Non-core post #1

While reading McCarthy’s article, the following video came back to mind:

In the article, she argues that “television shapes time flexile and adaptively, in consort with other institutional and personal elements, and according to site-specific cultural norms and protocols”, which is something we can see in the video, namely that TV is present in a myriad of forms which become meshed with the features of their environments (and it’s likely that the different individuals portrayed are experiencing time in a different way).  The ad (for a cable company in Argentina) shows people watching TV in traditional sets and non-traditional forms like cellphones, tablets or computers in their homes both as an intentional activity alone (the woman in the bathroom) and accompanied (the couple watching an action movie), as well as a way of passing time (the bride to be), but also in public spaces (like the guy in the restaurant or the girl on the bus) and work spaces (surreptitiously with one headphone during work or making photocopies, but also collectively). Moreover, the girl watching TV on the bus exemplifies Morse’s idea of TV as transportation because she’s moving within a movement, meaning she’s a “couch body” responding to the virtual experiences of motion but inside a bus that’s already in motion.