RemoTe Control - RemoVe Control

I am sick of liking TV. I am so tired of seeking meaning and acknowledgement in a box that no longer offers any. Despite its unfathomable potential, we as unwitting consumers are continuingly offered product and ‘productions’ by people who are changing the message this medium once carried, and who are now essentially filling spaces between commercials. One of the universe's saddest truths is that the bliss runs right out of an addiction the moment you realize you’re addicted and that the thing you’re addicted to brings nothing to the relationship. Movies and television are intentionally not art anymore, but a carefully constructed distraction specifically designed not to elicit a reaction. We are better consumers and tamer dictatees when we remain in that zone of unstimulated melancholy, not too excited and not too angry about it. Our hallowed magic box is a swinging golden pendulum watch, put to the beat of a low monotone influence. ‘You are now under my power…‘

Perhaps I should give up hope, drop my remote control cold turkey and cast aside my illusions about potential and meaning, but I just can’t ignore that part of my brain gasping for sustenance. As broadly as I intend to swath my brush, there are some sparkles amidst the wash of blandness. These hints of genius tend to be found on the last bastions of crea-TV-ty, cable networks. There are some great examples of satire that remain sadly at a 'cult' status because they are far too frighteningly original be offered in the mainstream. As tempted as I am to delve and obliterate the ‘value’ of ‘Reality’ TV, Infotainment, Infomercials, the Makeover Culture, and all things American Idyllic, I’ll save that bullet for another showdown. By virtue of the fact that cable networks needn’t pander to affiliates, regional psychoses and advertising trends, they have the freedom to paint colors and images on their canvas not limited to the three colors portioned out by the moral minority.

But why? Why wouldn’t they want to expand and innovate on the offerings emanating from the most influential tool of mass communication human eyes have ever seen? TV was once a window that showed you something beyond your four walls. It has become the thing that clutters the space between the good parts of your magazine and pulls your attention to billboards and storefronts, to the Joneses living room window and out of your own valuable life. The listlessly addictive quality of television is of course not a new development, but the movement towards stillness and unnovation is a terminal illness contracted through an overly sensitive society. This fear of fear has changed the idea of entertainment from thought-provoking to anesthesia. Remember when the idea of only fearing fear itself was a promising notion?

I’m not one for conspiracies, I do happen to think we are still far away from Big Brother’s dreaded telescreens, but the fact of the aforementioned matter is that we are consumers, demographics, cost analysis bar graphs, and least of all observers of moving art. Art is sadly the sensitive little brother of commercialism and though they attempt to compete and thus stimulate one another and live symbiotically, the dominant of the two quickly emerges. Although paying the bills is certainly important, this big brother must realize that there will come a point when hypnosis and blissful ignorance will simply lose its zest. At least I hope they will.

Don’t you kind of hate TV a little every time you turn it on? Either you hate the offering, the repetition, the advertising manipulation, or the fact that the perfect channel is unattainable no matter how much you search. There once was a time when the purveyors of the boob tube thought they had to provide something interesting enough to attract you to the glowing light in the corner of your rumpus room. Today, network executives know you’re there, they know the TV isn’t over in the corner anymore, but hung over your ‘family’ room in plasmatic splendor, and they know you are flipping. Oh yes, you’re watching, they know you’re watching. They don’t have to worry about keeping you; the new challenge is defining you.

That isn’t even to say that I hate or blame advertising. Sadly, as annoying as they tend to be, commercials are increasingly becoming the last gasps of individuality allowed on network television. Though the walls have been built, the lines drawn and the labels labeled, within these staunchly targeted schematics an occasional thirty-second flash of brilliance can occur. Every now and then we see something in these hypnotic commands in the vein of truly inspired satire. Commercials that have become part of the lexicon of our society deserve a valid place in our collective consciousness, unless they involve greedy lawyers or dancing tacos. Even though they represent a practice some would call suspect, they captured and represent the time they held our attention, like any notable literature.

I am not equipped nor am I willing to become some sort of a crusader against some evil been fed to us through a coaxial cable and a picture tube. Quite to the contrary, it is actually my contention that TV isn’t nearly evil enough. It used to be evil. It used to show us awful evils, like the first glimpse of Elvis Presley’s sexually abhorrent pelvis, Mary Tyler Moore as a housewife bold enough to wear scandalous Capri pants, and a politically frightening bigoted patriarch like Archie Bunker. It used to challenge and inform, and commit all sorts of atrocities that made it great, tore it down, and built it up again. Television should strive to offend the previous notion of friendly entertainment because in doing so it could finally encourage the last evolutionary step and teach the masses to CHANGE THE CHANNEL.

This little issue, though quite obvious in a broad sense, is at the center of nearly every social problem we endure as slightly evolved hairless primate consumers. Changing the channel is something we can all do to encourage a tolerance, not ignorance, of what’s going on on the other channels, both figuratively and literally, but not intended for us specifically. If we desire, we can all be and feel offended as a member of a group by any subject under the sun. In fact, I can be offended as a non-nocturnal person by the partisan setting of the sun every evening, which clearly gives favor to nocturnes and therefore alienates my non-nocturnal sensitivities. If we know that an offending sunset opposes our delicate daytime morals as it ushers in a cruel night sky, we have the option as progressive channel changers to turn on a light, perhaps the one over our heads, and peacefully have our light, while the other guys have their night. After all, what’s the alternative?

I can’t get over people who complain about what they see on TV, because, firstly and quite frankly, they stifle and badger, and censor, and ruin it for everybody else. Secondly and more strangely though is that hitting one of two little arrows on the remote control beside the title ‘channel’ is so easy. It is so simple to put that pain behind you, and what’s more, if you desire you don’t ever have to see it again. That’s a power control you hold in your hand that the remote provides you.

The even wilder aspect of our collective sensibility is that although I know nearly every individual mind out there reading this rhetoric likely agrees with me, a staggering amount will still one day stand with a group oppose to something that isn’t trying to hurt them, and is merely presenting a different image than that of the world they see, that they ironically see from the same ‘intelligence’ box.

So, we have this new golden calve that sits like a god on the stage of nearly every living room in western society. That box has gone from being a technological wonder in the 40s and 50s, to a world-shrinking video-telephone library in the 50s and 60s, to an instrument of social satire and questionable authority in the 70s, to MTV’s pulpit in the 80s, to societies two-way mirror in the 90s, which leads us to the window of pre-emptive defense it now stands as today. Commercial trends of refabrication and demographic, product spot compliance have tamed it, while lobbyists and social interests now hold the chair and whip. How do we get the vision back in TV? Can you imagine if a situation comedy about a middle-aged bigot and his spineless housewife, living with their liberal daughter and her schlub activist son in law were proposed today? In 1970 this groundbreaker was known as ‘All in the Family’, thirty years later and such discussions would be the very chemistry of Un-PC. Bibles would be thumped so hard God himself would have to plug his ears. And what if a pop star had the temerity to shock the crowd and flash a nipple, then apologize and admit it was a mistake, back when Archie Bunker began squawking at poor old Edith? Do we really think it would have shattered as many sensibilities? Would it not have fallen by the wayside? Back then we hadn’t yet defined political correctness and therefore hadn’t evolved into our current fixation on protecting people who didn’t ask to be protected. Would it even have been mentioned in some satirical essay, written by a clever, playful, handsome, thoughtful, quasi-brilliant, thin, tall, dark… Would anyone really still be talking about it?

From a growing understanding of free speech, satire, interpretation, and an acceptable level of gratuitous nudity, we have begun a spiral of pre-emptive defense. Though this reverse censorship was born of a desire for a harmless medium, it has become a stifling source of fear in sheep’s clothing. I personally can’t wait another thirty years for this cycle to make its revolution before we revolt. We have to shock ourselves out of this, and of course, I have the recipe for mayhem to think outside of the box we love so much, teach the masses to use their remote for good, and give a little respect to the evil.

For decades we’ve been going about this the wrong way. We’ve tried and tried to respectfully ask people to learn to accept that not everything will necessarily appeal to everyone. Tolerate, turn a blind eye, CHANGE THE CHANNEL… please.

What needs to happen is a mass exodus. We have to throw a huge, jagged rock into the pond and see how much water has the courage to trickle back. How do we accomplish such a thing? Quite simply, OFFEND THE HELL OUT OF PEOPLE. Throw the power of expression, the might of something so atrociously politically incorrect on one end of the seesaw, so that those who can’t handle it will be catapulted to the far reaches of their dial, and those who have a craving for it will be glued and fascinated and finally quenched. Channels will change and hopefully so will sensibilities.

I want to see something so cleverly offensive that it leaves me drained, that I fear to look but can’t turn away. Let me make it clear that I want this pageant of filth to ride on the sunny side of offensive without offending. If we are going to alienate people, let’s do it in a way that moves us forward not downward. Let’s offend people the way Lenny Bruce, Trey Parker and Matt Stone offend people, by examining our collective weaknesses, not preying on them. Jerry Springer and ‘Girls Gone Wild’ succeed only at giving us something to look at, not something to think about. We’ll give them something to fear, but it will be more satirically inflective than fear itself.

To the victor that spoils, go the spoils. To the broadcaster that takes this plunge, puts a middle finger to the sky, and throws this cycle off its axis, I guarantee two things. First you will incur the wrath of every person who thinks their values encapsulate or supercedes those of others, and in doing so you will lose the backing of those that keep their backs up. You will likely be forced to hold your breath. But following that comes not just desserts, but the feast. You will be the leader, the rebel, the flag that we the starved minority have been seeking. The weight of the seesaw will again come to balance, it always does, and you will reap the benefits of establishing the rightful meaning of sensitivity… until that meaning deserves its own abolishment.

I don’t want to create a form of channel partisanship. I don’t think the answer is to create factions and offend all the time. It is interesting how as a species we need to be reminded that counter-culture inevitably becomes culture, and it is those who remember history that are doomed to benefit from it.

The best defense is a good offense. Every once in a while the castle has to crumble and the peasants have to offend a previous system of values. Television has become a cigarette with a picture tube, a seductive delivery device for an addictive agent and yet another means for those with means to enforce their will upon people who should know better. We have to pick up our TVs and shake the idiots out of the box. The most influential instrument of the last century can again become the kind of place that’s worthy of our blank, dead-eyed devotion; it just has to be reminded how to offend again. I want to love it again, I want it to be the vessel it could be again. I want to be happy holding the remote and feel that I actually have control. If we can’t learn to use the buttons that change the channel, our collective voice will be stuck in mute, and I personally will be left with nothing but the one at the bottom that says SELF-DESTRUCT.

Wait, is my TV supposed to have one of these…

Stay Tuned,

Patrick Hughes