recently one of my best friends started in on a long television bash. To some extent, I was surprised how it made me feel so darn angry and even queasy. actually sick to my stomach.
and of course she had some decent points- how reality shows can be devoid of real content (aka trash), how mainstream america comes home from work and spends their life in front of a tv, a simulacrum of life
but mostly it was astonishing to me how much tv is still a stigma. to her, it retains all of its passive, zombie qualities that strip the watcher of independence, life, reaction. it is still essentially feminizing, capturing and sucking lifesource from the viewers who are helpless to leave and stay enslaved on the couch, gaining pound after pound and losing brain waves
in shorts, it like the government campaign on pot. one puff and you're a mindless drug addict. a slippery slope to disaster.
what can i do about this? nothing really. i cant change her mind. i cant even defend the pleasure (the wrong pleasure, apparently, the lazy/stupid/wasteful pleasure) i get from television. the nightly family guy, the fun of american idol, the challenge of Lost, the wit and tropes of Veronica and Buffy- all this is dismissed as my inability to go outside and play like a healthy kid.
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