FreeInKy - 09 August 2011 10:50 AM

All this brings up another thought, probably best put in another discussion but I just want to throw this out.

I heard a program on the radio this weekend about the groundbreaking aspects of I Love Lucy from the early 1950’s. Television was so new that many naïve viewers got confused and forgot that they were watching fiction. They wrote letters to Lucy, Ricky and the gang and made comments about events from the show as if they were really part of the actors’ lives.

We can smile bemusedly at that now, but with “reality TV” blurring the lines between fact and fantasy, it seems that people seem less able to differentiate between the two. I mean, it’s like one can simply make up facts nowadays in the political or social world, and hardly get called on it. It’s almost as if just putting an idea “out there” somehow validates it.

Yes, soaps have come a long way.

FreeInKy - 09 August 2011 10:50 AM

All this brings up another thought, probably best put in another discussion but I just want to throw this out.

I heard a program on the radio this weekend about the groundbreaking aspects of I Love Lucy from the early 1950’s. Television was so new that many naïve viewers got confused and forgot that they were watching fiction. They wrote letters to Lucy, Ricky and the gang and made comments about events from the show as if they were really part of the actors’ lives.

We can smile bemusedly at that now, but with “reality TV” blurring the lines between fact and fantasy, it seems that people seem less able to differentiate between the two. I mean, it’s like one can simply make up facts nowadays in the political or social world, and hardly get called on it. It’s almost as if just putting an idea “out there” somehow validates it.

Hell yes!  But some of that problem is caused by apathy, a lot of people simply don’t care about that distinction between real and unreal.