Avidly Reads Screen Time

In this original and thought-provoking survey, Maciak (The Disappearing Christ), an editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books, considers “the way that the popular discourse of screen time has impacted all of us culturally since the nineties.” Devoting the bulk of his analysis to television, Maciak discusses how opinion writer Tom Engelhardt’s 1991 Mother Jones article, “The Primal Scream,” suggested parents should regulate their children’s access to screens and inaugurated a “moral panic” about the corrupting influence of TV. The rise of prestige television in the late 1990s and 2000s, the author argues, was the result of creators “acknowledging and subverting the worst fears of those who think of television as a corrosive force” by introducing narrative complexity and “interpretive ambiguity.” The author’s analysis is bolstered by clever takes on such shows as Mad Men and WandaVision, both of which he suggests serve as allegories for “what becomes of intimacy, love, grief, friendship when we view them... through screens,” as well as of such apps as FaceTime and Vine, positing that the latter transformed attention “into a creative act.” Elsewhere, Maciak’s willingness to defend screen time refreshes, as when he contends that FaceTiming or watching television with loved ones provides a form of intimacy. Readers will want to tune in to this. Photos. (May)