Electric Josh

This space has been a longtime fan of the Zen TV Experiment that Adbusters ran a long time ago (and that is no longer on their site; the link is to what I think is an accurate copy). I thought of a new one last weekend while I was convalescing, and found it far more disturbing than I had expected.

• Step 1: Put your one-year-old daughter in front of an Elmo video or some other thing geared toward young kids.
• Step 2: Situate yourself between your child's face and the television, just slightly out of her line of sight (so she doesn't complain). You should now be able to see your child's blank gaze from a distance of about a foot. In particular, you should be able to see the TV screen reflected off the surface of your child's eyeballs.
• Step 3: Watch the Elmo video in the kid's eyeball reflection for at least two minutes.

During the experiment, smile at your child and note her reaction. Marvel at how well synchronized the sound is with what's happening on the kid's corneas. After this experiment, consider the following questions: Why is this experiment even possible, given that one-year-olds are usually wigglier than a bucket of eels? What is this kid thinking about while she looks at the screen?

(In the immediate aftermath of doing this experiment I half-seriously contemplated throwing the television down the basement steps (for effect), which is kind of the point of Zen TV Experiments, but decided that the resulting shards of broken leaded glass and powdery phosphor mist would probably be more harmful than the images displayed by a still-functioning TV. That and we like to watch TV after the kid goes to bed sometimes.)
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