No More Learning

Every selection, therefore, is based on a context of condensing, confirmation, generalization and schematization not found in the same way in the outside world being communicated about, and this applies to everyday commu- nication just as it does to the particular kind of communication of the mass media. This is what lies behind the assertion that it is only communication (or in other words, the system of the mass media) that gives facts or events a meaning. To formulate this using a different concept, condensates of meaning, topics, and objects emerge as 'Eigenvalues' of the system of mass media com- munication. 21 They are generated in the recursive context of the system's operations and do not depend upon the environment's confirmation of them.
It is with just this characteristic of identity acquisition that a form develops whose inside is characterized by reusability and whose outside disappears from view. But selection always also generates that other side of the products presented, that is, the non-selection or the 'unmarked space' of the rest of the world. The marking em- phasizes whatever is problematic for some reason and is there- fore interesting. But in so doing it simultaneously makes clear that there is something else besides. Understanding the communication requires, here as elsewhere too, the distinction of information and utterance. The fact that the information is true (demonstrable, can- not be disproved, etc. ) is therefore perfectly compatible with the observation of the utterance as contingent, as something that might not be carried out, as the product of a decision, conditional upon motives.
The social memory is filled with identities which are constantly being renewed in this way. However, memory is not to be under- stood as a storage place for past circumstances or events. Neither the media nor other cognitive systems can burden themselves with these things. Rather, we are talking about an ongoing discrimina- tion between forgetting and remembering. Communicative capaci- ties which become available are impregnated ever anew by the reuse of the necessary units of meaning. 22 Memory constructs repetitions, that is, redundancy, with continued openness towards what is cur-
? rent, with continually renewed irritability. As neurophysiological studies of the brain show, this is fully compatible with the opera- tional unity of the system, in fact it is conditioned by it. For these self-tests for recognizability could not even take place if the envir- onment itself were to become active in the system without being filtered. Memory compensates, in fact overcompensates, for the lack of operational contact with the environment by means of the sys- tem's own activities, simultaneously enabling a temporary focus on temporary situations. The marking of what is familiar prevents the forgetting which might indeed be expected in the leap from one operation to the next (and which functions almost completely), and simultaneously binds to learning processes the reimpregnating ac- tivated by events. Whatever is remembered does not need to be labelled with a 'past' temporal index, and we shall see presently how important this is for advertising by repetition. It can also be experienced as 'new', inasmuch as it is only brought into play for communication's ongoing tests of consistency (as well as those of neuronal and psychic memory). For without memory, nothing could appear to be 'new' (= deviant) and without experiences of devia- tion, no memory could develop.
To the extent that improbable information is marked out and selected for reporting, the question arises as to the reasons for the selection. The system's coding and programming, specialized to- wards selection of information, causes suspicion to arise almost of its own accord that there are background motives at work. This problem has been an immediate one ever since the introduction of the printing press. Neither the world itself nor the wisdom of the wise, neither the nature of signs nor the effort of writing can ex- plain the emergence of signs. Early modernity experimented with two different responses in the face of all knowledge becoming con- tingent. One response, related to understanding, was that only what is new, surprising or artificial can be enjoyed, since everything else is in any case the way it is. This is the response of art theory. 23 The other response refers to the aspect of communication to do with utterance and expects to find an interest here. This is the response from political theory (politics to be understood here as public be- haviour per se, according to the meaning it had at that time). This
response leads to the distinction of purpose and motive, of mani-
? fest and latent reasons for communication. Baltasar Gracian com- bines both responses in a general theory of social communication. Communication is the generation of pleasing appearances by which individuals conceal themselves from others and therefore ultimately also from themselves. 24
These two mutually exonerating responses can still be found to- dav, at least in the system of the mass media. On the one hand, improbability has become an institution. It is expected. It operates as an opportunity for attentiveness. On the other hand, suspicions arise of concealed goings-on, of political machinations in the broad- est sense. The mass media are 'manipulating' public opinion. They are pursuing an interest that is not being communicated. They are producing 'bias'. It may be that everything they write or broadcast is relevant, but that does not answer the question: what for? Their concern may be to achieve commercial success, or to promote ideo- logical options, to support political tendencies, to maintain the so- cial status quo (this in particular by providing a drug-like distraction towards ever new items of news) or simply to be a commercial success. The mass media seem simultaneously to nurture and to undermine their own credibility. They 'deconstruct' themselves, since they reproduce the constant contradiction of their constative and their performative textual components with their own opera- tions.
All this is also true of television. After all, television has to accept a rather curious limitation when broadcasting news, which has the effect of being a credibility bonus. When filming something hap- pening, it is tied to the real time of that event's unfolding. It cannot photograph what is happening (for example, a football match, a tornado, a demonstration) either before it has happened or after it has happened, only at the same time. Here too there are numerous possibilities for intervening in order to shape the material - use of several cameras and overlays during recording, choice of perspec- tive and film clips and, of course, choice of events selected for broad- casting and choice of broadcasting time. With digitalization the array of possibilities for manipulation might be expected to increase. Nonetheless, we are still left with evidence of something rather pe- culiar, which can be traced to the real-time simultaneity of filming (not, of course, of broadcasting and receiving) and which distin-
? guishes it from the written fixity of texts. Television literally has 'no time' for manipulating the entire basal material.
In both cases, with linguistic and pictorial generation of reality, reality is ultimately tested by operations' opposition to the opera- tions of the same system - and not by any representation of the world as it is. However, while language increasingly has to give up providing a guarantee for reality since everything that is said can be contradicted, the reproduction of reality is transferred to mov- able, optically/acoustically synchronized pictures. 25 What one must do here is see through the replay and not mistake the time of the broadcast for the time of the real events; but the speed and optical/ acoustic harmony of the series of pictures elude the contradiction that arises at certain points and create the impression of an order that has already been tested. At any rate, unlike words contradict- ing words, there is no sense in which pictures can be contradicted by pictures.
It is important to understand that the possibilities, however lim- ited, of manipulation and of the suspicion of manipulation, which is sometimes exaggerated, and sometimes not pervasive, are a set of problems internal to the system and that they are not an effect generated by the mass media in the environment of their system. Provided that readers and viewers participate, understanding en- sues (according to our theoretical premises) within the system, be- cause only within the system can it be an occasion for further communication. The fact that the effects on the environment are many and unpredictable goes without saying. The more important question is what kind of a reaction there is in the system of the mass media itself to the aporia continually reproduced by being helplessly and despairingly informed.
It is in the suspicion of manipulation that the code values of in- formation and non-information return to being a unity. Their separ- ation is halted, but in a way which cannot become information - or can at most as news etc. In the feedback of the unity of the coded system into the system, the system achieves individual operations at most, but not itself. The system has to live with the suspicion of manipulation because this is how it develops its own paradox, the unity of the difference of information and non-information, and feeds it back into the system. No autopoietic system can do away
? with itself. And in this, too, we have confirmation that we are deal- ing with a problem of the system's code. The system could respond with its everyday ways of operating to suspicions of untruthful- ness, but not to suspicions of manipulation.
? 6
Ricupero
When reality is constructed selectively to such a great and success- ful extent, occasional breakdowns have to be reckoned with. The suspicion of manipulation which constantly accompanies this con- struction remains vague, as long as there is no tangible evidence - which always means, evidence furnished by the media themselves. A good opportunity for studying such a breakdown was provided by an interview with the Brazilian minister of finance Rubens Ricupero, broadcast unintentionally on 2 September 1994.
Elections were due to take place on 3 October that year. On 1 July the Brazilian government had introduced a new 'hard' cur- rency and taken drastic measures to reduce inflation. It had always
been denied that this had anything to do with the election or with enhancing the chances of the candidate favoured by the business community, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB = Partito Social Democratico Brasileiro1). There was in fact widespread uncertainty as to whether the Piano Real could even be sustained after the elec- tions, but the government had committed itself to a political strat- egy based solely on economic considerations.
Something completely different came out in a conversation be- tween the finance minister and a journalist (his cousin) at the Rete Globo. Unbeknownst to the discussants, the conversation had been picked up and broadcast by parabolic (perhaps one should say 'dia- bolic') satellite dishes, until an outraged viewer interrupted the con- versation by phoning in. 2 In the conversation, the minister made it unequivocally clear that public assertions did not correspond to
? actual intentions. The minister's 'smokescreen' tactics also became apparent. 3 As the first shockwaves went out, the scandal was seen as a disaster for Cardoso's candidature. No amount of soothing explanation (such as that it was only meant ironically) helped the situation. The minister felt forced to resign. The shares index on the Sao Paulo stock exchange fell by 10. 49 per cent. The scandal was attributed to him personally and he was dropped. Cardoso commented that this was not his problem, it was the minister's problem. The Rete Globo, whose mistake it had been, made at- tempts at damage limitation. The debacle was the topic of conver- sation for days.
But not for the population. A few days later, a Gallup poll re- vealed that the electorate was not responding. Cardoso held on to the wide lead he had ahead of his main rival, Lula (PT). 4 The entire affair, then, was being played out at the level of public opinion and, if we include the stock exchange, at the level of second-order observation. It consisted in a reaction on the part of public opinion to itself. 5 In the first round of the elections on 3 October 1994, Cardoso was elected President of Brazil with an absolute majority.
But how do the suspicion of manipulation, which exists anyway, and people's general mistrust of politicians' honesty take effect? It is generally assumed, after all, that there is a discrepancy between public pronouncements and actual intentions voiced only in private. Contrary to all rationalistic assumptions about the truth-bearing impact of publicity, this case shows that truth is held to reside in private, rather than in public, communication. 6
? Advertising
After truth comes advertising. Advertising is one of the most puzz- ling phenomena within the mass media as a whole. How can well- to-do members of society be so stupid as to spend large amounts of money on advertising in order to confirm their belief in the stu- pidity of others? It is hard not to sing the praises of folly here, but it obviously works, albeit in the form of the self-organization of folly.
Everything we had always suspected anyway suddenly appears as truth here. Advertising seeks to manipulate, it works insincerely and assumes that that is taken for granted. It takes, as it were, the deadly sin of the mass media upon itself - as if in so doing all other programmes might be saved. Perhaps this is the reason why adver- tising plays with an open hand. It is here that the problems just discussed, concerning suspicion of motives, are resolved at a stroke. Advertising declares its motives. It refines and very often conceals its methods. Now, the point is no longer to describe the objects on offer appropriately and with informative details so that people know that they exist and at what price they can be had. Psychologically more complex means are used in advertising, circumventing the cognitive sphere where criticism is more likely to arise. Conscious attentiveness is only called upon for a very short period of time so that there is no time left for critical appreciation or considered de- cision-making. What is missing time-wise is made up for with graph- icness. In addition, the advertising slots change their topics and forms of representation from moment to moment without the slight-
? est consideration for 'intertextuality'. 1 The law of interruption op- erates here, in the hope that the memory of what has just been seen w ill immediately be activated in this way. Memory, which remem- bers things but actually prefers to forget them, is continually being reimpregnated. And the novelty of the information is more of an alibi for the intention to remind people that there is something to buy and that particular names or optical signatures therefore de- serve special attention. But that changes nothing about the fact that there is no deception concerning the aim of advertising or the mo- tive for utterance.
In fact, we can assume the opposite: precisely because advert- isers are completely open about their interest in advertising, they can be even more uninhibited in the way they treat the memory and motives of the person targeted. There are legal limits to delib- erate deception, but that does not apply to the rather common com- plicity of addressees in their own self-deception. More and more advertising is based nowadays on the motives of the people tar- geted being made unrecognizable. This they will recognize that what they are seeing is advertising, but not how they are being influenced. They are made to believe that they are free to make a decision, as well as that they want something of their own accord that they did not actually want at all.
This function of making the motives of the one being targeted unrecognizable is served above all by the trend towards formal beauty which currently dominates advertising, both visually and textually. Good form destroys information. It appears as though determined by itself, as if requiring no further clarification, as if it immediately made perfect sense. Therefore it offers no occasion for further communication to which the further communication might then react with a 'yes' or a 'no'.
Another widespread technique of 'opaque-ization'2 lies in the paradoxical use of language. For example, we are told that by spend- ing money we can 'save'; items are designated 'exclusive' in an ad- vertisement which is obviously directed at everybody. The 'rustic' look is recommended for furnishing city apartments. 3 It is precisely because we know that what we are looking at is advertising that we do not feel excluded, but rather included, by the word 'exclu- sive', not put off by the word 'rustic', but rather attracted. So this
? advertising technique amounts to an appropriation of the oppos- ing motive.
Or to withholding the object which is to be paid for. It is fairly common for the product being advertised to be tucked into the background in a set of images, so that one has first to turn the image inside out, as it were, in order to figure out what is being advertised. Temporal sequences are dealt with in a similar way, where the thing being advertised only emerges at the end. 'Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet' is a now famous example of this. Obviously this swapping of foreground/background and beginning/end requires some effort from the person who is at first uninterested; this effort then encourages and, if successful, fixes remembering as interest.
Such techniques of bringing paradox to the play of motives al- low unlimited scope (or so it is thought, at any rate) for the para- dox to be resolved by a decision for or against the transaction. But this itself entails expectations of success: what has to be done in the first instance is to break into a terrain in which interests are already fixed and to induce a specific uncertainty. Advertising has already achieved success when people even ask themselves the question whether or not (a new kitchen ought to be bought), since initially it is more likely that the mind is preoccupied not with one's kitchen but with something else.
This of course is only true of advertising which has been ren- dered recognizable, and not for advertising which is not even per- ceived as such. In this case, advertising plays with the distinction conscious/non-conscious. The paradox here consists in conscious decisions being made non-consciously - but again in the mode of a free choice and not under compulsion or threat or the pretence of false facts. Moreover, even camouflaged advertising is now so stand- ardized in many cases that it is recognized as advertising. The fact that 'sponsorship' (note the specially coined term for it! ) serves the purpose of advertising rather than good causes is surely now a com- monplace. 4
One of the most important latent (but, as such, strategically used) functions of advertising is to provide people who have no taste with taste. After it was proved to be impossible to turn education into money, the reverse possibility - making money seem like edu- cation - does have a certain chance of success. And to a consider-
? able extent, of course, on credit. This function refers to the sym- bolic quality of objects which is partly, but not sufficiently, ex- pressed in their price. 5 With its help one can be provided, both visually and verbally, with the security of making the right selec- tion in areas where one has no criteria of one's own - and one need not even buy anything, since advertising serves as a free service. This function, which substitutes for taste, is all the more important in that the old connection of social status and taste, taken for granted in the eighteenth century, has been broken today and in the upper social strata in particular there is a need for modernization due to rapid upward social mobility and unregulated marriage practices.
Taste itself serves in turn to structure desire. Whether or not he or she buys anything, the consumer reacts in the same way as the next person, without any direct imitation of others being required to do so. This too has to do with the fact that there is no longer any convincing upper social stratum to which one might look to see what is 'acceptable' and what is 'not acceptable'. If anything, it is the other way round: the upper social strata follow the taste dic- tates of advertising in terms of what they desire and think is worth showing off - not least, in part, because the market offers nothing else, and only differentiates according to price.
In relation to this, it might be worthwhile exploring the connec- tion of advertising and fashion. Here, advertising can largely with- draw into information, both as text and especially in images. For a sufficiently large number of people, fashion seems to be self-moti- vating. To go along with fashion - as soon as possible - is almost a must. (This much was remarked upon back in the seventeenth cen- tury when the term was introduced. ) From this there follows an interest in receiving information quickly. Although fashion has to be planned several years in advance as far as colour ranges, for example, are concerned, it is not until there is a product that it appears, and then there is only a short amount of time to obtain information. In this instance, therefore, advertising is able to as- sume motives and has only to give them a little encouragement in the form of information. The trend is clearly towards mass produc- tion and mass fashion. The good ideas that come from very small suppliers are taken and copied by large suppliers at fashion fairs and then appear larger than life in their advertising so that there is
? little space left for combining uniqueness in design (especially in clothing) with fashion. Advertising is thus a factor in the genera- tion of the speed of change as well. Even processes which are com- plex in terms of planning and production are affected by this - such as when cars suddenly have to be curvy rather than straight- edged, slim rather than imposing.
The fact that advertising (and especially fashion) goes on at the level of the use of signs need not be repeated. 6 Here, too, we are dealing with a construction of reality which continues its own real- ity - and as far as it is concerned, its primary reality - thus being able to outlast enormous fluctuations in the market and indeed to profit from them. What is typical is that it is the difference of ad- vertising and market success that is at stake, and perhaps also the possibility of being able to do something according to the tried and tested rules of advertising, without knowing whether it will be worth it. At any rate, it is a matter not of subjectively attributable differ- ences such as honesty/dishonesty or truthfulness/untruthfulness but always of pleasing appearances alone. The guiding idea for this form of mass communication can be traced back to the seventeenth century, in other words, to the time of courtly culture in which this first, operational reality of self-representation was still restricted to interaction. The alliance of pleasing appearances and short dura- tion has been a subject of European debates ever since. Advertising demands ever new things, and that is what the power of fashion is based upon. Even ridiculousness can temporarily be nullified by fashion. 7
Perhaps the most important schema of advertising, however, lies in the relationship of surface and depth. As the divination tech- niques of wisdom once used to, it uses the lineations of the surface in order to suggest depth. To this extent it is the same as the art of ornamentation. 8 But depth is no longer destiny, it is the vagueness of advertising instead. Advertising cannot determine what its ad- dressees will think, feel or desire. It may calculate its chances of success and seek payment for it. In this respect it makes an eco- nomic calculation. In the system of the mass media it follows other rules. It occupies the surface of its design and motions from that position towards a depth which remains inaccessible to itself.
The foregoing discussion may have given the impression of a
? static stocktaking in the area of advertising.
That requires correc- tion. In the forty years alone in which television advertising has existed, considerable changes have become apparent. 9 Increasingly, the construction of reality itself has become a problem, a question of 'how? ' Linked with the discovery of the youth scene as a target group with buying power, as one which extends to those no longer so young, are new forms of the integration of marketing, advert- ising and the involvement of those targeted. 'Trendscouts' are on the lookout for what will be 'in'. Cult objects which enable young people to form themselves into a distinct group are created as prod- ucts, equipped with design and name and simultaneously offered in advertising and production. (So it is no longer primarily a ques- tion of selling goods manufactured by mass production in as large a quantity as possible. ) The cult objects themselves generate the difference necessary for identification. This is why the ideological- political difference cited in opposition to 'capitalism' becomes dis- pensable. Concerns about cooperating with advertising = cooperating with capitalism fall away. Those targeted by advert- ising allow cooperation. For a short time, and therefore all the more effectively, cult objects have to be staged as theatre. People call themselves 'scene' or 'technoscene' etc. with an open aspect on whatever is coming up next.
And even the economic reasons used to rationalize expenditure on advertising appear to be changing. Expenditure for advertising is increasing - measured, for example, in relation to what is spent on consumption. 10 For car advertising alone, DM 2 billion are now spent in Germany every year, more than DM500 for every car sold. 11 There can be no question of a cost/yield calculation. Rather, what seems to be at stake is the necessity to remain visible (just as, in economic calculations, keeping or increasing a market share has become more important than profit). But that also means that more creative freedom is granted to the forms used in advertising, as long as they are only suitable for mobilizing attention, as long as they only function as communication. Accordingly, it is precisely in the relationship of economy and advertising that we therefore find good arguments for an increasing differentiation of systems with a decrease in structural couplings.
The success of advertising lies not only in the realm of econom-
? ics, not only in sales success. The system of the mass media has its own function here as well, and that can be said to be the stabilization of a relationship of redundancy and variety in everyday culture. Redundancy is generated by the fact that a thing can be sold, that it sells well, and variety by the need to distinguish one's own prod- ucts in the market. Under the conditions of industrial production, it is surely more of an act of desperation than reason to buy some- thing again. Therefore, additional support for motives is needed, and this is best done through generating the illusion that the same is not the same, but rather something new. Given this, one of ad- vertising's main problems is in continuously introducing new things and at the same time having to generate brand loyalty, in other words variety and redundancy. A BMW is still a BMW, but it gets better and better from one model to the next, and even the disposal of the object, so-called recycling, can be improved. In order to ob- serve this, a minimum of information is indispensable. This is how a combination of high standardization with equally high superfi- cial differentiation arises - a kind of best of all possible worlds with as much order as is necessary and as much freedom as pos- sible. Advertising makes this order known and enforces it. In any typical American restaurant you can choose between salad dress- ings (French or Italian), but you cannot ask for olive oil and lemon juice or even decide on an appropriate mixture of the two. And obviously, under these circumstances, only few people take the es- cape route of going without salad altogether.
? Entertainment
In now coming to consider mass media 'entertainment', we are get- ting into quite a different kind of programme strand again. Here, too, it is only the theoretically based issues which interest us. We are not concerned with the nature of entertainment or with how entertaining it is; we are not concerned with its quality, nor with differences in how demanding or otherwise it is; nor are we con- cerned with the idiosyncrasies of those who need entertainment or who simply enjoy being entertained and would miss it if it were not there. It is certainly true to say that entertainment is one compo- nent of modern leisure culture, charged with the function of de- stroying superfluous time. However, within the context of a theory of the mass media, we shall stick to problems concerning the con- struction of reality and to the question of what kind of effects the coding information/non-information has in this case.
We are best served here by taking the general model of the game as a point of orientation. This will also explain to us why it is that sports programmes, especially where replays are concerned, count more as entertainment than as news. 1 A game, too, is a kind of doubling of reality, where the reality perceived as the game is separ- ated off from normal reality without having to negate the latter. A second reality is created which conforms to certain conditions and from which perspective the usual ways of living life appear as real reality. The constitution of a game requires a time limit that is fore- seeable in advance. Games are episodes. They are not transitions to another way of living. People are only preoccupied with them from
? time to time, without being able to relinquish other opportunities or to shed other burdens. But that does not mean that real reality exists only before and after a game. Rather, everything that exists does so simultaneously. The game always contains, in each of its operations, references to the real reality which exists at the same time. With every move it marks itself as a game; and it can collapse at any moment if things suddenly get serious. The cat jumps onto the chessboard. 2 The continuation of the game requires that the boundaries be kept under constant surveillance.
In social games involving several partners, this will happen by means of an orientation to a set of rules which people have in mind when they identify their own and others' behaviour (within the game) as appropriate. Behaviour both in accordance and in con- flict with the rules is part of the game; but behaviour which breaks the rules is only allowed as long as it can be corrected by being pointed out. Entertainment, on the other hand, is a different kind of game. 3 It does not assume complementary behaviour on the part of a partner, nor any rules agreed prior to it. Instead, the excerpt from reality in which the second world is constituted is marked visually or acoustically - as a book, as a screen, as a striking se- quence of specially prepared noises which are perceived as 'sounds' in this condition. 4 This external frame then releases a world in which a fictional reality of its own applies. A world! - and not merely, as in social games, a socially agreed sequence of behaviour.
This difference to social games brings us back to the system of the mass media. Just as in a game, so entertainment too can assume that viewers are able to observe beginning and end (unlike in their own life) because they experience things beforehand and still do afterwards. So they separate out, automatically as it were, the time of entertainment from the time which affects them themselves. But entertainment itself is by no means unreal (in the sense of not being there). It certainly does presuppose self-generated real objects, double-sided objects so to speak, which facilitate the transition from real reality to fictional reality, the crossing of the boundary. 5 These are texts or films. On the 'inside' of these objects the world of the imagination is to be found, invisible in real reality. This world of the imagination, because it does not have to coordinate the social behaviour of the observers, does not need any game rules. Instead
? it needs information. And it is precisely this which allows the mass media to construct a programme strand called entertainment, on the basis of their information/non-information code.
Moreover, in entertainment, not everything should be fictional, especially when the story is told as a fiction. The reader/viewer has to be put in a position very quickly to form a memory which fits the story, which is tailored to it. And he or she can only do this if provided with sufficient familiar details along with the pictures or the texts. Diderot made this point repeatedly. 6 What is demanded of the reader/viewer, therefore, is a trained (and yet, not consciously handled) capacity for making distinctions.
If these preliminary theoretical decisions are accepted, the prob- lem then concentrates on the question of how, with the aid of in- formation (instead of prescribed rules), a special reality can be excluded from entertainment. The answer to this question turns out to be more complicated than might at first appear.
Let us reiterate that information consists of differences which make a difference. The concept itself, then, presupposes a sequence of at least two events which have a marking effect. But then the difference which has been generated as information can in turn be a difference which makes a difference. In this sense, items of infor- mation are constantly and recursively linked together in a network. They emerge from each other, but can also be arranged in their sequentially with regard to more or less improbable results. This can happen in the strict form of a calculation (or a 'reckoning'), but also in processes which, from one step to the next, include other non-programmed information. In other words, it can happen in processes which only reveal that further items of information are required, and which these are, once the result of a particular piece ot information processing has become apparent. In this case, we will be given the impression (no matter whether or not the process itself describes itself in this way) that what we have is not a calcu- lation but rather a sequence of actions or decisions. It is only in the narrative context that it becomes clear what an action is, how far it extends into its past and into its future and which of the actor's characteristics are part of the action and which are not. Reference to other actions is indispensable for every constraint on the mean- ing of a single action - in everyday life just as in stories.
? This version of the problem of information presupposes that there are 'subjects', fictional identities which produce the unity of the story being told and simultaneously facilitate a conceptual leap to a (likewise constructed) personal identity of the viewer. The latter can compare the characters in the story with himself. 7
But that on its own does not justify viewing this kind of produc- tion of information generated from information (distinctions gen- erated from distinctions) as a game or as entertainment. It presupposes further that the sequence of operations which process information generates its own plausibility itself. As is similar in the case of technologies, a closure of the process occurs in the face of uncontrolled environmental influences. Whatever has made a dif- ference adequately accounts then for which further differences are possible. In this sense the process generates and transports an un- certainty, which it itself produces and renews again and again, and which depends upon further information. It (the process) lives off self-produced surprises, self-constructed tensions, and it is precisely this fictional unity that is the structure which enables real reality to be distinguished from fictional reality and the boundary from one realm to the other to be crossed.
It is taken for granted nowadays that an audience is capable of following this distinction of real and staged reality, and that it there- fore allows certain liberties to be taken with representations, such as speeding cars, which it would never allow itself to get away with. Viewed historically, such an ability to distinguish is one result of an evolution that is nowadays traced back to the emergence of stage theatre in the second half of the sixteenth century. 8 In contrast to medieval performance practice, the idea in Renaissance theatre is no longer to make visible the invisible aspects of the world, not to bring things together again, to symbolize the visible and the invis- ible, but nor is it about any obvious confusion of game and reality (with the result that the audience has to be calmed down and kept from intervening). Rather, it is about an autonomous production which is experienced as merely being fake and which, moreover, rehearses once again within itself the game of deception and reali- zation, of ignorance and knowledge, of motive-led presentation and of generalized suspicion of underlying motives. Individuals are thus at liberty to interpret their own life situations accordingly. Above
? all, however, the schema of expecting there to be a difference of appearance and reality in all social relationships comes to be a fixed part of a culture which in turn, with no further fuss, can then as- sume and build upon the fact that this is taken as given.
It is still possible to find literature in the seventeenth century which takes this to be so remarkable that it draws attention to it specially, indeed virtually offers it as a product of individual learn- ing and of the art of sophisticated living. 9 However, this way of reading reality becomes so rapidly widespread via the printing press that the mass media (then in the process of taking shape) are pre- pared for it and, if anything, have the problem of mobilizing ever new interest in it. The element of tension already mentioned, of generating and dissolving a self-created uncertainty, will have been useful for this.
It is the modern novel which provided the model with the great- est impact in this respect. The novel is clearly itself a product of the mass media and their calculated effect upon an audience. It is pos- sible to read off from a key figure like Daniel Defoe that the mod- ern novel arises out of modern journalism, and this on account of the need to distinguish facts and fictions with regard to printed publications. The printing press changes the way in which the world can credibly be presented to an audience, namely by asserting facts, or writings which have actually been discovered (but are recogniz- able as fiction), through to purely undisguised fictional stories which nonetheless contain enough familar material to be able to count as imagined reality. That the distinction of news or in-depth report- ing (both of which can be proven to be factual) and sufficiently realistic fictional stories comes about at all is down to technology, which enables printed products to be manufactured. 10
It is this distinction which enables fictional literature's loose link to reality and its larger liberties to be used to tell stories which, while fictitious, nonetheless provide readers with certain points of reference that relate back to the world they know and to their own life . However, because what happens in the stories is fictional, those points of reference are left up to the individual, although the range of possibilities is based on a general structure which underlies every kind of entertainment, namely the resolution of a self-induced un- certainty about how the story will end. Epic elements were already
? being eliminated during the course of the eighteenth century, and there was an acceleration of the plot, which is held up only by the intrigues generated within the novel itself. This is why planning a novel requires a reflection of time in time itself. The perspective is future-oriented, and therefore tense and exciting. At the same time, however, an adequate past must be provided to explain at the end how the uncertainty is resolved by information which had already been introduced but whose function had not been realized. One has to be able to return to something in order to close the circle. However future-oriented the plot is, 'the knot is untied only by the past and not by the future' (as Jean Paul instructs the novelist11). If the story aims to satisfy certain basic requirements for its own con- sistency (and fairy tales are a much discussed exception here), the way it unfolds must be able to refer back to the beginning of the story. In any case, the elements needed for resolving the tension have to be introduced before the end, and only the reader or viewer is left in the dark. This is why it is not worth reading something twice - or it is only worth doing if the reader wishes to concentrate instead on admiring the writer's artistic skill or if someone watch- ing a film wants to focus on the way it has been produced and directed. For a text or story to be exciting and entertaining, one must not know in advance how to read it or how to interpret it. People want to be entertained each time anew. For the same rea- son, every piece of entertainment must come to an end and must bring this about itself. The unity of the piece is the unity of the difference of future and past which has been allowed to enter into it. We know at the end: so that was it, and go away with the feeling of having been more or less well entertained. 12
By generating and resolving uncertainty of its own accord, a story that is told becomes individualized. This is how there can always be something new of interest in spite of the stereotypical repetition of the way stories are produced. The reader or viewer does not have to be told to forget as quickly as possible so that new things can be written and sold, as Ludwig Tieck asserts;13 rather, this hap- pens of its own accord as each element of tension is individually built up and then resolved.
In order to be able to generate and sustain tension, one has to have the author stepping back behind the text, because inside the
? text he would be someone who already knows the ending or who at any moment can make things turn out just as it suits him. Every trace of his involvement has to be erased. 14 The mechanism of gen- erating the text must not appear again in the text itself, because otherwise it would not be possible for self-reference and other-ref- erence to be clearly distinguished. 15 Although entertainment texts also have an author and are communicated, the difference of infor- mation and utterance must not appear in the text - if it did, the discrepancy of constative and performative textual components would come to light and the attention of the one engaged in under- standing would be drawn to this difference and thereby diverted. He would waver and have to decide whether he should pay more attention to the utterance and its motives or indeed to the beauty and connotative intricacies of its poetic forms,16 or whether he should just give himself over to being entertained. For entertain- ment means not seeking or finding any cause to answer communi- cation via communication. Instead, the observer can concentrate on the experience and the motives of the characters who are pre- sented in the text and in this respect learn second-order observa- tion. And since it is 'only' a matter of entertainment, the problem of authenticity does not arise, which it would in the case of a work of art. As an art form, then, the novel departs from the sphere of entertainment around the middle of the nineteenth century, with Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, with Melville's The Confi- dence-Man, and gives it over to the mass media. Indeed, twentieth- century art can no longer be described as fictional at all, since fictionality presupposes that we can know what the world ought to look like in order for the fiction to be able to count as a correct description of the world. 17 It is precisely this description, however, which is systematically boycotted in modern art - and, as we can say once more, is left to the mass media which thus fulfil the re- quirements for entertainment.
As is always the case with operational closure, differentiation generates surplus possibilities in the first instance. Forms of enter- tainment therefore differ according to how these surpluses are re- duced. The basic pattern for this is the narrative, which in turn has differentiated itself into a considerable abundance of forms. Ap- parently there are only a few functional equivalents to this (always
? from the perspective of entertainment and not, for example, of art). One example would be competitions of all kinds, such as quiz pro- grammes or broadcasts of sporting events. We do not need to go into detail here, but the question remains as to how this imaginary variety of events is linked back to external reality.
It seems that knowledge which viewers already have must be referred to copiously. In this respect, entertainment has an amplify- ing effect in relation to knowledge that is already present. But it is not oriented towards instruction, as with news and in-depth re- porting. Instead it only uses existing knowledge in order to stand out against the latter. This can come about when the individual viewer's range of experience - always random - is exceeded, be it in terms of what is typical (other people are no better off than I am) or in terms of what is ideal (which, however, we do not have to expect for ourselves), or again in terms of highly unlikely combina- tions (which we ourselves luckily do not have to encounter in every- day life). In addition, it is possible to engage body and mind more directly - for example, where erotica is concerned, or detective stor- ies which initially mislead the viewers who know they are being misled, and especially foot-tapping music. By being offered from the outside, entertainment aims to activate that which we ourselves experience, hope for, fear, forget - just as the narrating of myths once did. What the romantics longed for in vain, a 'new mythol- ogy', is brought about by the entertainment forms of the mass me- dia. Entertainment reimpregnates what one already is; and, as always, here too feats of memory are tied to opportunities for learn- ing.
Films in particular use this general form of making distinctions plausible by having distinctions arise sooner or later within the same story. They condense them even further by including distinc- tions which can only be perceived (not narrated! ). The location of the action, its 'furniture', is also made visible and, with its own distinctions (elegant apartments, speeding cars, strange technical equipment etc. ), simultaneously serves as a context in which action acquires a profile and in which what is said explicitly can be re- duced to a minimum. One can 'see' motives by their effects and can get the impression that intentions behind actions are only a part of the whole series of events and that those engaging in action do not
? have a clear idea themselves of what they are doing. Almost imper- ceptibly viewers come to understand themselves as observers of observers and to discover similar or perhaps different attitudes within themselves.
The novel itself had found its leitmotifs in the bodies of its pro- tagonists, especially in the barriers to the controllability of bodily processes. 18 This explains the dominance of the erotic and of dan- gerous adventures in which the reader can then participate voy- euristically using a body-to-body analogy. The tension in the narrative is 'symbolically' anchored in the barriers to controlla- bility of each reader's body. If the story is also filmed or broadcast on television, these emphases on the erotic and on adventure do not need to be changed; but in pictures, they are capable of being presented in an even more dramatic, complex and simultaneously more impressive way. They are also complemented in specific ways - for example, by time being made visible through speed or by boundary situations of bodily control being presented in artistic film components and in sport, through which boundary cases the problem of the sudden change from control to lack of control be- comes visible. This is why sports programmes on television (as opposed to the results which one can read) are primarily intended for entertainment, because they stabilize tension on the border of controlled and uncontrolled physicality. This experience makes it clear in retrospect how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to narrate the course of sporting events - of horse races through to tennis matches. One has to go there oneself or watch it on televi- sion.
The artistic form of the novel as well as fictional forms of excit- ing entertainment derived from it posit individuals who no longer draw their identity from their background but who instead have to shape it themselves. A correspondingly open socialization, geared towards 'inner' values and certainties, appears to begin amongst the 'bourgeois' classes of the eighteenth century; today it has be- come unavoidable. No sooner than he is born, every individual finds himself to be someone who has yet to determine his individu- ality or have it determined according to the stipulation of a game 'of which neither he nor anyone else back to the beginning of time knew the rules or the risks or the stakes'. 19 It is extremely tempting
? to try out virtual realities on oneself - at least in an imagination which one can break off at any time.
The form of narrative entertainment gained as a result of the novel is no longer the sole dominant form today. At least since television became widespread, a second form has appeared along- side it, namely the genre of highly personal experiential accounts. People are put before the camera and asked all kinds of questions, often with interest focused on the most intimate details of their private lives. Whoever agrees to get into this kind of situation can be assumed to be willing to talk; the questioner can proceed freely and the viewer can enjoy feeling no embarrassment whatever. But why?
It seems that interest in such programmes lies in being presented with a credible reality, but one which does not have to be subject to consensus. Despite living in the same world (there is no other), viewers are not expected to join in any consensus of opinion. They are at liberty to agree or to disagree. They are offered cognitive and motivational freedom - and all this without any loss of reality! The opposition of freedom and coercion is dissolved. One can make a choice oneself and is not even obliged to stand by what one thinks of oneself if things get serious.
Entertainment performances, therefore, always have a subtext which invites the participants to relate what they have seen or heard to themselves. The viewers are included as excluded third parties - as 'parasites', as Michel Serres puts it. 20 The sequences of distinc- tion, which develop from one another by one providing the oppor- tunity for another, make a second difference in their world of imagination - the difference to the knowledge, capabilities and feel- ings of the viewers. The issue here is not what impression the text, the programme, the film makes on the individual viewer. And nei- ther can the effect be grasped with the simple concept of analogy formation and imitation - as if one were trying out on oneself what one had read in a novel or seen in a film. One is not motivated to align one's own behaviour (this would quickly place too much strain on one's own capabilities and, as we know, would look ridicu- lous).