THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996 TAG: 9603160364
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Catherine Kozak
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Congress: Save your breath and our tax dollars. V-chips are not the answer.
Even if this month's scheduled hearings between Congress and television honchos go on for 40 days and 40 nights, technological trickery will not defeat what freedom has allowed to fester.
In a country where it's common to walk into a home, a bar, a retail store or a waiting room with a television set on; where people eat dinner to TV, talk on the phone with the TV on, have company over and don't even think of turning off the TV - something a little deeper than a passive control is needed.
As experts scurry about trying to repair the family and education - while panting alarming reports of dumb kids and dumber parents at dumbstruck bureaucracies - I have resigned myself that television is safely nestled next to cars, telephones and airplanes in the bedrock of the 20th century. The medium is here to stay, no doubt.
But our miraculous Frankenstein is now running amok, consuming our children - their minds, their health, their playtime - and we don't know what to do.
It is much more sensible to ignore the whole impossible mess. So we don't subscribe to cable. And, on the Outer Banks at least, that means you don't have television reception. End of challenge.
It's not that I don't appreciate the entertainment value of television. The problem I have is that it has become a centerpiece of, well, life. It has diminished live music, live theater and live conversation. It has replaced human interaction with isolation. It has made us a nation addicted to imagery, sensationalism and sound bites.
But I'm no addle-headed extremist - I've found a great way to sidestep the extremes. We watch tapes of old TV shows or movies. My father is my accomplice, as he tapes the stuff for me. So when the kids want a diversion, we slip, say, a Laurel and Hardy movie into the VCR. It's doled out selectively in small doses from our own collection. Think of it - complete control over the noxious beast.
All right, I do miss the weather and the news and some interesting programs. But I've managed well despite never having seen the Challenger blow up or Rodney King get beaten. I'd rather read about it, anyway.
Before my impressionable years had ended, I'd already seen the best and worst of television, which strongly influenced my impatience with it today. I hold both exalted and repugnant opinions of the medium.
When I was growing up, my father used to take me and my brothers to work with him in New York City. He didn't have any old job - he was in television. He was a CBS cameraman, one of the best in the business, I was told. We'd park and walk the few blocks to what's now the Ed Sullivan Theater. Inevitably, a long line of people would wind up to the stage door entrance. Following close at my father's heels, we'd march right past the hundreds of audience-hopefuls, and go directly through the stage door. Suffice it to say, it made a big impact on us.
For 36 years my father held a camera on the likes of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bishop Fulton Sheen, and the Muppets. As kids, we trudged backstage on sets of the biggest shows in the industry. We met stars like Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan. We learned early how transparent and fragile the veil of celebrity really was.
Ironically, our family never watched much television, but we all saw enough to know that it's seen its day. Never, just like old Hollywood, will the medium ever again see such explosions of creativity. It's rehashed, desperate, and consequently pitiful.
But it's not just uninspired programming that keeps me from the TV screen. It's my experience working in a nursing home as a teenager. Blank-faced in a wheelchair, strapped into a chair, bedridden or senile, old people stared hour after hour, day after day, at moving images. It may be one of the most powerful associations I have made in my life: watching TV is merely existing. No thought is required, no communication is necessary. It's not just killing time; time simply has no meaning. It is an image that to this day repulses me - and if a television is on during the day, like Pavlov's dog, I think of illness, of waiting for death.
Perhaps I'm an extremist, but I think I've got it easier. I've removed the choice and, consequently, all those unruly consequences everyone worries about. I've concluded that television becomes less tolerable the less you see of it. To me, a night of television is like a meal of cotton candy, a few Twinkies, and a glass of soda on the side.
I'd rather have something to chew on. by CNB