Image via WikipediaI’ve heard an old hit from the eighties I completely forgot about – “Sun always shines on TV” by AHA. I am still surprised by the honest love of the medium demonstrated here. How can something so technical be a central metaphore for happiness?
It was written in 1985, the high point of early MTV, which was born in 1981. Amongst the first videos shown there was of course the Depeche mode’s “Video killed the radio star” from 1979. It seems that that generation rediscovered TV, not as a place of information distribution, but rather an actuall lebenswelt in which they started investing their hopes and fears. It took over the status movies had until then, embodied in hits like “Celluloid heroes” by Kinks. A disillusioned contemporary version of that tematization is REM’s “Immitations of life”, while the TV is strong in becomming the central focus of every home.
Related articles by Zemanta
