June 21, 2011

• Brief Nudity and Other Television Horrors

  The Box.

  Our lives are busy, and full of things worth doing; or at least, they should be, and if they aren’t – try working on it. ;=)

  For a pity it is if we can’t find meaning and entertainment without invariably soaking it up from that dispenser of both delight and junk, the television.

  None the less, we did pay for the damn thing, and it unavoidably is a major distributor of news, thought, opinion and culture. Culture, often in the form of films, where some bunch of actors and a director try to artistically express how life is, or could be, or definitely should not be. To move us to pity, or indignation; to horror, to understanding. Or perhaps just to earn a few honest bucks by making us laugh.

  It’s being going on since Sophocles had his cast yell at the citizens of Athens about the disastrous mistakes Oedipus made, and probably longer, and for all I know there may have been an intermission where guys sold Athenian hot dogs.

  It’s what’s loosely called “Culture.” It’s ours, it’s necessary, it’s legitimate, we invented it, it’s made for us, we paid for it, we need it, and we want it. It’s about life, whether lived on a higher plane of thought or a moronically low one.

  Yet, for some incredible reason, here in Canada we cannot have it unless we’re willing to endure some dumb-ass warning us in a grave voice of the dangers we are about to be exposed to. 

  It’s bad enough having to endure every ten minutes some crap about how this company’s soap will make your dishes sparkle more brilliantly than ever before, and watch an overjoyed woman hold a glass up to the light with an expression of ultimate orgasmic joy, as though been secretly, invisibly rammed by a hidden demonic lover; bad enough having to hear how your kids will grow up faster – and more intelligent – if enabled to shit themselves into the new, superior brand of pull-up diapers; bad enough been told that a car we can’t afford will use no gas and miraculously find ways around the traffic jams that our battered old banger has to trudge through, and a host of suchlike bullshit.

  This torrent of junk is advertising, and pays for what’s left of the airspace after it’s eaten its chunk. So – unfortunately – it’s necessary, and understandable. And with luck, it may be amusing or ingenious.

  But why – when this segment of commercial boredom has run its clanking course – can we not watch the damned program, instead of having to hear that “This program contains brief nudity, and may be suitable for a more mature audience,” with the same drivel given visually in text, in case the endangered viewer is Mutton Jeff (deaf.) To what purpose? May it blind our children, like an atom bomb’s flash? Are there no special glasses we can buy for our little ones, with a chip implanted that make them go black if some chick with big knockers looses her top in a film about surfers? God, we need such glasses for them! What if we missed the warning, and so failed to protect them? Really? This in a world in which we believe that education is good, and kids should be taught about sex in school, and are probably aware that people have fancy parts?

  Or… am I mistaken? Is the warning actually for adults? Might the viewing public include those who are training for some form of holy orders where purity of thought is essential, who would dearly like to watch Slaughterhouse Five, but fear that Montana Wildback’s boobs may be on view, this destroying their careers? Or are there some men – or women too – of sensitive disposition, easily disturbed, who may see an erotic scene and fall on each other in a frenzy of lust, and finally perish by heart attack?

  Then there’s that other superbly beautiful warning, “This program contains coarse language, and may offend some viewers.”

  But why go on? Just imagine though; somewhere out there a whole chunk of a major organisation is dedicated to organising this garbage, and paid bucks to do it; and some guy is actually employed to round out his vowels and solemnly intone these essential messages.

  Why?

  You don’t know? Then I will tell you. Because we, the consumers who ultimately pay for this, don’t count. And those who think we must be harried into their concept of respectability, they do count.

  And in their minds, our purpose in life is to obey.

   

  My Amazon Author’s page.

  • 11:48 am
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