Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Interpretation
Television symbolizes our desire to avoid the unknown and seek constant stimulation.
In this quote, Jean Baudrillard explores the idea that television represents society's relentless pursuit of light and clarity, while inadvertently illustrating our fear of darkness and the mysteries that lie beyond. The metaphor of 'perpetual day' suggests that TV serves as a means to distract from the complexities and uncertainties of life, pushing us to confront an oversimplified reality rather than the deeper truths that come with facing the night.
In practice
In a discussion on media influence, one might quote Baudrillard to emphasize how television alters perceptions of reality.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real.
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.
There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.
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