A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Wallace gathers his insights and arguments regarding the state of TV and American fiction during the early 1990s, the same period in which he was writing his novel Infinite Jest (1996). Wallace thinks that society tends to ignore TV as a medium and that fiction writers should take it more seriously. Throughout the essay, Wallace insists that he is not criticizing TV as inherently evil or destructive, but he nevertheless outlines how it has a corrosive effect on society.

Wallace begins by describing how TV, as a medium, is unique in that it allows people to observe other people without having to be observed themselves. Thus, people can avoid the “psychic costs of being around other humans” (22). On average, Wallace states, a US citizen (in the early 1990s) watches TV for six hours a day. Although people spend so much time watching television, Wallace does not consider this act of watching others voyeuristic, since everyone involved in TV (including production, broadcast, and consumption) is conscious of the arrangement. However, TV provides false intimacy, and any attempt to “act natural,” Wallace notes, is inherently and ironically impossible. As a result, TV distorts society’s impression of humanity, especially by emphasizing the idea of “watchableness” in pursuit of higher viewing numbers rather than realism.

Most people, Wallace posits, watch TV “basically because it’s fun” (27). Despite its popularity, however, many critics still view TV as “this despicable instrument of cultural decay” (28). Through their criticism of TV, Wallace suggests, many of these critics only betray their seeming need for TV. The medium has become such a cornerstone of culture that it can barely reference any other media at all. Instead, everything becomes overwhelmed by TV, making it “immune to charges that it lacks any meaningful connection to the world outside it” (33).

Next, Wallace delves into the literary figures of the mid-20th century to provide examples of how this era of writing focused on pop culture references and images. By the mid-20th century, Wallace posits, the permeation of consumerist culture into every corner of society made such references much more viable. Mass media particularly expanded the viability of pop culture references. Wallace cites work by Don DeLillo, who frequently explored the “complicated ironies” (49) of a culture built on the interplay between watchers (those who watch TV) and watchers of watchers (who create art by watching those who watch TV).

Wallace then presents the two core premises of his thesis. The first claims that the rise of a “pop-conscious postmodern fiction” (49) in the 1990s was a response to the rise of TV. The second outlines how TV is inherently good at responding to criticisms by deflecting, absorbing, and then redeploying criticisms of television through the medium itself (for example, through shows that criticize TV). Wallace’s argument is that Postmodern fiction and TV during the era in question are in conversation with each other, particularly through their use of irony. Although irony can be effective and entertaining when used in the right way, Wallace argues, it is ultimately unsatisfying and destructive.

He describes a form of fiction known as image-fiction, which is informed by a particular desire to respond to the pervasiveness of TV in US culture. Image-fiction mirrors the strange reality of US society in the 1990s, leaping from image to image between paragraphs and often sentences in a way that self-consciously references TV. Ultimately, Wallace holds, image-fiction can be effective but cannot escape from the TV that it attempts to imitate. Criticisms that image-fiction makes of TV, for example, have already been acknowledged by TV and turned into yet more self-referential, self-aware programs in pursuit of profit.

Advertising is an essential element of the TV experience. By the 1990s, Wallace argues, the commercials became almost indistinguishable from the shows. The form, content, and design of commercials have been refined in an attempt to prevent the viewer from changing the channel. At one point, many commercials actively acknowledged or mocked their status as commercials as an ironic joke on the nature of TV and commercials, just as TV shows indulged in such metafictional self-reference, and the end result was the promotion of a form of all-encompassing, detached irony presenting itself as jaded sophistication. This detached irony hoped to preempt criticisms of TV, while flattering viewers by allowing them to believe that they were part of the same ironic commentary on the nature of TV. The old usefulness of irony, Wallace suggests, has been lost because the irony of the 1990s is tactically deployed to deflect criticism and raise profits to the extent that it provides no substitute for the very thing which it criticizes. Writers like Wallace are left with no way to respond to the aura of irony that infects society and “tyrannizes us.”

Wallace describes the conservative responses to this cultural phenomenon. While some conservatives have called for a return to the ways of the past, others call on the viewers of TV to raise themselves up from the status of passive consumer. These conservatives want viewers to become active curators, participants in the culture. Wallace, however, does not think that this (or advances such as better computers or higher-resolution TV) would help address the fundamental problem. Instead, they would only promulgate the issues he outlines in the essay. Nevertheless, he does not believe that nihilism or other forms of irony are the ideal response to the problems that TV causes. Wallace suggests that one response may be to allow oneself to “risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama” (81) and embrace sincerity. However, he finishes the essay by admitting that he does not know.