Reply to: Falling; in slow motion... It seems to me that what we are watching, with respect to the compelling nature of the live coverage of the O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing proceedings, is life in real time. Life is slow, ponderous, hesitating, and filled with silences where people are thinking about what they are about to say. Whenever television carries the hearing and testimony process for any high profile legal and political institutions (as they have since the Watergate investigations) the presentation of questions and replies is done without editing or commentary until there is a natural break in the proceedings. The effect of this is to make the audience feel as though there is a suspense implied which comes from their inexperience with the nature of the process. Coverage is restricted to the step-by-step actions of senators, lawyers, and witnesses with no opportunity to reveal the inner dialogue of any participant in the way that is common in fictional portrayals. Coverage is bound by the pace of the presentation which is much slower and much more specific than the pace within the environment that the viewers find themselves in. The nature of this kind of real-time presentation allows for viewers to construct their own inner dialogue and to create their own commentary independent of the broadcast commentaries. What is explicitly attractive about these kinds of "live" events is the emerging celebrity of the principal participants. The audience grows familiar with the people involved (lawyers, judge, defendant) very quickly without having anything more to rely on than what they have "seen" for themselves. Even the institutions for which the testimony is being presented attracts some level of celebrity for the duration of the coverage. What maintains the level of interest in such coverage (or the drama) is the underlying issue which is a source of debate in the larger population. Viewers may weigh in their minds, as they watch or between episodes, what they would choose to accept and what they would choose to consider pointless. Those underlying issues are not necessarily addressed in the testimony, or by the news commentaries. People commenting on the coverage often focus on the activities of the people presenting the coverage. They examine the "sensationalism" or the "exploitive" slant of the news reporting. They become over sensitive to the mechanisms of television coverage often regarding the reporters as the celebrities. They primarily regard the selection of shots, the close ups, the graphics, and all the other quickly worked-up "style" of coverage. These people are professional critics of the industry but very often fail to address the compelling nature of the spectacle these events provide the viewer. As much as the viewer is placed in the position of being a "jury" they are also being manipulated by the non-stop image of the proceedings. Their "jury" role extends beyond the specific event and out into society at large. The projection of the process into the viewer's private environment elevates their sense of importance in that larger social fabric. It gives every single viewer a chance to take on the role of the decision-maker on a significant social issue and settle their own mind about the state of their world. Better than slow motion, real-time coverage allows time for reflection without being led by the "story" (as is common in fictional portrayals). It presents the pace of history at a speed more familiar to historians than to the ordinary citizen more familiar with condensed and distilled descriptions of events. Because we are constantly working to keep up with the perceptions of life at break-neck speed we tend to forget that the pace of our own lives is the same as those of the people coming to them through television. What we are watching is a reflection of the illusion we are living by. What is bizarre is that we cannot see the pace of our own lives until we encounter it in someone else's. July 8, 1994 4:00 pm. [log in to unmask]