Letters to the Editor
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breckenback, i think mjwycha hit it on the nose
escapism, wish fulfillment. no one wants to pay attention when they watch TV. we want to imagine another life, and in these times, like in the thirties, a better one.
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The Working Man
Want to see working class people on TV? Scripted dramas/comedies may not show them, but they get their moment in the sun each week with DIRTY JOBS on the Discovery Channel.
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But what about-
Well, they say that art imitates life, right? Tv shows are so expensive to produce anymore . . . the writers must be earning a decent wage, right? And if they are, then they are more in tuned with the lives of the upper middle class or lower upper class, right?
Most shows are set in Manhattan and L.A., right? Mostly because writers mostly like to set stories in places that they know. It provides a structure of reality upon which to base one's fiction. Faulkner sets his stories in the South. Steven King sets his books, for the most part, in New England. It is hard to write a story if you don't know how the people who live in it speak or what their culture is like. Not that liberties aren't taken, of course.
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People are too familiar with the typical middle class sitcom plot
If they still had one of those shows on TV now, Heather would point this fact out relentlessly.
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Great article, you tell 'em, Heather.
You raise a lot of really good points.
I've been noticing myself that people from middle-class families are increasingly being portrayed as hokey and backward.
Any regular Salon reader will be familiar with the fact that there's a carefully-crafted political and economic war being waged to eliminate the American Middle Class and stratify our nation into two classes, the Very Very Rich and the Very Very Poor, what Noam Chomsky refers to as the Third World Economic Model.
Are the TV networks along for the ride, or are they actively working to legitimize the end result by telling us that there's no room for a Middle Class in a country as fabulous as ours?
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Lay off TV
I don't really understand why people who claim not to watch TV are reading a TV column and posting comments -- unless it's because they're looking for an opportunity to boast about how they don't watch TV. And scouring the Web for chances to boast about how you don't watch TV is even more pathetic than watching too much TV.
There's a lot of good TV out there, much better than a lot of the movies that come out and a hell of a lot better than "the Internet for entertainment" (which means? YouTube? Video games? Please). You could TiVo Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Deadwood, 30 Rock, Rescue Me, etc. and not watch a bad show or a commercial on any night of the week. No one forces people to watch those cocktails-and-designer-shoes shows or the gossip shows or reality TV. I don't because they are toxic. But the best TV, which is plentiful nowadays, is the best thing out there.
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Flashing Butts! Flashing Butts! Flashing Butts!
When I log onto Salon sometimes,my eyes are accosted by dozens of perky, trim, young, toned flashing asses, apparently an advertisement for some sort of toilet for the ultra-rich (I don't know precisely, I'm too offended to check it out). I KNOW it's for the rich, what lower/middle-class fat-bottomed slob could afford it?... And so it is with the new shows full of the ultra-rich and their clothes and cars and toys, and the new ultra-rich man's toilet, no doubt. I'm too offended to check it out. I guess I'm at that point in my middle-aged, middle-class comfortable life where I'm content with what I have and conspicuous consumption and envy of the rich just doesn't do it for me anymore. Also, reality shows and game shows - fake and stupid - and boring.
When my TV is on, I'm watching 1) old movies on TCM, 2) an occasional talk show (Oprah, the Today Show), 3) the Weather Channel, 4) the Discovery Channel. Give me a marathon of Dirty Jobs ANY day, I admire the people who work for a living. Give me a marathon of Mythbusters, entertainment and education, not a Ferrari in sight. Show me Blue Planet, a seemingly vanishing natural world that is being bulldozed for shopping malls, Pep Boys auto parts, and McMansions.
Another wonderful article, Heather, (((big kiss))).
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conspicuous criticism
A typical lefty self-congratulations on class consciousness. How about the constant "conspicuous virtue" displayed by journalists? If you want to trot out economic theory as a stake to wave your silly media criticism flag, keep it up--eventually you might accidentally stumble out of your 19th century Marxist rut.
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You're starting to sound like Soviet television
Everyone put on your babushkas and trudge to the GUM store to wait on line for something. All hail the Rodina!
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For What It's Worth...
"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."
I'd like to think that if more Americans were aware of what's actually going on in this country, instead of on "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol," we might be able to do something about what ailes us. The media is as much to blame as all the network executive ninnies who sell this crap to the advertisers, knowing full well that the American people will be glued to it. That's why the "Republicans and the megacorporations" have become what they've become. As long as WalMart can sell hi-def TVs and hunting rifles, we're set.
Throwing out your televisions is not the answer.
By the way, Heather - you were right about "Tell Me You Love Me": it was awful. HBO has definitely hit the skids.
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This has been addressed more throughly...
...by Joe Bageant in his essay The Simulacran Republic.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/the_simulacran_.html
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Friday Night Lights
If there's another show that portrays the lives of the American lower middle class better than this one, I'd like to see it.
I'm sick of seeing only the rich on television. These aren't even the lives of the genuinely wealthy in this country, but instead some bougie cartoonish version that lives only in the heads of the middle class dreamers. Where do I fit into that world? What can I relate to?