ABSTRACT
A multiplicity of images is diverted into the box, but, once they're inside, the medium takes control, blurring and eliding those different messages until we can no longer tell them apart. But while these ingrates fret to escape from the box, others are comfortably housed there. The box purports to be our window on the world. But the only place to which it gives us access is the studio, a larger and more snugly insulated box. The world as conceived by television is a synoptic box. Even outer space, when seen on television, resembles nothing so much as a television studio. During the moonshot, live relays from the moon alternated with studio mock-ups, and it was often difficult to tell which was which, especially as the lunar waste looked like a cheerless studio in the sky. Television hopes to intern all of us in its simulatory box.
