Summary

In this radically unconventional television series, Godard and Miéville analyze the political economy of personal and mass media communications in relation to society, culture, family and the individual. Their inquiry focuses "on and beneath" communications in a provocative critique of the power of media images in contemporary culture and everyday life. Each of the six programs is constructed of two complementary segments: A discursive visual essay on one aspect of the production and consumption of images is paired with a related interview on labor and leisure with an individual — an amateur filmmaker, a dairy farmer, the mathematician René Thom, Godard himself. These extended interviews provide a subjective counterpoint to the theoretical essays on work, economics and mass cultural imagery.