"Similar to the telescope or the telephone, television enables us to see or hear things we never dreamed of. When you look at the details, a concrete scene between people is really something incredibly unlikely, something subtle that requires extended description"
About this Quote
The second sentence pivots from tech optimism to aesthetic suspicion. A “concrete scene between people” is, for Kluge, an improbable achievement: not because people are rare, but because the density of motives, misunderstandings, micro-gestures, and unspoken history is almost impossible to capture honestly. Television promises immediacy, yet the intimacy it markets is usually a shortcut, a pre-chewed simulation of social life. His phrase “requires extended description” is a quiet provocation against TV’s default grammar: speed, compression, simplification. It’s also a defense of montage, essay film, and the long, patient gaze - forms Kluge championed in New German Cinema - as tools capable of honoring complexity rather than packaging it.
The subtext is political. If human scenes are subtle and unlikely, then mass media’s easy narratives aren’t innocent; they’re power’s convenience. Kluge is asking viewers to distrust seamless realism and to demand forms that admit how strange, overdetermined, and hard-won “ordinary life” actually is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kluge, Alexander. (2026, January 17). Similar to the telescope or the telephone, television enables us to see or hear things we never dreamed of. When you look at the details, a concrete scene between people is really something incredibly unlikely, something subtle that requires extended description. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/similar-to-the-telescope-or-the-telephone-41038/
Chicago Style
Kluge, Alexander. "Similar to the telescope or the telephone, television enables us to see or hear things we never dreamed of. When you look at the details, a concrete scene between people is really something incredibly unlikely, something subtle that requires extended description." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/similar-to-the-telescope-or-the-telephone-41038/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Similar to the telescope or the telephone, television enables us to see or hear things we never dreamed of. When you look at the details, a concrete scene between people is really something incredibly unlikely, something subtle that requires extended description." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/similar-to-the-telescope-or-the-telephone-41038/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.
