Acute Tellevism

So you’ve decided to become addicted to a television show. It wasn’t a choice, you did your best to avoid tv at all costs, but you were caught. You hadn’t considered the fact that once it was all on dvd, you wouldn’t be able to resist the whole story. An epic saga, with high production value, great story, in-depth drama and closure, sweet, sweet closure. Private cable entities with great spending possibilities and loyal fan-bases couldn’t be completely wrong, could they? The television show that dare not speak its name, is available, in entirety on a series of discs readily available to the rental and purchasing masses. Waiting patiently to usurp weekends, drag out evenings, and give you a radioactive tan line in a bulbous concavity from the glow and hum of the idiot box. An escape that willfully removes us from our everyday worries, a reason NOT to watch the news, a current event that lives in a moment of time, a moment of time that lives on a series of discs, that are readily available, for sale or rental. Easy answers with concrete closure just your local video store away.

So you became addicted to a television show by proxy. Someone you know, watched an episode and was hooked, or was talked into renting the first disc of the first season, “begin at the beginning the dark lord beckons.” And so you do, but first, you have that inkling in the back of your mind, once I open the floodgates, will I be able to say, ‘no more’. For those of us without an existing tv addiction, it only takes from season to season for the serialized crack to work its way from our system. We need only sleep it off, and our curiosity is trumped by actual responsibilities and life as it continues in general. However, for those who watch habitually, loyally and compulsively, there is no escape, will they escape the perilous predicament in which they’ve found themselves? This is how the first Batman tv show stayed on the air, this is why kids planted themselves in front of giant cabinet radios to find out what would happen. At some point we became a nation that needed closure, we started going to the movies too often and one day, that was it, every show dawned on a new day. One could pick it up as needed and a miss a few without missing any key plot points. Though to be sure, there were still a few that required continued attention. But not until our introduction to the first family of the mafia The Sopranos, followed quickly by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Lost television franchise was a can of worms opened. Those worms are still crawling, day by day, hour by hour, we are not getting what we want and we are getting invested in the lives of people who don’t exist.

So you’re addicted to a television show because there was nothing else to do. It’s interesting how invested we as a society can be in television programs and their outcomes and yet so disconnected from politics and the inner workings of our social systems. It’s a brave new world we live in, in our cultivated complacency our eyes and minds are diverted daily and we are rewarded with the happy lives and ongoing trials of people whose lives we are not wholly invested in. Evening after evening we plant ourselves in the comfy lull of a cushy couch or other cultivated cushion with our proverbial mark and print in it. Our conscious minds are suspended in their disbelief at art imitating life for an hour at a time. It’s satisfying, to be sure, not being directly affected by the drama, social anxiety, real life decisions and consequences of everyday life, knowing that it will not affect our personal lives. Ironically our lack of investment and focus in actual life, everyday events and the state of political and social affairs has led to an increase in global drama perpetuated and often cultivated or originating with our own country of origin. It was sheer luck and social buzz that got us out of the political purgatory of the last decade.

So you were forcibly addicted to a television show. Society forced you over the edge, you couldn’t find anything else to discuss around the watercooler at work, your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife threatened to leave you if you didn’t. I understand, everyone else who’s seen it understands. But will society understand? You’ve lived almost an entire lifestyle out of bondage, only to pick up the shackles and bind yourself in a prison of your own design. Our lack of focus and haphazard cautionary tale, begins at this moment, nearly a decade ago, when our minds were first being mesmerized and hypnotized by media and our attention was being pulled away from the small political fire and towards the serialized explosion. It seems that the period of implied and self-induced ignorance and complacency is coming to a close. The age of television has not ended, but the age of using the proverbial idiot box as a radioactive curtain shielding independent thought and keeping the people out of politics is over. That said, our President cannot do his job alone, we cannot sit idly by and expect him to perform miracles. He needs and requires our continued support and outspoken motivation. The time has come for those who want to get involved, to find their niche. You can become the pebble in the folds of the political oyster, a tiny thorn on a big, pretty flower, too small to remove, but just big enough to be a prick.

So you’ve been kidnapped by armed gunmen and while tied to a chair you’ve become addicted to a television show to pass the time until rescue. The ultimate irony of this predicament is the notion that the show in which I’m so ensconced concerns the corruption of America and its political system during a time of upheaval and renewal. I can only hope that my interest is held as equally by the developments and future endeavors of the new administration. I can only hope that I wait with bated breath for refreshing news, breaks in the lulls and doldrums of frustrating cleanup left in the wake of an irresponsible tidal wave of corruption and violent self-indulgence. I can only hope that the hope we’ve invested manifests itself in the form of positive action and a new path through the political bureaucracy like a chainsaw through a chair factory. I can only hope that your mouth is that chainsaw, cut through all the bullshit and from the splinters honesty, integrity and a renewed hope will rise. I can only hope that your rise doesn’t plateau and that the idealism and honesty you bring to the office is everything I can only hope it can be. Television gives closure to all stressful situations, all loose ends are tied to something and rarely are questions left in the air during the final commercial break.

So you’ve come to realize that being addicted to a television program isn’t so bad, as long as there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and you know it has some form of resolution. Recently politicians speak of America as a young country, a country in it’s early years of development, in the budding years of character development, not yet reached the crescendo of it’s plot arc. We have not reached any closure in our future, this country has no pigeon hole to which we are relegated. We have finally re-invented the nature of our characteristics and broke the mold from which the world thought our ideas would continuously pour. Now is the time for our rebellious teenage years, to begin discovering who we are as a people, to establish our identity as we as a people wish to be. We can be better, we will be better, things will get better, but our final season is a long way off. We will yet have many episodes, we will yet have many adventures, and we will yet face many challenges, but though closure is a comfort many Americans wish and hope for, it is not without open-ended change and upheaval that greatness and wonderment develop and as we dawn on a new season, a new chapter in the future of this country, I hope this season goes on forever.