Soundbite TV
I haven’t blogged on the utter wasteland that is television, in large part because it seems too obvious to even the most uncritical mind to be worth the bother. Sure, one can learn things, or even be entertained (such as TV claims to do); I don’t deny that. But a couple questionably salutary effects, which can be accomplished better through other means, don’t make up for the immensely destructive character of the medium and its content. When I say to people that “TV rots your brain” I’m not being funny or ironic, although that’s how most people take it, sort of like pointing out to a smoker that cigarettes kill: they know, but the comment is somehow transmuted into a joke.
As a kid, I watched TV all the time, just like most kids, and as a result, I have a veritable storehouse of useless information in my head. I’d call it ephemera except that it never really goes away. These days, I watch so little TV that it’s tantamount to watching none. For instance, I’ve never seen a single episode of such critically lauded shows as 24, The Sopranos, Arrested Development, Grey’s Anatomy, The Family Guy, 30 Rock, or Sex in the City, just to name a few that have gotten a lot of press and won some awards. I don’t know anything about most of the celebrities recently made famous by TV, either. I’ve seen just one episode of a number of other shows — enough to know that I’d never watch them again. I rather regret seeing the whole first season of Lost on DVD. So it’s with this fundamental lack of familiarity with the medium (from the last ten years of so) that I offer an assessment of two new styles of narrative that have recently come into their own.
