TELEVISION OR THE REAL WORLD - WHICH WILL YOU CHOOSE?

It re-boggles my daily-boggled brain how much time people spend submerged in the perverse world of television. However, since television appears to have the collective mind in a stranglehold, perhaps we should stand back and take a second look. 

Seen from a distance, the effect of television on society has been something like a tidal wave. We can all agree the impact was immediate and overwhelming. The wave hit everybody at once. The shock wore off, but when the wave receded, much of the landscape had been damaged or destroyed, and those bits of society that remained were scattered in isolated pockets, like islands in a new, unfriendly ocean. Sceptics warned that television would destroy first the community, then the family itself. Cynics speculated that was precisely the purpose of television. The public  just switched on the machines and sat down to watch.

But television is rarely seen from a distance. For the majority, it's close-up and personal, and for far too many it begins with breakfast and never really stops. I would -and do- argue that TV has been cleverly used to redirect the focus of our society. I believe we have been deliberately turned away from the process of civilisation and led, instead, deep into a theatre of brutality. Programmes are just that -things which have been programmed to program you. TV "news", soap-operas, sitcoms and documentaries are, I suggest, the very same thing, and emit the same (very Covidian) command: sit down and watch.  

By reducing every aspect of life into a bite-size dramatic sketch, TV brutalises the viewer. Viewers quickly become immune, and begin to explore and exploit the possibilities of brutish behaviour. Passive stimulation is so much easier than anything requiring effort.  Solitary stimulation is so much easier than dealing with people. Books are put down, hobbies abandoned, the exercise of mind and body forgotten. Of all the dumbing-down techniques used on us for the last 60 years, none have played a bigger part than television.

If this sounds like an exaggeration, try observing the conversations of your own circle (if you're lucky enough to have one in your Covidian cell). Consider how often conversations begin with reference to somebody on the television. Equally, ask yourself how many long conversations do not, at some point, include a reference to someone or something seen on television. However innocent or mild the reference, an extraordinary amount of human speech seems to require the validation of televised input. Hence the moth-eaten, but very pointed punchline - what you're saying can't possibly be true -if it was, we'd have seen it on TV.  At some point, people ceased to believe that anything real could exist outside of television.   

As I've written before, I stopped watching television back in 2001. From friends and aquaintances I expected criticism and disbelief, but was surprised to encounter a fair amount of downright verbal abuse as well. I was baffled. When I stopped smoking (quitting a 60-a-day habit) friends were both impressed and supportive. From my perspective, television seemed considerably more dangerous than cigarettes. TV watching, I discovered, was what normal people did. I was, I learned, a snob, a poser, at best a weirdo. I was cutting myself off from a valuable source of information and entertainment. Who the hell did I think I was? Certain individuals reacted as if my rejection of television was a rejection of themselves. I hadn't dreamed that people could conflate their ego with their viewing to that extent. 

WHY GIVE UP TV?

It was then -in 2001- that I had my first inkling of what had been done to us. I knew plenty of smart cookies -literate, articulate men and women leading purposeful lives- but very few of them saw television as something they would ever consider removing from their lives. The mere idea was ridiculous to them. Why on earth would you do that? 

Savvy readers will have spotted that my walkaway from the box likely coincided with the sudden  availability of unlimited information and entertainment on the new-fangled interweb thing. That is correct, but truthfully, the net was neither the stick nor the carrot. After the grotesque, theatrical overload surrounding the events of  9/11, I'd just had it with TV. The same people rushing to criticise my rejection of television were equally aware of the online opportinities, but were in no hurry to forsake their televisual addictions. Net or no, I would have left television behind anyway, for reasons even more relevant today than they were in 2001.

By the turn of the century I was already semi-detatched from television. A decade of self-employment spent travelling around Britain, its towns, villages and astoundingly beautiful countryside, had gifted me a world view that simply did not match with the insulting spectacles I saw presented on the small screen. The real world was populated by an endless variety of (mainly) remarkably well-behaved people. Television, by contrast, was full of violent thugs and creepy "stars" like Jimmy Saville. 

During the nineties my home-base was on a south-London council estate where I was on first-name terms with  dozens  of individuals of all ages and types. But my eyes were being opened by constant travel; even as my horizons expanded it seemed those of my friends were narrowing -onto a wall-mounted screen. Without apparently noticing it, most people I knew had become consumed by their televisions. ""Can't do Tuesday night, ----- is on the telly" was considered a perfectly normal excuse for a raincheck.  

TALK ABOUT THE STARS

Conversations were increasingly centred on television and tv-stars and what they did and said. Newspapers began filling up with stories about television people. Shopkeepers and landlords, housewives and teenagers  talked about telly performers as if they were personal friends; whole lists of "stars" and "celebs" were referenced by their first names, and my ignorance of these characters was frequently mocked. 

By the late nineteen seventies, telly in hotel-rooms was already the norm; nowadays I imagine most people wouldn't even consider renting a room without one. By 2010 a large number of UK homes had television in every room. At some undefined moment, television jumped from optional stimulation to essential facility. Who can recall when they first heard the phrase "essential viewing" ? Whose essential needs, exactly, does television serve? Why did this service become so important that no room anywhere, in private or in public, would be complete absent a big, flat screen?  The answers are simple yet the questions are ones we brush aside with guilty haste. 

The year is 2021 and the Covidian hours crawl past like lead-booted centipedes. For millions, no doubt, television has evolved into a complete imitation of life; the only reason to wake and rise; find the sofa and submit to the soft hypnosis. The unfolding horrors of the last twelve months have only confirmed the ghastly truth I glimpsed in the angry eyes of my TV- addicted peers in 2001.  Television has become so entwined with "reality" that the removal of one threatens the very existence of the other. 

COVID MADE FOR TV 

They could never, ever have pulled off the pandemic panic without TV. Seventy years ago reality was assembled in the commonplace brilliance of our own minds, not cobbled together by a production company. Before television, the lies and deceptions of our leaders could be measured against the real-world experiences of daily life. Too late, perhaps, we understand that televisual authority can no longer be challenged. Reaching for the remote, the weary Covidian groundhogs plug in to the source. Click, click...maybe somewhere out there on a warm, deserted channel, the truth is waiting to set them free...click, click, click. Reality is in the room; out isn't anywhere you really want to go. 

We have come too far now. Something wonderful got lost on the way from Coronation Street to the Corona-tion. 

IAN ANDREW-PATRICK

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