THE FLAT SCREEN TV

THE FLAT SCREEN TV in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 covered a whole wall and was called “the wall.” Today’s largest TVs boast seven-foot screens. That’s about the size of the wall in Fahrenheit. 

Like new homes today that include a media room, game room, or home theater, every home in Bradbury’s futuristic novel had a wall.  Bradbury predicted in 1953 that television screens would get bigger, programming would become mediocre, and technology would become the center of our lives.  In Fahrenheit 451 the TV shows are similar to reality TV today and viewers interact with the wall in a sort of Facebook-Twitter-Skype combination.  Characters in the book talk to the wall and the wall talks back. 

Bradbury predicted many inventions in Fahrenheit 451 including 24-hour banking machines, earbud headphones, electronic surveillance cameras, and listening devices.  Instead of drones, Bradbury envisioned robot dogs that sniff around your house listening to conversations. 

The most prophetic trend in Fahrenheit 451 is technology’s dehumanizing effect on modern culture.  Characters in the novel suffer from loneliness and isolation from watching the wall’s mindless programming.  The character of Mildred spends her days interacting with the wall and taking sleeping pills at night.  

Today mind-numbing reality TV shows are on the decline.  Taking their place are quality dramas and sit-coms produced by internet companies.  Netflix and Amazon have hired talented writers with fresh ideas.  For the first time CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX did not win 2015 Golden Globes. HBO won a single award.  Netflix and Amazon were big winners, signaling a power shift from the traditional television industry to tech companies, and the viewers’ shift from TV to computer. 

The new players in the media biz seem to have heeded Fahrenheit 451:  “The good writers touch life often.  The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.”

By Mary Jane McKinney