vast wasteland (part 2)

I still can’t decide whether it’s encouraging or terrifying that my biggest complaint from my twenty-four hour television viewing extravaganza was that I developed a stiff neck. I never found myself forced to watch infomercials. I was never mind-numbingly bored, although there were, of course, a few moments of “oh god, when will this end.” Neither my brain nor my eyes bled (although my eyes were feeling a bit strained by hour fourteen or so). And I’m fairly certain I didn’t kill any brain cells or lose any IQ points. In fact, I was surprisingly pleased by the ideas those twenty four hours generated; there’s seemingly always something on worth watching (although I guess that depends on your definition of “worth”), and I was able to give shows a chance—and find that I enjoyed them—that I would never usually give a second glance during the course of a normal day.

For the record, Roland Barthes was right: “Boredom is not far from bliss, it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure.” Sure, I wafted in and out of boredom, but moments of entertainment or insight or (tele)visual pleasure were never far behind. That’s not to say I would recommend watching television for twenty four hours become a weekly or even monthly activity. I think someone might have to pay me to get me to do it again, but not because I was bored. I felt mostly content, if a little cramped, until around hour twenty, when I became incredibly, irreparably sleepy and never fully recovered (i.e. never fully regained consciousness). The rules of inertia dictate that a body at rest stays at rest and while earlier in the day I moved around the room and stretched and even danced to keep myself from turning into an uncomfortable heap of stiff muscles, it eventually became nearly impossible for me to drag myself off the couch, which I think contributed to my later lack of alertness. Besides chronic exhaustion, the other hazard of televisual gluttony is literal gluttony: I consumed twice the daily recommended calories and twice the maximum recommended grams of fat for my age and gender in little under fifteen hours (since the last ten hours or so I didn’t eat much). Sedentary viewing breeds hunger—not that this is huge news flash to any of us—especially when every other commercial is telling you to order Papa John’s or drink Miller Lite. One thing this experience did leave me with is a vast inventory of comments and observations from which to draw on in the next weeks and months, so in lieu of an extensive account today, here’s an overview of my day and evening. It was sunny on Friday, when I scheduled myself to undertake this marathon, a fact which I initially resented as I could have been outside flying a kite like Mary Poppins (but then I realized that the likelihood of that happening was slim to none, so my resentment ebbed).

The experiment began at 11:30am with the second half of The Today Show (NBC). After half an hour, I was not only insanely jealous of their frolicking ‘winter-break edition’ in Miami, but also knew the entire NBC line-up for the rest of day by heart. Apparently around lunchtime NBC prefers to promote itself rather than have actual advertisers. From there I moved on to Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV; I didn’t even know this was a show, but I was pretty impressed by the dancers (plus, it’s hosted by Mario Lopez, formerly of Saved By the Bell—alas, yon Slater, I remember him well). This show, though kind of cool, begged the question of what they’ll think up next in the “America’s Best…” genre of television: America’s Best Carpenter? So You Think You Can Scuba Dive? Seriously, where will it end?

The subsequent few hours were occupied with an episode of Family Matters on ABC Family (another blast from the past), Ten Years Younger on TLC (because nothing says “the learning channel” like veneers, Lasik surgery and a new wardrobe—although I do appreciate the attempt at a mind-body-soul approach to the makeover genre: i.e. better looks begets better lifestyle begets better overall health and happiness), a Law and Order rerun on TNT (ah, Law and Order, it’s like chicken soup for the televisual soul—such a comforting constant of the TV landscape), and an episode of Stargate Atlantis on the SciFi channel (a show I’d never seen before; hence I was very, very confused). The Ellen DeGeneres Show brought me back to NBC at 4pm and will fuel a more lengthy discussion next week about talk shows, the American Dream, free stuff and philanthropy.

After an hour back in the land of the thousand reality shows with The Discovery Channel’s It Takes a Thief (apparently going to jail is a good career move, one that can be parlayed into a reality show where you prove to people how easy it is to burglarize their homes and then provide them with better security systems), I drifted back into narrative television with Will and Grace on the CW (a show I sorely miss) and King of the Hill on Fox (a show I’ve been unfairly prejudiced against until now). From there I moved on to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on Spike (an enduring favorite, and the only time I accidentally ended up watching an episode I’d seen before). CSI segued nicely into Fox’s Bones (which will certainly fuel its own discussion one of these days about perception versus reality and rational thought versus emotional appeal) which, in turn, segued nicely into CBS’s The Ghost Whisperer (which I enjoyed but will probably never be able to watch again because there were too many, well, ghosts).

Done with my parade of crime shows for a little while, I moved on to Family Guy on the CW (always entertaining) and Out of Jimmy’s Head on the Cartoon Network (surprisingly confusing/weird even for a kid’s show or perhaps I just couldn’t have cared less). TLC’s What Not To Wear brought me back briefly to the makeover genre (one reality show that I absolutely adore, as shamed as I am to admit it). After that, two more sitcoms—reruns of Frasier on Lifetime and The Jamie Foxx Show on BET—made for rather entertaining counterpoints to each other, and not only because of the tension between race, class and each of their perceived audiences. At 1am, my television and I had a strange moment of synchronous exhaustion during an episode of CSI: Miami on A&E. At some point during the episode, I drifted off, and, when I awoke, my television had turned itself off as well. Perhaps I rolled over onto the remote or perhaps my television is sentient and was just looking out for my best interests—all I know is that I had to completely reset my cable box before my television would deign to provide me with programming again. The ghost in the machine.

After that eerie-yet-minor lapse, things progressed swimmingly again with an episode of Good Eats with Alton Brown (the Bill Nye of food) on the Food Network and learned how to make olive bread, followed by a strange episode of The Jefferson’s on TV Land (actually, I find The Jefferson’s just generally strange). The History Channel’s Prostitution: Sex in the City provided a rather fascinating account of the world’s oldest profession, although I was disturbed by the implication that Greek slave women preferred prostitution to other possible tasks. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. In the “and now for something completely different” category of channel flips, I moved on from prostitution to The Cosby Show on Nick-at-Nite (more thoughts on race and perceived viewership may result eventually) and then from wholesome family togetherness to VH-1’s Top 20 Video Countdown (which was possibly the most boring program all evening—the videos I watched were supposedly from the top 6, but they seemed incredibly facile and sluggish).

A rerun of Dawson’s Creek on TBS reminded me how young Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams looked and seemed in the late nineties, and a rousing episode of Little House on the Prairie on the Hallmark Channel reminded me how idealistic television used to be in the 19^th century (okay, fine, the mid-seventies). After that, things start to get a little blurry and Sesame Street on PBS merges in my memory with ABC’s Good Morning America and Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker to form a highly unlikely scenario: Elmo and Zoe fight over who will marry the next Democratic presidential candidate. As I’m sure this didn’t actually happen, let’s just say that by the last few shows I was more than a little tired.

The stats: 24 channels, 29 programs (mostly reruns), 20.5 alert hours, 3.5 hours half-asleep, 3795 calories and 119 grams of fat consumed. The verdict: I think I can safely say that television is far from a vast wasteland. But I wouldn’t say it’s a vast utopia either. Vast is entertaining—and apparently only boring in the best of ways—but we shouldn’t necessarily be satisfied with quantity over quality. Still, after all that, I’m mostly left with the same ruling as last week: television is vast. End stop.

But at least now I have even more to say about it.

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(NEXT WEEK: “A Helping Hand and the Greater Good.” Talk shows, philanthropy, talent contests, and the American Dream.)

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vast wasteland (part 1)

Ever since 1961, when newly-elected Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Newton Minton described television as a “vast wasteland,” the phrase has been bandied around quite a bit—sometimes justifiably, sometimes carelessly—by the medium’s critics, its advocates, and those whose tele-cultural loyalties fall somewhere in between. I, for one, take issue with the phrase not because I don’t agree that some television programming is bleak and barren, but because the phrase implicitly encompasses all television, television as a medium, rather than just allowing that some television shows are kind of dumb (just as some art/film/music/insert-your-cultural-object-here is kind of dumb or, as Star Trekcreator Gene Roddenbury supposedly once said,“They say that ninety percent of TV is junk. But, ninety percent of everything is junk”). That doesn’t mean I’m ready to let television completely off the hook. There have been enough indictments of television as mindless, soul-destroying and intellect-diminishing that it’s pretty hard to just shrug off.

Here’s what I do agree with: television is vast, ridiculously so; it is an omnipresent, ubiquitous force in American culture. Television is often distracting, seductive, hypnotic—a medium people seem to either love or hate. But whatever we may say about television—and even I, a great lover of the medium, know I’m guilty of moralizing in my constant griping about reality shows—people do watch television. Billions of people. And it would be pretty difficult and pretty arrogant to say that billions of people are stupid, misguided and uninspired in their desire to watch. There is something fascinating about television, perhaps even because of its vastness, and I want to take a bit more time to explore this fascination one element at a time.

Last week, I talked about seriality and narrative, and I want to continue today thinking bit a more about seriality and excess (the “vast” in “vast wasteland”). Most television is serial and/or episodic (or are those the same thing?). While episodes are narrative and a season might have a narrative arc that binds its episodes together, the continuity of the television show is not narrative or linear, but serial and protracted. Its impossible to watch a conventional television show from beginning to end when broadcast as part of a normal, weekly schedule. Instead, you have to always “tune in again next week” for more—satisfaction continually deferred through seriality. Even if you’re watching television-on-DVD or a marathon of repeats, there’s simply no way you could watch an entire series in one sitting (unless it’s a hapless series like Joss Whedon’s much-admired Firefly (2002-2003), of which there were only thirteen episodes). Even watching an entire season in one sitting is pretty untenable, considering a full season of episodes is usually (and this is a purely non-scientific estimate) fourteen to twenty-six hours worth of material. Sure, you might be able to do it, but would you actually be able to enjoy it or remember anything about what you were watching?

That said, the traditional mode of television viewing is one-show-after-another, each show leading into another show that’s often not related to its predecessor in any way, shape, or form except in the sense that they share a network or cable channel lineup. We might want to flip channels, a televisual experience par excellence, but, unfortunately, flipping channels is often disappointing. I might search for something good to watch or a particular show and not be able to find what I’m looking for (even if I have 200+ channels). Or, if I do find the show I want, it may have already begun or be an episode I’ve seen. TiVo and DVR have aimed to cure some of these televisual dissatisfactions, but I sometimes find that I enjoy my experience more when I don’t find what I’m looking for, when I come across something unexpectedly. In television, I often find that boredom can be extremely productive and surprisingly pleasurable.

Of course, all of this is leading up to something, a strange, perhaps foolish wish of mine to become completely overwhelmed by television’s vastness, to experience it in all its excessive, serial glory. My thoughts on seriality (some of which I’ve discussed above) led me to the point of wanting to engage in a kind of conceptual, psychological experiment: 24 hours of television, with rules designed to allow (force?) me to experience as much as possible in that amount of time.

Rules and Methods

The television must remain on for 24 continuous hours, beginning at any start time designated by the subject

Subject is not allowed to sleep during said 24 hours

No activities should accompany watching besides eating, drinking and dictating/taking notes (voice recorder, video recorder and/or pen and paper, only)

Movement is allowed (stretching, exercising, walking around the room, etc.) as long as subject does not leave the room (except during breaks)

Subject may not consult TV Guide to decide which shows to watch; flipping channels should be the only method for selecting programs. If the subject has digital cable, the digital guide should not be used.

A minimum of 15 different channels must be viewed

No more than 1 hour continuous viewing of one channel (unless it’s a made-for-tv movie)

No viewing films unless they are made-for-tv

Subject may return to the same channel only up to 3 times in one evening

Every hour, the subject may take a 5 minute break to either use the bathroom or get snacks/food/drinks; these breaks are the only times the subject may leave the tv room and must occur during commercial breaks.

Maybe this will help me form some opinion about whether or not we ought to believe that television is a vast wasteland. Maybe it’ll be a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll just be bored to death. Only the Shadow knows.

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(NEXT WEEK: "Vast Wasteland, Part 2." In the words of French philosopher Roland Barthes: “Boredom is not far from bliss, it is bliss seen from the shores of pleasure.”)

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once upon a time

When I was a kid in the early 1990s, there were these obnoxious Trix cereal commercials. You may remember the general theme: the white Trix Rabbit would plot yet another cockamamie scheme to get his hands on some cereal, only to be caught by a gaggle of cruel children and told “Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!” Not only did I hate these commercials because I felt sorry for the poor, cereal-deprived rabbit, but I was also irked by the company’s penchant for serial advertisements in which two or three ads would be connected by the same narrative. (Trix cereal wasn’t the only product employing serial advertising; if I remember correctly, the Keebler Elves and others were also guilty-as-charged, but the Trix commercials really stuck with me). For example, in ad number 1, the Rabbit would devise a plan, often involving elaborate disguises; in ad number 2, he would execute his plan, his fingertips inches away from the bowl of Trix; in ad number 3, he would get caught and the kids would snatch the cereal away from him laughing while the Rabbit lamented his bad fortune. These serial cereal ads (pun intended) were such a nuisance to me because I never seemed to see more than two of them; even though I knew the Rabbit would never get his Trix, I held out hope time and again. Besides the fact that I think the Rabbit ad campaign was seriously flawed—catering only to mean, vindictive children who liked denying pleasure to cute, cartoon animals; I felt so bad for the Rabbit, I’m not sure I would have eaten Trix if someone had paid me—my childhood memory of these Trix commercials provides a useful springboard for a consideration of our (my?) desire for narrative closure in the televisual universe.

Think of the uproar inspired by the spectatio interruptus series finale of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007). If television were real life, this is exactly how things would end, in mid-sentence, because real life doesn’t have a plot and, hence, can’t have any closure. Of course, television by necessity must offer us a narrative structure. Most, if not all, of the plot points in the majority of narrative television shows serve a purpose in the grand scheme of the episode or series. Very little is arbitrary on television; too many loose ends and viewers begin to complain.

Part of this is necessitated by the hour-long format: we’re only shown what we need to know. Can you imagine what CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-present) would be like if we watched every aspect of the investigation? Besides the fact that every episode would probably be about two weeks long (if not longer), we’d also find that ninety percent of the evidence collected is completely useless, all false leads and red herrings. And where’s the fun in that?

In the crime show especially, this question of fun—viewing pleasure—is also crucially linked to narrative. I would wager that the average person would not find watching someone being murdered—especially multiple times, as CSI’s flashbacks often facilitate—very entertaining or pleasurable. Granted, CSI and other shows of its ilk are fictional, which is significant, but these murder sequences are also narrativized (implicitly through context or sometimes through the investigator’s descriptive voiceover). They’re stylized for our comprehension and easy digestion. Without an overarching narrative structure, murder scenes in crime shows would be grotesque, pointless and visually inapprehensible to a viewing public. The contextual framing of violence and the promise of narrative closure (e.g. the impetus to catch the killer), allows violence to become part of the story—entertainment rather than trauma.

On a less gruesome note, the same narrative framing that structures the collection and presentation of only crucial evidence in crime shows also motivates the editing techniques used in most reality TV shows. Even reality television is predicated on a narrative framework—from competitions like Fox’s American Idol (2002-present) with elimination rounds leading up to a finale, to lifestyle shows like MTV’s Real World (1992-present) and The Hills (2006-present) which have tasks or career goals or relationship issues for the protagonists to deal with each week. Furthermore, it’s no secret that reality shows are often fictionalized through creative editing and rigged situations, not to mention the trope of the solitary interviews with contestants/participants that help frame the “action.” Okay, so why is any of this interesting? Because the popularity of reality shows (and not just those in the competition genre) may signal how compelling we find the idea of narrative in our real lives as well as in fiction. We don’t want to see every mundane detail of a reality-celebrity’s life, only the highlights. Who says you can’t experience just the good bits—the interesting bits—a desire which television, reality or otherwise, feeds.

In conclusion, the short-lived Fox show Andy Richter Controls the Universe (2002-2003) represents to me one of the ultimate narrative fantasies offered by television. Each episode, Andy, an aspiring novelist in a dead-end, boring job writing technical manuals, imagines creatively kooky versions of the most mundane aspects of his life: his friends ask him about his date Broadway musical-style, with choreography and in four-part harmony (versus their actual bored disinterest at the water cooler) or he suavely approaches the building receptionist with James Bond-esque flair (versus his actual inability to say more than a meek “hello”). These imagine scenarios, juxtaposed with what actually happens, seem to give Andy real pleasure even when reality turns out to be a monumental failure vis-à-vis his fantasies. Even though his real life is relatively dull and pointless, the imagined narrative of his life is fascinating and hilarious.

Television must by necessity boil down its narrative to only the essential plot points. What’s our excuse? Do we live week-to-week, setting goals, points of contextual interest, creating an imagined framework on which to rest the chaos of our lives? Is narrative—translated into the search for meaning or “purpose”—an ingrained human desire? Does television fuel that desire or sate it somewhat? If we compare ourselves to the characters in television shows, who comes up lacking: us or them?

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(NEXT WEEK: “Vast Wasteland, Part 1.” An introduction to an experiment in televisual seriality and visual/sensorial excess. Taking the narrative out of narrative television: a day in the life.)

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television delivers people

In 1973, artists Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman created a six minute video art piece entitled Television Delivers People. In the work, Serra and Schoolman deconstruct the political-industrial-commercial matrix of television and the mass media in a straightforward, yet scathing, critique; their text, accompanied by jazzy elevator muzak, scrolls slowing over a blue screen, compelling viewers to confront the curious dichotomy of the seemingly innocuous melody with the artists’ polemic. Asking viewers to read a text dismantling the illusion of television as sheer entertainment on a television set, only furthers Serra and Schoolman’s conceit of contradictions and lends credence to their statements, statements which are presented as fact, even though there is no actual evidence provided to support any of their allegations (which is not to say that they’re not right).

Here’s an excerpt from their text, including the first line and the final lines and some of the statements in between. The entire video is available here and can be purchased from Video Data Bank.

The Product of Television, Commercial Television, is the Audience.
[…]
Television is the prime instrument for the management of consumer demands.
Commercial television defines the world in specific terms.
Commercial television defines the world so as not to threaten the status quo.
Television defines the world so as not to threaten you.
Soft propaganda is considered entertainment.
[…]
Every dollar spent by the television industry in physical equipment needed to send a message to you is matched by forty dollars spent by you to receive it.
You pay the money to allow someone else to make the choice.
You are consumed.
You are the product of television.
Television delivers people.

Even after a half dozen re-viewings, I am still rendered momentarily speechless each time I watch this video. Moreover, the first time I watched this in a museum setting—just a few weeks ago—an older woman came up to me, disregarding the sanctity of my headset listening bubble, to remark, urgently, “Just ask yourself how much has really changed.”

I didn’t need to ask myself anything. Nothing has changed. American television has always been commercial. And television has always been about the audience. “Viewer” is just another name for “visual consumer.” I know that. I think we all know that deep down when we watch television. This is not the part of Serra and Schoolman’s piece that I find so startling—although the clarity with which they present their points is quite brilliant, as is the implicit (but intentional?) connection they draw between television and God in the phrase “television delivers people.” Sure, television delivers people, in the sense that viewers inherently shape every aspect of the televisual product—the kind of advertising, the types of shows, whether a new series will rise or fall. However, in the same breath television that depends on its viewers’ fidelity and fascination, it denies us any true power over the programming. Our desires—what we want to watch, for example—are consumed, processed, and regurgitated in the form deemed most acceptable for a mass market. Thus we are both consumed and produced by and for television.

But we like it. At least I do. I know that in the eyes of the television executives, I’m just a statistic, just market research, but that’s part of television. What would television be without viewers qua consumers? Would it even exist? That’s what find most startling about my own reaction to Television Delivers People; I agree with much of the critique, but not the implied accusatory tone. I love television for precisely some of the reasons it’s often decried: its unabashed commercialism, its endless appeal for escapism, even its occasional pandering to the lowest common denominator. Sure, I’d like to see a world in which reality TV played a smaller part in the daily line-up of offerings, but I’m not sure I can quite imagine a world in which television wasn’t commercial. Particularly, what would television be without the commercials?

Of course, this is just what TiVo and television-on-DVD promise: ad-free-TV. But even with these alternatives, we still see the lingering ghost of advertisements in fast-forwarded flashes or suspenseful fade-to-blacks. Commercials are built into the structure of television; dismantling the commercial matrix of television would involve a radical restructuring of the medium—one I’m not sure it would survive, as such. (You’ll note that I’m purposefully omitting pay-cable channels like HBO and Showtime from this discussion. Right now, I’m not prepared to jump on that elephant (in the room), but rest assured I’ll come back to it someday. For now, let me just say that HBO’s tagline, “It’s not TV…It’s HBO,” is not coincidental.)

All this is not to say that I like watching commercials—although sometimes I do. Let’s just say that I love to hate them. After all, what would the Super Bowl be without the ads? What would we do without the parade of funny animals, vulgar humor, vague racism, and sexist visual punch lines to entertain us?

I think part of the appeal of these 30 second spots is their ability to tell a brief, often amusing story about some aspect of American (consumer) life. A rejected Budweiser Clydesdale pulls himself up by his virtual bootstraps and trains like Rocky Balboa until he can join the team. Animals scream cartoonishly as a car swerves to avoid them on a dark road. Napoleon uses a Garmin to find his army.

Commercials are tiny stories. Soft propaganda is considered entertainment, as Serra and Schoolman write. The appeal is in the narrative, in the story as it is offered to the viewer to entertain and educate on an aspect of daily life. It’s just that in the case of the commercial, the moral of the story is the product.

I could say more, but we need to take a short break. Stay tuned.

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(NEXT WEEK: “Once Upon A Time.” An ode to narrative in which I discuss why Reality TV is just another fairy tale and re-visit the question of why non-reality television just seems so much more real than real life.)

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