So here I am. This is my first blog. Woo-hoo. I should be working on my next novel, but this seems like fun. When I went to school in Tallahassee, I used to write a column for the now deceased Florida Flambeau (ah, the good old days before the frat boys killed it because Mary Jane Ryals made fun of their stupid beauty pagent). My column was called Lifestyles for the Poor and Unknown (I've been trying to overcome that stigma ever since) and I wrote about whatever weird thing I had done lately. I don't have nearly such an adventurous life these days but I still have this desire -- like so many of us I guess -- to publish the things I happen to be thinking about at the time. It might also be a good outlet for those little pieces of writing that I know I'll never send out. I'm not sure whether anyone else will read this. I don't profess to have some inside scoop on what the White House is up to. FOX News will never quote me. Thank you, God. But here it is. My first blog.
This morning my friend Patti called me. She has stopped watching "The Medium" because of a recent show that had to do with doctors who were possessed by an evil spirit cutting open fourteen-year-old girls just for fun. She says she loved the show at first but now it seems they're jumping on the CSI bloodthirsty bandwagon. I watched that particular episode of The Medium. (I hadn't seen the show before.) It was nowhere near CSI. If the CSI writers had been in charge, you would have seen the distraught parents walk in to find their daughter a mangled corpse. You would have gotten to truly experience the horror of inexplicable evil. And if you were a regular CSI viewer, you would have said it was entertaining. I hardly ever watch CSI, but sometimes when I'm tired and mindlessly channel surfing it'll snare me. The visual work is stunning, the actors are all easy on the eyes and the dialogue makes you think that something interesting is going on. Then I always get sucker punched. Some vicious example of human behavior so twisted as to make Hitler and his minions look almost kind by comparison pops up on my television screen and scars me for my life. I can't get to the remote fast enough to turn the TV off. Who could possibly like this shit, I wonder? (Okay, nothing would make the Holocaust look kind. I'm just trying to make a point here.)
So The Medium wasn't nearly as bad. The problem I think is with the whole format of the one-hour drama. Leonard Hill, in an essay called "The Hijacking of Hollywood," explains why one-hour dramas are so empty and so unsatisfying: "Only twenty years ago the typical one-hour dramatic series episode had a running time of approximately 48 minutes. Today the typical episode contains roughly 42 minutes of content."* You wouldn't think that six minutes would make that much difference, but it does, and I think it's a major difference. It's nearly impossible to get emotionally or intellectually involved in these shows. And major plot points are NEVER explained. You simply have to accept the fact that the problem was somehow solved. The "how" of the solution is not delineated. One show that I really like is "Numbers" --which is stylish and intriguing (well, Ridley and Tony Scott created it, I think), but it suffers from the same syndrome; there's not enough time to delve into the cool mathematic calculations that form the basis of the show. I wish it were on HBO or one of the other commercial-free stations.
Patti says she's spoken to several other people who have stopped watching "The Medium" for the same reason she has. They liked it at first but find that recent episodes have been too disturbing in a way that seems not narrative-driven but disturbing merely for the shock value. Hmmm, shouldn't "shock value" be an oxymoron? I guess it isn't. It's unfortunate that the producers/writers feel they have to pander to the prurient mindset that seems standard in our culture rightnow. It would be nice for there to be television for the non-sociopathic minority.
* I read Hill's essay in a book called News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownershop and its Threat to Democracy. This is a must-read book for anyone who cares about what is going on, politically and culturally in the United States.
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