Test Card F: Television, Mythinformation and Social Control [Paperback]

Anonymous (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2001

Test Card F is a graphic demolition derby through the culture of a factory farmed and show-shocked society, a society whose sell-by date has long since expired. Using savage image/text cut and paste, this controversial book explodes all previous media theories and riots through the Global Village, looting the ideological supermarkets of all its products: anti-fascism, Malcolm X, James Bulger, the Gulf War, Satanic Abuse, Somalia, and Eastern Europe.
Test Card F joyrides in front of the surveillance cameras, amidst the rubble of a junkyard nation, and heaves television's burnt-out carcass through the plate glass shop window of "independent" video and "community access" broadcasting. It transcends postmodern and Situationist analysis in its positive refusal of the concept of Truth.
Test Card F has no named authors; it originates in the pirate transmissions of the unruly squatters of cyberspace when scheduled programming closes down for the night.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: AK Press (July 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1873176910
• ISBN-13: 978-1873176917
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,916,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smashes the Idiot Box, June 12, 2000

By 

Jesse Hicks (Pennsylvania, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Test Card F: Television, Mythinformation and Social Control (Paperback)

Test Card F systematically dismantles the myth-machine of Television, and in the process brings down the culture of distraction surrounding Television. But Test Card F isn't some incoherent rant on the evils of modern society - this is in-depth, thought provoking material, well-researched, articulate, and reasonable. This book has more in common with Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan than the Luddittes.

Test Card F addresses the issue of The Society of the Spectacle - what happens when we all become viewers, spectators in our lives? Today's television viewers are more informed than ever in mankind's history, but are we more active? What is the role of commercials in the television mindscape? Who are these people on the box we see every day? Just who's at the controls here?

Test Card F is a eye-opening, provocative piece of writing, presented with the kind of humorously cynical optimism missing from much of today's social criticism. It's the kind of book that will make you stop watching and start doing.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very informative...to those in the UK, January 31, 2001

By 

Joe Kenney "buttergun" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Test Card F: Television, Mythinformation and Social Control (Paperback)

This book was first published in Ireland, so it naturally focuses on the UK. However, its information on the pathetic state of modern news coverage is very global. This book is very short, slim, and Situationist. Lots of deranged "comix" throughout. It will definitely open your eyes to many things, but I doubt it will make you want to toss your television out the window. After all, if this book makes you do that, then you are just as "impressionable" as the TV slaves the book derides. And that's the funny thing about this book. It claims that TV is bad because it will rot your brain and tell you what you should think; then the book TELLS you to throw away your TV. Basically what I am saying is, this book is just as opinionated and commanding as the industry it is trying to lambaste. Read the book and see what you think. Let it open your eyes, but don't let it change your life. Because the idea that ALL television is bad is just as lameheaded as saying that ALL white people can't dance, or ALL Asians are good at math, or any other such idiotic popular myths. As Hagbard Celine said in the Illuminatus! Trilogy: "Think for yourself." Actually, there was an additional word on that sentence, but if I wrote it, Amazon would surely edit it out...