RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

language is bridged. This »vvhenever« includes both football commentaries and the mosaic type of educational programmes, and even television advertisements if they arise from direct production and are not forced upon man wiUy-nilly. Of course, this »new literature« is not apparent in the sort of programme which pretends to be all-knowing and superior no matter how much it proclaims itself to be - art.

Even without the future development of the information systems which promise a marriage between the means of communication and computers, television is establishing new cultural amalgams. Whenever language and image аге organically joined, a new cell, even a whole new block of cultural links come into being. In contrast, and this is suggested by the Ovidian picture of the narcissistic alienation of the image from the linguistic echo, whenever the images on the screen аге at odds with the words, then cultural awareness is put out of tune. For the present such cancerous discrepancies are not dangerous. The viewer is the genie ol the control panel. He switches off a sterile programme, and as far as his individual life is concerned, the chaotic message is thus extinguished. But imagine what will happen when all television programmes enter a computerised тетогу bank and emerge from it to continue television’s present task of feeding man s everyday consciousness and conscience. The narcissism of this image, the series of lifeless images bereft of language or organised thought put into words which this system would introduce will lead to a wasting of time and a comnlete stoppage of productivity. Nor whl the viewer be able to influence the flow of information or prevent this sterility. This gloomy possibility is not unavoidable. We can also imagine that thc communications system of the future will make room for the whole gamut of television criticism, not only that formulated in artistic terms, but social and political criticism as well.

202