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New Post has been published on Discounted Scarves

The cinema tried to counter the overwhelming omnipresence of the electronic media by intensifying its own means, which television – as much as it was technically able – then immediately integrated into its system again. The compulsion to trump one another led to the permanent paroxysm of attempted intensity and, thus, indirectly to the further blurring of the boundary between reality and image as well. (In the area of representing violence, the producers of fictional violence were forced to compete against the sensation of authentic terror by upping the visual appeal. In the battle against it, journalistic ambition shed the last remnant of respect for the dignity of the exposed victims.) An end to this process is not insight – on the contrary: It seems as though it has only just begun – in the battle over market shares and viewer ratings, any innovation, whether of a technical or artistic kind, contributes to driving it on. The form of representation determines the effect of its content. In the course of implementing these mandates, a short-circuit has occurred with media competitors in that, for the sake of constantly increasing the impact of form, content has become an interchangeable variable. This applies to violence as much as it does to its counterpart, to the war victim as much as to the TV star, to the car as much as to toothpaste. The absolute equivalency of all the contents stripped of their reality ensures the universal fictionality of anything shown and, with it, the coveted feeling of security of the consumer. The form–content relation of classical aesthetics appears to have become obsolete. The morality of selling has little in common with that of a possible social contract.