A Conversation with Ray Bradbury ("if you watch local news, your head will turn to mush")

Fahrenheit 451, 50th Anniversary Edition ^ | 2003 (50th anniversary of Fahrenheit 451) | Ray Bradbury

[Recovering_Democrat]

excerpts from the interview with Bradbury....

[Q]: What forms of censorship do your regard as the most dangerous today?

Bradbury: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other...The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

[Q]: There seems to have been a decline in standards of journalistic objectivity, to put it mildly.

Bradbury: It's not just substance; it's style. The whole problem of TV and movies today is summed up for me by the film "Moulin Rouge".

[Recovering_Democrat]

Ray Bradbury grew up in a Baptist home while living in Illinois, Arizona and California.

He is best known for his book "Fahrenheit 451", a book about government censorship of books and thinking. The government uses TELEVISION as a distraction to real thinking, and anyone found with a book has their home and goods burned to the ground.

Bradbury's hero in the novel is a book burner whose mind and heart is changed. He sees the television for what it is: a distraction to keep people from thinking.

I don't know Bradbury's politics, but he was damn right about TV's detrimental effects on the human brain.

I think Bradbury's thoughts on censorship might be a bit different 8 years later--it certainly seems as though some form of "censorship", though not explicit governmental censorship, is rampant in some quarters. "Censorship" as I see it is an act of government, not the market place.

[Recovering_Democrat]

More of what Bradbury said about Moulin Rouge:

It came out a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It has 4,560 half-second clips in it. The camera never stops and holds still. So it clicks off your thinking: you can’t think when you have things bombarding you like that. The average tv commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That subsitutes for thinking.

[PaleoBob]

Bradbury is a paleo lib but his comments here are good. And funny.

[Huck]

I think the film “Network” nailed it a long time ago. I gave up broadcast and cable tv a few years back and haven’t missed it a bit. In fact, I’ve lost all tolerance for it. If I am exposed to it for even a few minutes, it starts to make me sick.

[cuban leaf]

I got rid of TV in the mid-1990’s. Whenever I’m exposed to LOCAL news anywhere in the US, without exception I notice the same thing. They speak and act, literally, like their primary audience is in the 7th grade.

[skeeter]

Read all his major works in high school. I’m not a big si fi fan but loved his stuff.

[television is just wrong]

that is why I stopped watching the news.

[Paladin2]

I’m Montag.

[laweeks]

More of what Bradbury said about Moulin Rouge: It came out a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It has 4,560 half-second clips in it. The camera never stops and holds still.

I totally agree . . . Moulin Rouge was probably the worst film I ever saw . . . the jerky camera crap was extremely annoying . . . it never let up . . . 1-1/2 hours or so of constant flickering screen . . . garbage.

And yet, they had a very beautiful female lead that the camera could have spent time on, but they chose to go goofy with the camera jerks.

[NRA1995]

My favorite Bradbury book was “The Martian Chronicles.”

[Yossarian]

Obligatory Ping.

[MichaelNewton]

I hated the new Moulin Rouge. The original one was much better.

[Dick Vomer]

Where’s the entire interview?

[Thorliveshere]

My favorite story of his is so non-sci-fi: Dandelion Wine. Every time I read it, it evokes a deep sense of nostalgia and yearning for good days of life.

[neefer]

he was damn right about TV's detrimental effects on the human brain. I finished reading this book yesterday and agree with you. What I found so interesting is that it was first copy written in 1953. He had such a clear vision of the future - TV's control and degradation of morals. I kept thinking as I read, "Is this guy a conservative?"

[Jack Hydrazine]

I can’t remember who said the following quote.

“Those who don’t read the news are uninformed. Those who do are misinformed.”

[skeeter]

Yes. He was best at short stories though, IMHO.

And he's lived long enough to see some of his favorites themes being born out in a general sense, for better or worse.

Mostly worse.

[Pearls Before Swine]

"If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush."

And, if you watch national and international news, your head will explode!

[NativeSon]

I really liked TV, turn it on and I'd sit in front of it and flip through the channels and zone. For the past five years I've been more or less TV free. I watch movies on DVD or Netflix, get my news only online (thanks Freepers). But now, I can't even get interested in movies; the best thing I've watched recently was a 30 minute show about two beavers building dam.

I'm now onto audio books, downloaded from the library, I can listen and do other things at the same time. I'm not trying to be snobbish about it, I just can't tolerate what is being served up. The news has me ranting for hours and the shows, well, they just plain s**k.

[Sergio]

bkmk