I'll be the first to confess that perhaps my opinions various television programming is suspect, as I don't really follow television much. It's not that I'm in the category of a television protester, like some folks are, and have tossed out TV out the window. No, we have a TV. Two actually, which seems to be an increasingly small number for many houses. I guess, in thinking about it, we have three actually, as I have one out in my shed as well. Our used travel trailer came with one, but we never watched it and I wiped it out taking the trailer up the Big Horns in 2012. As nobody ever watched that TV, nobody ever expressed the desire to replace it, and I always thought it a bit odd that it had one. It isn't the fanciest trailer in the world and, for that matter, you have to fire up the generator to use it, which would seem to be a pain.
My association with television began to decline when I entered the University of Wyoming, which is now some 30 years ago. For most of the time I was an undergraduate I didn't have a television, and I didn't miss it. When I was a law student, I lacked a television for two out of the three years I was in law school. I didn't have space for one, and I just didn't miss it. Electronic stuff wise, at that time, I had a compact stereo/record player. I didn't have a computer, which was something most of us lacked, and I just didn't bother much with TV until my last year at law school, when I brought a very small television down to Laramie that my father had. At any rate, since 1983 I haven't really followed very much television regularly, with some exceptions. There's a few TV series I've followed over that thirty year period, but just a few. That doesn't say anything wonderful about me, it's just a fact.
After law school, and before I was married, I did renew my acquittance with older movies. While I hardly ever go to the movies, I do like movies, and I like classic movies a great deal. In the several years I was away at university the movie channels developed and when I started watching television again, that's what I tended to watch. I still do, although after getting married, and more particularly having children, I've just basically lost control of TV in general. I know what's on TV, and I know what I really dislike about TV, but I don't watch much TV.
Maybe this was true for some in the radio era also, but there are some syndicated things on the TV which I just don't get. This is beyond that which I don't like, I just don't get it. Those things inspired this post.
The cooking shows.
I realize that there's always been cooking shows on television. Always. All a person has to do is look back to Julia Childs, who remains a well respected and well remembered early television figure, to realize that. But since there are now a zillion television channels, it seems to have gone completely out of control. Nothing demonstrates this more fully than The Food Channel.
Food Channel? How bizarre. An entire channel devoted to nothing but cooking shows. It's one of the weird ironies of modern life that at the same time that the UN comes out with one of its typical overblown panicky warnings (see Holscher's Eighth Law of Human Behavior) that in the future we'll all have to eat bugs that the evidence is that that food abundance has reach the ridiculous level that we can now play games with food. There are food competitions based on such things as cakes that are designed to illustrate fables or cupcakes made out of the improbable. Cupcakes, in particular, have enjoyed an absurd level of televised attention. Cupcakes are cupcakes, they don't deserve a television show. None the less, there are cupcake competitions which will even involve such unlikely things as a team of radical sugar free vegans who have to make cupcakes out of nothing other than wallpaper paste and flax seed, and make it taste like pastrami.
There was even a series, and may still be, featuring two women who lived in the D. C. area and who ran a cupcake shop. They had a lot of infighting on a modern level, and called their mother "mommy" even though they're in their 30s. That alone sort of bothered me.
One that really bothers is me is Cake Boss. Cake Boss? Cake Boss involves some big city bakery that bakes cakes, and it seems everyone who works in it is related. They spend a lot of time sort of arguing with each other, and the show is sort of a stereotype of Italians. I'm surprised that Italians aren't offended actually.
One that really bothers is me is Cake Boss. Cake Boss? Cake Boss involves some big city bakery that bakes cakes, and it seems everyone who works in it is related. They spend a lot of time sort of arguing with each other, and the show is sort of a stereotype of Italians. I'm surprised that Italians aren't offended actually.
Anyhow, neither of the shows mentioned above bother me as much as cooking shows do. Does anyone actually cook any of these recipes. I highly doubt it. But the number of the shows is endless. I think people are watching them, and then they go and fix a bowl of cheerios for dinner.
This isn't; to say that every single show on these channels is horrible. I sort of like the ones where the hosts travel around and sample restaurants. I've actually eaten at a couple of cafes that showed up on such shows, when I was in those cities, so those shows are a little useful. But I don't think a show on how to cook some odd Lithuanian dish in 25 minutes actually means that even one single person ever makes it, and I'm not sure why anyone wants to watch a show that shows you how to.
This isn't; to say that every single show on these channels is horrible. I sort of like the ones where the hosts travel around and sample restaurants. I've actually eaten at a couple of cafes that showed up on such shows, when I was in those cities, so those shows are a little useful. But I don't think a show on how to cook some odd Lithuanian dish in 25 minutes actually means that even one single person ever makes it, and I'm not sure why anyone wants to watch a show that shows you how to.
Wedding shows.
Even stranger than the cooking shows are the vast number of wedding shows.
A subset of this genera involves insanely expensive wedding dresses. I was married not quite 20 years ago and while we thought wedding dresses were generally expensive, they didn't cost anything like what television portrays. I suppose that's because the dresses that are portrayed in things like Say Yes to the Dress or Say No to the Schmo, or whatever they are, are being bought by the wealthy. I hope so, because a lot of the dresses actually exceed the median annual income for the middle class. No kidding. But as odd as that is, I don't grasp why it is interesting to watch a bunch of people you don't know buy a dress. Would a show based on buying a set of athletic shoes deserve weekly attention? I wonder.
While I find the dress shows strange, I find the competitive wedding shows appalling, and is at least one such show. In that show, four brides are pitted against each other and rate each others weddings. The weddings are rated on superficialities. My son happened to catch one (because my wife and daughter like these shows) in which the brides rated down a Greek Orthodox wedding because it was too traditional. Seriously? A person who would rate down a Greek Orthodox wedding as too traditional is ignorant beyond belief. Of course its traditional. It's a Greek Orthodox wedding and meant to be taken seriously, a sacrament in the Greek Orthodox faith with a form going back a thousand years or more.
But why would brides want to compete in the first place? Bizarre.
Pregnant again shows
It must be a sign of the cultural times that television audiences apparently find large families, or even just pregnancy, novel.
It wasn't all that long ago that large families were fairly common. I knew plenty of kids when I was a kid who came from families that had seven or so children. One person I was friendly with came from a family where she was one of twelve children. A graduate student I knew at UW was the youngest of fifteen children. What seemed odd, at the time, was to be an only child, which I was, or to be the only child in the household as the siblings were much older, which described the situation of at least one of my friends. What was really unusual was to meet a child whose parents were divorced. I don't think I knew anyone who was being raised by just one parent.
Now, this situation is so reversed that there are actually television shows devoted to the topic of big families. I just can't quite grasp why that's so novel, and it seems extremely voyeuristic to me. To follow somebody around with the "gee, shes pregnant again!" type of implication is a little perverse, but it would seem to describe such shows to an extent. Indeed, just this morning I overhead on the Today Show, which was on (but I wasn't watching, that married son of the Duggers, who have one such show, and his wife are going to have a (second?) child. Well, so what? Is that really that interesting? Congratulations to them, to be sure, but why is that newsworthy?
In some ways this seems to have gotten started with a couple of shows about families that had a large number of children at one time. So, for example, there was Jon and Kate plus Eight, the novelty being that the couple had all but one (I think) of their kids at one time, through fertility drugs. That this was the novelty, however, seems to have been quickly forgotten, and now it suffices just for a couple to have a lot of children.
This has even developed to the point where even people having smaller sized families is deemed noteworthy if the couple is a celebrity couple. There are a couple of television shows that have had this as a platform even though I can't grasp why that should be any more interesting to people than any other couple having children. Indeed in real terms, it isn't, as you don't know the couple.
The worst example of this show, in my view, is MTV's Sixteen and Pregnant. Defenders of the show argue that it shows the viewers that you don't want to be sixteen and pregnant, but what it really seems to do is follow around a fairly clueless set of male and female couples in an expertize of pathos. And it seems to me that its simply odd to be following around teenagers with a camera and pretend that the cameraman isn't there. Of course the camera is there. Who has a deep meaningful discussion on anything with a camera there?
Well, anyway, there's still the old movie channels.
It wasn't all that long ago that large families were fairly common. I knew plenty of kids when I was a kid who came from families that had seven or so children. One person I was friendly with came from a family where she was one of twelve children. A graduate student I knew at UW was the youngest of fifteen children. What seemed odd, at the time, was to be an only child, which I was, or to be the only child in the household as the siblings were much older, which described the situation of at least one of my friends. What was really unusual was to meet a child whose parents were divorced. I don't think I knew anyone who was being raised by just one parent.
Now, this situation is so reversed that there are actually television shows devoted to the topic of big families. I just can't quite grasp why that's so novel, and it seems extremely voyeuristic to me. To follow somebody around with the "gee, shes pregnant again!" type of implication is a little perverse, but it would seem to describe such shows to an extent. Indeed, just this morning I overhead on the Today Show, which was on (but I wasn't watching, that married son of the Duggers, who have one such show, and his wife are going to have a (second?) child. Well, so what? Is that really that interesting? Congratulations to them, to be sure, but why is that newsworthy?
In some ways this seems to have gotten started with a couple of shows about families that had a large number of children at one time. So, for example, there was Jon and Kate plus Eight, the novelty being that the couple had all but one (I think) of their kids at one time, through fertility drugs. That this was the novelty, however, seems to have been quickly forgotten, and now it suffices just for a couple to have a lot of children.
This has even developed to the point where even people having smaller sized families is deemed noteworthy if the couple is a celebrity couple. There are a couple of television shows that have had this as a platform even though I can't grasp why that should be any more interesting to people than any other couple having children. Indeed in real terms, it isn't, as you don't know the couple.
The worst example of this show, in my view, is MTV's Sixteen and Pregnant. Defenders of the show argue that it shows the viewers that you don't want to be sixteen and pregnant, but what it really seems to do is follow around a fairly clueless set of male and female couples in an expertize of pathos. And it seems to me that its simply odd to be following around teenagers with a camera and pretend that the cameraman isn't there. Of course the camera is there. Who has a deep meaningful discussion on anything with a camera there?
Well, anyway, there's still the old movie channels.
3 comments:
I'm not sure how I came up with the idea, but I've always thought that someone reads a book or watches a TV show or movie because they somehow identify with the main characters.
Like a mirror (either subconsciously or consciously), the reader or viewer sees the qualities that they either have or want to have in the characters in the story.
As an example, I watch some stupid reality show like Swamp People because I can see myself making a living hunting alligators with my family in the swamp and that's the sort of life I either have or wish I had.
So it bothers and baffles me that someone would watch TV shows like the wedding shows you describe that are basically just a spoiled adult that is still acting like a child and the people around her that allow or encourage that sort of behavior and wasteful spending.
The people that watch those sort of shows have to either identify with or idealize that sort of behavior or outlook on life.
In other words, the people watching the TV shows are influencing the TV shows rather than the typical view that the TV shows are influencing the watchers. That's a pretty difficult problem to fix.
"As an example, I watch some stupid reality show like Swamp People because I can see myself making a living hunting alligators with my family in the swamp and that's the sort of life I either have or wish I had."
Or perhaps could see yourself having, even if you don't and don't necessarily aspire to.
Interesting point of view. I think there's a lot to it.
As a followup, I guess it shows how out of it I really am that the entire Paula Dean story sort of mystifies me because I just can't grasp why people watch Paula Dean.
I'm still not really too certain what exactly she's accused of, although I understand there's an accusation that she used a highly insulting racial insult. That's bad,, if true, but I lack sufficient interest to bother to look up what the accusation is.
Probably not at all to my credit, I found Dean to be highly irritating in the 2.5 or so seconds I've actually seen her on television. I'm not sure what it is, but something about her presentation bothers me. But then, if a person is generally bothered by the food network, I suppose that's not surprising.
Anyhow, if she used racial slurs, shame on her, and I'm sure that she'll pay the results accordingly. But isn't it generally weird to have big food celebrities?
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