"Football Season is Over"

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won't hurt."

-Hunter S. Thompson
1937-2005
Circa February, 2005

Wither Television?

Why has television displaced the theatre? When a young person is first introduced to Shakespeare, the Bard's colloquial appeal is a popular point of entry. Although his plays are often the subject of academic study and "intellectualization", the true genius of Shakespeare was his uncommon ability to affect the common person, to tap into - and define - zeitgeist. In the golden age of theatre, plays were sources of edification and entertainment.

The common critique of television is that it is expected to entertain, edification be damned. Of course, profitability trumps all in the business of entertainment. What about art? is no longer a valid question. The bricolage of images and sounds pose as art, without meaning or substance. The individual spectator consumes and accumulates mercilessly. Prostrate before the altar of 'cool'. The television, for better and for worse, is the central medium of my generation.

Many of my colleagues would readily admit with little equivocation that they have been raised by television, that their most profound influences come from the small screen. The cartoon 'Family Guy' is demonstrative of pop culture revealing its inclination towards self-cannibalism. The 'jokes' work in a 'wink wink' manner. Hey, you remember the Kool-Aid man, right? Or this or that 80s band? Or this or that 80s cartoon? "You get it or you don't" is the common defence of this brand of humour. It no longer is about observation of a common condition, the way standup comedy - a one-man theater show, some would say - often produce jokes. How come a show, such as Family Guy, which grows increasingly ensnared in a mimetic universe of bricolage remain so utterly popular? Maybe it is because television is the paramount outlet for modern individualism? You "get" it or you don't? Those who "don't get it" are quickly dismissed. Those who "do" count themselves somehow exceptional, distinguished from the rabble rabble. How can aristocratic sensibility grow so comfortable in the bosom of the liberal bourgeoisie?

But of course there are shows that appeal to the 'common denominator', a sexy, intriguing, or wholly grotesque appeal to populism. You have your Fear Factors, your American Idols, or your CSIs. Each taps into an ostensibly rudimentary drive for baseness, while, in the case of CSI, reasserts the reign of rationality over the whole of society. The veil of Isis has been peeled away.

Increasing visibility is a defining aspect of reality television. There are no mysteries. Television cameras show almost everything. The voyeurism inherent in all this is obvious and uninteresting. The creation of new celebrities is also an obvious corollary, but it is not a simple case of hero worship, because most of the 'famous' reality show 'stars' are detestable ones, such as Omarosa from the Apprentice.

The relative boredom of modern liberal society demands that people find something to stimulate feeling. It doesn't matter whether the feeling is outrage, sorrow, anger, or jealousy. Feelings are safe. Feelings reinforce the individual's desire for self-actualization. Rather than alleviate modern alienation, indulgence in mere feeling only pushes the individual further away from others. The television, hence, facilitates a destruction of interhuman meeting. There no longer is any need to leave one's home, except on occasion to engage in mutual exploitation.

So why does everything on TV suck? Maybe I have outgrown television. Even worse, I think I have outgrown it only to realize that I am tragically dependent. There was a time when thoughtfulness emerged through the meeting of serene minds. The veritable speed culture of modern life demands action prior to thought, decisive action and retroactive rationalization; it is sensory overload designed to avoid and to escape.

Escapism, admittedly, has a role to play. Without it, life would be without leisure. But unabated escapism is tacit capitulation; isolating the individual in a world of dreams and insulating him or her from "everything else". So the dilemma is whether one disengages from this defining source of zeitgeist, desiring purity from its temptations, or does one seek to engage with the medium as well as the content in forcing it to recognize its own contradictions?