Wednesday, February 18, 2004
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 |
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The Rating Ritual or a 40 Share Gets Me Hot! “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” In 1976, the film “Network” premiered and showed us a world where television had been pushed to the limit by program directors desperate for high ratings. As the movie progresses the shows that get aired on the fictional UBC network get stranger and stranger. The public’s appetite for the strange and unusual reaches its climax with the on-camera assassination of Howard Beale, “a man who was killed because of lousy ratings.” This scenario with its out of control executives and tv-crazed public looked like science fiction, a parody of near future excess. Not anymore. With the upcoming “The Littlest Groom”, a dwarf dating reality show, the Fox network has broken the mold, so to speak. Arguments on both sides have validity, but in the final analysis, this is just sensationalistic programming. Perhaps it will allow the “height challenged” to be viewed with respect as people like everyone else. Of course, one would hope that people already felt that way. On the other hand, most people will probably watch with a smirk and possibly become more insensitive than they already are. Then again, this is America, land of television. “Survivor,” “The Surreal Life,” “The Simple Life,” “Fear Factor,” “Surviving Nugent,” “Average Joe,” “The Osbournes.” All of these shows would have been greenlighted by UBC. It is no longer enough for the average TV viewer to sit and watch a scripted drama or sit-com, there has to be some humiliation involved. People eating worms, people lying about their millions, people arguing with their kids, it’s all so fascinating! We are approaching that point of no return when we have seen everything and done everything in the name of entertainment. Sure, we can turn the channel, but as a nation we are too lazy even to grab the remote. There is something insidious about the way we overdo every trend that arises as if not being in the know about the latest obsession is a mortal sin. I’m just as guilty as the next guy though. I can’t help but be flabbergasted by the antics of people so desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame that they will appear before the nation in the most grotesque situations. I will tune into Jerry Springer, “the worst show in the history of television” to watch the flotsam and the jetsam of the world try to scratch and claw each other’s eyes out. It’s jaw-dropping fun, but after a while I have to stop. I begin to feel sickened. I can only take so much real life depravity. Eventually I turn over to the Love Channel and watch “Grease” for the millionth time. Is it just that we feel superior to these idiots when we see them behave badly for our amusement? Is it wrong to laugh at such obvious misery? Maybe in the privacy of our own living rooms, it’s a little less cruel. On the other hand, the live audiences of the Jerry Springer show frighten me. To think that this is who we are in reality is very sad. I think I prefer the more educated banter of “In the Actor’s Studio.” Hollywood may have its own forms of depravity. I get more out of the comments of Kevin Spacey or Julianne Moore and the attending audience than the bile being spewed by Joe Nobody at a quadriplegic love triangle hashing things out for Jerry’s amusement. Network television has plummeted a long way since the advent of cable. They have taken the easy way out so many times now that it seems like the thing to do. HBO and Showtime and a slew of other non-commercial stations are doing what regular TV never really could. They make intelligent programs for intelligent people. Network TV and its sponsors remind me of the special interest groups that lobby for the homogenization of the nation. It’s the lowest common denominator, that old nemesis, that has brought us to even consider Paris Hilton as a celebrity. It may seem simple-minded of me, but I tend to think that the responsibility to culture by the media is an important factor in the growth of this country as a people. There are too many camps working to stupefy us with the banality of their ideas. I suggest a good book in its place. Has anyone read any Dickens or Dreiser lately? How about Paddy Chayevsky? He’s the one who said, “Television is democracy at its ugliest.”
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