I’m spinning it tight…
posted on June 10, 2009 at 9:55 pm by Khali
I was going to write a blog about how I detest some of the programming that’s on TV – how I think reality TV is watchable only in a train wreck sense: how it’s impossible to tear your eyes away even though you know that some television network is exploiting people for money, and that those same people are allowing themselves to be exploited for money and or whatever dubious fame they can achieve. It’s sick. And it’s a symptom of just how sick our world is. What’s next? A reality TV show following the next teen gunman? How far is too far? How desensitised can we be to violence, mistreatment and exploitation before we lose our core humanity?
Bre was watching Robot Chicken the other night and the disclaimer at the beginning said that it was for 18+ and I said off hand that she should probably not be watching it then and she threw me attitude. She doesn’t even get all the jokes and every other frame has someone being raped, beaten, stabbed or otherwise killed and/or humiliated, albeit in cartoon fashion. I remember when people were upset about the violence in bugs bunny. We have lost our subtlety
Granted I’m not one for censorship; people should be allowed to express their feelings and show how they see the world as they see fit. I’m an advocate of free speech – but at the same time I’m worried about how much is too much. There is a line whether we like it or not and mass media has left it far, far behind because sensation sells.
For instance, the kid who committed suicide on a webcam –what led him to such drastic measures for attention? How can a kid think that shooting everyone in his school will somehow end his pain? How does a man just decide to decapitate the man sitting next to him on a bus? Where did we get so disconnected? (No, I’m not blaming mass media for these behaviours any more than I can blame a violent video game - it’s how people process the input that causes the rift, the disassociation if you please - and there does not seem to be the tools available to help people differentiate and/or make sense of the crap versus the not-crap - or rather the people to teach these differences and supply the tools.)
I can see a prime example in teenagers today. Parents are either too self-absorbed or too busy to pay much more than the cursory attention to thier children. They end up appeasing thier guilt and/or the kids with gifts and bribes and by letting them get away with the most outrageous of behaviour, and now these kids have this sense of entitlement that seems to be a trademark of the generation. That’s oversimplifying, I know but the fault lies in thier upbringing, more than on the state of the universe. Though mass media: the Internet, TV, you name it, feeds the consumer tendency, that doesn’t mean anyone has to buy into it. But because it’s there and it’s so prevalant and, for the most part, unregulated by parents… they watch things they don’t entirely have the capacity to deconstruct in a useful manner and where does that leave them? (And if not regulated, then parents are not taking the time to deconstruct or interpret the content with these kids - I tell you I’ve had some interesting conversations about Robot Chicken recently…)
Why is it so hard to give each other attention? That’s all we really want and need at the end of the day: to feel loved and appreciated by someone. When we don’t get that we feel less than ourselves. Am I wrong? I don’t think so.
So we look outside of ourselves to reinforce the way we feel about ourselves. If we don’t have people to do this for us we turn to food, alcohol, drugs, media, to make us feel better. Food to fill the void, alcohol and drugs to alter our emotional state – though that never lasts for long- media because there’s always some poor sap who’s worse off than we are. It’s a weird kind of one-upmanship.
Whatever happened to those feel-good programs? You know, like ‘on the road again’ and such, where the host would visit these people with extraordinary tales of survival, creativity and accomplishment. I miss those! Where is our pride? We’re a mess, people.
listening to: Tori Amos - Strong Black Vine
