“An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen. Images shown on television are by…
“An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen. Images shown on television are by definition images of which sooner or later, one tires. What looks like callousness has its origin in the instability of attention that television is organised to arouse and to satiate by its surfeit of images. Image-glut keeps attention light, mobile, relatively indifferent to content. Image-flow precludes a privileged image. The whole point of television is that one can switch channels, that it is normal to switch channels, to become restless, bored. Consumers droop. They need to be stimulated, jump started, again and again. Content is no more that one of these stimulants. A more reflective engagement with content would require a certain intensity of awareness - just what is weakened by the expectations brought to images disseminated by the media, whose leaching out of content contributes most to the deadening of feeling.”—
Regarding The Pain of Others
Susan Sontag