Letters to the Editor
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Just One Small Problem
I think it's unfair to simply lump "Arrested Development" in with the rest of these shows. I'm not just saying this because no sitcom has ever made me laugh the way AD did, but because it is a fairly overt criticism of the wealthy TV family. The Bluths are so rich, only Michael (the prodigal son) knows the value of a dollar. They live in a beautiful model home that is falling apart. They're a wealthy family brought low by their own decadence and stupidity. The viewer constantly judges the characters for being sheltered rich folk who don't know how to live in the real world. It's the root of most of the comedy.
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In this era, everything is "high-dollar."
...super-bling is the rule of the day. Bentley Mulliners for debut rappers, day trips to Paris for Paris, blah, blah, blah. We love excess, but apparently are unable to grasp that so few of us will ever get there. It's appalling, but not really shocking that tv reflects our idiotic fascination with unattainable wealth. The other shows (vampires, time travellers, murder investigations) are apparently designed to further separate us from reality. But not everything is an exercise in fantasy; The Wire remains my favorite show, as it has since its debut. Anyone who says *everything* on TV is garbage isn't watching HBO or Showtime. Even there, there's some crap, but in general, their serial dramas/comedies are top notch.
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social class on TV
A few years ago, Paul Krugman published a little book entitled Return of Depression Economics. Depression economics is a situation in which ordinary citizens do not have enough money to buy what they need and they cannot support the supply side of the equation. (oversimplified obviously).
I think we are already psychologically into the next depression. What we are seeing in popular culture seems to me to be remarkably similar to what I get from watching movies from the depression era. Our interest in the super rich allows us to experience in fantasy what we can no longer hope to experience in fact. Much reality TV strikes me as the functional equal of marathon dance contests.
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I blame my MTV
Has anyone watched, "The Hills" or "Laguna Beach" or "My Supersweet Superstupid Sweet 16".
Those are the shows that tween and teen girls watch. Women spend 4 out of every 5 consumer dollars in America. It's a good thing we're teaching them so young how crucially important it is to consume consume consume.....
Roseanne is the show for me. You saw them struggling to get by, and making sacrafices for each other.
It's also about geography. The Hills = Hollywood. Dirty Sexy Stupid Consumption = Manhattan. Roseanne = No frills Illinois.
I'm so happy they've invented On Demand. I can watch NGC and A&E and whatever I want.
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From a pander to a flaunt?
I agree with a lot of what Ms. Havrilesky's observing in television, although I have to wonder if there's much to do about it beyond tuning it out, turning off the television and reading books or going online and glowing and flowing. When commercial radio began to seriously suck (I remember first thinking that by 1995), I just stopped listening to it. Seems like that's the best defense against the tyranny of televised Tinseltown.
Near as I can tell, the only difference is that wealth is being flaunted (and really, glitz has always been part of the formula) -- television and film actors (and writers) are unionized and are paid far, far better than the majority of their audiences, most of whom could probably comfortably retire on what the cast makes in one episode of a successful show.
I know it would always grate on me to see these extraordinarily well-paid actors pretend to be middle class or working class, regardless of the stance of the show; I'm sure they drew on their own pre-celebrity backgrounds for characterizations, but they've long since left the middle class they'd portrayed onscreen when they went to Hollywood. Of course most actors (and writers) don't hit the jackpot, but televised or filmed (e.g., working) actors and writers basically have -- even residuals can greatly benefit those of bygone eras.
It's all illusory, whatever class is being portrayed. I can almost imagine directors having production assistants rat up a prop sofa to make it look properly worn, authentically well-used, for a working class or middle class show. All images, all the time, all illusion, whether they're looking working class, middle class or merely upper middle class, or even rich, or filthy rich.
"Friends" was certainly a prime culprit, with those cavernous NYC apartments mentioned, and everybody doing so well -- but that's all part of the medium; certain emotional responses are discouraged on commercial television, because they're not conducive to buying, just as some emotional responses are encouraged, putting people in the frame of mind to buy. Television's always going to be a fishbowl, a distorting lens.
So, if television's absence of sumptuary laws and the vanishing of the pretend television/film middle class (which I'd consider the new working class in the real world, given the disparity of income in this country -- a televised middle class doing well is so much fiction these days) bothers you, I'd say just tune out, pursue something more personally worthwhile than watching television.
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Middle Class
Now I know why I don't watch television.
But the term middle class is so broad as to be almost useless. The word 'middle' just means between rich and poor, but it does not delineate beyond that. It's not really a class.
Poor people are on television on cop shows only ... as criminals, victims or oddballs. Working class people show up on cop shows as well, usually as criminals or saints.
However, Kramden, Bunker, Roseanne and Laverne and Shirley and Sanford were working class. Bus drivers, factory workers, waitresses, garbage haulers and whatever Archie did.
Raymond is actually middle class, a sports writer. Tim the Toolman was middle class, a TV host. Etc. Seinfeld was middle class, a "comic." The people on Friends, well, they were an odd mixture of crumby jobs and middle class lifestyles. What were they? A fantasy!
Even the people who work in crime labs have gotten an upgrade. On Miami CSI they wear low cut desinger clothes and expensive leather boots or heels, work in glass offices with high tech tools that grab information in nano-seconds, drive giant SUVs and never take their sunglasses off.
I'm sure the people in the real Miami CSI office have long stopped laughing about this show.