🚀 go-pugleaf

In a message dated 20 Jan 93  00:02:27, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com wrote:

 N>   Deeper, more complex, more thought-provoking philosophy; funnier
 N>   humor, more suspenseful suspense ('cause you don't know how it's 
 N>   going to turn out), better production values, wittier dialogue,
 N>   etc.  What did you THINK I meant by "better"?   No matter what
 N>   quality you think a TV show offers, for either intellectual 
 N>   stimulation or "entertainment" I can probably find a book, 
 N>   movie, lecture, or some participatory activity (game, hobby, 
 N>   sport, discussion, etc) that offers better. 

Yes and worse, Television can not hope to cope with the complexities which can
be presented by with written word.  It has to be presented via a visual medium
where as a book is visualised by the mind.

This is not a fault of telivision, just a limitation.


 N>    But today TV's choices are just as artificial; whereas in 1960
 N>    the only black faces TV showed were train porters or cooks, 
 N>    today TV goes out of it's way to ensure that every group of
 N>    people: every office scene, starship crew, classroom, etc, 
 N>    is carefully populated with as much ethnic and gender diversity
 N>    as they can manage, always making sure that women are given 
 N>    non-stereotyped roles for females (security officers) and 
 N>    blacks are given non-stereotyped roles for blacks (scientists,
 N>    engineers, etc).   This is not an improvement, it's just more
 N>    artifice.

 N>    And it provides the viewer with the false sense of satisfaction
 N>    that he, or TV, is confronting these issues.   I've literally 
 N>    heard people say things like, "I'm not racist, I watch the Bill
 N>    Cosby show".
 N>     

Yes, but racism is a strange thing, everyone is racist in some way.
Racism in it's simplest form is a product of a person's prejudices and a
person's prejudices are what we all judge things by and make our inital
responses in reflection of.  It is just a case of learning and letting our
prejudices be altered (hopefully for the better).

As for blacks and so on in stories I remember reading a book by Arthur C.
Clarke which involved a tourist bus (of sorts) which was trapped in a crater
that had opened up beneath it on the moon (I think the title had the words by
Earthlight - or Moonlight in it somewhere).

There were two main male characters and they were talking when one asked the
other how he felt about his Aboriginal (Australian Aboriginal) heritage.

This shook me quite a bit in that I had not realised that this character was
black!  This is how I feel it should be, that we take people as they are and
don't bring colour into it at all.

That includes accusing Star Trek of adding token nationalities because you feel
it is politically correct!!

Later people,

Adrian Jenkin


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