Television gets a bad rap, which is ironic because there’s never been better things on television than there is today. A lot of people take pride in not watching TV. I’ve heard many people say “I don’t own a television”, which is code for “I’m a pretentious douchebag” by the way, as a sort of merit badge of their intellectual superiority or something. Not owning a television implies you fill your time with more meaningful pursuits like reading Plato or discussing Nietzsche over herbal tea.
But, is the lowly television, even if we examine the most escapist drivel, really so bad? Let’s listen to Chuck Klosterman break down some modern escapist fare and compare it to, say, Plato.
When I say people like TV shows that are “predictable and escapist,” I don’t think that’s necessarily a manifestation of weakness or loneliness. I think it has more to do with the unpredictable and inescapable nature of everyday existence. I think people are constantly trying to understand their own life and constantly trying to find meaning within that reality; this is an extremely difficult process, mostly because we’re all shackled by a fixed perspective. We can only experience life through our own eyes and our own memory. But TV is not like this. When we watch TV, we are watching (a depiction of) life from a detached, outside perspective, and we’re able to understand multiple experiences simultaneously: We can see Turtle’s life as Turtle sees it, but we can also see how people view Turtle and how accurate Turtle’s personal worldview is, and everything else that’s happening in Turtle’s world that Turtle is oblivious to. We are also watching something that was written with a definite beginning, an action-heavy middle, and a definite end (so a clear metaphorical meaning can always be deduced). It’s almost like watching escapist TV is a way to unconsciously simulate our own hopeless attempts at understanding ourselves, except with all the answers outlined at the back of the textbook. The static predictability of Entourage suggests that it’s somehow possible to understand actual life, and this feels good to people.
I think he’s spot on. Aristotle and Plato wrote about their own lives, their own thoughts, and people read them for the same reason Klosterman argues people watch escapist nonsense: we get to understand another experience, to see something through someone else’s eyes. We get to instantly evaluate Plato’s thoughts and actions, compare them to the worldview we know, judge them, think about them, and maybe apply them.
So, in a way, even escapist TV can be thought-provoking philosophy…
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