Pericles Critical Essay | Pericles Deconstructed

David Skeele, Slippery Rock University Theatre

"I do not fear the flaw. "

(act III, scene i)

One of the more pervasive images in current popular culture is that of the "channel surfer." In this image, a person (for some reason, usually a male)¹ sits in the dark, staring glassily at a flickering television screen, while his hand clutches a remote control. As his finger presses down on the channel button, rhythmically, every two or three seconds, he is confronted by a quick succession of disconnected snapshots: "gangster-rap" video, wildlife documentary, sexy beer commercial, "real-life" police drama, Barney the Dinosaur, Australianrules football—the world as a bewildering array of incongruous images.² Though it lies outside the bounds of the cliché, it would not be difficult to imagine our hypothetical channel surfer wearying of this electronic collage and attempting to focus on one program for a length of time. However, on...
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