No wonder we’re hosed…
I’ve said it before – I don’t have “TV” at home, so I don’t “get” TV (and what I mean by that is this: I watch things of special interest on the internet; I get my news via the internet; and I scan several different local news sources to stay up-to-date on local issues: that’s it) – but on yesterday’s flight from Seattle to Boston I watched various network TV channels on the plane.
OMFG.
No wonder people are r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d! [Edit: via Twitter, I’m alerted to an expression of sensitivity to my use of the word retarded. I’ll use a strike-out on the word, but I stand by its meaning all the same, from the verb retard: to slow the growth or development of; to decelerate: lose velocity; to be delayed – hence, retarded. Language has simple associations, but we need to use the richness of words even if they also signify matters we’ve become squeamish about. I really do mean “no wonder people are slowed in their growth or development, or decelerated and of inferior velocity (mental quickness) in their analytical powers, and delayed in their reasoning.” TV is like sludge.)]
Look, if you go to the gym five times a week (as I do), you condition your body: you do some aerobic, you do some yoga, you tighten your core, you yak it up with the regulars …you know? You get fit.
But if you sit in front the fucking boob tube five days or more per week and let this garbage – and I don’t care if it’s “right” or “left” garbage – pour all over your soul, what the hell are you doing to your brain? What are you conditioning yourself to?
You think it’s easy to stay in shape? Nuh-uh, it’s work, hard work. Well, guess what? Keeping your brain box in gear isn’t a game of tiddly-winks, either. Get used to it. Suck it up. Get off the couch and turn off the TV!
What are you conditioning yourself to if you watch TV regularly? It’s a serious question: how can you function? It’s like living on a diet of fast food and soft drinks (and don’t give me any “I drink the ‘diet’ version” shit): it’s just not sustainable. You are going to die a miserable brain death – zero insights.
Go grate a carrot, for pete’s sake. And what that means in terms of news? Roughage. Stop swallowing the pre-thought. Give your brain a diet. And for god’s sake, turn off the TV. If you like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, great – in my book, that means you’re not quite as lost as the next guy who’s glued to Fox. But you know what? If you’re watching that crap every day? Well, then there’s something wrong with you, same as if you’re drinking Diet Coke every day and eating the matching “solid” junk every day.
Junk is junk.
/end of rant.
Gratuitous photo: Boston has what appears to be a new Rapid Bus Transit line (the Silver line) – here’s a photo of the bus in South Station. You can’t see the catenary line (typical of power supplied via overhead lines) in my shot, but it’s there.
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It’s quite amazing to ride a bus on rubber wheels that’s zooming through a tunnel you’d expect to see tracks on, and to realize that it’s just an underground road. And yet the bus has the speed and capacity of the subway lines that it connects to.
I’d generally agree with you, although I’d argue that some tv narratives are doing more interesting things than films these days. But these I download and watch, and avoid on the actual teevee.
Comment by Cheryl — June 16, 2010 #
I use TV as an alternative to sleeping pills, but maybe I should reconsider? Also, TV on long flights, with a little wine, is great for the generally travel anxious….
Glad to hear you are finally in Boston. We missed each other there by days again, though I was mostly stuck in Brookline and Jamaica Plain.
Comment by maria — June 16, 2010 #
We like to rent some TV programs, and I get that there are some really interesting things to watch. Or, alternately (as per Maria’s comment), they can act as a nice soothing semi-sedative! 😉
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Where it all goes sideways – and this is what I found so shocking, watching teevee for the first time in ages – is that on broadcast commercial tv, the ads continuously interrupt the program, and somehow, it adds up to garbage.
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…Or worse. For example, I was watching news/ civic affairs programs, and the hypocrisy of the ads made me want to spit. I mean, I love Rachel Maddow’s take on current affairs, but to see her rip the oil industry a new one in one moment and then in the next moment see an ad that’s total greenwash, about ethanol and how it’s gonna bring peace to the world …I mean …come on, America! Are you nuts? Ethanol? Ugh.
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Or to see a segment about oil dependency and then to see an ad that “celebrates” the suburban lifestyle with single-use zoning (housing only), big lawns, and – get this – the brand new chi-chi car that’ll complete your perfect life? A car that’s so big it’ll cost you another $3 in gas just to drive for a gallon of milk to that super-store that’s 10 miles away from your single-use (residential) zoned Shangri-La…?
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It was the chop-chop-chop aspect, a kind of literal disconnect, that really pissed me off. It’s like some kind of orchestrated effort to keep people so distracted and crazy that they can’t connect the dots or think straight.
Comment by Yule — June 18, 2010 #
Although I can agree about what you’re saying regarding eating healthy and staying active, the quick survey of “TV shows” you did before making up your mind is pretty short-sighted. There’s plenty of brain-blending gruel out there for the orange-skinned finger waggers and always will be. But I tend to agree with a sentiment that Patton Oswalt had in an Onion interview last year; that we are in the middle of the next Golden Age of Television.
“…right now, television is the way Hollywood was in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The dream era I would have loved to have been part of in Hollywood then is happening right now, but it’s happening on television, with these big complicated story arcs and real character-driven shows and sheer ambiguity left and right.”
And when you take stock of what’s REALLY out there, in many ways he’s right. It actually seems to me that the majority of the Hollywood output is getting dumbed down for their main spending demographic (16-25 year-olds), while the people who will invest more in a complex character study like The Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The West Wing or hell, even Battlestar Galactica are content to stay home from the theater.
And also given that the most normal thing for people to do after they view tv shows is go online and discuss it with their peers, I’m inclined to think that couch potato is less resembling a (mostly) hairless sloth, and more like furiously typing pseudo-intellectuals.
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At least they’re “reading.”
Comment by Andy — June 23, 2010 #
Reading blogs, too, it seems…
PS: Your link to the Patton Oswalt interview was stripped out for some reason (bad html?), so here it is:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/patton-oswalt,32085/
Comment by Yule — June 23, 2010 #
Yeah, sorry about that. I thought just using the “q cite” tag that it would put the link as a footer at the bottom of my post. Thanks for correcting.
Comment by Andy — June 23, 2010 #
[…] in Propaganda, War and Peace …if you sit in front the fucking boob tube five days or more per week and let this garbage – and I don’t care if it’s “right” or “left” garbage – pour all over your soul, what the hell are you doing to your brain? What are you conditioning yourself to? – Yule Heibel, “No wonder we’re hosed…“ […]
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