Turn Me Off, Dead Man
By Margaret Moser, Fri., April 24, 1998
The television sets in my home stay turned off more than on. This wasn't always the case, but about three years ago that other, smaller screen on my desk began to occupy more and more of my time.
At first, both would blaze in their gray, luminous glory at the same time, me pecking away on my Powerbook with Beverly Hills 90210 (4/29, 7pm; FOX) on in the background. But... well, you know 90210. It's written with such sly subtlety that if you miss one of Donna (Tori Spelling) Martin's two expressions, the whole scene is lost. Soon, I left the set off and started taping my shows. Besides, I could fast-forward through those overwrought Party of Five (4/29, 8pm; FOX) previews, thereby saving myself the trouble of looking for an oxygen mask for the helium-voiced Claudia (Lacey Chabert) Salinger. After watching a few of those Po5 guilt-inducers layered between the wasteland of commercials, it's no wonder some people think watching television is hazardous to your health.
I love my TV watching. Like being alone in the car, it's a solitary pleasure. Even when the weather is gorgeous outside, inside you can go from the steppes of Russia to Bugs Bunny in one click of the remote control. But for me, the siren song of cyberspace was too strong and I got sucked into the black hole of the Internet, where quality is job zero and you can fritter away hours endlessly.
Because Aaron Spelling puts such masterful touches on his shows, however, rendering them as vapid as possible and therefore perfect after-work, no-brainer viewing, I soon relented and went back to sitting and watching them, even though the plots are as predictable as that Channel 36 News restaurant health inspection report on Thursdays after ER, (4/30, 9pm, NBC) ó "we checked back and management reported everything was fixed." (Don't you just know some poor intern in their newroom has the odious job of calling the offending restaurants to find out if they've met the standards?) Besides, sitting back down to watch TV stopped Weezer from sounding so exasperated when I would keep asking "What happened in the last scene?" But the actual hours spent sitting on the couch watching shows really have decreased.
This news would probably sit well with Adbusters, the folks behind TV Turnoff Week (http://www.adbusters.org/Media/tvturnoff.html), which officially began on Wednesday, April 22 (the night of the special two-hour Party of Five angst-fest) and runs through Tuesday the 28th, meaning that even if you participate, you can still catch the 2am rerun of the nightly Law & Order (M-F 10pm/2am, A&E) early that Wednesday morning and not break the "fast." (Remember, not watching TV does include not watching The Simpsons (4/26, 7pm FOX). You may, of course, simply tape all your favorite shows and watch them in your own personal marathon viewing session over the following weekend.
TV Turnoff week is an intriguing idea, even if its mission statement is fairly mundane: It is a collective attempt to save our most precious resource: the clarity of our own minds. Adbusters' website has a manifesto of sorts addressing our culture's obsession with television watching and urging retaliation by turning off the sets. What's good about this site is the sensible, non-hysterical tone it takes in discussing the concerns of too much TV. (I might, however, take issue with their assertion that "Twenty years ago the environmental movement shocked the world into realizing that our natural environment was dying." Believe me, that realization set in well before 1978.) What Adbusters doesn't seem to do is recognize television's good points, but then, that's not their purpose. They also offer some tips for a few anti-commercial activities that smack appealingly of anarchy but are basically illegal. (These "culture jamming" ideas include suggestions on how to modify billboards with spray paint to give models acne, whiting out the eyes of models in advertisements, using red paint to create blood dripping from mouths, and painting black Hitler mustaches on billboard faces. Truthfully, I fell off my chair laughing at these suggestions because they will work. Nothing dimishes a slick, commercial concept better than an effectively subversive move, as long as you don't end up on Cops, (4/25, 7pm, FOX).
"This is a collective attempt to save our most precious resource: the clarity of our own minds," sayd Adbusters, and they encourage you to not only rebel against the brain-drain but let them know "how it enriched (or impoverished) your life" by writing to [email protected] afterward.
Locally, Fringeware is offering a cleansing rite of sorts for anyone wishing to divest their household of the devil boxes. The public destruction of television sets will precede a "video exorcism and ritual performance" by Houston video artist Vincent O'Brien, who will also be showing his videos "Slaughterhouse" and a new work entitled "The Philosophy," along with an appearance by some of the actors. O'Brien won the Houston International Film Festival's Silver Award for live action video in 1989, and is a featured artist at the Austin Media Arts. Fringeware's mass TV destruction will be held Friday, April 24 at 8pm at 2716 Guadalupe and is free to the public, or you can look it and future events up on their website, http://www.fringeware.com/. And Homicide (4/24, 9pm; NBC) starts an hour later.
Say something. [email protected]
