Television, good harmless fun or the unholy spawn of Lucifer? The general consensus, especially in this era where television has become a creative wasteland, is that tube is more of a boob than ever, distracting millions from being more productive and contributing to society while acting like a real life SpongeBob SquarePants by soaking up the talent and imagination of viewers. Despite the fact that during any given week you have truly lucked out if you can find three or four hours worth of television that doesn’t insult your intelligence or sap your very will to live, how many viewers are being completely honest when they say watch no more than five hours of TV each week? Clearly there are certain events that cry out for the nation to tune in for day-long rapturous attention by viewers such as the 9/11 attacks, and on those occasions it would take a mighty argument indeed to successfully stake the claim that any other invention in history has been as important as television. If one is willing to undertake the effort to dig beyond what is immediately apparent, one quickly arrives at an appreciation of the fact that television is an instrument quite unique in the annals of communication history. At the same time, the sheer inadequacy of those left in charge of this unique device allows for the substantial argument that television as practiced has been primarily useful for corrupting society with it a constant influx of unnecessary violence and explicit sex directly into millions of homes.
One of the principal proponents of television, and the overriding reason why you doubtlessly have more than one of them inside your house right now, is that television stimulates a warm feeling of comfort, security and intimacy within each individual viewer. Additionally, since the overwhelming amount of television programming is devoted to representational fictions that usually tie up all loose ends nicely in the range from thirty minutes to two hours, television helps to maintain the illusion that life provides a satisfying sense of closure, rather than being the fearsome open-ended serial it really is. The extent of the importance of that feeling of comfort cannot be adequately acknowledged until one realizes that the primary viewers of television are children and the elderly, two groups not exactly empowered in modern society and for whom the illusion of security is far preferable to the reality. And even for those stuck in the middle between Big Wheels and wheelchairs, television acts best as a means of escape from the punishment of being daily slapped in the face by the mundane horrors of life in these United States. More so than any other metaphor, television is really a best friend, always dependable and always capable of providing whatever emotional support is needed.
Or, according to others, it can influence untoward behavior. The one thing that those who feel the demonization of television is overblown and those who feel television gets a free ride is that standards for allowing what can be regularly delivered to the screens inside America’s homes have been on a downward spiral for the last few decades. The opening salvo in the history of television followed some pretty strict rules of conduct; one may even posit that these rules for positively Puritan. Will we one day look back on the censorship experienced today with the same disbelief as we now look back on the fact that Barbara Eden’s navel was not allowed to be shown on I Dream of Jeannie? Could it actually be possible that one day people will look back upon the daily nudity, four-letter words and graphic violence that are a staple of television today and consider the first decade of the 21st century to be the last hurrah of good, clean television?
It was the introduction of cable television that opened the floodgates to the state we now find ourselves in. Prior to cable television and the still not quite fully delivered promise of narrowcasting, broadcasters could be relied upon to present a certain type of programming to correspond to the demographics of viewers. Back during the days that most Republican lawmakers drool over returning to when the majority of women didn’t head to work everyday and instead stayed home and cook and cleaned and took care of the kids, the broadcast networks delivered programming tailored almost exclusively to appeal to some amorphous idea of “female” in the form of soap operas, game shows and cooking shows. Upon the arrival of the kids returned home from school in the afternoon television stations gave way to cartoons and syndicated reruns of popular television comedies and adventure shows that appealed to younger viewers. Once the sun set and primetime kicked into high gear, the choices got somewhat more unrestrained as the needs of both sexes and all ages had to be met simultaneously. While primetime television shows crossed the spectrum from family-oriented situation comedies to police investigation shows to medical dramas and, especially, westerns the fact remained that if you were to judge what America looked like based on what you saw on television you would be shocked and perhaps a little frightened upon your arrival here to see that not everyone was white, middle-class and happy. On those rare occasions when a minority member of the American populace became the focus of an episode, you could almost count on him being the villain. More often than not, a minority on American television was just background. The really weird thing about American television before cable came along is that the minority group most likely to be featured as a character on television were Native Americans and it was just as likely that the actor playing an Indian on the countless westerns that dotted the lineup during the 50s and 60s had no ancestral ties to any tribe in North America.
The introduction of cable networks changed the world of American television forever. Once the sweaty nude bodies of William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in Body Heat began showing up at all hours of the day on HBO, the entire justification for strictly enforced censorship of network TV eroded. After all, if pressing upward on the channel selector on the remote just one brought the foul-mouthed gangsters of the Corleone family into your home, how could you honestly say that society would be ripped apart by having Al Bundy say the word “ass”? Once parents became acclimated to the idea that a cursory surf through all the channels was likely to include full frontal nudity, images of body parts violently exploding in slow motion and literally every profanity ever created it was only a matter of time before network executives felt the freedom to push the envelope. The result is that targeted demographics no longer enter into the equation; all television is homogeneous and designed only to appeal to the widest possible viewership that can be found within a rapidly dwindling audience share.
