19 February 2009
Telemission
I bloody love watching television. I don’t mind admitting it either. I mean, a small part of me would like to be one of those people who claims that tv doesn’t really interest them and prefers to spend their evenings reading Proust aloud while their partner alphabetises the spice rack instead, but I know the truth. That my life would undoubtedly be poorer if I wasn’t able to spend several evenings a week slumped on the sofa absently gawping at the telly.The thing is, I think I’ve developed a problem. Lately, I have found myself watching all manner of absolute tat simply because it happens to be on. The Dog Whisperer, Ice Road Truckers, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Tossathon – it doesn’t really matter what it is I’m watching, television is utterly hypnotic to me. Regularly I find myself eschewing my own values of taste and dignity in favour of another few hours sifting through the dregs of late-night programming, simply because it feeds my craving for moving images.
It’s even started to affect my social life. Whenever I go to a pub now, I pray that there’s not a tv on because instead of engaging in witty repartee and charming the teats off my companions as I’d like to do, I can’t help but look at the telly. Even if it’s in the corner of the room and out of my direct eye line, I’ll end up furtively glancing at it like some shifty schoolboy peeping into the girl’s changing rooms. It’s becoming embarrassing. I even turn my chair away from pub televisions sometimes, just so I can focus on the basics of talking, thinking and breathing.
The problem is, I think I’ve lost all qualitative judgement of the tv I watch now. I’m so used to tolerating any old nonsense that I’m conditioned to stare blankly at the screen while my brain switches off to allow the tide of pap to wash over it like audiovisual slurry. Something needs to change.
Crap television is like junk food. I know it’s bad for me, I know there are more rewarding things to imbibe, but it’s so effortless and so readily available that I can’t help myself. The problem is – I don’t think it’s doing my brain much good. If I were to continually shovel burgers, kebabs and fistfuls of pizza into my face every mealtime, my arteries would clog up and pretty soon I’d become a bloated, sweat-drenched abomination. What’s to say that’s not what’s happening to my brain?
By hungrily consuming so much unfettered crap on tv, maybe I’m corroding my brain receptors until my thoughts become more and more sluggish. Come to think of it, I’m sure that after watching whatever prime time Saturday night slop was dished up last weekend, I felt distinctly more stultified. Maybe that explains why people in their millions temporarily lose their faculties enough to actually vote for contestants on Strictly Come Gardening or whatever it is.
Well rather than just blather on in my blog without doing anything about it, I’ve decided to take action. From now on, I’m going to implement a system to regulate my own viewing. It’s very simple really - all I have to do is divide the whole of tv programming into categories. For the sake of argument, let’s say that they are; Light entertainment, news and current affairs, sport, comedy and drama, and documentary.
The only rule is, that I must watch an equal amount of each of those categories in a week to ensure that my viewing is balanced. I won’t have to stop watching crap altogether because let’s face it, some of it’s ludicrously entertaining, but what it will do is make sure that I balance the cack out with some more quality programming. A sort of televisual 5-a-day if you like.
That means I’m perfectly at liberty to watch an entire hour of I’m a Celebrity, Where Are My Trousers? as long as I balance it out with an hour of Question Time. If I choose to watch two hours of football (which I very often do), I also have to watch two hours of something more varied, such as MasterChef and a documentary on Egypt. And if I really want to know what’s going on in Eastenders every day, I have to watch the local news so I also know what’s going on in the real London.
I won’t necessarily be reducing the amount of tv I watch - it may be that I end up watching more than I ever used to, but at least I’ll be ensuring a better balance of programmes. Not only that, but it will force me to evaluate just how much I actually want to watch Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend. If I know that I’ll subsequently have to sit through the whole of Country File, I may well decide to turn the tv off and stare at the cat instead.
Now I’m not saying any of this is going to be easy. I’ve been gradually becoming addicted to poor-quality tv for quite some time now so weaning myself off it will take a lot of effort. I fully expect the first month to involve me bingeing on crap from Monday to Saturday and having to spend the whole of Sunday frantically watching nature documentaries and BBC News 24 just to offset it, but I’ll give it a go and see how I get on. First things first though - I watched The Jeremy Kyle Show this morning and I'm still trying to work out whether to count it as light entertainment, drama or sport.
Labels: Spraff Mark Allen Watching Television
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