My great uncle is Neil Postman, who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book that critiqued the prevalence of television as a means for conveying information versus providing entertainment, and now I really want to resurrect him and get his opinion on Tenna.
Me: So there’s a character who’s the personification of a television, right? And his raison d’etre is to entertain the main characters of the video game— that’s kind of like an interactive television show— so much so that they stay with him in his world and away from their real-life problems, like how you described television as a version of “soma” from Huxley’s Brave New World. But he himself is just as affected by those real-life problems as the protagonist, and his flashy, attention-grabbing persona is really just a bid to be loved as he slowly becomes outdated, paralleling the main character’s isolation in the aftermath of their parents’ divorce. How does that affect your view that television is a means to advertise lifestyles rather than convey information?
Neil: Donald Trump is president?
Me: Oh, and he’s implied to have previously been in a romantic relationship with the personification of a spam email— gay marriage is legal now, by the way— which, while a newer technology than television, is also becoming obsolete, and is also centered around being attention grabbing and spreading misinformation. Does the inclusion of this relationship imply that genuine connection can be found through the spectacle of these media forms, or does the relationship’s failure condemn both television and internet as vapid reflections of true connection?
Neil: The media gave Donald Trump enough free publicity that he became president?
