Thomas S. Hibbs on film and television in anxious times, in the New Atlantis:
We seem suspicious that what we take to be real in our experience is in fact a fiction, that technological construction obscures what is natural and authentic. We are also anxious that technology, the chief instrument of progress in our culture, will be turned against us by terrorists, destroying our entertainment-seeking way of life. We hunger at once for restored innocence and unifying epics; we lament what we are and we fear losing what we have. Taken together, film and television seem to mirror the confusions of our age. Real love, real danger, and real grief intermingle in the popular imagination with pulp fact and pulp fiction, with the worst delusions and highest aspirations both taking shape on the big and little screen.
