Mediacation

By Brady Russell, WireTap. Posted June 2, 2000.

Even though I may never read another fantasy novel again, I can still talk at length with anyone who read a silly string of books by an author named David Eddings. I never watch television now, but I remember the way my friends and I used to imitate characters from THE TRANSFORMERS cartoons at recess. Old comic books remind me of where I was in my life when I first read them. Every day at work my office buzzes with the latest news in the paper. Of course, we are in the political business, but, then again, we talk about the funnies as much as anything. Media stimulate all sorts of human interaction.

Humans need meaningful exchanges with others to maintain sanity and perspective, but we have media to substitute for contact with the thousands of people out of an individual's reach. We need news about the world: rather than visiting with leaders on every continent every day, we have the evening paper. We need a sense for our society's values: rather than engage in extensive conversations with people in every region and strata, we have novels and movies. We need to know about the past: rather than build time machines and go back to have a look, we have books. Media permit millions of people to stay in touch with each other (living and dead), but only individuals can make contact; contact is unmediated.

Humans have other substances that artificially provide for our physical and emotional needs: drugs. Media is a drug. Both drugs and media give people easy access to something they need, but that's the trouble with both: they are so damn easy to take. I could just release my emotions to marijuana every single night, at home, right in front of the idiot box, and let its flickering pixels entertain me, but would I regret it? Absolutely.

When I was ten my mother remarried. As a part of the deal, she and I moved to my stepfather's hometown, Cherokee, for one year before moving back to the the place where I went to school, Pittsburg, Kansas. The two towns were only twenty minutes apart, driving, but divided by at least a half-century in terms of culture (in Cherokee, picture Deliverance with more paint). I hated it there, so I just watched television and played Nintendo all the while, even though I had played outdoors constantly before the move. I remember none of that veggie time, but I do remember the family dramas and the one day I played touch football with the neighborhood boys. I did like Nintendo. I didn't like the boys, but I remember as many snippets of that day as I do from a whole year of playing Nintendo. That's telling.

Think of it. People go to great lengths to watch sports live, from only one perspective and with less clarity than they would see the game on television because they don't go at all to see but to share in the crowd's pomp and circumstance. Sports exist for gatherings' sake, not vice versa.

Yet people still watch sports on TV because they love the games and they need to discuss them with their friends and family. To me, the best of media is their by-products, such as giving acquaintances and strangers a topic to talk about. In fact, I opened with memories not of the media themselves, but of what their consumption inspired. Take a survey of your fondest memories. How many are of games, conversations, parties or romance and how many are of TV shows, ratty novels, movies or newspaper articles? Looking directly into another's eyes is more memorable than any cinematic moment.

Memory is funny. Handshakes don't come with special effects, and conversations don't have symphonic scores, yet they stand out more in our thoughts than big budget anything. So if unmediated exchanges look so good in hindsight, why don't we look forward to more of them? For the same reason America medicates its misery: it is easier just to watch TV than to maintain friendships. No one needs four hours of TV to foster twenty minutes of lunch time gabbing the next day, but a person faces less risk in front of a television than before a person who may reject them, embarrass or insult them. At worst, a television will bore you. So what? You were bored all day. At least now you're relaxed and making forgettable moments in the comfort of your own home.

Just as the prohibitionists were wrong to suggest the banning of alcohol, I would be wrong to suggest banning the most addictive media. We need them, all of them, to get a quick fix on the great mob's comings and goings, but not so much as to forget each of us are active parts of that mob. So, tonight, the evening news may well be in order. Maybe even a sitcom, but afterwards there will probably still be time to go out with a homey and hoist a few, right? No reason to drink too many, though, because once you get out you may run into someone you will not want to forget, and you won't want anything hazing the focus between your eyes and his.

***

Many Italian-Americans live in Southeast Kansas. In another era, two heavily Italian towns there, Arma and Frontenac, had a fierce football rivalry. When the two teams played it was called the Spaghetti Bowl. One famous Italian spot is a restaurant called Barto's Idle Hour, where happy patrons eat gloppy pasta and fried chicken that tastes like soap. I grew up there, so, when I recently started dating an Italian girl who told me she felt guilty for not being able to cook all that well, I said, "Wait, don't you all just make a lot of fried chicken that tastes like soap?"

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