Monday, February 20, 2006
TV Free America
I quit watching TV last fall.
I'm not talking about merely slipping a kente cloth over the console and banishing it to the far corner of the living room; neither am I talking about sticking it behind a tasteful media cabinet with doors that hide the black box. We sold the TV. We canceled the cable. We have not watched TV since Halloween weekend, 2005.
Let me be very clear about something up front: I am not one of those liberals who blames TV for the Iraq War (as does one woman I met recently) or for teen violence or for voting apathy. One of my pet peeves has always been people who brag about not watching TV. Those people really got on my nerves before I sold my TV. Maybe it's because they were too sanctimonious. Maybe it's because I knew they were right.
We had to get rid of the TV when we realized it did us more harm than good. We're both inveterate media consumers, like most Americans, and we wanted very much for TV to entertain us -- especially and because it was free and came right into our living room where we did not have to get dressed up to experience it. We kept trying. We watched even when we were bored, dismayed, disgusted and even felt abused by what we watched. And that's why the TV had to go. If it's here, we will turn it on -- more often than we care to admit.
I do not miss TV, but sometimes I jones for it, the way I guess an ex-smoker gets hit with the craving for a cigarette. Oh, the comforting hum of a million voices saying nothing; the flash of skin and bling; the promise that I could be as beautiful and witty as those people on the screen. I crave both the worst and the best of television: the soap operas that offered escape from the crushing disappointments of teaching in America today, the Seinfeld jokes that never grow old.
Despite itself, TV endures. There are not many people like me, people without one, not even in less-industrialized countries. In Cuba, where there is plenty of real skin but few of the airbrushed kind and very little bling, they enshrine their sets: http://www.polarinertia.com/jan06/cuba01.htm
What does this say about art, and freedom, and the human spirit?
I'm not talking about merely slipping a kente cloth over the console and banishing it to the far corner of the living room; neither am I talking about sticking it behind a tasteful media cabinet with doors that hide the black box. We sold the TV. We canceled the cable. We have not watched TV since Halloween weekend, 2005.
Let me be very clear about something up front: I am not one of those liberals who blames TV for the Iraq War (as does one woman I met recently) or for teen violence or for voting apathy. One of my pet peeves has always been people who brag about not watching TV. Those people really got on my nerves before I sold my TV. Maybe it's because they were too sanctimonious. Maybe it's because I knew they were right.
We had to get rid of the TV when we realized it did us more harm than good. We're both inveterate media consumers, like most Americans, and we wanted very much for TV to entertain us -- especially and because it was free and came right into our living room where we did not have to get dressed up to experience it. We kept trying. We watched even when we were bored, dismayed, disgusted and even felt abused by what we watched. And that's why the TV had to go. If it's here, we will turn it on -- more often than we care to admit.
I do not miss TV, but sometimes I jones for it, the way I guess an ex-smoker gets hit with the craving for a cigarette. Oh, the comforting hum of a million voices saying nothing; the flash of skin and bling; the promise that I could be as beautiful and witty as those people on the screen. I crave both the worst and the best of television: the soap operas that offered escape from the crushing disappointments of teaching in America today, the Seinfeld jokes that never grow old.
Despite itself, TV endures. There are not many people like me, people without one, not even in less-industrialized countries. In Cuba, where there is plenty of real skin but few of the airbrushed kind and very little bling, they enshrine their sets: http://www.polarinertia.com/jan06/cuba01.htm
What does this say about art, and freedom, and the human spirit?
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AMAZING link. i think i'll feature it on my blog. lol at "flash of skin and bling." i stopped watching tv in grad school because i felt it was a distraction from my writing. unfortunately, the internet took that spot. but i think i'm ready to buy a tv again, if nothing but to watch the dvd's i've been collecting on a widescreen larger than my laptop.
I feel a kind of awed envy for people who quit watching TV, the same kind of awed envy I feel for those who run marathons. I go through TV phases. Right now, for example, because of the Olympics, I'm watching more than usual ("Oh, look! The two-man bobsled!").
As someone who, in the early 90s, used to yell along with The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's "Television: Drug of the Nation," I can't justify my new tolerance of the tube; however, one of the happiest, most hopeful moments of the past months happened for me during the post-coverage of the "president's" 1996 State of the Union Address. While the camera panned the legislators milling about, in the corner of the screen, sans audio, there stood Congressman Kucinich and Senator Obama in a seemingly deep and affectionate conversation.
As someone who, in the early 90s, used to yell along with The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's "Television: Drug of the Nation," I can't justify my new tolerance of the tube; however, one of the happiest, most hopeful moments of the past months happened for me during the post-coverage of the "president's" 1996 State of the Union Address. While the camera panned the legislators milling about, in the corner of the screen, sans audio, there stood Congressman Kucinich and Senator Obama in a seemingly deep and affectionate conversation.
Addendum:
Naturally, I meant the 2006 State of the Union, not 1996. Apparently, I'm a decade behind the calendar.
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Naturally, I meant the 2006 State of the Union, not 1996. Apparently, I'm a decade behind the calendar.
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