Non-Core Post: TV at the Pump

As Professor McPherson suggested that we pay careful attention to encounters with screens this week, I want to share an odd bit of media that I experienced yesterday at a gas station. Many pumps now seem to be equipped with a screen that advertises that particular gas station chain or some associated product. I typically get gas from a Shell station, so I have heard the same ad for a Shell card once every few weeks since I moved to LA. Yesterday, I visited a 76 station and was met with a familiar screen at the pump. I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to this content – these screens tend to fade into the background, warranting about as much notice as the smell of gas or the sound of car doors slamming. This particular screen was strange, however, as it came alive when I removed the nozzle from the pump, and shut off when I replaced the nozzle after my tank was full. I was reminded of McCarthy’s conception of deadness and televisual time – here, the TV offers content for the exact duration of my wait time. Alternatively, the TV blares only as long as the cost of my time at the pump goes up, as though I’m paying to have someone in a studio made to look like a generic apartment feed me the day’s top headlines. To be honest, I barely remember what played on the screen, which is typical for my experience of most public screens. Unless I am confined, like McCarthy, to a waiting room in which the same bit of material plays ad infinitum, I tend not to internalize the content on screens as I pass by. These pump-screens are still quite new to me; as a relatively recent transplant from NJ – the only remaining state where you can’t pump your own gas – I am unaccustomed to leaving my “iron bubble” in order to fill the tank (Morse 199). I wonder if anyone has had similarly strange encounters with pump-screens – do they exist everywhere, or just in screen-obsessed, gas-guzzling LA?