ABSTRACT
The American Forces Television program begins with the national anthem sung by a male choir. Images of trees, mountains, clear-blue skies, amber waves of grain follow in quick succession. The emplotment of the storyline, both for the benefit of the viewer's time and the sponsor's budget, operates on a relatively short libidinal attention span. What gave coherence to more traditional forms of storytelling, the plot, is chopped up into short sequential bursts, each with their own simulacrum of a microplot, but all without closure. The strategy of short-range sensation used by television (T.V.) storytelling may not be entirely the invention of commercial T.V., though it has found its classic perfection. There is more hope in the contents of the programs and in the inherent tendency of man-made symbolic universes to create their own metalinguistic escape routes from each new, self-created prison house.
