Television and The Extremes of Entertainment in Our Culture

I hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday season. Things have been going really well for us lately, and I'm looking forward to keeping it that way. This update is in no way based on the status of my Christmas. I've had a really nice couple of days with my family, and during the time spent chilling at my dad's house I got to watch a little T.V. We don't have cable at our house. Instead, we save the money on what we assume is piss-poor programming (and commercials) and pick-and-choose from a small selection of things we can watch on the internet or rent from Amazon. It's been this way for a while, so I'm way out of the loop on regular programming and advertizing. This Christmas, I was reminded of why we made this decision and never looked back. Television is still a terrible pile of shit. For the most part, I see television as both an accurate reflection of society in general boiled down to its extremes, as well as a perpetuating force for our best and worst behaviors (because extremes are so entertaining.)

For the most part we watched four things: lots of commercials, A Christmas Story, an episode of an educational/demonstrative show about weapons, and a holiday episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Everything except A Christmas Story managed to offend me in some way. I worried that I may have simply become overly sensitive; but when I pointed out the offensive material, the family and friends around me generally agreed that the material was over-the-top. For the most part, we laughed about it. Deep down, however, I was concerned by the fact that people willfully--and often gleefully--absorb this stuff. Not enough of us are disgusted. If I took this programming back in time and showed it to families in the 60's, they would be outraged. It's easy to laugh at that statement because "people and entertainment were different back then. That stuff is nothing, now." How does that make it any better? Admitting we're desensitized to it doesn't mean it's not a problem. It actually means it's an even bigger problem. Think about it.

On to the examples.

• A Christmas Story. I love this movie. It's nostalgic, innocent without being unrealistic, and amusing to children and adults alike. It gives us a feeling I think we should feel more often than just for a few days at the end of December, and crams a ton of that feeling into an hour and a half. It's a dense package of positivity and humanizing awkwardness--a slight extreme. I argue, here, that television programming highlights (and encourages) these sorts of extremes. With that light opening, I bring you to the next example,


• Commercials. I still have to deal with ads on the internet, so these generally aren't very shocking anymore. Because there are so many more ads on television, however, I got to experience a larger selection of them in larger doses. I'm sure it's of no surprise to anyone that the level of mindless consumerism demanded of us by a majority of advertizing has reached socially damaging proportions. Luxury items are advertized as not only being absolutely necessary (and therefore simply expected by the general public), but being capable of delivering deeply personal emotional and psychological experiences like love and spirituality. Ads tell viewers that smart people watch such-and-such, and dumb people dislike such-and-such, and women all do this, and men all do that, and caring about things is stupid, and being a pig is totally acceptable, and making your neighbors jealous is an important goal, and the car you drive is more important than nature (and in fact, nature is stupid), and every other terrible falsehood that you've probably already seen. Despite none of this being new, I still wanted to include it since a massive portion of what I watched consisted entirely of just ads. Couldn't be avoided. On to the next example,


• Juvenile excitement over deadly weapons' demonstrations by grown-ass men. I have no idea what show this was and I don't recall what channel it was on (one of the History/Discovery/Nat Geo stations.) The underlying concept was perfectly fine, and actually rather interesting. Whatever the show was, this particular episode focused on comparing the capabilities of straight and curved swords, while (minimally) discussing some of the details of the blacksmithing process.
  
  Most of the content consisted of people attacking stationary foam mannequins and at least one pig carcass. These objects were slashed in half, hacked diagonally, or stabbed. Mannequins were bare, armored, or constructed with the addition of life-like replica skeleton parts beneath a layer of transparent jelly "skin." All three mannequins were filled with tunnels of blood to skirt and/or drain from the body once wounded (fatally, of course.) The increasingly "realistic" additions (blood, bones, clear skin) were unnecessarily gory, and it seemed very obvious that the intent was to make it more exciting by making it more like hacking at a real body--not merely to give the viewer an educated idea of how a body might be damaged.
  
  It wasn't just the methods or visuals which made this obvious to myself and my fiance, however. The boisterous exclamations from the host encouraged and highlighted the "Whoa, blood and guts, cool!" aspect of the display. He was overly dramatic and a little breathless with forced (or maybe sincere?) excitement. I was constantly surprised and annoyed to see a 30 year old man behave like a 15 year old goth kid watching a Rob Zombie video for the first time, while speaking about the history of war, war weaponry, and traumatizing (and deadly) war wounds.
  
  Now, I'm not an idiot, and I'm not a pansy with violent entertainment. I play video games, read comic books, listen to Rammstein, and own a collection of fantasy/action/adventure/sci-fi movies. I understand the entertainment value (and, sometimes, even the educational value) of over-the-top violence. I also understand the difference between entertainment, and harmful glorification. Apparently, not everyone does. With that in mind, on to the last example,


• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've heard all sorts of people rave on and on about how great this show is--about how original and hilarious and (more or less) "indie" it is. Because of this, I actually hadn't assumed it would be a bad show (though I didn't necessarily expect to enjoy it.) This show made me feel bad inside. I hated every character and just about everything they said. The only watchable portions were those in which the two dumbest characters were alone in a scene, because if anyone else was around them, it was horrendous again. (And those two characters were annoying in their own way, believe me.) Otherwise, everyone was mean, apathetic, and greedy--gleefully so. They were proud of their behavior and judgment, and at no point did they actually "get what was coming to them." (Sorry, having luxuries stolen from you after you behave like a horrible person is no kind of comeuppance.) There was so satisfaction, no sense of completion, and nothing to glean from their experiences. They never learned anything from their self-caused struggles. The audience is supposed to feel positive about the characters' petty judgments, impatience, and callousness. The entire show is all sarcasm, impulsive (unrealistic) exchanges, and extremely abrasive people. Am I supposed to like these characters?
  
  Even the worst of them--the guy who the others hate because he's such a douche (arguably the "main" character, played by DeVito)--isn't intended to be entirely disliked by the audience (not as far as I can tell.) His meanness is shockingly heartless, but "quirky and acceptable in its own way." (I use quotes to emphasize that this appears to be what is intended and therefore what is felt by the approving audience. This viewer does not agree.)
  
  To top it all off, this holiday episode included an animated portion intended to mimic the hold stop-motion Christmas movies from the 1960's. The segment was intended to teach the main character a lesson by comically and ironically encouraging him to be nice to others or else they'll collectively kick his ass. That could have been the punch-line, right there. Instead, the animation went on for minutes, demonstrating in graphic (stop-motion) detail the myriad ways his "friends" would mortally wound him if he didn't become a better person. The list included ripping off his limbs (and licking the blood from the bone), gauging out his eyes, chainsawing his leg, hanging him from the Christmas tree by his spinal cord, pushing what remains of his leg into a meat grinder, tossing him to an alligator, repeatedly stabbing him in the face with a knife, macing his face-wounds, and burning him alive on a Christmas tree. If I have to explain why this is unnecessarily grotesque and not funny--if you find yourself more annoyed or distanced by what you're reading than shaken by it--then I encourage you to either have patience with me and muscle through to the end, or just skip to the red text at the bottom of this post.
  
  The only character in the entire episode who was consistently "good" was mocked incessantly for wanting to preach about peace, forgiveness, and Jesus. The audience was supposed to be amused and relieved whenever the other characters silenced his attempts. Yes, religious preaching is annoying and I myself dislike it, but the show took the only decent thing about the entire episode and made it "dumb and unacceptable," and at the end of the episode, made the man into a lying hypocrite who threatened everyone with a gun and stole all their stuff, anyway. Now I have no one left to like.
  
  Lastly, as an interesting (and probably inaccurate) side-note, this episode's animated segment incorporates a little routine with the California Raisins. Remember those guys? They were an R&B musical group comprised of anthropomorphic raisins used to advertise dehydrated grapes in the 1980's. (I know. Brilliant.) It should be noted that the Raisins are the only "black" characters in the entire episode, save for an extra in an office scene who is disgusted by one of the main characters earlier on. (I put "black" in quotes because I'm well aware that there's no guarantee the California raisins were black. It was merely insinuated at every possible turn.) When the "black" Raisins make their entrance, the singing narrator specifically describes them as being "racist." In keeping with the joke, the Raisins are the ones who burn DeVito alive on the tree (while dressed as Klan members.) Now, I'm pretty confident they simply referred to the Raisins as being racist in order to drive home the image of them in Klan robes, and therefore giving them a reason to suddenly appear and burn someone at the stake. At the same time, I did find it a little odd. For a moment, all I could focus on was the fact that the show introduces some rare minority "cast members," and makes them racist murderers. In all honesty, however, I probably read too far into it. I could really take or leave this portion of the blog entry. I may delete it later.

Skip to this part if you disagree with what you're reading, here.

Remember that the purpose of this post is to share with my readers how I feel about television programming in general: that it depicts extremes of our current culture (while also encouraging it, thereby creating a self-sustaining cycle.) My goal is not to bring you down with examples of awful TV. (I meant what I said when I included the bit about A Christmas Story.) However, I do tend to use this blog to draw attention to things I think people should notice, and at this point in my life, I'm worried about a lot of bad stuff. (Welcome to my blog. Maybe I should focus on more positive things, too...) That having been said, I'm not looking to tell you that I hate something you may like. I'm not here specifically to tell you that the things you like are bad. My goal is to make you think, and to get things off my chest so I don't let them fester internally.

I'm rambling.

Today, in this post, my goal is to give examples of some of the extremes in our televised entertainment (good or bad, though I complain about the bad more often than I praise the good. Hm. I don't think I like that.) I'm concerned that we absorb this stuff without realizing just what it is we're watching, or what it means about (and does to) our culture. I'm concerned that we blindly and eagerly absorb promotions for extreme consumerism, extreme gore, extreme negativity, extreme assholishness, and extreme selfishness, while thoughtlessly believing that it's all okay. I'm not upset with people. I'm shocked and I'm worried.

So I'd like to leave you with this. Before anyone disregards my concerns with a roll of their eyes and defensive scoff--before I'm compared to aging grandparents droning on about how bad movies, music, and young people have become--please stop to consider that maybe, just maybe, old people keep saying this stuff because sometimes it's true. Having experienced generations of people and culture, the elderly have a lot to compare this stuff to. Sure, opinions are biased and lots of older folks are just plain cantankerous. I'm certainly not insinuating that their younger years were spent in a lost Utopia. But let's at least admit that the graphic violence, willful cruelty, and general rudeness in entertainment has increased consistently over the years. Let's just admit that our entertainment often encourages us to cheer for the meanest and/or sassiest of characters. Hell, it's why so many people find old programming to be so damn boring. We need it extreme, and we need that extreme behavior in our faces at all times. And usually, bad extremes are more dramaitic and therefore more entertaining than good extremes. Notice, I only experienced one good thing on TV all day, and I really struggle to even call it an "extreme." (Maybe only in comparison to how negative everything else is.)

Just because we enjoy something else, now--stuff clearly very different from the entertainment people enjoyed 50 years ago--doesn't mean what we enjoy is better. (At least, not in all ways.)

What say you we be a little more discerning with our entertainment?

Woo... done ranting. Merry Christmas everyone. Mine was awesome. It gets better every year, seriously. In 2013, I think I'm going to try to focus more on the positive. It's better for my health, right? Love and peace to ya'll!

Repost: Reconsidering Thanksgiving (and Columbus Day)

While it is true that for most Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude for the comforts and people in our lives—a celebration of diversity and of the tolerance therein—it is also true that for many remaining Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning. Yes, there was a day in which the Wampanoag in the North east and the colonizers shared a harvest celebration. However, within fifty years of that feast, the Wampanoag were no longer a free people. The remaining Native Americans have been removed further and further from their resources and homelands. Their reservations are small, environmentally inhospitable to agriculture, and under constantly abuse. One-in-Three Native American women are raped by intruders who enter their reservation, commit the crime, and then flee. (See link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/us/native-americans-struggle-with-high-rate-of-rape.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.) As reservations are somewhat separate from federal law, it is difficult to prosecute non-native Americans who enter a reservation and commit a crime. Tribes are unprotected and their needs go unheeded, despite having been forced to live where they are in the first place. Children are taken from them by state child services for reasons which often cannot be fully explained (see link: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141662357/incentives-and-cultural-bias-fuel-foster-system), further chipping away at the populations of their dwindling families.

For many Americans, the Natives are a distant memory from a biased and largely incorrect fifth grade history textbook. It’s important that while we enjoy our cozy homes, blessed family, and plentiful foods and comforts, we also take a moment to remember those who have suffered and continue to do so in the creation of the world in which we now live.

While we like to believe Christopher Columbus discovered America, this is wrong for multiple reasons. Most importantly, America was already fully populated by tens of millions of Natives. It was so heavily populated that it was experiencing issues with global warming, as so many trees had been utilized and so many fires were constantly being burned. It is also a false statement because Europeans and Nords had sailed to North America many times previously without having been able to domiante the local populations. Eventually, the occasional arrival of Europeans brought plagues to North America, and it was Smallpox which wiped out more than 20 million Natives. By the time Columbus arrived (and systematically murdered, enslaved, and raped the Native population with which he came into contact) most of the work had been done for him.

It’s also important to understand just how Europeans and Natives interacted. No one person can represent an entire population, and so not all settlers were murderous rapists. Colonials were often completely overwhelmed by the cleanliness, kindness, and beauty of the Native Peoples. Their “laws” and habits were so fantastic that there was a constant “problem” with colonials fleeing their territories to intermix with the Natives and live happily. Some tribes were so kind and welcoming that their populations became completely interbred with Europeans. Verrazzano, for example, was a sailor who brought a native upon his ship. He described him as being "as beautiful in stature and build as I can possibly describe." William Wood , a British fisherman, said the Natives of New England were "more amiable to behold, though dressed only in Adam's finery, than ... an English dandy in the newest fashion." (See book: http://books.google.com/books/about/1491.html?id=vSCra8jUI2EC)

Christpher Columbus provides perhaps the finest examples of the atrocities which have been carried out against all manner of Native peoples. Columbus came upon Haiti and, having recognized the presence of gold and of the people’s limited technology, immediately set about subjugating its people. He so thoroughly enslaved and destroyed the native Arawaks that:

    According to a letter written by Michele de Cuneo, before his first voyage had even reached Haiti in 1492, "Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape." Columbus wrote in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

When there were no more Arawaks to mine his gold for him–for they no longer existed–Columbus systematically depleted the Bahamas of their peoples for this task. Tens of thousands of slaves from the Bahamas were transported to Haiti, leaving the islands behind deserted. Peter Martyr reported in 1516: "Packed in below deck, with hatchways closed to prevent their escape, so many slaves died on the trip that a ship without a compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola."

After the new batch of slaves died, Columbus depleted Puerto Rico, and then Cuba. When they had all succumbed, he turned his eyes to Africa, thus establishing the transatlantic slave trade and the concept of "race."
(See link: http://faceless39.hubpages.com/hub/Christopher-Columbus)

So what of the Native Americans still lingering in North America? Many have given in and blended with a society which continues to destroy the environment originally taken from the indigenous peoples. There are many who can proudly cite their fractional connections with native tribes (for example, I have up to 1/16th Cherokee ancestry. It’s not even worth mentioning, really.) But for those who prefer to hold to tradition and remain separate from the society which so destroyed them in the first place, rights and protections are few and far between. So this Thanksgiving, remember what has happened to bring us to the state we are in today. Remember the “great men” who slaughtered and raped and enslaved their path across North America so that we could sit at a table of meats, breads, vegetables, casseroles, jellies, butter, and gravy. Remember the people who came before you. And of course, appreciate what you have, and know the great damages brought about by great greed.


To read a speech written by a descendent Wampanoag man Wamsutta James, see the following link: https://masbury.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/the-suppressed-thanksgiving-speech-of-wamsutta-james-wampanoag/. The speech was rejected by The Massachusetts Department of Commerce in 1970, as it was a historical recount of truth, rather than the complimentary boot-licking the state was looking to receive. Wamsutta refused to read a speech provided for him, and so he did not speak.

Repost: THRIVE

In line with the belief that the coming change is a positive thing, a film is being has been produced which discusses ideas of global changes, money wars, and humanity. Check out ThriveMovement.com. The site and the "movie" soon to be provided there describe the drop in our society and the possibility for free, unlimited energy (once attempted Nikola Tesla.) The oil companies and the tiny minority of extremely wealthy powers-that-be have wanted nothing to do with profitless free energy, and so this technology has been smothered for decades.

Though some of the subjects discussed also touch on alien conspiracies (or rather, technology learned from supposed past alien encounters), the purpose of the information is whole and good. I happen to believe in past encounters, but you needn't believe it as well. The film will be available online on 11/11/11 is available for free! Donating to view is a nice gesture, however.