"Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things"
About this Quote
The subtext is less about literal programming than about a culture trained to treat uncertainty as a defect. TV’s continuous presence performs reassurance: if the screen is speaking, the world is legible; if the world is legible, it is manageable. That’s why the metaphor is so sharp: day suggests surveillance, exposure, an enforced clarity. Night suggests interiority, ambiguity, the possibility that reality contains gaps the image can’t fill. Baudrillard’s cynicism is that TV doesn’t illuminate the dark so much as erase it, replacing depth with a steady stream of visible, consumable surfaces.
Context matters: Baudrillard wrote in an era when mass broadcast TV was the central hearth of the household and the central engine of “hyperreality,” where representation starts to outrank the represented. The screen’s endless daylight becomes a cultural discipline: stay awake, stay plugged in, keep the unknown at a safe distance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Baudrillard, Jean. (2026, January 18). Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/television-knows-no-night-it-is-perpetual-day-tv-9165/
Chicago Style
Baudrillard, Jean. "Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/television-knows-no-night-it-is-perpetual-day-tv-9165/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/television-knows-no-night-it-is-perpetual-day-tv-9165/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.





