chosen works articulate a human angst related to the indistinguishability between what they perceive as ‘actual’ reality and the realities constructed and transmitted by TV. More than that, the characters’ anxieties pertain to the impact of television consumption on human con- sciousness, which dissolves into television and turns into “teleconscious- ness” (Tichi, Electronic); the privileged status of TV in a culture where tele- vision constitutes the point of reference for all kinds of human experience; and the collectively shared feeling that humans are slowly, but irresistibly, turning into machines and becoming “humachines” (Poster). However, although the selected novels enact this collective television- phobia, their portrayals of television and the TV environment, as well as their enactments of TV experiences, do not solely focus on the fear of TV’s invasiveness. The novels rather pinpoint that, in an environment in which TV is ubiquitous, the characters experience television in ambiguous ways. The chosen works depict characters in everyday life situations – in which television either plays a decisive or a minor role – who have difficulty in understanding television, who try to come to terms with themselves in rela- tion to television and who attempt but, in the end, fail to differentiate be- tween TV and ‘actual’ reality. Thus, on the one hand, the novels suggest that the characters fear, perhaps even condemn, TV’s invasiveness; on the other hand, however, they stress a state of ‘natural’ confusion unburdened by qual- itative judgments. By taking a closer look at the ways in which the charac- ters behave in relation to, as well as think and feel about TV, readers learn that the characters are not necessarily driven by fear, but that they are, simp- ly speaking, perplexed. The novels carry notions of anxiety and rejection, but they also attenuate these notions. By depicting characters at a loss to try and understand the roles and functions of television in culture, the ways in which they can relate to it, and how it affects them, the selected works also manage to disregard human anxieties. The feelings of uncertainty or sus- pense expressed through the characters are thus not unavoidably connected to notions of fear. Even more contradictorily, the chosen works also place emphasis on the characters’ positive experiences with television. Viewers cited in David Gauntlett and Annette Hill’s study appreciate TV’s entertaining presence: “TV is like a husband – you probably wouldn’t know what to do without one (42-year-old mother and freelance journalist); the best TV is like a good novel – totally absorbing and enriching (45-year-old female teacher)” (114). Just like these viewers, the characters turn to television to find reassurance 13 For further reading on the question of how people use television in everyday life, see Sil- verstone (Television); Gauntlett and Hill. For the more general question of how people use and integrate media in their everyday lives, see Pink; Tacchi. 8 and security. On top of that, the novels present characters that simply disre- gard television’s omnipresence in everyday life situations. Therefore, on the one hand, the novels propose that the characters cannot escape the invasive- ness of TV in all areas of life, thereby implying that, in order to live with television, one has to accept and, in the end, give in to it. These implications are, on the other hand, denied; in some instances, the characters experience their co-existence with television not as the necessary evil but as a natural- ized way of life. For example, the novels do not suggest that failing to dif- ferentiate between TV and such a thing as ‘actual’ reality is an unsolvable problem one has to fear. Instead, through the characters, they propose that failing to differentiate between different realities is a new sort of experience humans adapt to naturally. By indicating (to some extent) that the characters have not yet overcome the, by now, old concerns over TV’s invasiveness, the chosen novels rein- force the critique of television emblematic of the TV age. It is against this background that the characters’ indifference towards television, which some of the novels enact, constitutes one of the most vital findings of the analyses. Reading the selected novels in light of contemporary television and media theory makes clear that these works, as I will argue, anticipate a techno- cultural change currently under scrutiny, a change Mark Deuze calls “the disappearance of media.” Deuze argues that, today, people take television and other media for granted. They overlook its physical and mental presence and accept it as an integral element of their everyday life routines (“Media” 137). Portraying the ways in which humans adapt to a world in which televi- sion is ubiquitous, TV novels anticipate what media scholars like Deuze have started to pay attention to only recently. Therefore, from today’s per- spective, the novels’ enactments of how the characters experience TV’s nat- uralization can be understood as an anticipation of a new way of life I call ‘TV life’ and which Deuze, with regard to media in general, introduces as “media life” (“Media”). In fact, the novels do both: they bemoan the natural- ization of television and suggest that TV life is the new way of being. Television, Television Environment, Television Culture, and Television Experiences When talking about television, television environment, television culture, and television experiences it is necessary – and yet impossible – to define these terms in the context of my study. John Fiske, one of the leading experts in the field of television studies, starts the introduction to his seminal work Television Culture by saying “Any book about television culture is immedi- ately faced with the problem of defining its object. What is television? And, equally problematically, what is culture?” (1). Just like Fiske’s standard 9 work and, in fact, every piece of writing thematizing television culture, my study faces the difficulty of defining its subject matter.14 Television is: a commodity; a cultural agent; a text; a pop cultural medi- um; a machine or, more precisely, a late capitalist machine; an apparatus cum art form; a technological device; an empty technology; an economic and social institution, an ideological institution, and a cultural institution; a sign system and a financial system; an enormous industry; an environment; certi- fication; a network; sounds and images, fragments, a collection of discrete programs; a household appliance; a piece of furniture; a spectacle; a dissem- inator and definer of cultural atmosphere; a mechanism of transparency; cultural education; an intruder, a whipping boy, and a predator that is power- ful, manipulative, and hypnotic; a house pet, good company, a family mem- ber, and a provider of intimacy and friendship; a symbolizer of international- ism; social status, taste, and desire; a world maker; complex and paradoxical; and, simply speaking, what the audience makes of it.15 This list of approach- es to and experiences of television (which could be continued even further) demonstrates television’s complex nature, which makes defining it highly complicated, if not impossible. My study, however, is not interested in pos- sible ways of defining television. I rather focus on how the novels present the characters as perceiving, experiencing, and understanding television in their everyday lives. I will therefore adopt what Buonanno calls “a phenom- enological and human-centric perspective” (13), which focuses on human experiences with and through television, and I explore its potential through the perspectives of characters in TV novels that enact experiences in the TV environment. The idea of the TV environment refers to a private or collectively shared cultural space in which television plays a decisive or a minor role, or where it is, to allude to Kosinski’s Being There, ‘just there.’ The term TV environ- ment is informed by the simple fact that, since TV’s conquest of the house- hold in the 1940s, people’s surroundings have been imbued with television, which is either in the center of interest or constitutes an entity whose pres- ence is neglected.16 Inspired by Cecilia Tichi, I would like to use the term environment to evoke the notion of television as an encompassing surround- ing earmarked by a variety of social attitudes (Electronic 3, 6). The term television culture, then, refers to the more general idea that in American culture and other cultures worldwide television has been a constitutive ele- ment ever since its emergence. Western cultures, that is to say “our histori- 14 TV scholars and critics alike have frequently pointed out the difficulty of coming to terms with television both as an object of study and a cultural phenomenon. See, for instance, Buo- nanno 27; Ellis 2; Fiske and Hartley 16; Gitlin 3, 4. I feel Postman’s claim from 1993 that “we have yet to learn what television is” (Amusing 165), is therefore still true today, perhaps even more so than ever. 15 See Arlen; Dienst; Fiske; Fitzpatrick; Kaplan; Newcomb; Tichi; Wallace. 16 In 1988, Mark Crispin Miller observes that TV is everywhere and has itself become the environment (8). 10 cally produced systems of beliefs and codes” (Castells 357), is according to my underlying assumption, shaped by television.17 I use the term (and idea of) television culture in the singular, not the plu- ral because the novels force me to. The selected works refer primarily to the American cultural context and therefore American television. As a Polish immigrant to the U.S., Kosinski uses his in-between position to write – and complain – about American culture and politics. DeLillo’s White Noise is also undoubtedly situated in American culture. Elton, an author with dual British/Australian citizenship, satirizes British and American versions of travelling reality TV formats.18 Donoghue’s Room offers a number of hints that the novel is located in an American context.19 Moreover, the novels I briefly refer to in the conclusion of my study, Scarlett Thomas’ Going Out from 2002 and Dave Eggers’ The Circle from 2013, also invite their readers to situate the stories in American TV culture.20 As the chosen novels are primarily situated in and concerned with American television culture, I will draw heavily on secondary literature about American television. I will con- sider and refer to secondary texts about TV in other national and cultural contexts if their findings apply to the novels under discussion. My procedure suggests that many of my theoretical observations and results can be general- ized with regard to TV experiences that readers from around the world can re-experience and identify with.21 17 I follow Castells who argues (with regard to media communication in general) that new technological systems fundamentally transform (Western) culture, as culture is mediated and enacted through communication (357). 18 Despite being adapted to national and local conditions, the formats Elton’s novels satirize share the same core features. Hilmes, for instance, considers such reality TV formats as “the first truly transnational TV forms” (429), and I agree. I am therefore convinced that the find- ings of the satires’ analyses will be the ones one can most easily generalize with regard to the American context and other TV cultures. 19 The text mentions American animated TV series such as Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Backyardigans (R 10-11, 29). It also refers to the American movie The Great Escape (95). Furthermore, the American setting becomes obvious when the characters talk about American currency (264-65). 20 Thomas’ Going Out is set in Britain, but when it comes to television, it refers mostly to American TV. Eggers’ The Circle is set in California and clearly refers to the American con- text. 21 If one attempts to find answers to the question of why TV experiences can very often be generalized with regard to viewers from all around the globe, there are many aspects one would have to bear in mind. One such issue is the dominance of American television in many parts of the world. Other arguments concern the connections between different TV cultures and (trans-) national television industries or the emergence of a global television market. In my study, however, I will not dwell on the much debated topic of the Americanization of television worldwide. I will neither discuss the idea of the rise of global television nor wheth- er one should think about the international influence of American television in terms of media imperialism or colonization. My reason for focusing primarily on American TV is the novels’ situatedness in, and their strong links to, American TV culture. For further reading on the topics just addressed, see, for instance, Havens; Parks and Kumar; Sinclair. 11 I do acknowledge, however, that the chosen novels differ considerably in some respects, and the authors’ different national and cultural backgrounds are but one reason. Firstly, the fictional works were published within a time span of four decades and thus in different historic moments (from Being There, published in 1970, to Room, published in 2010); in my analyses, I intend to respond to this factor. The novels also differ with regard to generic ascriptions, for they range from standard works (White Noise) to popular literature (Dead Famous and Chart Throb). The topic of television is, on top of that, either pivotal (Dead Famous and Chart Throb) or secondary (Room). And yet, despite these differences, they touch upon similar themes, depict and discuss similar phenomena, use similar images, evoke similar ideas, express a similar critique, and enact similar TV experiences. The novels’ enactments of TV experiences through the characters are therefore compara- ble. It is due to these similarities and intersections that I consider the selected works to enact TV experiences in a way that American readers, but also readers from around the world, can re-experience. By TV experiences, then, I mean the characters’ experiences of, with, and through television in an environment where television is an integral part of everyday life. The term ‘experience’ encompasses the characters’ percep- tions and their understanding of, as well as relationships with and attitudes towards, television. I do not wish to limit my analyses to the novels’ repre- sentations and imitations of perceptual processes, nor do I intend to restrict the analyses to the ways in which the texts present the characters’ opinions on television. Working with the concept of TV experiences enables me to consider the complex enactments the narrative texts offer with regard to the characters’ everyday lives of, with, and through television. Theoretical Implications and Considerations When I speak of the novels’ potential or capacity to articulate a critique that they at the same time question, enrich, or perhaps even subvert, I am in- spired by Winfried Fluck’s elaboration on the functions of literature in Das kulturelle Imaginäre (The Cultural Imaginary). Based on his conviction that whenever we speak about literature we also implicitly talk about its func- tions, he claims that literary fiction operates as a mode of communication that allows for tentatively transcending particular situations in life (13-14). Fluck’s idea to regard literary fiction as a test ground for actual life experi- ences is in line with my understanding of the novels’ capacity to respond to the public discourse on television and enact TV experiences to which readers can relate. My approach to the potential (or function) of literature corre- sponds with approaches such as Kai Sicks’ in his investigation of sports novels. Sicks considers the novels to be engaged in the cultural problems of their epoch in order to negotiate, hold certain positions, and point out cultur- ally significant contexts (10, 16). Sharing the same conviction, Tichi bases 12 her approach to television culture on the belief that cultural artifacts both shape consciousness and reflect that shaping, and that they, by doing so, disclose the social construction of TV (Electronic 7). What is more, I hold the position that the selected novels enlighten their readers with regard to their own TV experiences. Through the novels’ enactments of experiences of, with, and through television, and through the representations of the char- acters’ attitudes towards television, the texts bring to the fore the ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical experiences television and the TV environ- ment facilitate. Kathrin Ackermann and Christopher F. Laferl also proclaim the capacity of novels to point out culturally significant contexts and voice a critique of TV culture. They consider fictional narratives as contributors to, and having affinities with, discussions on the value of television led by philosophy and cultural studies (Vorwort 8).22 Ackermann and Laferl, as well as the contrib- utors to their volume Transpositionen des Televisiven: Fernsehen in Litera- tur und Film (Transpositions of the Televisual: Television in Literature and Film; my translation), approach novels with the acknowledgement that they reflect on TV culture critically, thereby taking part in interdisciplinary dis- cussions on the value, functions, and roles of television in culture. Holding the same view, I will show that the portrayals of TV culture in these novels, and their enactments of TV experiences, respond to the by now well-known lamentations about television’s invasiveness voiced by critics worldwide. More than that, however, I will demonstrate that the novels’ depictions of television culture and enactments of TV experiences are more differentiated and multifaceted than suggested in the academic and public discussions to which Ackermann and Laferl refer. I argue that TV novels represent and shape the critical and condemning public discourse on television, but I also recognize that they do more than simply repeat or affirm established opin- ions. The chosen novels question and enlighten these discussions, and they re-evaluate statements which seem to prevail through their multifarious en- actments of TV experiences.23 Due to the privilege of literary fiction to in- herit an observational position and function (Von Tschilschke 34), TV nov- 22 Holding the same view, Von Tschilschke speaks of literature as an observer (34). He em- phasizes the multiple intersections between the literary and non-literary, in addition to schol- arly-academic discourses, and provides examples of novels anticipating and reacting to the public discourse on TV (52, 41). In reference to Jürgen Link’s understanding of literature as an inter-discourse, Von Tschilschke bases his observations on the belief that literature has the potential to present media-relevant problems in particular, concrete, personalized, condensed, and ambivalent forms (54). 23 In the analysis of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La télévision from 1997, Von Tschilschke argues that the novel implicitly quotes media-theoretical positions such as McLuhan’s, Viril- io’s, Baudrillard’s, Postman’s, or Bourdieu’s (46). With regard to the novels explored in my study, I would like to suggest that they not only implicitly allude to these critics’ positions, as suggested by Von Tschilschke; rather, they question, challenge, and further elaborate on them. 13 els highlight issues that the academic and public discourse on television has so far, for the most part, neglected. In order to investigate how the selection of texts simultaneously responds to and questions the critique of television that is typical of the TV age, I need to refer to the television theory and criticism of the TV era. From a culturally pessimistic angle, the novels represent, engage with, and produce what I call a television-phobia emblematic of the TV age. The skepticism towards tele- vision and its outright denunciation by critics, among whom Postman is only one of many, is echoed in the novels’ critical portrayals of TV culture. Alt- hough TV novels might be informed by this cultural pessimism, and are considered as affirming it, they also distance themselves from this critique. I will therefore delineate the negotiation between TV novels and the academic and public discourse on television to detect the ambiguities and contradic- tions of TV experiences that are enacted in the novels and largely disregard- ed in the academic and public discourse. But what about the novels pub- lished in the post-TV era? I will argue that they respond, at least to some extent, to the cultural pessimism in ways similar to novels of the 1970s and 1980s. Accordingly, I will also read them in the light of the theory and criti- cism of the TV era. As suggested earlier, however, I will also read the novels against the background of cutting edge television and media theory. Doing so not only helps to demonstrate that the earlier novels anticipate current theoretical discussions, but also helps to acknowledge and analyze those facets of the selected works that would otherwise remain undiscovered. It would therefore be fatal if the perspective taken on the novels was limited to their most obvi- ous feature: the collective fear of TV’s invasiveness. More than that, as some of the novels are published after the so-called end of the TV era, it is crucial for me to also consider ongoing discussions. Despite the fact that these nov- els also express the television-phobia of the TV age, their more ambivalent take on contemporary television, TV-related cultural phenomena, and their more differentiated enactments of TV experiences must be acknowledged. The ‘both…and-mindset’ therefore also concerns my theoretical and meth- odological handling of the chosen novels. I will both contextualize them in the history of television and open up space to let the novels speak for them- selves. This selection of novels sometimes prompts me to adopt a diachronic perspective that considers the many changes of television. At the same time, however, the selection demonstrates an unavoidable sense of continuity which I cannot ignore. As far as the most recent developments of television are concerned, the focus will be on the emergence and spread of reality television as one of the most dominant contemporary television phenomena – a focus again enforced by the novels. Interestingly enough, all the selected novels – from Being There to Room – address issues that I am able to investigate against the background of topical discussions on reality TV and, in relation to that, ce- lebrity culture. The TV experiences under scrutiny concern the realization of 14 a convergence of life and TV on different levels that affects ideas and con- ceptions of life, reality, self, and what it means to be human.24 In order to comprehend and analyze the novels’ enactments of such TV experiences, I will refer to Jean Baudrillard’s theorization – if one wants to call it a theori- zation – of the “hyperreal.” Baudrillard’s claim that reality has turned into hyperreality is part of his argumentation in Symbolic Exchange and Death (originally published in French in 1976), and he continued to develop this idea throughout his oeuvre. The formula “dissolution of TV in life, dissolu- tion of life in TV” is articulated in Simulacra and Simulation (originally published in French in 1981) and again picked up in his social critique in Telemorphosis (originally published in French in 2001). In the success of the reality TV format Big Brother, Baudrillard sees further proof that we live in a hyperreal world in which life and TV are merging. As for the novels’ anal- yses, these Baudrillardian ideas help to explain how the characters experi- ence everyday life of, with, and through television. His findings prove bene- ficial when it comes to grasping the characters’ state of confusion and their indifference to television. As for the theoretical investigations and considera- tions, Baudrillard’s cultural diagnoses help to give reasons for the human fear of television, but referring to these Baudrillardian thoughts also helps to explain that there is nothing to be afraid of. More often than not, critics consider Baudrillard’s observations to be driven by nostalgia and technophobia. Whereas I fully agree that Baudrillard is nostalgic, I am hesitant to call him a technophobe. I would therefore like to advocate a more differentiated and unreserved approach to Baudrillard’s TV-related cultural diagnoses, which admittedly have a nostalgic flavor. Baudrillard’s observations of his cultural surroundings and his efforts to understand techno-cultural phenomena express the well-known human anxi- ety about technological progress. His thoughts are therefore very much in line with what I think of as the typical, dismissive critique of TV that critics such as Postman express. In contrast to simply denunciating TV, however, Baudrillard’s writing on television culture is not only a lamentation; it is a way of coming to terms with and trying to explain his TV experiences in an environment of dissolution. In short: whereas Postman’s critique is primarily driven by an inner urge to defend humankind against the invasiveness of television and its cultural power, my reading of Baudrillard is that his writ- ing is primarily driven by an inner urge to comprehend what he, like Post- man, experiences as a frightening development. I think it is important here to elaborate on my impressions of Baudrillard’s writing, as it is my aim to make a small but necessary contribu- tion to working with, questioning, and further developing Baudrillard’s ob- servation that Western cultures are characterized by technologies that have 24 With regard to media in general, Deuze claims: “Over the last few decades, the key catego- ries of human aliveness and activity converged in a concurrent and continuous exposure to, use of, and immersion in media” (Media x). 15 an impact on how one perceives, experiences, and understands the world. His theorization of the dissolution of life into television and television into life is the starting point for my argumentation. I consider TV novels to dramatize these Baudrillardian claims and to enact the human experience of living in a hyperreal environment. However, the novels’ ambiguous and contradictory portrayals of TV culture and their enactments of TV experi- ences also make clear that the characters do not necessarily perceive the convergence of TV with the so-called ‘actual’ reality in terms of fear. The novels’ enactments of TV experiences rather highlight feelings of confusion and indifference. They propose that humans and technologies such as televi- sion organically adapt to one another, and that this naturalization and human adaptation to television does not necessarily connect with human reservation and denunciation. I aim to keep developing Baudrillard’s theorization in the sense that one can describe the dissolution of life into television and televi- sion into life in more neutral terms. Disconnecting the idea of the hyperreal from nostalgia and using it in an unbiased way helps to understand what the novels suggest through the characters: that the human fear of television is slowly being replaced by indifference. One also becomes aware of this notion in Baudrillard’s writing, although it has remained largely disregarded. When Baudrillard, as he does through- out his oeuvre, uses terminology from the natural sciences (such as ‘meta- morphosis’ and ‘osmosis’ when he suggests that society has been “telemor- phosized,” Telemorphosis 48) to investigate the dynamics between techno- logical progress and socio-cultural processes, he indicates that such devel- opments are somewhat natural, organic, and evolutionary. The focus on the technophobic flavor of Baudrillard’s argumentation, from a perspective that sees Baudrillard as a nostalgic, has had the effect of critics having so far neglected other important implications of his techno-cultural attestations (as non-denunciations). It is not least through the readings of the selected novels and their contradictory enactments of TV experiences that Baudrillard’s observations can be read in a new light. Although referring to Baudrillard’s thought helps to approach television experiences through the lens of TV novels, it also leaves open many ques- tions. How, for instance, does the total telemorphosis of society (Baudrillard, Telemorphosis 28) affect the characters in their everyday lives? And how do they experience life in an environment of hyperreality? Since Baudrillard’s cultural diagnoses are largely too abstract to give answers to such ques- tions,25 I consider it necessary to combine them with approaches to TV cul- ture that are more example-oriented. I will therefore bring together Baudrillard’s TV-related generalizations with elaborations such as those Tichi makes in her seminal study Electronic Hearth: Creating an American 25 Baudrillard’s abstract thinking has been criticized widely. Nick Couldry, for instance, suggests that Baudrillard’s “extreme generalisation” should be “opened up to empirical work” (29). 16 Television Culture. Tichi’s study delineates the many ways in which televi- sion affects people living in a TV-saturated environment, thereby also show- ing in which ways these interactions, in turn, create TV culture. By connecting Tichi’s research with discussions in contemporary media studies, I will be able to highlight the important implications of her 1991 study. I intend to show that the ongoing relevance of Tichi’s arguments – for instance, that consciousness may have turned into “teleconsciousness” (Elec- tronic, chapter 5) and that humans may have started to live not only with, but through television (137) – is enacted in the selected novels. I also aim to make clear that Tichi’s findings on TV culture and, more precisely, TV ex- periences anticipate claims recently made by Deuze: that contemporary life is, in fact, media life (“Media,” Media). I will therefore bring together the theory and criticism of the TV age with contemporary media studies. By doing this, I will be able to elaborate further on the Baudrillardian claim that the telemorphosis is total, and pinpoint the relevance of this techno-cultural observation in the context of today’s media-saturated world as portrayed in the chosen novels. Literary Review An overwhelming amount has been said and written about television culture since TV’s invasion of the household in the middle of the twentieth century. The number of texts that focus on the literary-fictional contribution to these discussions, however, is rather limited.26 Tichi’s Electronic Hearth from 1991 is one of the few direct contributions to this subject matter. Aiming to retrace the assimilation of television as a new technology in American cul- ture (6), Tichi draws on such diverse cultural material as cartoons, short sto- ries, novels, advertisements, and journalistic articles, so as to demonstrate how these different texts and artifacts have shaped what she calls the “TV environment.” Since “The environment cannot speak for itself but must be spoken for and about” (4), Tichi argues for the decisive role of cultural texts in representing and, by doing so, shaping TV culture. Based on the hypothe- sis that television has been imbued with socio-cultural meanings by these texts, Tichi claims that they not only represent but, indeed, constitute the American TV environment (7). Tichi reverts to a variety of cultural texts – as interpretive texts in the wider sense of the term – and artifacts, and it is this variety that strengthens her argumentation. At the same time, however, the compilation of a corpus 26 Julika Griem also argues that “The history of television’s interplay with literature . . . has been given less attention than the relations between literature and photography or the success- ful ménage between literature and the movies” (465). Griem’s observation from 1996 is in my opinion still true today. I therefore agree with Von Tschilschke’s claim that the thematic or formal-structural references to television in literature, and especially the potential of literary fiction to operate as an observer of TV culture, is still a neglected research interest (31). 17 of such heterogeneous cultural material implies that the particular ways in which the different sources shape and represent TV culture are somewhat neglected. Although this does in no way interfere with Tichi’s overall argu- mentation, her work leaves open questions my study is interested in investi- gating, questions directed specifically at the novels’ capacity to critically reflect on television culture and enact TV experiences. Whereas Tichi’s work argues for the potential of diverse cultural texts to shape the TV envi- ronment and not only reflect that shaping, I consider this interrelatedness as a given. The focus of my study is instead on how TV novels bring into visi- bility the ambiguities and contradictions of TV experiences through the characters’ perspectives. My study also aims to investigate how the selected narrative texts enact unbiased TV experiences. Through their enactments, they both anticipate and reject discussions on the human adaptation to TV as an evolutionary process. Irmela Schneider’s German contribution “Fernsehen in der zeitgenö- ssischen Literatur” (“Television in Contemporary Literature;” my transla- tion) from 1988 is one of the earlier articles attempting to systematize the engagement of novels with TV culture. First and foremost, her study is based on the observation that literary fiction in the TV era is more and more con- cerned with television.27 Claiming that writers attempt to come to terms with their experiences in TV culture through writing (168), she makes clear that writers integrate TV in literary fiction in different ways: in the fictional world, for instance, protagonists can either directly or indirectly be influ- enced by TV, or TV can operate as a symbol (158-61). In the 1980s, these observations might have been illuminating. From today’s viewpoint, they are of course dated. Schneider’s indication that the authors’ take on television is usually negative and highly satirical (158, 168), however, resonates with my claim that TV novels offer a critique of TV culture, thereby responding to human concerns emblematic of the TV age. Like Schneider, Tichi provides an article that acknowledges the themati- zation of television in literary fiction. In “Television and Recent American Fiction,” published in 1989 and thus before the publication of Electronic Hearth, she limits her sources to the genre of the novel. Distinguishing be- tween pre-TV and TV-era writers, Tichi argues for the “ubiquitousness of TV in novels” (111) and demonstrates how television “now makes its pres- ence felt in the very structure of fictional narrative” (110). In this contribu- tion, in which Tichi retraces what could be called a first approach to a liter- ary-fictional outline of the public discourse on television, she focuses on TV’s formal impact on American fiction.28 My study acknowledges the im- 27 Castells writes that, at that time, “the best-seller lists . . . became filled with titles referring to TV characters or to TV-popularized themes” (358). Unfortunately, he does not provide any examples that would support this statement. 28 Tichi analyzes, for instance, how fiction enacts the experience of TV as a continuous flow (119). 18 pact of TV on narrative form, structure, and style, but I am not primarily interested in these interdependencies. Nevertheless, despite her focus on narrative form, structure and style, Tichi acknowledges that the thematiza- tion of TV in novels is “an index of the spread of the technology in . . . Unit- ed States history” (111). Proposing that television should be considered a legitimate subject matter in American fiction, she stresses the need to argue for the collective acknowledgement that both “literary and TV texts are con- junctive in the contemporary American consciousness” (113). She also un- derlines the urge to draw attention to what she calls “the battle lines” (112) between literature as a valued medium vs. TV as a non-valued medium29 and provides examples of the novels’ ambivalent portrayals of TV, which she, however, only ascribes to the generation gap (pre-TV-era vs. TV-era writ- ers). Obviously inspired by Tichi’s contributions, Peter Freese devotes two ar- ticles to the phenomenon of TV-era novels. In his analysis “Bret Easton El- lis, Less than Zero: Entropy in the ‘MTV Novel’?” from 1990, Freese is interested in form, structure, and narrative style.30 At times, he touches upon the cultural environment of a generation growing up with MTV and hints at the critical potential of the novel – and thus on its reflection on the American television culture in the 1980s. His focus nevertheless remains on the narra- tive strategies that he claims are influenced by TV. However, in a later arti- cle entitled “‘High’ Meets ‘Low’: Popular Culture in Contemporary Ameri- can Literature” from 1994, Freese demonstrates that “the ‘high’ medium of serious literature increasingly finds its raw material in the ‘low’ realm of popular media-made fantasies,” which is “a realm in which the country’s electronically disseminated mass culture is examined and evaluated” (“High” 79-80). There, Freese also places great emphasis upon how the nov- els negotiate a culture characterized by the increasing pervasiveness of tele- vision, claiming that “these stories are cultural landmarks that establish an epistemological horizon against which to negotiate shared meanings and come to terms with the world” (80).31 Analyzing “elite fiction” such as John Updike’s Rabbit-tetralogy,32 DeLillo’s White Noise, and Kurt Vonnegut’s 29 This dichotomy is, indeed, symptomatic for many scholars of that time interested in inves- tigating the role of TV in literary fiction. 30 Freese claims, for instance, that the 108 very short chapters of the novel are geared to the limited attention span of the characters and readers used to being exposed to the endless flow of TV, and that the use of the present tense responds to TV’s effect of immediacy (“High” 71- 72). 31 Bringing up this thought, which forms the basis for my study, Freese’s article is focused on the claim that “serious literature can no longer afford to disregard the ‘noisy’ material of mass culture” (“High” 97). Freese does point out that TV-era fiction addresses the characters’ changed perceptions of the world and themselves, and he does comment on the ways in which literary fiction dramatizes this change of human perception. However, since he limits his investigation to this article, an elaborate analysis of the novels’ enactments of such experienc- es is still pending. 32 Rabbit, Run (1960); Rabbit Redux (1971); Rabbit Is Rich (1981). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit,_Run http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Redux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Is_Rich 19 Cat’s Cradle (77), Freese illustrates that these works revolve around preva- lent issues, such as the changed perceptions of oneself and the world as dis- cussed by Baudrillard, or the phenomenon of the “human pseudo-event” as coined by Daniel J. Boorstin (76, 79). Freese achieves to offer an overview of American fiction dealing with television-related cultural phenomena, thereby joining Tichi in her attempt to delineate a literary history of the pub- lic discourse on TV. The questions that remain unresolved concern the close analysis of how these novels enact ambiguous and contradictory TV experi- ences. Like Tichi and Freese, Julika Griem retraces the peculiarities of pre-TV- era vs. TV-era fiction in her article “Screening America: Representations of Television in Contemporary American Literature” from 1996. Arguing that American fiction is “increasingly influenced, threatened, and inspired by television and its electronic heirs,” Griem observes that the “Literary repre- sentations of television during the 1960s and 70s count on the ‘otherness’ of the medium,” whereas fiction of the 1980s is “characterized by a greater ubiquity and acceptance of television” (465, 471). This observation creates the basis for my argument that the novels’ engagement with television cul- ture becomes more and more ambiguous over time. The only convincing example Griem offers, however, is one small passage of DeLillo’s White Noise. Her argument then gets lost in her acknowledgement that, in times of the acculturation of the computer (and, a little later, the Internet), American fiction not only refers to television but shifts its focus to newer technologies. This point, although most certainly important to mention, distracts Griem from putting more emphasis on her claim – and discussion of how – the rep- resentation of TV changes over time.33 She centers her argumentation on the observation that TV-era writers explore “how the medium gives way to more complex networks of communication technologies” (465). More than that, her claim that contemporary fiction shifts its focus to newer technologies is, in my view, untenable. Donoghue’s Room, for instance, and Thomas’ Going Out, to which I will refer in my final conclusion, both neglect the Internet and media devices other than television to a large extent. In Room, the Inter- net and computers are mentioned, but as a twenty-first century reader, one expects the novel to put the role of the Internet in the story more center stage. In Going Out, the Internet does play a major role, but it does not over- shadow the importance of television in the protagonist’s life. An approach to the subject matter slightly different from the aforemen- tioned is offered by David Foster Wallace in his widely known essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” from 1993. Arguing that Amer- ican fiction addresses prevalent, culturally significant questions such as 33 In the end of the article, Griem refers to Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, intending to call attention to its ambiguous portrayal of TV (480-81), but she does not address this ambiguity directly. By not doing so, Griem unfortunately fails to stress the point she claims to make: that novels of the 1980s are characterized by the acceptance of TV. 20 “What is it about televisual culture that we so hate? Why are we so im- mersed in it if we hate it so?” (157), he stresses the power of literary fiction to respond to television culture (172). Concentrating on a subgenre he calls “fiction of image,” which “uses the transient received myths of popular cul- ture as a world in which to imagine fictions about ‘real,’ albeit pop- mediated, public characters” (171; original emphasis), Wallace states that the novels do not simply use or mention televisual culture; they have, he makes clear, “a genuine socio-artistic agenda” that makes them respond to it (172). Considering TV-era fiction to be a response to TV culture is one of the basic assumptions of my argument. I claim that in the secure space of fictionality they are able to expose how the characters experience and come to terms with the ambiguities and contradictions they face in the TV environment. In the preface to the aforementioned and more recently published German volume from 2009, Transpositionen des Televisiven: Fernsehen in Literatur und Film, the editors provide an outlook on the contributions. According to their conclusion, the articles in their collection prove that literature tends to adopt a critical view towards TV, a view mostly negatively inflected (Vor- wort 10). Finishing their preface by stating that most of the works analyzed present a differentiated view on the medium, Ackermann and Laferl stress simultaneously that these views are still dominated by generalizing, negative judgments; positive assessments of television are, they agree, still missing (15). The differentiated views the contributions offer according to the editors are indeed missing – at least as far as the articles on TV in literature are con- cerned. According to my reading, these contributions support the claim that novels voice a typically dismissive critique of television. As for the latter claim that positive assessments of TV are still pending, my analyses of the selected novels show that their portrayals of TV culture and enactments of TV experiences are ambiguous and not altogether negative. One contribution in Ackermann and Laferl’s volume that I would like to highlight is Von Tschilschke’s “Literarische Fernsehbeobachtung in Frank- reich: Von Milan Kunderas La lenteur (1995) zu Jean-Philippe Toussaints La télévision (1997)” (“Literary TV-Observation in France: From Milan Kundera’s La lenteur (1995) to Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s La télévision (1997);” my translation). In this article, Von Tschilschke lists a few features which are, according to him, fundamental to the analysis of TV novels. Ar- guing that literature operates as an observer (34), he points to Kundera’s novel to show how novels express an extensive, radical, and consciously anachronistic cultural critique, which is focused on three main issues: the disappearing boundaries between intimacy and publicity, the public exploita- tion and aestheticization of morality, and a way of life that centers on hedon- ism and happiness (43). Irrespective of the fact that this list needs, in my view, further explanation, I aim to show that the novels’ critique of TV cul- ture is not limited to these three topics. Apart from that, Von Tschilschke detects a conventional, culturally pessimistic attitude towards television in Toussaint’s novel also, and he concludes that there are multiple intersections 21 between literary and non-literary, as well as scholarly-academic discourses (47, 52). My study will not limit itself to the observation that the chosen novels are in line with a non-literary critique á la Barthes, Bourdieu, or Postman. Rather, I will investigate how the novels challenge and enlighten these critical voices. All of these contributions are based on the observation that literary fiction reacts to the pervasiveness of television in culture34 – an observation that today appears trivial and that we take for granted. In 2014, critics and schol- ars have long attested to the ubiquity of television. Due to the expansion of the Internet and the huge variety of diverse technical devices, television and its omnipresence fall into oblivion. The emergence of ever new technologies in the so-called new media and digital media, along with the collective will to use them, have caused TV’s avant-garde-status to be superseded. In other words, television culture has opened up and turned into a multi-media and digital media culture, and the same discussions previously inspired by and centered on television are now evoked by and directed towards its successor technologies. As this study illustrates, television has long become a part of our contemporary cultural environment, which makes its presence in (liter- ary) fiction practically mandatory. In the same way humankind has long ago become used to having access to and being surrounded by the printed book, which was considered a groundbreaking, revolutionary invention by the end of the fifteenth century, humankind has become used to consuming and be- ing with television in everyday life. In a sense, references to and a critique of TV in novels seem hardly worth mentioning anymore, since the presence of the medium goes without saying. Questions should therefore not revolve around the fact that television has long ago become a subject matter in liter- ary fiction, but should address the question of how novels discuss TV culture and what kind of TV experiences they enact.35 Another aspect the above mentioned approaches have in common is the differentiation between pre-TV-era and TV-era novels. The scholars I listed manage to make clear that fiction writers who did not grow up with televi- sion experienced and evaluated its cultural pervasiveness in a different way to those who never knew what life without television was like, which is an issue that becomes noticeable in the narrative techniques and styles the au- thors apply. This finding gives support to the assumption that consuming and simply being with television in everyday life has a significant impact on how one perceives and experiences the world and thus oneself. Clearly, when 34 Another contribution whose essence is limited to this observation is Uwe Japp’s “Das Fernsehen als Gegenstand der Literatur/-wissenschaft” (“Television as a Subject Matter in Literature and Literary Studies;” my translation) from 1996. A contribution that takes this realization as a starting point is Dagmar Schmelzer’s “Jugendkultur und Fernsehkonsum in den Romanen der Spanischen Generation X” (“Youth Culture and Television Consumption in the Novels of the Spanish Generation X;” my translation) from 2009. 35 Yet, we should not forget that the novels analyzed here both support and counter the idea that humans have adapted to TV life. 22 analyzing literary fiction of the 1940s to the 1980s, one should not neglect the implications of the generation gap these scholars never fail to emphasize. Since then, however, the significance of this generation gap has more and more faded away, simply because the literary scene has started to be domi- nated by writers who have never known life without television. In short, pre- TV-era writers have become extinct; today, every writer is a TV-era writer – and it will not be too long before the generation of post-TV-era writers takes over. Whereas the authors of these contributions felt the need to legitimate their research on a pop-cultural medium like television by highlighting its pres- ence in, as Freese calls it, “elite fiction,” – thereby implicitly opening up a debate on ‘high’ vs. ‘low’ culture and the latter’s (non-)place in academic literary research – I will not follow this rhetoric of defense and legitimiza- tion. Rather than distinguishing between literary (sub)genres and attesting literary value or non-value to the corpus, I will draw on diverse novels that, despite their particularities, share many characteristics, which gives them an even greater force of expression. When novels of such heterogeneity pin- point certain aspects despite their heterogeneity, their propositions must be even more significant. Attesting literary value or non-value does therefore not elucidate my argumentation.36 Then again, how do the novels position themselves with regard to the debate on ‘high’ vs. ‘low’ culture? Are the chosen TV novels self-reflexive about their potential loss of cultural curren- cy? And how does the novel as a form which is potentially culturally con- servative conceive of itself with regard to television? As mentioned above, Tichi draws attention to “the battle lines” between novels (or rather, literary fiction in general) and televisual products, and Freese does the same when he observes that elite fiction finds its raw materi- al in the low realm of popular culture. The questions I would shortly like to address against this background are: How do the novels deal with TV cul- ture, and how do they (as an archaic cultural form) place themselves and their functions in relation to the televisionization of everyday life? Are they self-reflexive in discussing TV culture and enacting TV experiences? Most of the novels selected for my study are highly satirical, but I do not regard their dealing with television as a self-reflexive way of interacting with a medium unable to shake off its reputation as a lower cultural form. It rather seems to me that they are – to some extent – critical of the other medium they are commenting on. Yet, they do not question their own reflections on television. I would therefore like to argue that, by portraying and discussing 36 With regard to his study on sports novels, Sicks also explains that he is not interested in considering or even taking part in quality valuations, convinced that he could not gain rele- vant insights by doing so. Literary texts, he explains, become meaningful through their refer- ence to cultural contexts, and this happens regardless of their literary value (15-16). 23 TV culture, albeit critically, the novels imply that commenting on the medi- um of television is a legitimate topic in literary narratives.37 As this review should demonstrate, the analysis of TV novels and their engagement in critical discussions on TV culture are for the most part lim- ited to articles. It is due to these limitations that the aforementioned contribu- tions cannot provide a thorough account of the novels’ ambiguous and con- tradictory enactments of TV experiences, which I will be investigating in more depth. Also, the articles date back to the 1980s and 1990s, and there- fore do not address more recently published English-speaking novels and recent developments in TV culture. The German volume by Ackermann and Laferl from 2009 is the most topical publication upon which my study can draw. With a focus on Romance literature, however, the contributions con- cerning TV in literature are rather selective case studies limited in length that can therefore only serve as starting points for further investigation. A mono- graph with in-depth analyses of selected, representative TV novels is still pending. Objectives and Structure We experience television in all sorts of ways, and it is sometimes challeng- ing to come to terms with one’s own feelings and attitudes towards televi- sion. The public and academic discourse on television might help us to gain a better understanding, but these discussions tend to be partial. They influ- ence our own experiences in the TV environment. Sometimes they even overshadow our thinking and instincts, forbidding us to approach and, in- deed, experience television without prejudices. In short, they bar us from feeling what we feel and experiencing what we could experience. This is also true for the reading of the chosen novels. I assume that the well-known denunciations á la Postman overshadow the reading and understanding of the selected novels. Supporting this claim in his analysis of Thomas Pyn- chon’s Vineland, Brian McHale calls on his readers and the readers of Vine- land to approach the text in a less biased fashion: “What if we suppressed our automatic inclination to read denunciation into such a passage, and in- stead tried to read it ‘neutrally’ or ‘innocently’?” (124). It is therefore my aim to show that the selection of novels can operate as a means of under- standing our own TV experiences better, experiences that are often ambigu- ous and contradictory. I argue that the selected texts enrich the public and academic discourse on television through their enactments of TV experienc- es. Some of them even anticipate pivotal discussions in media studies today. 37 The only novel opening up this debate is Dead Famous. Elton’s reality TV satire discusses the cultural value of contemporary reality television in relation to Shakespeare’s plays, and I will dwell on this discussion in the analysis of the novel (conclusion of chapter 5). 24 Through their portrayals of television culture and the enactments of TV experiences, the selected novels reflect on how humans live their everyday lives in the TV environment, how they relate to television, and thus, more generally, what roles and functions television has in culture. By using the characters’ perspectives to filter human experiences with, of, and through television, they join the established critique of TV’s invasiveness. My study intends to demonstrate that the chosen works (re-)construct the cultural pes- simism emblematic of the TV age. In contrast to expectations one might have, this is also true for the works published in the post-TV era. Acknowledging this revelation, my study also makes clear, however, that the novels’ enactments of TV experiences become more and more complex over time. I therefore aim to prove two things at the same time: Firstly, the enactments of TV experiences in the particular novels are full of ambiguity. Secondly, the novels’ enactments of TV experiences both alter and do not alter over time. So far, readers of Being There and White Noise have pre- dominantly emphasized the novels’ critical comments on TV culture. Schol- ars unanimously consider DeLillo’s protagonist a representative of the by now traditional negative view on television. Trapped in the condescending discourse on TV, they seem incapable of detecting the protagonist’s confu- sion and uncertainty, and TV’s assuasive impact on the character of the pro- fessor and father. By underlining the novel’s satirical engagement with tele- vision, DeLillo’s readers neglect the novel’s ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical depiction of and response to TV culture. Against this back- ground and through the analyses of the selected novels, I am determined to show that humankind has both overcome, and failed to overcome, the collec- tive fear of TV’s invasiveness – which is, after all, the catalyst of the denun- ciating TV-era litany. The TV-era concerns that the novels articulate while simultaneously ques- tioning and revising them revolve around Baudrillard’s observation that life and TV have dissolved into one another and that the telemorphosis of society is total. Baudrillard’s cultural diagnoses help to delineate and explain the characters’ TV experiences, but one must simultaneously scrutinize and elaborate them further. To do so, it is necessary to consider other approaches to TV culture that enlighten Baudrillard’s abstract and at times fragmentary observations. Drawing on approaches to TV culture such as Tichi’s and Deuze’s should help to more adequately understand the novels’ enactments of TV experiences. Tichi’s and Deuze’s considerations and theorizations on the fusion of life with TV (and, in Deuze’s case, media in general) will therefore flow into an extension of Baudrillard’s theorization of the telemor- phosis of society. The reason why I consider Tichi’s approach to TV culture and Deuze’s cutting edge conceptualization of media life to supplement Baudrillard’s theorization of the hyperreal is that both of their studies are devoid of nostal- gia and technophobia, although they are situated in and draw on a hyperreal environment. Referring to Tichi’s and Deuze’s ideas will therefore help to 25 clarify that Baudrillard’s theorization of the hyperreal can help to contextual- ize the novels and to frame their enactments of TV experiences – if one frees the idea of the hyperreal from notions of nostalgia and technophobia. Baudrillard’s writing is not pessimistic but it is nostalgic, and critics will always connect it to feelings of nostalgia. Baudrillard’s concepts therefore help to pinpoint the characters’ uneasiness enacted in some of the novels. However, the novels present some of the characters as accepting an envi- ronment of hyperreality. They are not afraid but confused, and some of them simply disregard or even play around with the fusion of life and TV. In other words, through the enactments of TV experiences, the novels suggest that life in hyperreality has become the normal condition. The characters enact the human adaptation to life in a hyperreal environment, which is why some of the characters’ experiences are not dominated by anxieties. Due to Baudrillard’s nostalgic tendency and the cultural pessimism critics usually associate with him, it is problematic to speak of hyperreality with regard to the more positive enactments of TV experiences. It is therefore necessary to dissociate the use of the term from notions of nostalgia. This I do by refer- ring to approaches such as Tichi’s or Deuze’s, which have a much more open, unbiased position. These theoretical implications and considerations constitute the focus of the second chapter of my study. The second chapter is supposed to contextu- alize the novels in the history of television and inform my readers about central debates and dominant critical voices one can ascribe to specific cul- tural moments. I intend to offer my readers an overview of both television theory and criticism, because I claim that this knowledge is basic for under- standing the novels’ portrayals of TV culture and their enactments of TV experiences. However, the theoretical frame I use is not a guideline in the strict sense of the word; rather, it is a sort of orientation guide that points to the main discussions about TV from the beginning of television until today. The other chapters are devoted to the selected novels in chronological or- der. Chapter 3 introduces Kosinski’s Being There (1970) as a satire on TV culture that represents and reaffirms the age-old fear of TV’s fatal impact on those who indulge in it. By delineating the acculturation of TV, the novel anticipates the televisionization of everyday life, that is the adaptation of human life to television. Nevertheless, as it comments on the process of nat- uralization satirically, it condemns the idea of TV life, thereby stressing tele- vision’s disastrous impact on society. Being There presents Chance, the pro- tagonist, as an anti-hero whom the narrator functionalizes as a deterrent. ‘Look what happens to you if you keep on watching TV,’ is what Kosinski’s narrator seems to shout at the endangered TV generation that the author him- self, quoted in an interview, calls “a nation of videots” (Sohn 52; original emphasis). The fourth chapter is an analysis of DeLillo’s success novel White Noise (1985). Like Being There, the novel is known as a satire on television. I in- tend to show that White Noise is representative of the prevailing skepticism 26 towards TV’s naturalization, but I also aim to offer an unbiased reading that breaks with categorizing the novel as a typical critique of television. More than simply responding to the fear of TV’s invasiveness, White Noise high- lights feelings of uncertainty and indifference. It portrays the characters on their way to adapting to television by finding sophisticated reasons for not having to resist its appeal. Still in line with the critique of its time, DeLillo’s novel portrays TV life in much more ambiguous and contradictory ways. Chapter 5 jumps to the new millennium and investigates Elton’s pop- cultural reality TV satires Dead Famous (2001) and Chart Throb (2006). Devoid of the anxiety about TV’s invasiveness, these novels do not criticize television as an integral part of culture, but they satirize the ways it is used – and for what purposes. Ridiculing the worldwide success of reality TV and the ordinary celebrities it produces, the novels enact the appearance on tele- vision as a naturalized, and not exceptional, form of being. The focus con- cerning characters on and behind rather than in front of television marks an important shift in how novels portray television culture and enact TV experi- ences. I will argue that this shift in narrative representation exposes changes to television experiences in the era of reality TV. The last analysis in chapter 6 of Donoghue’s Room (2010) travels forth in time – which refers to the date of publication as well as the novel’s emanci- pated enactments of TV experiences. Room is, in many respects, very similar to Being There and White Noise, but despite the similarities, Room’s portray- al is not dominated by notions of fear. Against this background, I will argue that the novel highlights an ongoing alteration in TV experiences today. It is therefore even more paradoxical that Room represents, at the very same time, the arguably outdated critique of TV as a medium of harm. Through the character of the mother, it enacts a sort of TV experience emblematic of the TV age. By presenting two opposing enactments of TV experiences, Do- noghue indicates that collective fears are both surmountable and persistent. The novel suggests that in TV culture there is both victory over and an in- sistence on anxieties about television. I shall summarize the main findings in the conclusive and last part of my study. Chapter 7 will provide an overview of how the novels enact contradic- tory TV experiences to which the readers can relate. I aim to show that, ana- lyzed in sequence, TV novels suggest that humans fear the adaptation to TV life and that they have, at the same time, overcome this fear. This is, of course, a contradiction in terms… or is it? By applying a diachronic perspec- tive on the chosen novels, it becomes evident that the televisionization of everyday life has both progressed and not progressed. I will use the conclu- sion of my study to show that my findings apply to novels other than the ones selected for close analyses. At the very end, I take a look at Thomas’ Going Out (2002) and Eggers’ recently published The Circle (2013). With regard to the latter, I will discuss the question of what contemporary TV novels might look like and how they might enact TV experiences. Or could 27 it be possible that TV novels have ceased to exist in times when TV has, as one might want to claim, lost so much of its cultural significance? 28 29 Chapter 2: Televisionization of Everyday Life Kosinski’s TV satire Being There from 1970 comments critically on the disastrous impact television was back then feared to have on human percep- tions of the real. It hints at cultural fears emblematic of the TV era that re- volve around the indistinguishability of TV reality and ‘actual’ reality, and the influence of the medium’s presence on human everyday life. In the 1970s and 1980s, Being There was not the only novel expressing human anxieties about TV. In his analysis of Pynchon’s Vineland, McHale argues: Vineland . . . reflects the routine interpenetration of TV and ‘real life,’ the in- timate interaction between what has been called ‘TV flow’ (the succession of program segments, commercials, etc.) and ‘household flow’ (the succession of domestic tasks and activities, see Altman (1986)). Contextualizing his argument, McHale refers to the readers’ environment where “TV has come to pervade our lives in . . . profound ways, shaping and constraining our desires, our behavior, and our expectations about others” (117). In the post-TV era, exactly 40 years after the publication of Kosin- ski’s satire, Donoghue published the novel Room that tells a story similar to Being There. Like Kosinski, Donoghue confronts her main character with the question of how to differentiate between ‘actual’ reality and the realities of TV. It seems as if the 40 years separating the two novels do not affect the authors in what they believe to be pressing questions connected with the cultural environment upon which they draw. Both authors depict characters equally occupied with finding out how to come to term