From the Small Screen to Television : The History of a Trivialization (1949-1984)

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This article shows how a totally unknown object became an ordinary one in only thirty years, owned by virtually all French people and what this development hides. This trivialization took place in three steps. The 1950s saw the arrival on the stage of television. In spite of its cost and newness, it rapidly became a popular craze. As an extension of known leisure, a public service television was considered a ‘right’. Yet its dissemination remained socially and geographically restricted. The small screen became more democratic in the 1960s to become a domestic, daily, and family leisure activity in the great majority of French households. Yet the object is anything but ordinary. An instrument of propaganda by the power structure that paid very special attention to its public television, a new medium of mass culture, and an object of consumption, television was harshly criticized by certain elites. The disparities in equipment showed that it was not evenly distributed. This was not the case in the following decade. While it took on ‘color’, the television settled massively into the everyday life of almost all households. The place and uses of this ordinary object, especially with the development of new tools such as the remote control and the VCR, differ from one category to another, or even from one individual to another, and qualify the trivial aspect of a good that has become indispensable to some.