TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.
(found at ben.casnocha.com via Marginal Revolution via Brad Delong)
I disagree with this quote most-heartedly. TV is not vulgar in the sense of offensive, regardless of the ridiculous censorship rules imposed by the FCC. As Tom Lehrer explained some 40 fucking years ago, "Dirty words are fun". As for sex and nudity, which will take out DFW's prurient comment as well, they are a good thing that we are biologically conditioned to enjoy. Let's leave repression for medieval peasants named Dennis, shall we? If you think that sexuality is in any way unnatural, we'll have Alex in to guest post on the topic of the sex life of Bonobos, the primates that love to party. DFW may have meant TV is vulgar in the older sense of the word, "of the common people", but if so the point was obvious to begin with.
Ok, then why is TV so dumb? Remember that there are some criminally good programs on TV right now: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Office, Scrubs, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica, Weeds, Dexter, The Wire (taking this one on faith based on about thirty positive reviews from random strangers), etc. No, TV is very conservative, and the highest rated shows are frequently dumb because people like familiar programming, networks LOVE familiar programming, and originality is only occasionally rewarding to viewers but always risky for the network. See the demise, with no small influence of the networks, of Arrested Development, Firefly, Deadwood and a bunch of others. Many people fear change, and will continue to watch endless reruns of Murder She Wrote and Everyone Loves Raymond and laugh along with the laugh tracks forever, but with several hundred networks out there, it just takes some looking, and a huge cable bill, to see some good programming.
On a random note, when it came to buying Hanukah presents, my wife and I both secretly went for cartoon t-shirts (an Uglydoll for her, Cheat Commandoes for me had it been in stock; she went with Colbert Nation as a backup). Why do smart people enjoy cartoons and all sorts of youthful type stuff? Because they're fun. One can enjoy post-modern literature and the Cartoon network, although preferably not simultaneously. These things are fun, and if kids are the only ones smart enough to realize it, then maybe most adults are fools....no, that's too harsh. Most adults are wise, using their hard-earned smarts to behave responsibly in all sorts of ways, like voting for a former alcoholic with no grasp of world politics because they think he'd be more fun to have a beer with than his opponents, decent men who just don't have the charisma and fratboy charm it takes to make decisions about the global economy and international relations....
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1 comment:
The real problem with cartoons is that they, more than ever, reflect reality rather than provide an escape from it. On the other hand, so-called reality programming (like I would want to be on an island with several people I don't particularly like striving not only to survive, but all the while harboring the suspicion someone might give me a million dollars if I were successful) has increasingly less to do with any reality that I have ever seen. Perhaps television plays to the lowest common denominator audience, but we can't just Blame Canada. But then again, we are not supposed to have good (if you take that in part to mean cultured, television). After all, the comedian in chief actually believes that what we had in the late '90's was somehow wrong, evil, and created a nation in need of vast reform. Or as he put it, according to the May 1, 2004 issue of Christianity Today: President George W. Bush, in a rare on-the-record session with religion editors and writers on Wednesday, said his job as president is to "change cultures." Of course it is doubtful he would actually handle a petri dish, and we all ought to be afraid of the various nasties he, Dick and Rummy might have been growing.
What's the Frequency Kenneth?
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