The Reality of Television

First there were the golden years of Hollywood. Even the eggs that rotten pictures laid are viewed in retrospect as golden gems. You certainly knew it was its own era when someone like Fatty Arbuckle (the Louie Anderson of his time) could be a star. Fat has always been funny. Then the little screen came along.

Today there are few places for fat people on TV. When you do see them it is something that keeps the tradition of seeing porkers as the punch line. Homer Simpson is probably the best known image of a fat person on television today. Think about that for a while. Serious shows are more of a sad exploitation. There was recently a show centering on competition of teams of fat people to see who can shed the most pounds each week.

Post World War II and television in the home changed movies forever. It certainly transformed the home, the living room, and the family unit in America. Sure mom still wore only dresses around the house, but now we lay on the floor in front of a box that showed us pictures along with our sound.

In the 1950’s creativity reigned and comedy is usually the format that is remembered most. Jack Benny, Milton Berle, and I love Lucy opened new avenues for television. The wackier the better!

That blueprint for quality television with creative writing lasted decades. Make no mistake there were plenty of stinkers in the procession of shows networks tried to entice you into watching over the years. Then you could smoke yourself to death on the screen. Heck, cigarette commercials were everywhere. By and large however the successful shows were anything from quirky, to socially conscious.

Speaking cars, families of vampires and monsters, talking horses, spy thriller spoofs, a goofy shipwrecked sailing group and country mishaps down on the farm all shaped some of the most memorable comedies of the 50’s and 60’s. Laughing silly was the goal during that age.

The talk genre of television which was so successfully launched and ruled by Phil how much blood has my heart spilled on the floor this show Donohue for so many years gave way to mundane hosts not willing to suffer the loss of their shows to bad ratings. Talk TV came to be as important as the situation comedy format. Luck and desperation became the mother of invention. Thus Trash TV was born, thank you Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera. The germination of a seed was planted which took a decade to come to fruition and infect the latest small screen landscape overhaul.

The marketing of this latest form of television was similar to Madison Avenue’s genius in selling us bottled water. The evolution from trash talk into the entertainment module of television has brought us Reality TV. This form displays average people exhibiting those things we use to hide in our closets. "Why should I hide the fact that I am a cross dressing, alcoholic hermaphrodite, drug dealer, that carries guns to my school, and has bouts of depression because I live in a big house where my parents don’t understand that I am different than my superstar siblings?" Book that guy as a guest!

Now instead of employing writers for dialogue to bang their heads against the wall with temperamental stars, Hollywood took the easy step of producing shows from a debauchery assembly line. They seem endless.

If you were going to write a generic script for most Trash and Reality Television it could probably include looking at all of the perversions in our cupboard. Let’s take a good look at our corrupt and bankrupt morals. Hell, let’s put all of our shortcomings on television for everyone to ogle instead of quietly trying to overcome the disease that causes it. Forget the sickness lets laugh at the symptoms! That is much more doable! The winner is the most depraved! “Johnny Olsen tell the paraplegic tap dancing, worm eating, bisexual, cowboy from Queens what he’s won just for participating!”

This is the same mindset that has unleashed Donald Trump on America’s television conscience. Fear Factor, and the can you top this sweepstakes of reality shows, have our trailer trash minds salivating over the prospect at what will be next. It’s sort of a real life cliff hanger. How far can we push the envelope of bad taste?

The junkyard of humanity is being laid bare to the delight of our own sick voyeuristic streak. We’ve gotta see who’s gonna be the next Idol, and what kind of an insect someone will eat to get off the island. We enjoy seeong how pissed off some gold digger is going to be when she finds out Joe Millionaire is a part time sewer worker, who is really a hillbilly from Des Moine’s and who’s favorite sport is yodeling.

Hollywood is selling America’s own muck to itself while quoting and confirming their own mantras; It’s a hit and Give ‘em what they want. What ever happened to always leave them wanting more? I have a better slogan. How about just Leave 'em?

The lack of Hollywood creativity is hopefully only a temporary rest period for writers so that they can recharge their exhausted bankrupted reputations. Alas, I fear that this mode may be with us to stay like goofy comedy reruns, trash talk TV, and 24 hour cable news leading us to believe that it is all entertainment. Watching Reality TV is more like being in a Dante undiscovered circle of hell. How on earth did we ever find it? We have simply risen to the level to which we have aspired!

Then again perhaps that whole classic piece of work could be turned into a reality show. “For a cool million who wants to visit Dante’s Inferno in the flesh?” What million bucks? The reality is that we visit hell nightly and pay the cable company for the honor.

THE 'FEEL GOOD' INDEX

What has become of the days of toughing it out? Today we spend all of our time trying to measure concrete formulaic principals in terms of “feelings”! This may be a mistake. It is sort of the difference between Math and English in school. Mathematics is the cold hard reality of absolutes that truth brings. There is no gray area or wiggle room; kind of like with your spouse if you’ve been married too long. Sometimes in the great marriage horserace of life you need to go to the whip to make sure ol’ reliable will still move for ya from time to time!

In math, one plus one is always two. In English however there are high theoretical concepts applied where one plus one may be two, but if there are others playing the game you must find a way to comprehend their sentences so to spare their feelings even if they sound like Charo with thick lips and a fat tongue. Similar to Math however, in English there is a specific order that must be followed for the language to ring true to the ear. Accents are fine and people can be understood even if the speaker’s subordinate clauses are spoken sideways. On the other hand Math offers graphic differences. It is one thing to house .000024 worms as opposed to 240,000. One is a barely visible microscopic portion of the creature hardly fit for fishing, and the other could have you in the bait and tackle business for an eternity not to mention increase your popularity among countless feathery friends of bird species. You must make that non-English speaker feel comfortable even though they’ve ordered that bottle of Rose’ Brut by asking for a bottle of rosy butt! That may be what every one wants when they order a shapely bottle of French wine however, your broken-English associate might be more useful as a tagalong in a New Orleans brothel.

Remember in the old days when you wanted to know how cold it was outside? It use to be that you could get an accurate idea by the weatherman’s report of the temperature. Fifty degrees was pretty cool and you knew you needed to wear a lightweight jacket.

In the post Generation X culture that we live in today however fifty is not fifty. It “feels like” thirty if the wind is from the north and blowing strong enough. The TV weatherman's map is unique. The guy is paid thousands of dollars to stand in front of it and can’t wear green because if he does he’ll disappear The blank screen in his studio when displayed on your TV with all of its high tech gadgetry still says fifty degrees, but wear that lightweight coat not knowing the wind chill factor and you might freeze off a dangling participle. If I had known I’d need to be acquainted with barometric pressure, wind speeds and cloud formations I would have majored in meteorology in college. On a side note, what do meteors have to do with the weather except during a shower one must remember to bring a lead lined umbrella? Obviously now you can understand how well I faired while in the post secondary education system.

If Americans aren’t driving down the road offering high hand gestures to bad drivers (and crappy drivers are always the other guy), then we’re finding some other way that someone else has made us “feel” wronged. The guy in the parking lot has zoomed into the parking space two feet in front of us from three aisles over at supersonic speed and we feel incensed. The battle ensues when two of us reach for the same article of clothing on the discount clearance rack at Slut-Mart (soon to be a registered trademark, guaranteed to lure both men and women to such an attractively named store of such potential for both genders). Our dinner engagement didn’t put up a fight when we offered to pay the check. Now we’re stuck with their doggie bag and their high liquor bill. That’s what you get when making dates with alcoholics. Hell, who wants to go out with someone having no drinking problem? Those kinds are usually stiff and prudish. The liquored up partners are always eager to unsnap things and can usually go from full evening attire to their birthday suit faster than the guy who stole your parking space. Talk about “feelings”. What better way to feel someone than while in the midst of a buzz induced night of partying.

In hospital emergency rooms there is even a chart on the wall of smiley faces designating a range of feelings. Of course their jobs are to assess how you feel. The happiest smile on the chart means the least amount of pain. As a matter of fact that smiley face feeling is about the same as a couple waking up after a night of carnal indulgence except the smiley face is much more clear-eyed and doesn’t wake up with panties in its mouth. At the opposite end of the chart the smile is turned upside down indicating extreme pain. This un-smiley face is indicative of the “feeling” Lorena Bobbitt imparted to her husband after she did some shearing of the old family jewels before sending the main meat flying from the car window to flop on the ground like a pouch of wet jelly. Does anyone in an emergency room who is still conscious ever tell the admitting nurse that their pain is a ten? I would bet there are plenty of dramatists who exaggerate their pain for a little sympathy and a big industrial sized pain relief suitcase of medicine. We after all have become a pill popping, touchy, feely, mommy it hurts collection of whimpering snivlets! Not only have we allowed this to happen, but we’ve embraced the idea that we are better people somehow if we feel everybody’s pain. It’s the easiest way we have of assessing our own and trying to see how we can top theirs.

Look around you over the course of any given week and see how many areas of life that were once bastions of clear cut black and white reality have degenerated into an ego stroking cultural sensitivity class; making us feel as if we have more value than we do. It is such a sad state of affairs that many ignore the slide toward pseudo-sensitivity, or go completely another way.
As for me I like to drown my feelings as often as I can with some unique hand gestures, tablets from my own pain relief suitcase, and a nice compliment of rosy butt.