Children of the Screen

As a sociology major, I find the two main premises of Hannah Baylon’s article Children of the Screen to be fundamentally flawed. Firstly, the author seems to indicate that modern society is a more frenzied and destructive place than the past, and to salve our frazzled brains we turn to television, which keeps us from doing more constructive and creative things like walks in the park. Secondly, the author believes that our mass media try to dictate who we should be, and today we are pressured more and more by these media to relinquish our individuality in favor of “cultural norms.”

I beg to differ. During the pre-modern age, the time of the Roman Empire, the expected life span at birth was twenty years. Only eight percent of the population lived to age sixty-five. If such a lifestyle can be considered less stressful than our current one, than I’d like to know on who’s authority. Granted, the wealthy and elite may have lived in luxury and ease, but I think that the same follows for the wealthy and elite of today. In addition, you may recall the entertainment that the Romans came up with: gladiators, circuses, and chariot races. I don’t consider any of those intellectual or self-enriching pursuits. If you want to discuss pressure to conform to societal norms, just take a look at the persecution and slaughter of early Christians. And the next few centuries didn’t get any better; from Galileo to Oscar Wilde, those who didn’t fit into the “norm” were punished.

It’s the nature of the human condition. The majority of the population fall into a group Karl Marx called “the proletariat,” those who are forced to labor to provide for themselves. In modern times we still need to provide for ourselves; our basic needs have never changed. We have just come up with more and more complex ways to fulfill them. I agree that the degree of escapism present in our society can be frightening, but I don’t find it unusual or new. It is only our outlets for our escapism have changed. As for society telling us “who we should be,” that has remained constant throughout the ages. There are various reasons for this phenomenon, but essentially it boils down to the fact that human society is a glorified pack of wolves. There is no room for a rogue wolf; the survival of the pack depends on every wolf knowing their place and knowing their job.

We’ve evolved quite a bit from the wolves, of course. That’s why there’s so much freedom of movement in modern society. You may be pressured to conform to the norm, but in Western society you’re allowed to do whatever you want. Apparently, what we want to do is watch television. Well, more power to us then. Every vice is dangerous in excess, but eliminating one will not keep us from seeking others. Others include gambling and substance abuse, both of which have been around pretty much since we were tribes of hunter-gatherers.

We are children of the screen. I can’t deny that. However, I posit that children of the screen are better off than children of the opium trade, children of the streets or children of the mines. I also don’t believe that we would elect to take sunny walks if that darned television set wasn’t in the living room. You see, the poverty-stricken East End of Victorian London was not bustling with folks out for their daily constitutional, thinking of ways that they could better than selves and humanity with their own special creativity. Leisure is a luxury that the common (until now) could not afford. The fact that the average American watches four hours of TV a day is a testament to the radical improvements brought to our lives during the twentieth century… which is why mass media was invented. As a people we have more spare time than every before, which means there is now great money in coming up with ways to fill up that time.

The key to surviving all of this with our intellects intact is not necessarily appreciating the natural world around us, though that is a lovely pastime and you’re free to indulge in it if you wish. It’s being able to filter through the nonsense and being able to think about what you see. I admit to being fully adapted to the screen, but to me it’s not a bad thing; I’m just maximizing my leisure time. I have always had a love of performance arts and fictional stories, so to me film and television can be great art at their best. Now, at their worst they can be complete drivel, but the great ones still enthrall me.

Personally, I watch television in two ways: zoning out, and being entertained. I occasionally if not habitually watch certain shows to zone out and relax. For instance, “Spongebob Squarepants” is ideal for a cheap laugh and nice bright colors that don’t require much thought to understand. I love it. However, there are shows that I watch because they fascinate me and intrigue me. I enjoy crime shows for the intricate plots, but I only enjoy the ones that also have believable characters and premises. That’s why I abhor “CSI: Miami.” Each episode features neon lighting from below in every setting, from the lab to the interrogation room, with supposed “crime scene investigators” acting like detectives and solving all the murders, plus a gravelly-voiced redheaded man who seems only to be able to take off his sunglasses and say something dramatic. Conversely, I adore “Bones”, a show about a forensic anthropologist and an FBI special agent, along with a gang of unique lab scientists, all of whom are played by excellent actors and who back up their investigations with what is at least convincing-sounding pseudoscience, if perhaps not always technically accurate science.

As you can probably tell, I watch a lot of TV. Maybe you think that this entire tirade is a gut reaction to defend my own personal vice. Perhaps so. However, I think that the amount of time, effort, and thought that I’ve put into this argument disproves Baylon’s theories in and of itself. We don’t have to just zone out. With the advent of the internet we are more involved in our own entertainment than ever before. We can comment on our favorite shows, start grassroots campaigns to bring cancelled shows back, or create our own shows. Television watching - much like Wikipedia - is about what we put into it. Turn on the Discovery channel, or the History channel. Don’t be a passive viewer; engage, question, scrutinize, critique, be scandalized, laugh, sigh, cry, and most of all, enjoy.