I was reading Patrice Petro’s Aftershocks of the New (2002) this morning since I’m working on a paper about distraction and boredom and I came across this:

…this collection hopes to contribute to the larger task of restoring richness, complexity and vitality to our understanding of feminism and film history in the recent past as well as today. And it does so precisely by being attentive to the aftershocks of our own modernity, and to the ways in which they continue to reverberate in our culture, our writing, and our everyday lives. (12)

And then the camel’s back broke. What is the distinction being made in this and countless other examples in film/tv/cultural studies between our lives and our ‘everyday’ ones? I detect that it might be different – or is it? – from an understanding of  ‘everyday’ that, say, Zavattini had.

‘Television’ and ‘everyday’ are also frequently seen together and while I can grasp that television might be something one consumes on a daily basis (like our daily bread or the daily newspaper), what I want to isolate is the precise force of adding ‘everyday’ to it. I assume this is about more than distinguishing regular kinds of television from event television. And while many shows establish regular patterns in content, few that I remember seemed to cultivate a sense of the everyday – most TV shows I watch seek the distinction of standing out, and attempt to recruit attention precisely by being interesting, not ordinary or everyday. 

 I suspect there are nuances to the usage of ‘everyday’ (or even ‘the everyday’- whatever that is) that I’m missing.  Readers are invited to help me out in no more than a paragraph.