One more thing
I hate people who look down on others for watching television. Usually, they say things like, "Oh, I don't even own a tv," or "I only watch Nova." These are the same people whose five preprogrammed radio stations are all NPR. I'll admit that I love television. I grew up on it. An only child with divorced parents who lives in the middle of nowhere needs something to do. So, yeah, I've seen every episode of Saved By the Bell three times. I know the theme song to Perfect Strangers. I can watch The Simpsons on mute and still know all of the jokes. I could definitely win a Seinfeld trivia contest. Am I supposed to be ashamed of this?
Why is watching television still (pardon me while I consult a thesaurus) uncultured? I understand reading is still considered the great intellectual pursuit, but have you ever attempted to watch a Congressional Agricultural hearing? There is plenty of television that would be considered a valid intellectual pursuit, with the exception of Booknotes on CSPAN 2. (The Deuce) That shit is just boring. And there are plenty of books that would be considered simply fluffy entertainment and not a grand search for knowledge. Dan Brown, I'm looking in your direction.
And even if television is not the purest academic pursuit, why does that matter? Shakespeare wrote comedies, music and alcohol have been around for millenia and a substantial portion of early television was a couple of idiots running around hitting each other with things. Entertainment, humor, and distraction have always been an integral part of the human experience. There is nothing wrong with wanting to laugh and/or not wanting to think. Now, there may be something wrong with wanting to do that all of the time, but to that, I'll say what my grandmother told me when I went to college, "Everything in moderation." God, in retrospect I hope she was talking about drinking.
This type of criticism comes from the same group of people who I have taken issue with before: Soccer watching, bizarre beer drinking, BBC watching, sweater wearing, dilettantes. Stop being judgemental! And yes, I get the irony of excoriating people for being judgemental while being overwhelmingly judgemental myself.
Why is watching television still (pardon me while I consult a thesaurus) uncultured? I understand reading is still considered the great intellectual pursuit, but have you ever attempted to watch a Congressional Agricultural hearing? There is plenty of television that would be considered a valid intellectual pursuit, with the exception of Booknotes on CSPAN 2. (The Deuce) That shit is just boring. And there are plenty of books that would be considered simply fluffy entertainment and not a grand search for knowledge. Dan Brown, I'm looking in your direction.
And even if television is not the purest academic pursuit, why does that matter? Shakespeare wrote comedies, music and alcohol have been around for millenia and a substantial portion of early television was a couple of idiots running around hitting each other with things. Entertainment, humor, and distraction have always been an integral part of the human experience. There is nothing wrong with wanting to laugh and/or not wanting to think. Now, there may be something wrong with wanting to do that all of the time, but to that, I'll say what my grandmother told me when I went to college, "Everything in moderation." God, in retrospect I hope she was talking about drinking.
This type of criticism comes from the same group of people who I have taken issue with before: Soccer watching, bizarre beer drinking, BBC watching, sweater wearing, dilettantes. Stop being judgemental! And yes, I get the irony of excoriating people for being judgemental while being overwhelmingly judgemental myself.
posted by quint at 11:53 PM
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