#pseudo events

[nikonowicz]

The walls of Babylon on a movie set did not need to be solid so long as the photographed version made them look so.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[kenyatta]

It is no coincidence, Boorstin notes, that it was around 1850—the early years of the Graphic Revolution—that the word “celebrity” came to refer to a particular person rather than to a particular situation. Nor is it a coincidence that the revealing term “non-fiction” arose a little later: That was a response, Boorstin suggests, to the sudden explosion of fictional worlds that came, via books and magazines, to a democratized and newly literate American culture. The image, the stereotype, the ad, the manufactured spectacle, the cheerful lie … these are, he argues, all of a piece. They are evidence of Americans’ constitutional comfort with illusions—not just in our cultural creations, but in our everyday lives. Deceptions are our water: They are everywhere, around us and within us, palpably yet also, too often, invisibly.

The Image in the Age of Pseudo-Reality - Megan Garber, The Atlantic

I’m reading Daniel Boorstin‘s The Image this weekend. It’s agonizingly lovely.

[nikonowicz]

All of us ... are daily less interested in whether something is a fact than in whether it is convenient that it should be believed.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[nikonowicz]

More important than what a Buick really is, is our image of it. We are sold it and we buy it and enjoy it for its image and how we fit into the image.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[nikonowicz]

As with other pseudo-events, about God, too, the most interesting question for us is not what he does but whether he exists.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[nikonowicz]

As there comes to be less and less difference between the time it takes to reach one place rather than another, time itself dissolves as a measure of space.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[nikonowicz]

If we test presidential candidates by their talents on TV quiz performances, we will, of course, choose presidents for precisely these qualifications. In a democracy, reality tends to conform to the pseudo event. Nature imitates art.

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962

[nikonowicz]

The question 'Is it real?' is less important than, 'Is it newsworthy?'

Daniel Boorstin. The Image - A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. 1962