ABSTRACT
When asked if he thought films should be a slice of life, directorAlfred Hitchcock is reported to have said, no, they should be a slice of cake. We might well pose the same question about television: Is it a slice of life or a slice of cake? The images we see on the screen show us real people and objects, and the sounds we hear are taken from our real experience, with dialogue spoken in a language and idiom with which we are familiar. Often we suspend disbelief and imagine that television characters are real persons, with tangible pasts and a future toward which time is carrying them. We might muse, “I wonder what happened to Screech after Saved by the Bell was canceled.” It seems as if we just dropped in on these TV people and tasted a slice of their lives.
