Why I hate Popular Culture... (television rant)

I suppose the title of this does sound a little bit too much like the essay question for a high school English class. That said, the title does fit very well and I'll only change it upon an overwhelming influx of individuals who are arguing that it is a terrible title and proposes new ones. Until that time, however, the cheezy title is going to stand. Digression about the title aside, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this post, shall we?

I do hate popular culture. I don't watch television because it gives me headaches. My headaches are not spawned by the cycle of the flicker of the screen or some other related item explained by neurological deduction. It's not like my migraines that are triggered by florescent lights. No, my headaches that come from watching television are directly related to my aggravation over the amount of banality and trite horse-shit that is shoveled into our homes through what my family affectionately calls the 'idiot box'.

Over the last year, I have watched approximately 24 hours of television. That is roughly 2 hours each month. If you wish to include the occasional times that my husband and I watch television at our friends' and families' houses, then I suppose that number would edge close to 30 hours in a year. The national average is 2555 hours per year. I got that number from a little bit of simple math and the data on this website. Just to put that into perspective, that is roughly 106 days of watching television for a full 24 hours. That comprises nearly a third of the year. Sleep takes up approximately 144 days of the year, just to let you know. Work time, based on a standard40 hour work week, is roughly121 days in the year. That leaves you with no other time for anything else, and that you're probably overlapping some of your work time with one of the other two.

One may wonder why I have chosen to be watching less television by a couple of factors of ten. Part of it is so that I have time to get things done and not live in a hovel. I'm sorry, but I'm not one of these people where I can watch television and wash dishes at the same time. I'll wind up ignoring something, and I really don't feel like getting food poisioning because my dishes or food preparation equipment wasn't clean enough. I don't like wasting electricity by ignoring the television as I'm doing other things. So I don't even bother turning it on.

I'll watch the news from time to time. It's gotten almost painful to watch even that. Look, I don't have a problem with the fact that you're reporting the latest scandal in DC or how Brittney Spears must be reported to the fashion police. But I would really prefer to hear something of more substance. I'd be thrilled if you just did your jobs, actually. Just report on the issue, don't pander to the ratings by adding your opinions on it or how you feel about the images that are shown to go with your bit piece. Please, for the love of John Campbell, just do your job! Let me make up my own mind on the topics presented. All of the miserable business of having the reporter in the sportcoat telling me how they feel or view the topic (there by attempting to influence my feelings on it) is insulting to my intelligence. I have enough gray matter upstairs in proper working order to decide if I should be scandalized, amused, or bored with Britteny's presence or lack of undergarments in public. I really don't need some mouthpeice to bet telling me how I should feel or trying to influence it.

I don't bother with soap operas, reality television or sitcoms. They're pretty much all the same. People are stabbing each other in the backs, attempting to generate a succession of high drama moments, and pandering to the prevailing trends of fashion and the contemporary sterotypes. Maeby it's just me, but I find the paper thin plots and over blown 'drama' of it all to be disgusting. If I wanted to witness that much angst, I'd be continually subscribed to all the blogs of teenagers and their related webcams. The whole business is a glorified angst-fest that puts the hallowed halls of the high school hell to shame. There's so many prima donnas in one room that I think it violates some law of physics, thus some of them must be virtual images or filmed separately and parsed together to prevent the entire group from hitting the Chandrasekhar limit and collapsing into a black hole of irony. After all gravitational mass requires substance and these are generally vapid characters we're discussing on celluloid. Maybe it's all the mass of the photons, but I doubt it.

On occasion, I will watch educational television. A large amount of the selection on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel can prove interesting, if it was written just a little bit more towards a higher educational level. This, however, is not something I expect, because I think the national average for reading level is about 5th grade. Reading level has a direct relationship to word comprehension, which is vital for one to understand terms stated to them in a discussion. In short, they dumb down their shows so that the audience can keep up with them. I'm glad that these options exist, but they're rather buried under the 5 million other channels of fluff that's out there. I know, ESPN and the other sports specific channels aren't 'fluff' per se, but they get rather repetitive rather quickly. Especially if you're not interested in sports.

Now, popular culture, as I have been subjected to it, seems to insist that the fluff channel discussion how to paint your nails properly or the latest gossip from Hollywood (which I hope that someday those poor viewers will realize is manufactured gossip) is the thing to watch. The bread and circuses of our era can be found in how pop culture upholds fast food and television where you get to see people:

• act as greedy, self serving bastards
• prove themselves to be wonders of the world, for they have enough intelligence to breathe and walk upright, even as they have not enough to understand that placing a bottle-rocket up your rectum is not a good idea
• as objects of mental (and physical if you so choose) masturbation via sadistic voyeuristic fantasies lived out in reality television; specifically if you have a fetish for humiliation of others
• express a distinct lack of regard for the consequences of their actions upon others, thus engaging in behavior that proves denigrating to the society as a whole

I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm too much of an ignorant heathen and I am suffering for my lack of initiation into the cult of the television. The idiot box makes my brain hurt because there hasn't been anything of substance on it in many years, all that there is I have described above. I am not going to waste my time watching on television what I see in the street everyday in the first two points I listed. I am not a voyeur. As well, as I find the implied support of the final point via giving it my attention to be repugnant and would mark me as a hypocrite.

Here's the really good part, I still get to hear about all of the tripe that's thrown up on the television for us all to debate if we can choke back the vomit rising in our throats or force it down by shoving a twinkie in to absorb the acid and physically force the regurgitation process to reverse. I have the wonderful joy of being told all about it by the people around me. I get to hear about Britteny's latest stunt, the current moron who's grandstanding for glory on this week's 'hottest' reality show, and be told how frumpy I look because I'm not dressed in the latest fashions. I can't escape it, no matter how hard I try, unless I completely isolate myself from all other people. Even then, I will still be subjected to the supporting materials in the form of advertisements and other miscellany that litters the world around me.

I hate having this stuff shoved down my throat. I don't want any damn part of it and it's getting forced on me.