Page 6 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

JOBNAME: McGraw−TaylorHarris PAGE: 1 SESS: 7 OUTPUT: Thu Sep 13 10:28:30 2007 SUM: 2AFEB77F
/production/mcgraw−hill/booksxml/tayharris/poem

It comes as a shock to that first audience.
The street they walked in off just moments before
hangs pale on the wall …
and their hairs stand on end to a shimmer of leaves
or the movement of clouds, and the way the tense
has been thrown like a switch, where the land turns to dreams,
and where,
sad to say, we have been living since.
(Paul Farley, ‘Electricity’, from The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See
You

I was witnessing a time when most things, including hard cash and
our perception of reality itself, were about to be turned into an idea
of themselves … I began to notice the insistence of image over
substance and this insistence began to pester me, like a bad radio
station that you can’t afford to turn off.
… we were just that bit too old to buy into the rumble of a world
described by advertising and products …That was the world where
everything had turned into an idea of itself, where life no longer
had an inner life … It’s a process which just seems to have built up,
like an accumulation of fat around the heart’s weary muscle.

(Michael Bracewell, Perfect Tense)

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