The illusions of television (no. 5 & 6).
And then (5) it’s ultimately of course not even actors we’re espying, not even people: it’s EM-propelled analog waves and ion streams and rear-screen chemical reactions throwing off phosphenes in grids of dots not much more lifelike than Seurat’s own Impressionist commentaries on perceptual illusion. Good Lord and (6) the dots are coming out of our furniture, all we’re really spying on is our own furniture, and our very own chairs and lamps and bookspines sit visible but unseen at our gaze’s frame as we contempate “Korea” or are taken “live to Jerusalem” or regard the plusher chairs and classier bookspines of the Huxtable “home” as illusory cues that this is some domestic interior whose membrane we have (slyly, unnoticed) violated.
David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U. S. Fiction
3 months ago