It can’t be junk if it’s PBS
I both admire and am appalled by people who don’t own a TV. You may have noticed in the comments to my post “The 50-novel challenge” that my web designer, BJ, is one of those people. Here I am, touting the thrill and challenge of reading 50 novels in a year, and BJ comes along and says she’s already handled that, thank you very much, because she doesn’t own a TV and is therefore able to read three to six novels a week.
I felt this small, with a hat.
I agree that TV watching can completely suck the life out of your life. You sit there passive, hour after hour, and let other people make up their stories when you (the writer) should be in your office making up your own stories for people to get hooked on. And though I’ve made a conscious effort in the last few years to curtail my TV viewing, I’m still going to devote time each week to the great story-telling that is Lost (when they’re not giving us those stupid pseudo-new shows that are really just splices and recaps of what we’ve already seen. It drives the Lost fans crazy, because of course we’ve watched every single show, so do you really think we need a recap? Just keep up with us and write something new!).
Anyway. Once Xena, Warrior Princess and Dawson’s Creek went off the air (spare me your judgment), I felt a new freedom to stop watching TV for a while, and managed to reclaim more of my week. I was feeling quite self-righteous.
Then along came the reality shows. They’re like chocolate and coffee. If you start, you’re hooked. This season it’s American Inventor–so hokey, so over-dramatic, so addictive. Please forget I even mentioned it–do NOT tune in on Thursday nights. And please, please, for the sake of all things good, do not get hooked on What Not to Wear, featuring Stacy and Clinton remaking people from the underwear up, or you’ll never leave the house again.
So then we come to this week. PBS has been doing these great living history shows where normal (okay, semi-normal) 21st-century people inject themselves into some historical time period and see if they have what it takes to make it. It started with Victorian House, which I loved so dearly since I went through my own period of pretending I lived in Victorian England, right down to wearing long dresses with puffy sleeves when I went out for McDonald’s. It was a sick, sick time, but that’s a matter for another blog.
Now PBS is doing Texas Ranch House, where people reenact living out on the Texas scrub in 1867. And yes, there’s a little bit of history in there, like what the Comanche went through, and how hard it was to cook a decent meal amidst the flies and dust, but what’s really riveting about the show–as with all these reality shows–is the clash of personalities. You put 15 people together in a closed, uncomfortable environment, and there’s bound to be some juicy conflicts, and I’m not just talking about tooth fencing.
The buzz phrase for this show seems to be, “You disrespected me.” As in, “You disrespected me when you said that in front of my cowboys.” “Well, you disrespected me when you didn’t introduce me to the Indian.” “Oh yeah? How about when you disrespected me–” On and on, every single person being disrespected and disrespecting right back. It’s GREAT. It’s pure gossip and sniping, and it doesn’t even count as junk because it’s on PBS. If they’d only start doing What Not to Wear, public broadcasting-style, I’d be the happiest woman alive. (”Stacy, you disrespected me when you said I look like a Butterball turkey in this dress.” “Well, Linnea, you disrespected me when you said you’d never be caught in cashmere and pointy-toed shoes.” Etc.)
Now I’m opening up the floor. Okay, all you intellectuals out there, all you people pretending to be too good for trashy TV–what are you watching these days? Confession is good for the soul.
Technorati Tags: Lost, PBS, What Not to Wear, American Inventor
May 4th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Project Runway and the Real World/Road Rules Challenges are my guilty pleasures, but both the seasons ended a few months ago, so I’m without reality TV for the time being, which is just fine.
I was a real fan of The Biggest Loser the first season, but it kind of tanked after that. It’s still the only reality show I’ve ever seen that doesn’t make me completely disgusted with humanity.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
lizzie, i’m with you on project runway, again its my fascination with the creative process in all its forms. i can’t handle the petty nastiness of road rules. in keeping with the
“quality” of runway, try “top chef” its so much fun (although at times heartbreaking; i loved miguel’s can-do spirit, but had to agree he just wasn’t in the same camp as the others), the contestants keep it real and its ALL about lovin’ food. as far as “what not to wear” goes, stacy and clinton are my gods. my own creative outlet largely centers on high-end shopping and criticizing the bad taste of others. i therefore feel a true kinship with s. and c. i have in fact turned the entire city of seattle in to the show–waiting on follow-up. not like i expect them to give everyone in king county a $5,000 buying spree. i’m more hoping that through public shame they can start a grass roots effort to get some municipal ordinaces passed banning polar fleece and birkinstocks.
May 8th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Um, excuse me for injecting a bit of reality here, but REAL people don’t talk like that(“You disrespected me.” As in, “You disrespected me when you said that in front of my cowboys.” “Well, you disrespected me when you didn’t introduce me to the Indian.” Sounds like a bunch of therapists arguing.) so your so-called reality TV is anything but. If you really want to get a dose of reality you’d be much better served by getting your couch potato butt off that couch and getting out into the world to see real people reacting to each other in very different ways than your reality TV depicts (I saw one of those shows once. How FAKE. And don’t EVEN get me started on the Antiques Roadshow, which has nothing to do with Antiques and everything to do with entertainment. I know some of those so-called experts. But I digress . . . )
A walk through an ethnic neighborhood in Manhattan, or your local flea market at dawn, is much more educational and much more realistic, and the dialog is a WHOLE lot more colorful and maybe even downright SPICY. Not to mention the fact that there are action scenes that accompany that realistic dialog.
Yesterday I picked a rummage sale at the local Jewish Community Center and watched two blue haired old biddies duke it out, complete with vocabulary that would make a dockworker blush, over a sterling silver serving set on the bric-a-brac table. Since there was a lot of “taking the Lord’s name in Vain” going on, and most of it using “Jesus Christ” I suspect these two were good and upstanding Christian women who were pulling out fistfuls of their opponent’s carefully permed curls, which was of great entertainment value to the rest of us, many of whom were Jewish.
I interrupted my walk along the river the other day to sit and watch an ancient and tiny oriental man perform his morning tai chi facing the rising sun over the river. Quite beautiful, and much more stimulating than anything on the squawk box. I waited until he was done to ask him if he’d teach me if I joined him sometime, only to find out he has no English. I’ll probably try to catch him down there one morning and see if I can make myself understood just simply by joining him. But Ms. Syd, the dominatrix alpha bitch from hell, will have to remain home that day. Squirrel chasing is not conducive to the contemplative life.
My son commented, a couple months after he started college in the fine arts program, how disappointed he was in the folks he was meeting. He said everyone talked the same, walked the same, wore the same clothing, listened to the same music, and wouldn’t think of doing anything individual or different. My comment to him was, “It’s hard being a trendsetter, isn’t it?” which made his mouth twitch up into a bit of a grin. That grin was instantly wiped off his face when I spit out the punch line. “Now, aren’t you glad I threw out the TV?” I might mention that he’s one of the few people who has a fine arts degree and is actually working in his field (even if he has to work a second job delivering pizza to pay the bills.)
My point is this- if you are brave enough to get rid of that tool of the corporate ruling class that is euphemistally called a TV, you’ll find that you develop your own style, your own opinions, and your own unique way of looking at the world. It’s quite refreshing. And I do suspect that it might be a good thing for a writer to gain that bit of perspective. I know it did wonders for me as a designer.