I watched a little bit of Dr. No on TV tonight.
That, in and of itself, is certainly unremarkable. But stay with me for a sec. I think I’m on to something.
When I was a kid, there were three channels on the (black and white) TV. There were, I think, two or three movie theatres in my hometown (Shreveport, LA) and probably a bunch of drive-ins. If you wanted to see a movie, you waited until it was released in your area, then you went to the theatre to see it. You probably went right after it opened, because there was no way to know how long a flick would play at the local (single-screen) theatre. If you didn’t catch it in the theatre, you MIGHT be able to see it at a drive-in – they largely subsisted on second-run and B-movie fare. I remember, when I was a kid, my parents refused to take me to a number of films they thought to be inappropriate for me. And they were probably right. Some of them, they just didn’t want to see themselves – like The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. (I’d feel the same way if my kid wanted to see 8 Mile or the latest opus from 50 Cent.) If something good was on TV (a no more likely proposition then than it is now), if you missed it, you missed it. There were no VCRs. No DVRs. No PVRs or DVDs. Few second chances, unless it was the annual trotting out of specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas or The Wizard of Oz. In the 60’s, most shows didn’t go into reruns until late spring. And sometimes, they were preempted for replacement shows that ran only through the Summer. If you missed an episode of your favorite show (Green Hornet, The Time Tunnel, etc.) you had to depend on the kindness and descriptive powers of your buddies at school. Oh, yeah, and you were instantly on the “uncool” kid list, until next week.
Now compare and contrast that situation to what we have today. We have dozens, if not hundreds of channels on cable or satellite. Even in a town the size of Amarillo, we have a couple of dozen movie screens. We have VCRs, DVDs, DVRs and PVRs. We have the Internet and BitTorrent. Then there’s the video iPod. Miss a show? Maybe you taped it, or better still, programmed your Tivo or satellite DVR to record it while you were gone. Miss a line, or wanna see it again? Wind it back. Really like a show? Buy the entire season on DVD, with commentary by the cast, the director, the producer, and the guy that works the craft services truck.
This is all obviously an great boon to the consumer. But is it good for Entertainment? I would argue, that, no, it isn’t. Here’s why. Back in the 60s and 70s, TV and movies were king. When a new movie came out, it was the talk of the town. Literally. When the new season began, everyone was glued to their TVs, and oftentimes bewailed the manifest and great pain that was “counterprogramming,” where you couldn’t possibly watch two shows you liked, because they came on at the same time, on different channels. With only three channels, most of your friends watched the same shows, on the same nights. It was a communal experience. The next morning, on the playground (or if you were older, the water cooler) you’d talk about the show, and (almost) everybody would be able to comment on what they’d seen.
It was, in short…cool.
We’ve lost that. Not just that, but with the every-increasing, voracious appetite of the public, we spit entertainers out faster than you can say “Jessica Simpson.” Everybody becomes “this year’s blonde” because nobody has the experience to survive after they’ve done their act for a nationwide audience. Well before my time, there was Vaudeville. Acts played to an audience of hundreds, night after night, honing the skills before a live audience. Their act was never over-exposed, because nobody could tape it, and there was always a huge number of consumers that had never seen the act before. Performers had time to mature. The good ones developed skills that served them well over decades. Hope. Marx. Crosby. Merman. Giants, all. Today, when someone shows one iota of talent, they are processed, Pasteurized, homogenized, and presented for our amusement. I knew a great country act, once. Four girls that sang cowgirl songs. The real deal. Nashville didn’t know what to do with them. They were too good. Too different. Too unique. They had a choice to make – fire the two thirty-somethings in the band, replace them with a younger lead singer, and change their act to fit in with the “we know what the public wants” mentality of the big labels, or stay with their genuinely unique act, and limit themselves to self-produced albums and a regional following. They chose option “A” and went on to fame and fortune as the Dixie Chicks. (Their downfall is a subject for another post.)
Entertainment today has a couple of problems. First, the sheer amount of it has devalued it to be all but worthless. (When was the last time you looked forward to the new shows in September, or felt like the opening of a movie was a big deal?) Second, to feed that voracious appetite, we fail to nurture real talent, and allow it to burn out too quickly. Third, there is no “farm system” (like Vaudeville) that allows talent to develop and acts as a filter system to promote talent and weed out the talentless.
What to do about it? I’ve a suggestion. I call it the “Just Say No to Crap” plan. If you don’t like something on TV, TURN IT OFF. Go read a book. Do you good. If somebody calls a movie “A Must-See” or “The Best Movie of the Year” (and it’s January) blow it off. Go listen to some live music. Or take in a play. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Find something worth watching and savor it. And throw the rest out with the trash. Now…where’d I put that remote…
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