Too cool for the idiot Box

The addictiveness of television notwithstanding, I dislike pretentious people who say they don’t like TV just because that’s the thing to say. It’s okay to like entertainment; it’s okay to like movies and music, but TV is demonized by people who want to project an image of the busy person. These people feign an image of the socialite who’s always at the latest Hollywood party, and so would never have time to watch the latest Animal Planet. Or we see the intellectual who’s too deep in philosophical study to ever have time to switch on the tube. Of course, the line is always, “oh I’d rather read than watch TV.” Then we find a hybrid of the two: the super socialite, out conjuring their cures for cancer, meeting the President and then retiring to their abode to spend an evening with Dickens.

I’m a literature major so I love to read; I love to hang out and meet new people, and like everyone else in this post-modernist society, I’m a very busy person. But at least I’m honest with myself and with everyone else. (Are you ready for this?) Ladies and Gentlemen, I watch TV! That’s right, I watch the news, the Learning Channel, comedies, movies and—dare I say it—television dramas. Sometimes it’s nice to unplug and let the TV do the thinking for me and sometimes I learn a lot watching TV.

These same people who claim to never watch the evil idiot box also seem to own the Seinfeld box sets (as I do) and readily quote The Simpsons. I’ve known people who truly don’t watch television, and never have, and these people seem to have a pop-culture handicap. They don’t understand many of the jokes that fly around, and I think that TV has performed a sort of humour calisthenics for a new generation weaned on The Family Guy and other such intelligent satire. This isn’t an essay in defense of television, but generally, most people have a sharper sense of humour founded in irony, than they would have without good TV programming. Most people, except that guy in the office who was raised in the Ozarks and doesn’t understand what sponge-worthy means. Him, or the countless hordes out there finding a cure for cancer, socializing with Steve Spielberg or curling up for a long night of War and Peace.