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George Trow, Within the Context of No Context (Little, Brown, 1981) Reissued in paperback by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1997. Originally appearing in The New Yorker in 1978, George Trow's classic book Within the Context of No Context got another facelift in 1997 when the book was reissued with Trow's new introduction, "Collapsing Dominant," which picks up where the first edition left off and continues with a bit of Trow's autobiography. Other than the introduction, the book is the same criticism of American culture that it was in 1981. In a short book, filled with New Journalism-like headlines interspersed throughout, Trow argues that meaning has disappeared from American culture, mostly because of television, which he asserts creates its own context of no-context. There is nothing beyond television; there is no context except television itself. "Television has problems with its programming, because the frame of all programs on television is television – nothing else," he writes. Game shows and daytime shows are examples of programs that refer only to themselves and never discuss the 'old' history beyond the demographic-obsessed world of today. They are the television context of no-context. While at times difficult to understand, Trow's analysis is clearly ill at ease with what he calls the "New History". It is now the self-proclaimed experts on television who have become authorities on subjects, as well as magazines such as People and Vogue, which claim to have authority for the particular demographic they target. There are only two "grids" left, he writes: the grid of intimacy and the grid of the 200 million, in reference to roughly the population of the U.S. The difference between the two grids is "very great" and Americans are coming to enjoy it. Trow complains that America is now obsessed with demographics, such as finding averages. He uses the old game show "Family Feud" as an example - when "Family Feud" asks its contestants what a poll of 100 people had guessed was the height of the average American woman, the show's organizers are asking contestants to guess what other people have already guessed. This is hardly authority, according to Trow. MORE: Salon.com article about "information overload" Curtis White's Appreciation of Trow |
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