Where Do You Live

Abstract

WHERE DO YOU LIVE?This review presents the novel "I Live in the Television", written by Chloe Delaume, translated into Romanian by Mioara Izverna, at Art Publishing House. The novel is an experiment carried out by the authoress, intended to find out what it is like to be a contemporary person, who does nothing to find his/her identity, to distinguish himself/ herself from the many around him, and indulges himslef/ herself into being manipulated by televison. The authoress is eager to know if television will have the same effect on herself, who has a critical attitude on this reality. She assumes consciously this experiment not in a unaware way as the majority of people do.Chloe Delaume is a French writer who considers herself to be "a fiction character". She confesses to be living in "a female body dating from from 10th March 1973". She creates an experimental literature, with investigations into self fiction with ludic and humorous feelings, with ironical pirouettes, distorting words, fracturing meaning and with aggressing sounds. The French media signaled in her books a surrealism meeting with a "Unidentified Literary Object" . Chloe Delaume is a literary pseudonimi her first name coming from the main character of the novel "The Foam of Days" (which has determined her to write literature) by Boris Vian, and her family name comes from Antonin Artaud' s book "L'Arve et l'Aume". Her real name is Nathalie Dalain.All the books written by the young writer are challenging from the very title. She is the author of the novels: Mes week-ends sont pires que les votres (2001), Le cri du sablier (2001), La Vanite des Somnambules (2002), Corpus Simsi (2003), Certainement pas (2004), J'habite dans la television (2007).In I Live in the Television, the author makes an experiment. For 22 months (1451 hours), from morning till night, she makes up her mind to turn into a telvision "sentinel", becoming her own object of study, exposing herself to the flow of media and advertising messages, swallowing reality-show programmes, to be able to pick up information about "reality". All this is done to understand what can happen to a human being who takes in television in excess. Chloe Delaume switched on the TV and, for almost two years, she lived connected to its reality-shows, its advertisments and to everything TV programmes offer people, in short, she joined the big family of TV fiction consumers.More convincing than a theoretical book, Chloe Delaume's book demonstrates by an unwonted fictitional game - a 27 piece puzzle - what kind of a product a man, permanently connected to TV, can become.Although this book has mainly in view the French audience, it can be easily read in any country, as stupid programmes like the Big Brother and others of the kind have invaded the whole world, the news manipulators existing everywhere, and companies skilfully promoting useless products are aggressive and get good results, making our epoch a consumer one and people with an aim to obtain more and more objects. This might distract our attention from the fact that our life is empty. I Live in the Television makes a thorough analysis of the mechanisms behind the apparently harmless programmes, which try to prove that they have been made for the viewer's comfort.The book starts with the awareness that "you are not here at hazard. There is nothing like hazard, you will understand this. In this moment you are here, in this moment you stay on your feet. Man should have a vertical position... you are the elite, aren't you? You are no longer the supporter of any idea, with the exception, maybe, of optimisation... (because) you never watch TV, never indeed... You think like this: to stay upright means not to go down to television." You should say: "I am alive, life is not television".This is the reality which determines the author to make this experiment. She will have an extreme experience with rightly so consequences: even during the experiment she will become aware that her body, her brain and speech is changing; enters lethargy; becomes the victim of a progressive anesthesis; she undergoes alarming physical modifications - headaches, getting fat, ocular congestions, hallucinations; she is seized with sadist impulses after watching the programme Star Academy, getting over them by turning the candidates into charcaters. …