Remember the good ‘ol days of Garbage Pail Kids and Bart Simpson? Andrew Dice Clay and Roseanne Barr? Chris Rock? Back when potty talk and smart mouths were entertainment?
My kids and I turned on the TV the other day and watched about 15 minutes of TLC’s Extreme Cheapskate. One man ate home-roasted goat heads –including eyeballs and brain - for dinner. (If the cabrito enthusiasts from the butcher shop weren’t enthusiastic enough to eat the heads, I don’t think he should have been eating them either.) Another re-used floss, and took discarded food out of a movie theater trash can to serve to his wife. I guess I missed the memo that came out with Hoarders and My Strange Obsession: mental illness is now entertainment.
Is that because we’re all so mentally balanced that mental im-balance is an extraordinary phenomenon, like the aurora borealis or me making only one trip to the grocery store in a week? I don’t think so. Not according to Glaxo-Smith-Klein, Pfizer and Eli Lily. Not according to the Sandy Hook families. Not according to any of us, myself included, who face or have friends/loved ones with mental health issues.
I’m strange enough not to consider mental illness entertainment, so we turned the channel to watch Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet. Safe territory here, right? Two lunatics and a scientist crashing around the Colorado Rockies, chasing B-roll of a ‘squatch from the 1960s. That’s entertainment I can appreciate: grown adults enticing a shy forest-dweller with bacon, doughnuts and an ear-piercing Oooouuuahh. (Because reclusive, wild animals are attracted by loud noises, baked goods and pork? Though to be honest, if I lived out in the Colorado wilderness, I’m pretty sure you could attract me with a Boston crème and a slab of honey-cured fat-back).
I watched until they interviewed an eye witness. And not just any eye witness. A visually-impaired eye witness with a guide dog. Describing what she saw. Yeah. All I’m saying is that I know what I can see without my contacts, and it ain’t much.
I understand now why Camus wrote Le Malentendu and Beckett En Entendant Godot, creating the theater of the absurd. They didn’t have TLC and Animal Planet. Everyone was so grounded and sane around them, absinthe drinkers aside, they had to try to convince their fellow man life wasn’t as wonderful as it really was.
Which brings me to the meat of this particular rant about contemporary TV: the fall season. I’m disappointed with Sleepy Hollow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, anyone?), Agents of SHIELD (I want to like it in the way I want to like cucumber, but don’t) and especially The Blacklist. Blacklist Spoiler Alert: anyone else watch the pilot and immediately think the FBI woman is the bad dude’s daughter? Don’t get me wrong, I’m still watching these shows, but I’m smirking the whole time.
A show I still really like? Will you let me explain why I like it before you pass judgment? Keeping Up With the Kardashians. And yes, I know it’s not reality. I know the story lines are scripted and the scenes staged. That didn’t bother me when I watched Beverly Hills, 90210 and it doesn’t bother me now.
I like Keeping Up With the Kardashians for the same reason I like the Brady Bunch. After high school, a lot of you, dear readers, studied the hard sciences or went out there in the real world. I, on the other hand, watched The Real World and studied liberal arts - sociology and French to be exact - at UT Austin. One thing I learned in one of those sociology classes is why the Brady Bunch was and is so popular.
See the Brady Bunch helped America emotionally escape from the Vietnam War. It was an idealized representation of a blended family, a new trend at the time. It gave that first-generation of divorce hope that family life could still be good. And even for those of us who didn’t grow up in a blended household, there is something fascinating and heartwarming about a family spending time together, working out their problems, and involved in one another’s lives.
Which is exactly what the Kardashians is all about. A family that, at least while the cameras roll, makes time for one another. Vacations together and shares the hardships (okay, luxuries) of life.
I am grateful that I have a brother and a sister, two brothers-in-law and two-sisters-in-law. But our lives don’t intersect in the way that a part of me desires. I wish I had pillow fights and secrets with the girls and more time with my extended family. I’m not pointing fingers. We would all have to quit our jobs to make that happen on a regular basis.
A close-knit family is part of the American dream. That’s a dream I hold in my heart and on my TV, at least as long as Kim, Kourtney and Kholé are on. (Marcia, Jan and Cindy, too.) And I’ll take a family caring for one another, for better or worse, as entertainment any day of the week.
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