creative pollination
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
White boys and white noise
For obvious reasons, I think the holidays are the appropriate time for me to understand how and why I watch TV. It used to be a thing of ritual and necessity. It would begin in the mornings of my childhood with familiar noises coming from the family set. The weekdays were news and weather, which now I'm certain was a ploy my mother used to keep our attention on catching the bus. Weekends were typically cartoons, Wheel of Fortune, or some other neutral, enjoyable broadcast. Television always felt like part of a regimen. What's interesting is most of us can't go without seeing one lit TV set in a given day. The amount of control we have over visual media has grown to be a bit overwhelming.
Growing up with TV's in every room seems more strange now than it did back then. Though my set was the old box set (literally housed in a wooden box) from the living room and had no remote, I managed to fall asleep to it every night like a pathetic and restless baby who needed audio-visual stimulation to relax enough for sleeping. It's really bizarre that these same empty habits still affect me every day.
When I stumble upon a likable show, my behavior seems to flair at the thought of an upcoming episode. There's always a level of sociability with watching TV now. Because of similar tastes, I'm constantly waiting of friends to be available to watch our usual programs. When LOST ended, I didn't see my friend Gwynneth for 2 months. No kidding.
Because my schedule is hectic to say the least, I try not to get suckered into the fanatic category too easily. There are certain programs I love to commentate on, namely South Park and other adult cartoons. They seem to be the prominent TV shows resonating through my peer circles.
Outside of the sporadic True Blood episode or NatGeo special, I typically keep my TV on Comedy Central. I like the availability of a good laugh even if I'm not really paying attention. In between cycles of blow drying portions of snarled hair, I will revert to the TV set for a 20 second mind-melt, and if I'm lucky, a mindless, fluffy chuckle.
2 Comments:
Unknown said...
Does the above graph suggest something about your current relation to the medium?
BUZZINGS said...
absolutely! as we speak! (see final blog post for deets)
buizzness:
thebuzzings@gmail.com