JOIN USDescriptions of television run the gamut, and a lot of them express contempt or distaste for the medium. However, its influence on our thinking and perception of the world around us cannot be denied.
In 1911, the Russian Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a basic television system to transmit very crude images over wires to a cathode ray tube in the receiver. Moving images were not possible until 1925, however, when Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion at Selfridge’s Department Store in London. It took another 30 years before TV sets began appearing en masse in people’s homes. From that time on, TV has had a massive impact.
We have become so used to having it around that it begs the question just what would we do without it? The idiot box, the goggle box. Not so much a box these days, but a ‘flat screen’. It was a great invention and had so much potential. Although it comes in for a good deal of criticism, it’s not really the fault of TV itself. The criticism stems from what we have chosen to do with it.
TV was a wonderful invention. At its best, it has the potential to be highly informative. Great films, great documentaries and even one or two great news channels. At worst, however… well, that’s a different story.
It depends on what you choose to watch, but, for many, that electronic box in the corner could well be responsible for sending thousands of people into a spiralling pit of despair on a daily basis. TV was always going to become instrumental in shaping public opinion, not least in terms of getting people to buy stuff — any old stuff.
Selling the dream.
From those humble beginnings at the start of the last century, TV now sits there spewing out an endless cocktail of drivel based on advertisements that tell you how to live your life. And, because almost none of us lead the lives portrayed in TV advertisements, it is easy to be left with lingering feelings of self-doubt, worthlessness and a sense of bitter disappointment.
Let’s face it, you probably used to feel really great before watching TV on a
regular basis. You didn’t know it previously, but you are ugly, have bad hair, and don’t possess the latest gadgetry that will make you supremely happy. Your diet is lacking, your fingernails are poor, your eyes are faded, your skin is sagging, and your taste in food, fashion and lifestyle choices questionable. You are a total mess! Or so you are led to believe.
Six months ago, you ran out to buy the latest miracle product to hit the shelves. Now you are told that that particular cutting edge commodity is obsolete and useless when compared to the super-improved-edge version. Or do they mean that YOU are obsolete and useless? You don’t have time enough to begin to get that hollow feeling because the message is relentless.
How many times have you seen someone appearing in a TV ad telling you that you are unique and so special and then implying you are totally useless because you don’t possess a face that resembles the smoothest piece of porcelain ever made? Do you need to see some 23-year-old models bragging about how wrinkle-free they are because they bathe themselves in some cream that costs a zillion dollars a jar, when we all know that wrinkles would not have set in anyway by that age and that the substance in question is probably as useful to humankind as the company that manufactures it?
If your face doesn’t fit, and it probably does not because, according to those ads, it will require not only facial cream but plastic surgery or botox and a head transplant as well, you will not be invited to the endless party that the whole world seems to have been invited to, at least according to the images on TV. Once your face does fit, however, you can join the people from the TV ad jet-set who pass their time at fancy drinks parties in sumptuous business class, up in the sky, travelling between New York and Paris, or brokering huge deals while wearing the latest from the fashion walkways of Milan.
Even cookery programmes are seldom about food these days. Food isn’t about tasty nutrition any more, it’s about lifestyle. So is drink. Coffee isn’t just a beverage, it’s a double decaff lifestyle aspiring latte to be drunk in the right place, with the right crowd, while tapping away on your blackberry in a plush branch of coffee-cup-price-rip-off.
When you begin to watch this fantasy world on TV, you might start out by being impressed by it all: “If only I could drink champagne aboard some ongoing
business class party-fest in the sky. If only I could get that power job with ‘million-dollar-deal-breaker, inc’.”
But, after a while, being impressed turns to frustration because no matter how hard you try, or where you look, there is a big ‘no entry’ sign barring your way to the world of easy living and happy, shiny people.
It might even get to the point whereby your frustration over this turns to harsh embitterment and you begin to yell at the TV on a regular basis as you realise that the aspirations being sold to us are as uncatchable as a rocket speeding into a big, black hole that is destined to crush the dreams of all on board.
As you stumble about your home, you might well become extremely adept at muttering about the injustices of the world and those advertising agencies that have conspired to ruin your life as you put away the hammer you have just used to smash your TV into tiny pieces.
Anyway, why bother buying hugely expensive celebrity-endorsed luxury chocolate that encases some mushy substance that is as tasty as eating congealed mud? We only bought it because we were informed that it comprises 100 per cent ‘natural’ ingredients made from the honest work of happy-go-lucky peasant folk toiling away with their cows’ herds on the slopes of the Andes. Yeah, right. As authentic as that bottled, bacteria-ridden ‘pure mountain water’ that came from the mouldy, dripping tap in the factory on the edge of town.
Don’t give up
But don’t do away with the TV just yet. There is more to the goggle box than commercial hell. The TV can be a great source of information, keeping you in touch with the wider world. In its early days, TV news programmes tended to show still images to accompany news items because it was thought that the half-brained viewer would not be able to concentrate on what the newsreader was saying while watching an actual moving image.
However, from the stale and boring presentation style of the 1950s, we were gradually treated to ever more user-friendly newsreaders and roving reporters. Then came cable and satellite TV, and competition between news channels intensified. What we now have is the 24-hour-a-day reporting of intolerable pain and horror that some or the other group of people somewhere in the world is hell-bent on inflicting on another group of people.
The sensationalist laden nihilism that now passes for news has become the worst type of voyeurism known to humankind. We sit mesmerised by non-stop images of earthquakes, tsunamis, death, war and unfathomable despair. “Why, why why,” we yell at the screen. At some stage, we will probably be informed that some country (you know the one) is yet again contemplating going to war to ‘liberate’ another set of poor downtrodden folk. And, for a fleeting moment, we may think it very strange that each time it carries out such action, it somehow always accidentally stumbles on a bunch of oil fields belonging to such folk.
But we can always take a slither of comfort from the fact that, amazing as it may seem, these are the good times because, no matter how terrible things may appear to be in the news, they are about to get much worse. The text rolling across the bottom of the screen tells us that some or the other expert believes we are all about to be sizzled by global warming within a decade, or are soon to become hopeless victims of the next horrific disease about to grip the planet. This rolling ribbon of text will also inform us about some catastrophic earthbound meteorite that could be (but probably isn’t) heading our way.
Just as we have been convinced that every drop of joy has been squeezed from living and contemplate ending it all here and now, we can stop reading the text and turn our attention again to the screen images of people experiencing yet another horrendous disaster and say, “Oh well, at least it’s not me. Things could be worse I guess.”
Suddenly, based on the it-could-be-worse philosophy of living, life almost seems worth living again, that is until we switch channels and begin to watch some depressing documentary on the correlation between mental breakdown and watching the news on TV.
But most of the ‘news’ isn’t really news. Actual news can be a bit of a damned nuisance and get in the way of speculation. 24-hour news channels have a lot of air time to fill. What better way to do it than by having an array of well-paid ‘experts’ wheeled onto our screens to speculate on worst case scenarios of doom resulting from that meteorite that has a one in a trillion, trillion chance of ever smashing into Earth?
Never mind, things could be worse. By the next time you watch the news, they probably will be.
Love life, love TV?
So, okay, there’s more to TV than just commercials and news. From movies to soap operas, there’s so much entertainment on offer. You may just come to realise how wonderful TV can be once it breaks down and is taken away for repair for a few days. Then you will have the marvelous opportunity to watch drops of condensation fall down the window before coming to rest on the decaying wooden sill. That could keep you occupied for hours! And, as you sit there pondering the meaning of life, you begin to count down the minutes before that good old faithful friend returns. Thankfully, before resorting to taking up wrist slitting to pass the time, TV re-enters your life, repaired, and as good as new.
The first thing you might do is to reacquaint yourself with the TV by sitting down to watch a movie. Before you know it, you are watching that time-honoured theme of boy-meets-girl-and-love-is-in-the-air. The time-honoured notion that there is someone out there for everyone, that unique person, that special ‘one’. Out of over seven billion people on the planet, strangely, there is only ‘one’. Why not ten, or a thousand? No, just one. Just think of all those love songs and movies that imply this.
You see it all the time on TV. Good looking boy meets good looking girl. It’s either love at first sight, or one has to win the other’s heart and go through a series of humiliating, soul-destroying setbacks before two hearts become one and they end up together, living happily ever after.
Now, the odds that you could ever possibly stumble across this person are just too astronomical to contemplate. The notion that there is just one person out for you to spend the rest of your life with is almost as ludicrous as the notion that you will ever find them in a rather large world containing billions of people.
Nevertheless, so many spend their whole lives looking for this mythical person. Many give up looking after numerous futile, self-defeating quests.
You meet someone. They are attractive and, if lucky, they will find you attractive too. It’s all very exciting. It’s all brand new as you discover your potential lifelong soulmate. This could be ‘the one’. The voice, the mannerisms, the looks. How wonderful. The air crackles with magic, and nights watching paint dry in a dark, dingy room are a thing of the past.
A few months or years down the line, however, that voice, the one you once found so soothing, has developed into an irritating, grating noise that drones on and on. The cute mannerisms are now merely annoying. And those facial features that were once so appealing... well, the eyebrows are too thick, the nose too long, and were those ears always that big? Maybe this person isn’t ‘the one’ after all. Perhaps it’s all been a massive mistake.
Of course, the person is just the same as when you first met them. It’s just that the perfectionists, the overly critical, the easily bored and the constant fault finders among us could never be satisfied, even if god’s gift to humanity were to suddenly fall into our laps.
Replace ‘happily ever after’ with ‘aching disillusionment’. Replace the notion of ‘the special one’ with someone who will ‘make do’. For Cinderella and her glass slipper, read ugly sister and old, worn out moccasin. All the movies and songs that held up the notion of true love, endless passion, beautiful people, two hearts becoming one — it was a big, fat lie!
But don’t despair. All is not lost. You could still turn your life around. You could actually get up off the sofa and leave the house. You could actually choose not to watch the TV ever again, and live life on your terms, never again pandering to the ideals, the misery, and the lies of the idiot box.
Idiot box? How did that term come about? Perhaps because of the idiots in control of broadcasting? Or maybe because you have to be an outright idiot to watch it! Anyway, like so many already have, you could always ditch the TV and turn to the Internet and YouTube... now, there’s a thought.
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