2005-11-15

TV. It's the New Happy Hour

I'm so disappointed by how stupid and dull things have become. Television in this country is about being lulled into the same stupor that alcohol or a joint would put you in...
TV. It's the new Happy Hour.
There are celebrities who are inching toward Stepford roboticism with their high levels of sameness, vapidity, and removal. There's nothing challenging about anyone that you see or hear on National airwaves. Seriously - what's the one thing that MIGHT make someone in the Midwest go, "I don't like that guy. What he did was wrong." It's not the President's DUI, nor the 5 felonies that the Vice-Presidential Chief-of-Staff is facing.
What's the single most offensive thing on TV these days?
Religion.
Kabbalah or Scientology, either one is weird and Hollywood and if you live in a small town, you might think of that aspect of national celebrity as "kooky." Otherwise, since there's nothing else to watch or to care about, you think everyone is pretty and sweet who's on TV. Hell, if there is something in your neighborhood that's going on and Viacom allows it to be broadcast into your home, it's probably a painful subject. Like all those black people who ignored evacuation orders and purposefully stayed in some shit-hole apartment so that they could later loot every store in New Orleans and rob white people during the mayhem.
Right on, Brother, I always plan that shit out, too.
But otherwise, we get a steady stream of pretty girls and with that pretty girl, be it Lindsay or Paris or Hilary, we get the innuendo that there is such a thing as perfection.

She's not real.
She's a package that someone has positioned in a market. She keeps up with the other products in the market, she might stay a little ahead of the eight-ball by dying her hair for a movie or by dating an equally, intentionally worthless scar but for the most part, as long as she's in the same list as Jessica and Ashlee, she's fine being singularly two-dimensional.
And the culture of flimse is fed by junkies. They go to the Internet and look up the "gossip" but why? Why do people give a shit about any of those horrible excuses who "represent" America in International settings?
Because the celebrities that we follow are a drug to those people who are tired of the sorry state of American affairs, or they are all that is available to people because they live in some 'Pleasantville' throwback but the game is controlled by the Big Three. CBS, number one network ratings-wise can't handle a boob but every single week, it takes a hose of sexual tension and sprays Survivor bikini shots all over my TV and it sprays shot after shot of famous people who are famous for being pretty, some of whom might even know how fucked up the machine in which they live is but don't know how to get out, like a stupid, stupid gerbil.

These celebrities, this celebrity culture; it softens our edges and keeps us not thinking, so of course the executives want it to stay in place. The government wants it too. If we are crossing our fingers and tuning in to make sure that Nick and Jess haven't split up, than we are ABSOLUTELY not concerned with the fact that in all likelihood, the White House leaked information about a CIA agent for a self-serving fraternity retaliation.
It's all so easy to see and so goddamn predictable. Sedate And They Will Ignore.
And what's a better drug than a photogenic girl with a soft voice and no visible imperfections?

I wish that there would be a revolt in Hollywood. I wish that the women whom the media and the pornographers allowed into my home would band together and rise up against all of the rules. I wish they would point to Britney Federline, with her falling apart hair-dos and her smeary make-up and her preggers double-chin and say "Now THAT is reality".
Then I wish they would thank her and go home and wash their faces and apply their own make-up, put up their hair, put on the clothes that they love but that they never get to wear out of the house because of how ratty and torn up those clothes are.
I wish that they were allowed to say "Fuck you People Magazine" and that they could talk without being told what they can and can't say. I wish I knew what Nicole is laughing about. I wish I could think of Misha and Rachel as normal people.
But I don't.
And that's not all their fault.
It's partly mine but it's mostly a very tightly contained set of media that doesn't allow for anything it decides might be unmanageable by the general public. If there was someone who actually had something to say, how could the public be trusted to filter the right message from that person's speech? We probably wouldn't get it right and then the whole thing would get all fucked up because we would be buying things that we weren't told to buy and dude....
That's just unacceptable.

Here's the thing: Americans? We're lazy, not stupid.

Trust me, if we were allowed to make our own decisions, we would certainly choose things according to our actual morals and values and not the ones that are crammed down our throats by talk radio. We might be more inspired to think, and to be open to conversations that a deeper than a Balanciaga.
But we're not allowed to make our own choices. We aren't even allowed choice to make and that mes amies, is about to get a whooooooole lot more serious and then maybe some of you fuckers will start listening to the people out there like me.

As it is though, we are a lazy people. I love that.
I love being lazy.
But I'm not stupid.
And I am not so lazy that I don't notice the forceful lack of perspective that is thrown at me everyday in a million formats but starring someone who looks just like someone else.

Give me something new, something different, something interesting... anything! Anything not owned by a major corporation with contracts in the Pentagon and in the White House. We need options that are not Lite Rock Live - lazy is not a synonym for stupid.
But we don't have options in the national marketplace and they're not coming and the generation of people who first demonstrated against Vietnam and who started Rolling Stone� they got rich and they planned for retirement and they are gone.
Now there are all of these horrible, stinking piles of shit that are telling me what I can and can't see on my TV and just wait, you wait. Because you may not care about your TV like I care about mine, but you wait.
Things are going to get much, much worse and before you know it, not only will you not have a choice of what to watch, you'll not a choice of where you live, what you drive, and how you vote.

I'm so angry that there's nothing to do but wait for the pivot point, the eye, the worst of the worst, and wait for the pendulum to swing back to actually encouraging and embracing expression.

arizonasarah at 1:11 p.m.

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