Letters to the Editor
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So, Havrilesky, how long did it take you to notice this?
And that's all I'm going to say to you this time. But to the others, there's more to say.
Trainman and MrOpEd, I'm expecting you to take the next step and go out and kill anyone who watches TV. If you're going to be snobs, be active snobs, not passive whiners. If you truly believe that TV, the last "cool fire" left in our country, the last meager expression of group consensus in America, is so evil...lock and load, dudes.
And BennyBrooklyn, commercialization isn't that much of a cause. In the 1970's and 80's, there were just as many commercials. Heck, in the 1950's, sponsors controlled the content of programs far more than they do today.
I think it's political. If programs were to talk about the middle and lower class, they'd have to acknowledge that there are problems. An Archie Bunker in today's TV would be laid off and unable to get a job through outsourcing, and if Edith were raped today, she'd get no medical or psychiatric help from the overcrowded charity wards, all the unemployed Bunkers could afford.
For TV shows to pretend otherwise would be unacceptable and unrealistic, and the public would know it. And if the networks showed the actual state of America, they'd start making people upset with the people running this country - the Republicans and the megacorporations. Who happen to own the broadcast and cable networks, and nearly all of the license-holding stations too.
Far better to confine the middle and lower classes to desperate "housewives" and husbands competing on game shows for crappy prizes - in games that don't even challenge the intellect, or as in Jeopardy, making "intellect" the memorization of trivial, useless facts, not actual cogitation. Far better to crap on ordinary people as...well, what one particular Salon columnist calls..."chickens."
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Go back to your cabin
in the woods, Tiberius. The Unabomber vacated it years ago. You'll be happy there. Or why don't you move to North Korea, since you hate America so much?
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Escapism
Films of the 1930s and '40s often glorified and reveled in the lives of the rich. From what I've read, many people during the depression enjoyed being able to lose themselves in the celluloid lives of the rich. A Marxist view (which I think has a bit of merit) would hold that the glorification of wealth was a kind of cultural propaganda promulgated by the establishment to keep people off the streets. Who was going to join the Wobblies while in the thrall of a Gable movie?
Maybe this current trend of television programs can be seen in the same way. Like the '30s it's a pretty scary world out there: violent religious extremism, the economy diving, vague rumblings of peak oil and global warming, etc. So now we get the 21st century version of those depression era glamor films. And again I think there also may be something to a kind of cultural propaganda going on here as well. The corporate world doesn't want us to freak out and stop buying stuff, right? These types of programs seem to have a opiate-like effect on the viewer: the world is orderly, prosperous, and interesting.
Oh well, it would certainly be an interesting topic in a cultural studies course anyway. Especially if Ms. Havrilesky was teaching.
Anyway, my fantasy TV world of escapism isn't in the world of the filthy rich, but rather in the fabulously smart world of Eureka. Now that's escapism I can get behind.
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Boy, are your industry friends going to be pissed!
There's a thin veneer motivating "Hollywood Magic" and you just ripped into it, for sure. Maybe they'll eventually forgive you since you left the fifties alone. Or maybe they'll tell everyone that at least the middle class is assuaged instead of enraged by the "beautiful people."
Remember "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle?"
Is that what you wnat the masses to aspire to?
Let them think they're eating cake, women!
Leave Hollywood alone, why don't you? Can't you see how important their work is!?
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And when they all get cancelled in a month
You'll claim it's a big loss for televistic diversity in a sea of crap.
I watch CN's Adult Swim.
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Oh Pulease
tomreedtoon wrote:
"Trainman and MrOpEd, I'm expecting you to take the next step and go out and kill anyone who watches TV."
Oh Pulease !
Is that the best you can do? That's like saying anyone who points out the health consequences of smoking should instead just go out and shoot anyone who smokes.
Come on, you can do better than that!
Heather, excellent article by the way...
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alain de botton, whom heather quotes
is a multi-multi-millionaire (his father, gilbert, founded Global Asset Management(whatever it is, it sure sounds rich)). here's another quote from him, “It can seem like the only way to be respectable is to achieve as much as the founders of YouTube or Google”. since i think heather probably has a nice car and a nice house and never had to accept second-tier health care, i think she's in the same boat. many of us are CRANKY and we find people like FilthyHarry, tiberius, and MrOpEd funny and not at all likely to whack someone (tomreedtoon) or to hole up in kaczynski's old haunts(Anonymous - don't you love 'em?).
all you can really say is, a LOT of people are very unsatisfied. my daughter once asked me, "how can you keep your self-esteem never earning any money?". i answered, "have you ever looked at TV?". so for me, retarded TV is an ego boost.
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A Rich Vein
has been tapped here. As so often, Heather's point is well taken.
Similarly, why there is so little discussion of the blatant consumerism that underlies the onrush of our supposed love of the latest technological toy? WIRED magazine is little more than an advertisement for consuming technology with every expendable dollar, admittedly flavored with interesting articles.
Mentioning current shows on TV with real middle class folk, I ditto praise to Heroes, and also enjoy Eureka, and further cite from Sci-Fi channel Flash Gordon (he lives in a pretty normal pad) and Dr. Who (the old assistant's mom lived in a pretty humble flat, although new gal does come from class). Also, Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a glowing window on financial reality, and Jericho has some pretty plebian life styles depicted.
I do agree that the most interesting question is why, when the middle class audience that drives ratings has been struggling financially for years, the media insist on portraying the oppressors and suggesting they are the ideal. Praises to Heather for clarity in raising this point.