My old roommate had a high definition TV. It
was interesting because, from my perspective in the kitchen, everything
on his television always looked so fake. It was really distracting. I
couldn't even take any of the somber CSI shows seriously. I don't know
exactly how to describe it...it's like the characters are on a
different plane than the environment and the two are not interacting
with each other. It's almost like there is a perpetual blue screen and
everything (including live news anchors) has a touch of animation.
My parents now have a high definition television and I notice the same
thing on their TV. No one in real life looks like that. It's as
though camera definition has surpassed the reality it's chased the past
70 years and now created Supereality. Which is impossible.
You cannot create something super--something beyond reality--and have
it exist in this reality. Reality is real. If it is beyond reality
then it is fake. And, something that is fake cannot be real. It is a
contradiction.
Something superreal can only belong to a superreal universe. Which is
why you can dream or believe in something beyond reality. However,
once it exists in this world, it becomes real. This is the case with
all inventions.
To a person living in the 19th century, an aeroplane was superreal
because it only existed in idea. The moment the idea was made into a
functioning machine, however, it immediately lost the distinction of
being super and became part of our reality.
Meanwhile...
Higher definition means less ambiguity. It is stripping away
falsehoods and unclarities to make something more sharp, precise, and
clear. This could go on in miniscule amounts into infinity. Take a
pie, for instance. Let's say we want to define with the highest
precision what's in this pie. First, we take one piece of the pie and
strip away all the excess. Then, we break that piece down into
cherries and crust. Those get broken down into fruit, sugar, flour,
butter, and all the other ingredients. Those ingredients get broken
down and it goes on until you're splitting atoms and pieces of atoms
for ever and ever.
In this case, high actually means low (which is intersting in its own
right), but when it comes to high definition TV, they're actually
ADDING MORE, not less! Yes, the rate of skipped frames in lower, and
yes there is an improved aspect ratio that leads to a clearer (more
defined) picture. However, the human eye has a threshold. You can
only make things so defined before the eye can no longer tell a
difference. This means television companies needed to come up with a
detectable visual difference in order to get you to buy their
new-and-improved higher definition TVs. This is where all the
additional filters, color correctors, color enhancers and things that
make all those people on TV look so much better--better than real life,
in fact--come in to play.
It's no different than any other industry out there. The food industry
waxes their apples and plumps their chicken breasts because they know
they sell better. Meanwhile, aestheticians from our thriving beauty
industry plump our apples and wax our lips beause we know how important
it is to sell ourselves as well.
Still...
While recently watching Meet Me in St. Louis I couldn't help marvelling
how lovely the picture was. The scene where Judy sings "Have Yourself
a Merry Little Christmas"...breathtaking. I daresay no one's skin has
ever looked better than when filmed in Technicolor. Beautifully rich
and saturated colors, elegantly soft lines... This is how I want me
life to be: saturated, full of color, musical, defined enough to know
what's going on, but soft enough to be dreamy.
Perhaps there is something to living life less defined. An ability to
blur out the imperfections; appreciate room to smudge; let the little
things go.
We let realism have its day in the 70s and 80s and, overall, it was a
bit dreay and grey. We need one or the other. The difference is, we
used to soften someone rough around the edges. We did our best with
the imperfections we were given. The flaws were still there, just not
in focus. Blurred until appealing. Nowadays, flaws are focused so
intensely we simply remove them altogether. We pluck them out with
filters and Photoshop. Giving the illusion they were never there to
begin with.
Dreamy is one thing, but false is another.
I have some beautiful flaws. I try to blur them out, but I'll let you
see them if you'd like. Perhaps one day I won't have to blur so much.
Until then, I'll have to muddle through somehow.
I always think that technicolor is the best too! It makes it appear that everyone from that age has fantastic skin. I want that.
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