Not to mention the fact that TV, although a generally poor cultural device, wasn�t such a bad thing all the time. A variety of channels, some/most of them garbage, also offered programming that ranged from informational to politically comedic to life-altering. I grew up on TV and have grown to hate for numbing me all those years when I should have been fighting tooth and nail to learn about the world or going to youth groups or doing anything that got me into contact with the real world, even if it was by myself. In most of my youth I was essentially a loner who was that way by force and always in a desperate attempt to get out of that cycle. Only later in the years was I able to embrace the loner chic at some point or another and partially give up on the need to need�.
That said, my focus here, was that I never really blamed TV per se, for anything in particular. I figured that if people were not deeply involved wasting away in front of the TV, they would be wasting away somewhere else doing something just ass mundane and numbing�Why adbusters or other advocacy groups were pouncing on TV was beyond me�
This all changed in the X-mas period of 2004 somewhere in the middle of Central Europe on a train. I had just finished a chapter of the Book: Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, in which he discusses the reasons why the public in North America all of sudden became less politically active, less politically knowledgeable, less social with eachother, lees apt to volunteer their time, less empathetic (caring) towards eachther, less trusting of others and especially politicians, took part less in voting, unions, religious institutions and poltical parties all around 1968.
1968. What the fuck was so special about 1968. The Smashing Pumpkins had a song about 1969, but I never liked them so I never listened to whatever the fuck it was about. Woodstock happened in 1969, right? What happened in 68 though? According to Putnam: we started watching a lot more TV.
He not only goes onto show that not only was the amount of TV watched and the amount of people time spent watching it over the last 35 years is very related to the fact that people in North America have stopped connecting to each other in almost every way imaginable; he also shows that no other indicator (thing that we can measure) is MORE closely related to the breakdown of our social relations.
The consequences of this are not only massive and far-reaching in North-America, they are also extremely unknown. Although Putnam charts out a variety of bad shit that happens when people stop connecting (less job prospects, less democratic awareness, worse off health etc.) he points out that no one for sure knows what could happen to us should we all end up like isolated, sickly people who work shitty temp jobs under authoritarian conditions, in front of the TV�
�.On another note.
The consequences of growing up saturated with television have been both extremely dramatic and long term for me. I used to come home from school at around 3 o�clock. I would then watch TV until 11. 8 hours. Family guy is apparently so funny to a number of friends I knew from high school (I have only ever seen one episode) precisely because of the amount of pop-cultural references made in the show that relate directly to TV.
Not only would I watch TV for these 8 hours. I would quote it, imitate characters and commercials (I�ve fallen�and I can�t get up) and play video games sometimes until 4am in the morning on weekends. I would break for two to three things: sports and hanging out with friends (which usually involved playing sports, watching TV or playing video games).
To this day I can not be in a room while TV is on, or video games being played, without developing what my current girlfriend calls TV-face. I am mesmerized by the fucking thing. Putnam even talks about the addictive effects of it. Not only does he talk about survey where people say the hate it, and love it at the same time, it accounts for the majority of there social time and in an experiment conducted in the 70�s, 120 family�s were offered $500 US dollars (which is a fucking lot of money in the 70�s, maybe triple what it is today or more) to give up TV for a month; 3 said yes.
What�s worse, TV has managed to weave itself into the very core of who I am, so that I am at a constant war with myself. A constant and continual state of self hatred. At points it is OK to be this way, like wearing the scars of a war you�ve been in, or the tattoo from being in prison, a constant reminder that you were there at some point and never want to go back. But more often then not, there is a constant struggle to break away from the deep influence of the television. For the longest time I believed deeply in movie romance and happy endings. I know of no sitcom on earth that has ever ended in a very sad way. The only one I ever saw made me cry, but I remember it well: (Sam Beckett never returned home: Quantum Leap)
What�s worse is that there are still so many things today that are part of my persona that I do not know whether to keep or not. I do not know whether or not I am at peace with some of the programming on channel Gwalgen.
Fact: I enjoy entertaining with stories, jokes, wild movements and impersonations. People tell me I look like Jim Carey. I have a deep memory for and ability to draw from pop-culture artifacts. Commercials, music videos, sitcoms that had one season, station-calls from Seatle. I can remember summers in front of TV wondering exactly which order they were going to com in: Weird Sceince, the Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Doctor Detroit, Howard the Duck, Weekend at Bernies, 16 Candles�
The worst is the following. I think that all my friends at points can imagine that I am an intense individual who will weird out a situation and often put more into a moment than can sometimes be necessary. Everything can have meaning. Everything I do can be a statement related to who I am as a whole. It gets so that sometimes, my life feels so full of meaning and inflection that everything is steeped in meaning like a cup of tea, until the color becomes powerful and dark, the flavor so thick and bitter and eventually it is all you can taste.
As of yet, I don�t know where I stand on this. But at all times, I wish it had been a choice