With a 22nd birthday and forthcoming graduation hanging over my head like a black cloud, I recently found myself confronting some of the things I’d always chosen to ignore.
I need glasses. The sugar-induced high gleaned from my morning bowl of Lucky Charms has now become only a mildly intoxicating routine. And, no matter how much I deny it by growing my hair out, it seems my mother’s genes are finally starting to rear their collectively ugly head on mine.
Aside from my petty anxieties, there are the little things that I am sure are growing to be common characteristics in all of us. I am now simply, utterly unable to walk, read or do anything by myself without the accompaniment of portable music. Simultaneously talking on the phone, eating and cleaning has become a chore, not a challenge. Even sleep seems like a time to play catch-up.
I’m pretty sure I knitted a sweater in my five and a half hours of time off last night.
Seeking solace, I turned to the mind-numbing pleasure of television but was instead clued into why I, nay, we are all so exhausted.
I tuned in to one of my afternoon staples, ESPN’s “Pardon The Interruption,” and nearly missed Tony Kornheiser’s best one-liner of the show (telling Michael Wilbon he looked “like that guy from ‘Boston Public'”) because I was too busy being reminded that their next topic would be Anna Kournikova, that the Rockets had beaten the Clippers (S. Francis 34 pts 12 rebs, Ming DNP [ankle]) and that it was currently 3:48 CST.
The same story on MTV’s “TRL.” I did my best to enjoy Snoop and Pharrell’s Brazilian escapade “Beautiful,” but was distracted by an inane audience member’s running commentary, countless onscreen graphics and Sierra of TN urging viewers to “…vote for Simple Plan beecuz they R way kewler than Poop Dogg!!!!!”
I didn’t even think of checking out any of the 24-hour news channels, where I was sure Chris Matthews would be screaming about something, the stock ticker would be racing across at a speed I couldn’t comprehend and the terror alert would still be high.
Scholars who like to utilize “dystopian/utopian” rhetoric when debating the effects of the Internet surely see the former when analyzing my aforementioned examples. Though it was initially developed as a medium for the communication of information, the Internet inevitably ventured into entertainment.
As channels like ESPNEWS, MSNBC and its ilk in television and the Internet ever closer to becoming one and the same, the old boob tube seems to be in grave danger of forgetting its entertainment roots.
Sports statistics and news updates I can handle (though I fear I might soon spontaneously sprout a third eye), but how long will it be, then, before NBC simultaneously plays all four versions of “Law & Order” simply because it thinks that’s what we want? Will we think nothing is amiss when all of a sudden the contestants of “Survivor: Outback” find themselves in the Amazon, while on the other half of a split screen Frasier Crane is loving Raymond?
What concerns me about the over-caffeination of television is not so much its loss of artistic integrity (one could argue that that went out the window sometime in the early ’60s) but its effect on our physical and mental health.
Sure, previous generations topped their steak with bacon and thought working out was striking a match to light a cigarette, but at least Archie Bunker and Ed Sullivan kept them chuckling loud enough to block out the sounds of their arteries clogging.
We eat right and exercise as much as we can, and we live longer. But none of that will help when our already hectic lives are further burdened by what is becoming an indistinguishable assault of media that can’t decide if it’s information, entertainment or just one more thing to distract us from doing our homework.
If I want intellectual stimulation, I’ll pick up a book or rent some movie Jerry Bruckheimer has never heard of. If I want information, I’ll read it in a newspaper or online.
But if I want to see good sketch comedy, compelling crime-scene investigation or raunchy reality antics — in separated, distinguishable spaces and timeslots — I want to watch television. I want to relax.
I’ve got enough things in my life making me blind and bald, and television shouldn’t have to be one of them.
