Oscar night warning

In Bangkok, video clips play relentlessly on SkyTrain platforms and inside the cars. As I found myself staring, it was clear that nothing captures our attention like moving pictures. And nothing kills our own creativity like watching them. I fear we’re doomed to a future of moving pictures of continuously diminishing substance in which the medium becomes the only message.

I don’t watch the Academy Awards, and the only movie I saw among the major contenders was American Hustle, which I found thoroughly entertaining.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.