The People of The TV

islam is credited for giving jewish people the label the “people of the book”. books, for a period of time, constituted a cutting edge and transformative technology. “words on paper” changed the world. over time, the new communication technologies emerged. thus, the question posed is whether a technologies can create a people?

the book-the torah- in part provided a variety of instructions. additionally , it contains programming. the programming, had themes. the book of exodus has a theme of liberation while the book of genesis has a theme of family relations.

today, one can visit an orthodox jewish community and observe the “the book” in action. it would be interesting experiment make an assessment of the community and compare it to the torah’s content. is the book’s content dictating people’s actions?

one twentieth century technological innovation was television. television has largely been co-opted to serve as entertainment. further, unlike prior technologies, the information is more easily digestible. one just needs to plant themselves in front of a tv to become entranced for hours of viewing.

i grew up living on television at an estimated viewing time of 50 hours per week. this was accomplished by multi-tasking; what better place to do homework! i grew up at a time of happy days…and laverne & shirley. i lived on sesame street and mr. rogers was my neighbor. while i lived on the westside, i was more than happy to venture to the eastside in a deluxe apartment courtesy of the jeffersons. if i needed to go on vacation, there was always gilligan’s or fantasy island. for a cruise, there was the love boat. a house confab could be done with all present partaking in all in the family. those were the days of television.

television shows often were about good guys and bad guys. comedy was all some variation of i love lucy. if you wanted to get serious at the time, you could catch phil donahue, the predecessor to oprah. finally, you learned of culture through variety shows such as ed sullivan or merv griffin. beyond tv shows, some movies got played and played and played. the notion of watching the same movie over and over had its appeal.

television’s programming shifted. the rockford files is one series that stood out. jim rockford was an anti-hero of sort. a private investigator and a reformed con man with a heart of gold. this notion was widely received by the public. shows such as the wire, breaking bad and the sopranos brought programming of true anti-heroes. morality, for tv, was a slippery slope.

comedy got twisted as well. armed with the i love lucy bible, writers crafted shows whacky scenarios. the seinfeld show took this to a new level. ben stiller also had a television show. he brought his craft to the movies; a movie inspired by his television work was zoolander.

recently, two news stories struck me as mirroring seinfeld and zoolander. a group of male dancers wearing only shorts started an impromptu dance performance at a new york city gas station. tragically, someone died. in zoolander, a group of male models go to a new york city gas station and enter into an impromptu dance performance. tragically, a number of people died. in california, recyclers were busted for transporting bottles over state lines to obtain higher redemption values. in seinfeld, kramer plotted and attempted the very same activity.

is reality now mirroring what we see on tv? has our society become “the people of the tv”?

while i spent an awful amount of viewing tv, perhaps my last decade has been removed from it. in the past years, i have no television in the house. most of time watching matter is on youtube.

thus, i pose the question as to whether technology has created new forms of people. sociologically, is there a generation of people that are “the peple of the tv”? what is to be made of them? what is their programming? what are the themes they are bringing on the real world?

this same concept of technology extends out to the internet and social media. there are people who are known as “tiktokers” or “youtubers”. what are these people about? what are they bringing to the real world?

in the end, we may need to ask whether we can separate the programming from the technology? or, regardless of the technology, is the programming paramount?

be well!!

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