Hello, Dear Readers. It’s good to see you.
This past week has been, well, kind of boring. Here in the Midwest, we’ve had rain nearly every day, and even when it hasn’t been raining, the sun hasn’t been out much. But I think weeks like this one offer a great opportunity to sit back and reflect on life. You have time to relax and reconnect with the things you love. And for me, reconnecting with what I love means only one thing: television.
I love television. I really do. I’ll happily sit through a four-hour layover in any airport anywhere as long as there’s TV. I’ll visit a total stranger in the hospital if the room has a television. And while I’m not entirely sure there is such a thing as the afterlife, I know that if there is one, there’s going to be TV. I can’t possibly imagine eternity without it.
Television is to me what Facebook is to a teenager, only in some ways, I think it’s even better because you don’t really have to interact with TV. It won’t cyberbully you or let you drunk-post embarrassing nude pictures of yourself. It doesn’t think you’re a jerk. It doesn’t think you’re anything. It’s a television.
The only interaction you’re likely to have with it is changing the channel from time to time. You can talk to it, of course, but trust me, it won’t talk back. It’ll just keep making noise and showing you pictures because it’s like the Terminator: “That’s what it does. That’s all it does. And it will not stop until you are dead.” And even then, the cable company will probably keep sending you a bill.
But more than just a continual stream of sight and sound, one thing that I know for sure is that television has radically affected the way that I see the world. I feel, for example, no need whatsoever to travel to any place I’ve ever seen on TV. Why would I? I’ve already seen it. I mean, I saw a program on Borneo once, so as far as I’m concerned, I already know what I need to know about that place. And what I know about that place is that it seems kind of humid and has a lot of bats in it. That’s enough Borneo-related information for me. If there’s more to be known, I’m sure someone will produce a show about it.
Beyond that, though, I think TV has also helped me to understand others better throughout my life. When I was in 9th grade, for example, a kid from New York transferred into our high school, and I think he was from either Brooklyn or Queens. And right there, I was just sure that his father was a cab driver. That, of course, made perfect sense to me. In the late ‘70s, Taxi was one of the most popular sitcoms around, and where was it set? New York. And beyond that, it seemed like every cop show I watched was set in New York and always featured a cab driver who’d seen something suspicious or remembered having dropped off a blood-soaked man somewhere in a bad neighborhood.
Of course, there were other cop shows set in other places in that era. Hawaii Five-O was on, and The Streets of San Francisco was around, too. But I didn’t know anyone from Hawaii, and all I ever got from The Streets of San Francisco was the distinct impression that the entire city was uphill in every direction…and that it needed to be painted. So, I couldn’t really connect with the non-New York police dramas. Besides, it just seemed like there was better TV crime in New York.
Anyway, I was convinced that this kid’s father was a cab driver because to me, there were only three kinds of people living in New York: police detectives, cab drivers, and victims. Those were the choices. (I thought all criminals on TV were just from “somewhere else”). And I don’t know why I didn’t think the kid’s father wasn’t a police officer except that the kids in our school whose parents were in law enforcement usually either talked a lot about it or were total delinquents who no one ever saw because they spent all day everyday in the principal’s office. This kid just showed up for English class every day and did his homework. Other than that, he was mystery. So, to me, that was proof positive that his dad drove a taxi.
I suppose that I could’ve just asked him, but here’s the thing: when he first arrived at school, our teacher had him introduce himself. So, he said who he was and told a little bit about himself. There was a quiet hush after he spoke, and then we all quietly turned to each other and whispered, “What did he say?” He had such a thick New York accent that no one in our class of suburban Denver kids could understand a thing he said. From what I remember of him, he was a nice enough kid. But then again, he could’ve been saying the most horrible stuff, and I never would’ve known. Whenever I talked to him, I just smiled and nodded. There are few things that TV doesn’t prepare you for, but an authentic regional accent is one of them.
Of course, it never dawned on me either that no one in his or her right mind would leave a job as a cab driver in New York to take up the same profession in the suburbs of Denver. In my neighborhood, cabs were regarded much like long distance was: rare and expensive. I mean, there could be any level of hullabaloo going on at my house, but it took only three words to bring everyone to immediate, reverend silence: “it’s long distance.” And the same thing went for cabs. Any distance under 30 or 40 miles that could be traversed by foot did not require a taxi as far as anyone in my neighborhood was concerned. It was just too expensive. According to my father, just going from our house to the airport would’ve required a second mortgage. And that must’ve been the common opinion because the only cabs I ever saw as a kid were on TV, and I was well into college before I actually rode in one. So, I can’t imagine how anyone could’ve made a living as a cab driver in the suburbs back then. You would’ve had to have charged $1000 a mile just to break even.
These days, I recognize that television may be a little slanted in its presentation, but I’m still sort of unconsciously swayed by it. To this day, I’ve never been to New York. At this point, I’ve seen so much Law and Order that I firmly believe that every New Yorker starts the day by tripping over a dead body lying on the stoop or out in the street. I mean, seriously, don’t the police ever find any of these dead people first? Can’t the cops just patrol around late at night looking for corpses so that everyone’s morning commute can start off on a more positive note?
Anyway, I think one of the other things that I really love about TV (and there are so many things that it’s actually difficult to choose) is that it’s comforting. Many is the time, for example, that I’ve turned on the Doppler channel and just watched the weather loop play over and over again. It’s very relaxing, especially if you mute the sound so you don’t have to listen to all those annoying severe weather alerts.
But I have to admit that when it comes to being comforted by my television, nothing works quite as well as a good infomercial. Of course, to get a good infomercial, you have to stay up until around 4 am, but it’s worth it. You’ll drift off to sleep believing that not only will tomorrow be a great day but also that every delicious moment of the goodness is well within your grasp.
Now, one thing you have to understand about TV commercials in general is that the audience basically breaks down into three categories: people with money, people with debt, and people with problems.
Commercials aimed at people with money tend to air at a certain time: when people who have jobs aren’t at them. They’re usually commercials for cars or electronics or beer. Now, you’d probably think that beer commercials would be better aimed at people with debt and people with problems, but beer companies are smart. They know that people with debt don’t have any money to buy beer. And they know that people with problems can’t usually drink because it interferes with their medication. People with money can afford to buy beer, and once they’re drunk, they can afford to impulse buy a bunch of other stuff. So, it’s kind of a win-win situation.
People with debt are a whole other story. Most of the commercials aimed toward them are ads for legal services, and they have a kind of help-I’m-slipping-down-the-side-of-a-big-hole sense of desperation about them. They’re just about scaring you into action, and they usually give you some nightmarish visuals to underscore the tragedy that is your life. It’s always stuff like someone losing an arm at work. All your belongings going up in a huge ball of flame. The police running your sorry ass into the station. Your children being chased by rats. You know, that sort of thing. A few pictures and some screaming. That’s all it really takes.
It’s less about debt than it is about the consequences of having debt, and not surprisingly, most of these commercials air in the afternoon during all the judge shows. I guess the advertisers figure that if your life is so tragic that you’re just sitting at home watching hour after hour of judge shows (and crying), you’re ripe for being terrorized by the mere suggestion of how much worse your life could get if you don’t call this toll-free number right now.
To find the commercials geared toward people with problems, though, you have do a little looking because these are the ads that take up most of extremely late-night television. You have to be up at 3 or 4 am in the morning to really bask in the magic that is this kind of advertising. But then again, I think the advertisers must figure that if you’ve got problems, you can’t sleep. So, you’ll be up. Unless, of course, your problems are debt-related, in which case, you might be awake, but you’re probably hiding under the bed and can’t see the TV anyway.
Commercials for people with problems come in a variety of forms. They can be regular-length ads or infomercials. They can be about cosmetics, financial freedom, fitness, cooking, cutlery, vacuuming sealing, air filtering, whatever. It really doesn’t matter because in the end, they all address the same problem: you’re dissatisfied with who you are and the stinking life you got. You want more. And you don’t even really care what it is or who sells it to you. You probably don’t even want to buy the product. You just want someone to explain it to you. Over and over again in a calm, predictable way. And that’s where infomercials shine.
And that’s what I love about infomercials—they are absolutely predictable. Nothing ever goes wrong like it does in real life. You can saw a suspension bridge in half, and this knife will still cut through a tomato. You can pollute the air in this sealed chamber with plutonium, and this air filter will still make it clean enough for babies to breathe. You can take a turkey that’s been buried at the North Pole for 10 years, and this countertop oven will still cook it in only 18 minutes. The high-torque blenders never spin off their bases and spew avocado and mayonnaise all over the place. The cosmetics never give anyone an itchy, peely rash. The fitness programs never result in pulled muscles and torn ligaments. The workbenches never collapse under the weight of half-ton truck, and the spiral saws never go awry and saw through a live electrical wire. In The Magic Land of Infomercials, nothing ever doesn’t work exactly the way it should.
And I think it’s that promise of cosmic order that most appeals to people with problems. The minute Ron Popeil says, “But wait, there’s more,” you just want to fall on your knees and cry out, “Yes, Ron, yes, there is more! There is more!” And suddenly you believe in better living through cutlery. You’re convinced that the key to happiness is in being able to vacuum seal everything you own. And if you had a spiral saw and a sturdy workbench, you would surely build a yacht and sail away, sipping all the while on delicious frozen drinks in their own mugs that take only 10 seconds to make.
Life in The Magic Land of Infomercials is beautiful and calm, and you really do sort of have to love that because real life is real messy for the most part. Things blow up in real life. They catch on fire. They self-destruct. But that never happens on an infomercial, and even if you’re like me and never actually buy anything off TV, just having someone explain (at length) how beautiful life could be will send you off to sleep better than a glass of warm milk. Ron Popeil doesn’t look anything like my mother (thank God), but he can tuck me in just as well.
Back when we were little kids, my sisters and I used to laugh about the fact that our grandfather had a TV in virtually every room. It was funny because when television first started to become popular in the 1950s, he swore he’d never own a set. But there is something about TV that just gets to you. I grew up eating dinner with Mary Tyler Moore once a week and running home at lunchtime in the summer to see Perry Mason win a case. These days, I’ll stay up until 2am just to see Captain Picard save the universe and to watch Tim Allen figure out that he’s being a jerk for the millionth time. Television is just a part of my life, and it’s not a bad part, either. So, it rains, it snows, it hails—whatever. Somewhere on my TV, the sun is shining, and that’s all I need to know. Well, that and where I put the remote control.
Philosophy for a hungry planet.
Enjoy.
© R. Rissler, 2011. All rights reserved.
Ahhhhh, television...
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