© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 101
Some time ago, one of my resolutions was to watch less television, something I have managed to do very well. The shows come and go, with all the hype they trail along, and they pass right by me, unwatched and unremembered. As a result, there are certain conversations to which I cannot be party. But on the whole, ignorance is bliss.
There are certain shows that are worth watching, and there have been a couple of nights when I have decided to give myself a few hours on the couch. None of this has increased the frequency of my viewing: television is still not a daily affair.
To live without the tube, or plasma screens as the case may be nowadays, would be naïve. There are some shows that are worth watching for their own merits, and there are other shows that are worth watching if only to understand what is going on in the heads of the people around me.
For instance, having watched an hour or two of television with my daughter, I am relieved to know that her monotonous chant of a string of numbers is not the onset of some hideous psychosis, merely a promo for a dial-in number that costs large amounts of money by the second. If I can get her to chant the Fibonacci sequence like that, and possibly even the family telephone numbers, who knows where it might end.
The proliferation of television is starting to give me pause for thought.
Ever since the invention of the automobile, the time-honoured tradition of bored families on long journeys has been to play ‘I Spy’. Today however, the advent of in-car DVD seems to have put an end to that tradition. So instead of the inane, but some how appealing interaction involved in spotting a hundred lamp posts all beginning with ‘L’ or seeing who can manage the most verses of ‘Row Row Row your Boat’ without gibbering, we have the prospect of everyone except the driver glued to a monitor.
Lately, I have also noticed that a new breed of decoder allows two individuals to watch two separate channels in different parts of the house while recording from a third channel for a presumably disgruntled third party. So much for family interaction then. If two people are watching different channels, even the possibility of trading snide comments about a particular actor or special effect are ruled out.
And now television comes to the mobile phone. So there go the coffee shops, restaurants and all the other places you could actually visit to escape television.
To where does it all lead? Glasses with built in audio-visual display came onto the market recently. Now you know.
My question is this… If everyone is watching television, what will happen to real life? If people sit around all day, not doing the things that make life interesting, for instance not making major personal decisions, not having nervous breakdowns or not shooting one another, what will the plots of the future look like? Will there be TV shows about people who watch TV? Will the decision to turn off whatever feed the main character is glued, and go and make a cup of tea, become a major plot point?
I can’t really complain about television. It seems to keep the various people in my neighbourhood busy, so I don’t feel obliged to greet them or invite them over for painful discussions about the weather, sport and other neighbours.
One of the more interesting aspects of television is the way that people use it to fill their heads. The fact that they want their heads filled, says a lot. Some may want it for new ideas. Others may want it to keep their from wandering in unwelcome directions. Yet others may want it to give them respite from the hubbub of their lives.
Whatever it is, television is seldom stupid. In fact, it seems to go hand in hand with some form of mental activity. Whether the activity is intelligent or not depends on the individual viewer.
So perhaps the box is wrongly maligned. Whether you turn it on or turn it off, there must be something good about it. Just another one of life’s strange little mysteries.
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