The opiate of the masses

I think finally figured out what annoys me so much about television.

Truth be told, it's gotten to the point where I almost hate TV -- the yammering voices of a cliched sitcom, the ominous music and sound-bite graphics of a slick news program, the commercials that all try to outdo each other to win your attention... I have never been much of a TV-watcher, and find that the more time goes by, the more impatient I get with the whole stupid business. I own a TV; but the only action it really sees is to play DVDs.

See, movies are great. They have a story, a message; someone is trying to express something through the multifacted narrative tool provided by film, and whether they do a good job or bad job, or whether I personally agree with -- or even understand! -- the sentiment being conveyed, the point is to communicate. A filmmaker has an idea, and wants others to listen. And unlike TV, which cycles on in an endless loop of rehashed garbage and advertisements, a film only asks a couple of hours of your time (not to mention will start and stop when you want it to!). Of course there are exceptions: sequels whose only point is to squeeze more revenue out of a previous success, adventure films that get so obsessed with the spectacle offered by CGI that they forget they're supposed to be telling a story; but these are the movies that seem to draw a bit from the TV genre in that their main purpose is to compete for your money, and any narrative goal of the filmmaker is incidental. For the most part, though, it still seems that the money of major film studios is just a resource that makes the filmmaking possible. The people who actually make the movie -- directors, writers, actors -- are all there because they want to tell a story.

We humans love stories. We learn, teach, identify, entertain, commiserate, empathize, dream through stories. The ability to communicate with each other so lucidly and vividly is an aspect of that one staggering talent -- language -- that only our lucky species gets to possess. And we have exercised and reveled in that ability since we began acting out hunting tales around the campfire. In film, the storytelling tools are just more advanced, but the spirit is the same. It's a community act: one person stands up and begins a tale, and the others watch and listen.

TV, on the other hand, is an entirely commercial enterprise. Whereas a movie is made by a specific, relatively independent team with one vision, and often (though of course not always) aimed at a selected audience, TV is the hash produced by a conglomeration of executives and advertisers, aimed at distracting as much of the masses as possible with one hand while they reach into the viewer's back pocket with the other.

What makes this whole scheme downright offensive is the way TV tries to engage its audience. When you slide a movie into your machine, you know you are about to view the manufactured presentation of a specific filmmaker. Even if it's a documentary film, most sensible filmgoers will realize that a movie is only so "real". But TV is sneakier. Of course everything you see on television is just as produced, just as carefully engineered and selected as that in a movie; but because it's presented in the form of "news", it suggests that you're supposed to lower your critical filter. It pretends to be educational; it tries to fashion itself as some kind of dispassionate lens onto truth. And yet (with the natural exception of local or non-profit programming), TV is just as fake as a movie, except without that essential desire to communicate. The purpose of TV is entirely to make money. Every show, whether canned sitcom, shocking drama, or appropriately grave news program, is designed to compete with each other for your attention. If there is any communication going on in TV, it is between the individual shows, not with the viewer!

I know I sound like some kind of conspiracy-theorist curmudgeon. TV is so normalized, such a part of the background of our western culture, that people hardly seem to really notice it. Our living rooms are arranged around the TV; conversation flows as easily over the topic of TV shows -- and the shared culture they provide -- as it does over real events. Hell, I pepper my conversation with as many Simpsons and Seinfeld quotes as anyone else of my generation. But it's exactly this normalcy that leads people to be indiscriminate about what they view. For every Seinfeld, there are three imitations with a recorded laughtrack, crammed with all the Sunny Delight and Mazda dealership commercials a thirty-minute slot can hold. Maybe that's what I like about the trend of the last few years of offering some TV shows on DVD. Removed from the advertising circus, the few unique, satirical, free-thinking delights like Scrubs and Family Guy can be enjoyed on my own terms.

I don't really remember when I stopped watching TV (obviously, I haven't missed it). But it's gotten to the point that just to hear a TV gibbering away in the airport feels invasive and unnecessary. When did this yammering barrage of flashy images and disposable contents get to be as normal as having the light on?

It makes me wonder what we'd be doing if we didn't spend hours on the couch being fed pointless, forgettable, barely-disguised advertisement. I don't think I'm naive enough to believe that the world would be significantly more improved, as we all exchanged TV for evenings at the soup kitchen or environmental action. But maybe we'd actually be talking to each other and getting a little exercise... getting to know the real world, instead of the flat, scripted one set to a laugh track.