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?"

You're right. I didn't say that. That would have been dumb.

The truth about Southeast Kansas is that no one can cook a damn thing with any taste, not Italians, African Americans or Anglos. No one. Prejudice presumes that skin indicates something about hearts and minds. It does not. There, almost done with the cliches, save one more: don't judge a book by its cover. Books, magazines, movies, etc. all have content so massively diverse that only a fool would judge a medium as a whole.

Except TV. Hate television. Turn it off forever and never return. Judge every program on television before it airs. Say, "That show stinks," and if they say, "Have you seen it?" reply, "No, and you can't make me, nyah-nyah!" Just once, be close minded.

Hate TV's aesthetics. Go find your TV set and turn it off. Now look at the thing. It is ugly, is it not? You don't really want to see that gray void staring back at you. As an object, it repulses, but, once on, you're watching it not looking at it. So look at it and hate it.

Hate TV because it sets your pace. Take the news: with a newspaper you can skim or skip or peruse depending on your interest and how well you understand the content. With TV you must be plopped in the Lazy Boy by six o'clock because that's when the news comes on, and if you don't want to see a story, well, sorry, tubby, but this is what's on.


Hate TV because it consumes you. Radio may set its pace, but at least you are free. Free to drive, cook, clean, smile at your companion because, shucks, that Garrison Keillor is funny. Free, as long as you can hear. Any CSPAN junkies out there? Here in D.C. we have CSPAN Radio, and realizing that you don't actually need to look at those ugly old white guys is sho' liberating. Now I prep my veggies and listen to Trent Lott blather every night. Bliss.

Hate TV because it is always there, like Big Brother. Remember how in 1984 no one could turn the TV off, just down? The difference from today is one of degree, not kind, with every set ready to blink on 24-7. People tell me that movies are just like TV, and if I like them I should shut up about the box. Movies are different, though, and the language reflects that. "I'm either going to watch a movie or the TV" When someone watches "the TV" they watch whatever happens to be on, but that's going to be the same whatever TV you watch. TV is just one long blur. Children are not taught to watch programs; people watch televison, that's it. Movies are units. Few go to the movies just to go -- not so with TV. People can flip around for hours, complaining about finding nothing on, but watching anyway.

Hate television because it sets your schedule. If you want to watch Friends then be home when it starts. Meanwhile, you can stop or start a comic book at your leisure. Take your time. Go back. Skip forward. Whatever. But if you miss a show, well, there's reruns.

Hate television because it is the world's only evil medium. Other media leave viewers in control either of content (pick up whatever book you want, whenever) or context (recorded music does not preempt dancing, studying, talking, etc.). Not so with television. Give it total attention or miss something. Your choice. Shh! The show's starting! Quit banging around!

In sum, prejudice against TV is okay. The content is just a lure to suck you in and make you like to watch. TV's skin is its screen, and everything behind that is the same no matter which set you turn on; unlike humans, every one an individual. I suppose the reason some people fear cloning technology is because someday a megalomaniacal couple (call them George and Laura) could populate a whole city with nothing but replicas of themselves, lots of George's and Laura's. Then, one guy could ask another what he had planned for the night and he might say, "Oh, watch the TV, probably, though I've been meaning to ask the woman out. Maybe one of her in Accounting?"

***

I have a secret. One night some friends of mine wanted to know about something that would have comprised my secret. I just would not answer the question. The one who knew me best said, "you can at least make up an amusing lie for us." I agreed; I could. Another, an acquaintance, said, "I doubt you are a good enough liar." What a maroon. He set me up! All I had to do then was confirm his doubts (a lie) and they would buy a story about Meryl Streep teaching me sharpshooting. So that is what I did. I retracted my boast and lied like a preacher's son at a "Love Waits" revival, and they bought it all. Convincing others is all about the set up, not the content of the assertion.



They ought to teach lying in schools. Seriously. We would all be better off if everyone were a savvy liar. A great deal of deception concerns form or opinions -- not substance or facts . Take this whole Britney Spears fiasco.

Britney: from whence did this pan flash come? Listen to any of her songs -- someone put some serious money into giving her that sound. Economists will tell you that hefty media campaigns signal consumers that producers honestly think they have come up with a good product (rather than scamming out a bad one), but young Spears's music is not all that good. So what's the deal? For a crowd long on curiosity and short on hard data, teens, music is a shortcut to identity and lifestyle. Where adults need some background music, teens need a soundtrack for their lives. So Britney ads value to her CDs by providing a complete character, ready-made for emulation.

Think of how much more empowered young people would be if schools discussed and analyzed what marketing really accomplishes. Those ads are not merely pleas to spend lunch money, but arguments for one lifestyle over another ( Blink 182 does "Punk" while N'Sync does "Preppie").

Media manipulates. In the first section I wrote about the move after my mother's remarriage. I was ten. I made our new town sound like one where people sniffed new acquaintances' armpits instead of shaking hands. In other words, I set the reader up to hate the place. Then I just slipped in my agenda. I said that I had blown that year in front of the TV set and, looking back, I remember what little time I spent away from it more clearly. In other words, for as bad as the place was, it was more memorable than "my shows."

So I had you co-opted in two sentences. Mainstream America cannot abide our lousier small towns on the fringes of KKKulture, so if such a place outperformed TV in the tournament of memory, then -- just for a second -- you doubted TV's value. Goal!

All set up.

I could have as easily said that after the remarriage everyone got along dandy and one of the ways we bonded was by watching the evening news together every night. TV would have come out the winner in the depiction, no? See, neither depiction of TV is a "lie," but they both use liars tricks to support a completely unrelated point.

Similarly, I suckered you into section two by using nicey nice section one to get you there. Raise your hand if you thought I contradicted myself by naming television the latest evil empire right after criticizing people who suggest banning certain media. No accident; I hope you enjoyed our little bait and switch, please settle back for the rest of the ride and remember, the brandy will cost ya but vitriol is free all night long.

We pay for media to manipulate us. If media just told it like it is, flat & flair free then it would be boring. Still, that's no reason to blindly believe. The key question is what the messenger's motive is. In a way, that's why teachers discuss Dickens so much. Students can easily draw parallels between his depictions of the social classes in England, his time period (industrializing Britain) and his opinions about both, but why not do the same thing with our time period?

Teachers could lay bare the techniques modern media use to manipulate. For example, the purveyors of ER really want you to believe it is a well scripted show, but watch it more closely. Compare the sound effects they use to the ones on Friends. Notice how the camera just goes crazy during those operation sequences. Why's that? How about that lighting? We do not want to believe that we can fall for form over substance, but we do it all the time. It is just better to do it knowingly.

This is a culture has decided that covering the roads in 3 ton behemoth S.U.V.'s is the way to ensure the safety of families. Not logical, but do you think we made that decision all on our own and without any help from the industry? Flip a coin. We could stand some backbone in our savvy because all mediacation persuades, and persuasion is the liars' trade. The good lie is partly true, while the truest statement about our world is a little false; honing the doubter's doubts enhances clarity, but do not take my word on it.

With everything I have written here, all I mean to convey has hinged on one silly story, one bald assertion: real life in the backwoods of Cherokee, Kansas meant more to me than boob-tubing life anywhere. Thus far, I have admitted to misleading the reader twice now. Could I have lied once more or hid some twist in my premise? Think what you may; keeping mum gives me one secret more.

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