“Television was now positioned as a replacement for many aspects of the communal Vietnamese life I'd left behind, a wise and understanding sage in a box with a glowing cathode tube for a heart.”
IN THE 1970S, America was one nation looking through the same window. Television created the veneer of consensus via three major networks while entertaining, consoling, and shocking its viewers. Vietnam was deemed the Television War, projected into the relative peace of American households with bleak realism, a contrast to the upbeat expressionistic World War II news reels of decades prior. As a young child who had just escaped this very war, I found myself suddenly beamed into the US, a land of advanced technology that felt like something out of sci-fi. The vivid and uncanny experience of an alien culture contrasted with the grim black-and-white newspaper headlines and TV broadcasts that I drew upon to understand my refugee identity and explain it to others.
My family's arrival in Brooklyn, another world crumbling and on fire, introduced a new chapter of trauma. (At least there were no bombs or napalm.) Our postwar daily life was a struggle on every level. Without even a rudimentary understanding of the local language, our seven-person family was isolated in a short-term two-bedroom apartment rental near the downtown commercial thoroughfare of the Fulton Mall. Our living space was fitted out with donated basics, secondhand furnishings, and a small black-and-white television set. The TV sat innocuously in a corner, as common as a pet, magically conjuring a flurry of image and sound at the flip of a switch. Television was now positioned as a replacement for many aspects of the communal Vietnamese life I'd left behind, a wise and understanding sage in a box with a glowing cathode tube for a heart.
My siblings and I stayed distracted from our family crisis solely with the TV set; it virtually babysat us when my mom and dad were engaged with daily basic survival or too tired from working multiple jobs to be present. TV broke down the language barrier with a visual narrative that taught me the local customs and vernacular of my new home. Sesame Street and The Electric Company literally decoded the sounds and structure of the English language for my young ears, where one word ends and another begins, building comprehension and rudimentary usage. Although I might argue that it was the endless barrage of commercials which taught me American.
Like any complex intelligent being, my TV had a multiple personality disorder; depending on which channel was dialed up, I never knew who or what I was going to get. I absorbed it all, from the black-and-white movies of Hollywood's golden age to the absurdity of nightly gameshows like The $25,000 Pyramid and The Price Is Right (the capitalist dream show!). There was no consistency, save possibly the didactic monotone of PBS. Television defined what was funny through persuasive laugh tracks and what was threatening with a dissonant music score and harsh lighting. Its multisensory experiences were in some ways more real than reality. TV images snuck into my dreams, TV voices became part of my conscious and subconscious thought. As painful and flawed as this transitional time was, I can say honestly that the emotional bond I formed with this transmitting analogue technology was real. Television was a nonjudgmental, friendly presence; it would never pick a fight with us for not knowing the language.
Is today's schizophrenic media multiverse the companionable entity that TV once was? Would TV still be the soothing white-noise balm to a new generation of traumatized kids and refugees? Over time, classic television's relatively benign desire for my attention has been usurped by contemporary media's demands for exhausting levels of perpetual interaction, while looking to surveil me and collect my personal data, just for starters. While responding in kind to modern media's plea, my anxiety has expanded in indirect proportion to my affection. I yearn nostalgically for the calming presence of an older analogue television, which at day's end would register the RCA test pattern signaling a circadian pause, a breath, perhaps a blank slate of beautiful possibilities.
Tati Nguyễn is a visual artist, storyteller, filmmaker, and arts educator; her multicultural perspective continues to shape her work. She holds an MFA from Cal Arts and a BFA from Cooper Union and currently works as the creative media specialist at Pratt Institute.