Talking on TV
TV does not rot your brain. Or, rather, it doesn't rot your brain any more than anything else does.
I can understand arguments that children shouldn't watch too much TV (and especially that they shouldn't play too many video games), because if they don't read some books, they'll be idiots, but TV is not, in itself, a moron-maker. Stupid shows ("I Love New York", for example) are stupid, but the thing is that people have always watched stupid drama. Think about the rude plays that the peasants and plebeians of antiquity watched - were they any more filled with quality than "A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila"? Not really. I mean, "Tila Tequila" had a lot of hot tub scenes, and common theatre had a lot of gigantic fake penises (Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" y/n?). The enlightened looked down on the latter and still look down on the former.
Furthermore, bibliophile though I be, there is something intrinsically more engaging about a performance with real people than a story stuck trapped in black letters. There's more of a human element, and it engages a bit more of the right brain, I suspect. TV shows serve as great cultural indoctrinators, for a start, which we don't really have in a basic old-storyteller-by-the-fire format, which would've been how we learn what our culture demands of its heroes and how it determines what makes a villain. Even musical theatre (which I have to admit I tend to loathe) is a sort of descendant of the ballad song-stories!
What makes a good TV show better than a stupid play? Plays are still, for the most part, able to don a semblance of artistic integrity which TV shows just about never do. But I'd put forth that "Robin of Sherwood" or "Rome" are more worthy than some of the heinous productions I've seen in my time on stage ("Cats", anyone?).
Even the damn History Channel, with its particularly wonderful programs about "mysteries" that manage to keep you in front of the screen for a half-hour of interesting graphics, creepy narrators, inexpert experts, and dramatic fanfares, has a purpose. People have always had their myths, haven't they? And what the hell is more fluffy myth than "Mega Disasters: Hawaii Apocalypse", or "Decoding The Past: Prophecies of Israel"?!? These are real shows on the History Channel, by the way, and I'm particularly intrigued by the latter, which promises to reveal secret prophecies from the Tanakh "about the fate of the Jewish people and the State of Israel." I bet they have those bits where they show the same shot of the same mysteriously cloaked historical people riding dramatically into the sunset 50 times during one half-hour programme! Yay!
Is it garbage? Without a doubt. But it's the same kind of cultural garbage as Prester John, folks, or the stuff that John Dee believed in. Is Scarface all that different from the story of Sigfried, Sigurd, or other figures from the Saga of the Volsungs? No, not really.
It's all the same thing in the end, and the sooner people stop whinging about TV being a bad influence the better. At least we're not all reading trashy novels the whole time, right?
I can understand arguments that children shouldn't watch too much TV (and especially that they shouldn't play too many video games), because if they don't read some books, they'll be idiots, but TV is not, in itself, a moron-maker. Stupid shows ("I Love New York", for example) are stupid, but the thing is that people have always watched stupid drama. Think about the rude plays that the peasants and plebeians of antiquity watched - were they any more filled with quality than "A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila"? Not really. I mean, "Tila Tequila" had a lot of hot tub scenes, and common theatre had a lot of gigantic fake penises (Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" y/n?). The enlightened looked down on the latter and still look down on the former.
Furthermore, bibliophile though I be, there is something intrinsically more engaging about a performance with real people than a story stuck trapped in black letters. There's more of a human element, and it engages a bit more of the right brain, I suspect. TV shows serve as great cultural indoctrinators, for a start, which we don't really have in a basic old-storyteller-by-the-fire format, which would've been how we learn what our culture demands of its heroes and how it determines what makes a villain. Even musical theatre (which I have to admit I tend to loathe) is a sort of descendant of the ballad song-stories!
What makes a good TV show better than a stupid play? Plays are still, for the most part, able to don a semblance of artistic integrity which TV shows just about never do. But I'd put forth that "Robin of Sherwood" or "Rome" are more worthy than some of the heinous productions I've seen in my time on stage ("Cats", anyone?).
Even the damn History Channel, with its particularly wonderful programs about "mysteries" that manage to keep you in front of the screen for a half-hour of interesting graphics, creepy narrators, inexpert experts, and dramatic fanfares, has a purpose. People have always had their myths, haven't they? And what the hell is more fluffy myth than "Mega Disasters: Hawaii Apocalypse", or "Decoding The Past: Prophecies of Israel"?!? These are real shows on the History Channel, by the way, and I'm particularly intrigued by the latter, which promises to reveal secret prophecies from the Tanakh "about the fate of the Jewish people and the State of Israel." I bet they have those bits where they show the same shot of the same mysteriously cloaked historical people riding dramatically into the sunset 50 times during one half-hour programme! Yay!
Is it garbage? Without a doubt. But it's the same kind of cultural garbage as Prester John, folks, or the stuff that John Dee believed in. Is Scarface all that different from the story of Sigfried, Sigurd, or other figures from the Saga of the Volsungs? No, not really.
It's all the same thing in the end, and the sooner people stop whinging about TV being a bad influence the better. At least we're not all reading trashy novels the whole time, right?