Aspects of Television in Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There

Jerzy Kosinski’s satirical and ingenious novel, Being There, introduces a new term to us: videots, who are the people whose language got depleted, whose dreams are advertisements, desires are videotaped, perceptions are fixed and their understanding of self and society has been stereotyped by television. Like so-called Chauncey Gardiner, who is actually Chance the Gardener, the citizens of this artificial video-web; which we can call the entire world of today, only “watches” but do or know nothing.

The character of a person takes its shape with communication, however in contemporary world, there is huge gaps in communication. People tend to watch the events go by, rather than participate in them. This is the situation in important matters; such as political, environmental or religious issues that are needed to be dealt with an activist manner. Moreover, a more grave problem in “culture” emerges at this point. The society is so dependent on television and “watching”, that nobody really thinks it is necessary to question or even read. As in the novel, Chance tries to calculate the time needed to read a page (441) which is enough, for Chance does not know how to read, but the created society is so typical to the television, that he can easily fit and blend in. A man without any real comprehension or quality can be the celebrity of the day, like Chance does. As Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”. Television does not ask for a diploma, or a real work of art to make you known. It just creates a new you, reflects its own values on you so you become one of the unreal people of television, as you watch it, take it seriously, or appear on it. We can see this in the novel too, when Chance thinks about television with his only outside source of information, gardon which represents the whole real world before us:

“By changing the channel he could change himself. He could go through phases, as garden plants went through phases, but he could change as rapidly as he wished by twisting the dial backward and forward. In some cases he could spread out into the screen without stopping, just as on TV people spread out into the screen. By turning the dial, Chance could bring others inside his eyelids. Thus he came to believe that it was he, Chance, and no one else, who made himself be.” (433)

Television affects social behaviour, firstly its messages broadcast throughout the world, people with little knowledge or people who takes information as granted are the first victim of this messages. Secondly it reorganizes the social setting by changing interactions of people and by weakening the relationship of physical and social areas. It defines the social roles and behaviours, determines new masculine and feminine roles and overruns the borders of public and private lives. Also it creates “fictions” instead of facts, with the messages that mentioned earlier.

In the novel we see the ultimate creation (or maybe the creature) of television, Chance. There is no person that can really identify with him, but in reality, he is every one of us. After Chance appears on television as a public personality, both Soviets and United States intelligences starts to make investigation about him. The Soviets analyse his appearance on “This Evening” and says that it is “impossible to determine in any way whatsoever his ethnic background or to ascribe his accent to any single community in the entire United States!” (490). When we consider these sentences we eventually come with one result, the television creates clones of people with a blend of characteristics that appeared on it, like Chance. With all their awe, Sulkin makes the perfect metaphor for Chance; “a blank page” (490). A page which had been erased and had not been given permission to be written on. Its ultimate creature is a blank page, however the other minions of the television are nor blank, for none of them are really like Chance, but the same effect can be seen on anybody; as a page that shows letters that have been seen on television yesterday, acts as the person that is being seen every single week.

To conclude, Chauncey Gardiner, with the name he has been given by television upon his creation, deemed as a personable, well-spoken man, and looking good on television. Thus he identifies as one of “them”. He is their only chance (495). He is a beloved creature of the television, one of the best, with his lack of comprehension of world, with his lack of identity, he is perfect for constant recreation and re-characterization. Chance is one of us, an imitation of his unpicked observations of his creator, who lives his life by chance, and who has never been born.