As frightening as it is, television is perhaps the greatest single conduit of values in American culture. That has worried parents in every generation since the advent of television, but it has certainly never been as bad as we face today, with the dominance of reality shows that demonstrate moral depravity, bad taste, and utter stupidity.
It is difficult to criticize the decision of many families to totally eliminate television from daily life. When I visit two of my sisters, one of whom has a small tribe of children still at home, I can’t even find a television. On one trip, I finally did find a television to watch a football game that was important to me. I just couldn’t get a signal.
Today, there is very little worth getting a signal for. This came to mind as I was watching The Left Wing season premier last night. I’ve always been able to sift through the liberal dialogue to follow interesting story lines. But the clunky and caricatured dialogue of the military leadership and the president, the peace-at-all-costs story line, the Israel bashing, the not-so-subtle parallels with Bush’s Iraq decisions—just about put me over the edge. I’ll give it another week or two to see if they balance things out, even a little bit, to determine if I’ll make it a Wednesday habit in 2004-05.
But I digress. There was an interesting article in yesterday’s USA Today by Stephen Winzenburg, a professor at Grand View College in Des Moines, titled Survival of Sitcom Requires Return to Family, Moral Roots.
Winzenburg suggests: “To bring the situation comedy back to life, shows must be situated within a value structure. . . Most of the comedies being pushed today emphasize rule-breaking and dysfunction without consequence. . . Instead, the industry needs to bring back the traditional foundation, in which contemporary issues and characters struggle within a moral culture. Until that happens, the situation-comedy format will remain on its death bed.”
It is difficult to criticize the decision of many families to totally eliminate television from daily life. When I visit two of my sisters, one of whom has a small tribe of children still at home, I can’t even find a television. On one trip, I finally did find a television to watch a football game that was important to me. I just couldn’t get a signal.
Today, there is very little worth getting a signal for. This came to mind as I was watching The Left Wing season premier last night. I’ve always been able to sift through the liberal dialogue to follow interesting story lines. But the clunky and caricatured dialogue of the military leadership and the president, the peace-at-all-costs story line, the Israel bashing, the not-so-subtle parallels with Bush’s Iraq decisions—just about put me over the edge. I’ll give it another week or two to see if they balance things out, even a little bit, to determine if I’ll make it a Wednesday habit in 2004-05.
But I digress. There was an interesting article in yesterday’s USA Today by Stephen Winzenburg, a professor at Grand View College in Des Moines, titled Survival of Sitcom Requires Return to Family, Moral Roots.
Winzenburg suggests: “To bring the situation comedy back to life, shows must be situated within a value structure. . . Most of the comedies being pushed today emphasize rule-breaking and dysfunction without consequence. . . Instead, the industry needs to bring back the traditional foundation, in which contemporary issues and characters struggle within a moral culture. Until that happens, the situation-comedy format will remain on its death bed.”
--James Jewell
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