Chapters 5-7

Before even reading the title of Chapter 5, my mood is already lifted by two characters of The Office being the first picture that I see! The beginning of Chapter 5 talks about how sitcoms popularity declines and how reality shows have taken over.  This is also true in my own house. My parents are addicted to shows like American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. Some of the reality shows I can watch but I don’t ever get attached to them and never have to seen the next episode. I think that reality shows have become more popular because people feel more connected to the “stars” of the show and they feel like they have to cheer on the person that they want to win.

In Chapter 6, the one thing that I thought about the entire chapter was how many TV channels there are. No matter what cable/satellite provider you have, you are getting a lot of channels. My mom has brought up a few times about how when she was young there were only a few channels to choose from and late in the night there would just be static on the TV.  What baffles me is that most of the time there is nothing really interesting on TV. Because I am living in the dorms I don’t have a TV in my room but I can still watch shows on my computer. But I can tell that I watch less television now because I can’t just turn on the television and watch some random show.

In starting off chapter 7, I’m already intrigued because the book brings up Muybridge! I learned a lot about his work in my Photo History class last year and I thought you should know that he also created a gun that takes multiple photographs. It’s pretty cool. In the section Television Changes Hollywood, it talks about how movies tried to drag people away from their television sets. I think that Technicolor was a very smart idea because it gave the people the one thing they couldn’t get from their TV’s, which was color. I found it interesting that 3D movies quickly wore off because now their are the “hot” things in movies now. Personally I’m waiting for 3D movies to go out of style again because I think that they are a really cheap way to make more money on a movie.

The Photographic Gun