Pop Vultures

Have you discovered Why We Write yet? Few sites do such a good job of putting a human face to the writers behind the strike and you should definitely check it out.

RTVW answered with an explanation of why they watch, which is something I’ve been thinking about a bit recently. See, television ratings haven’t actually dropped since the strike. There are fewer and fewer original programs left to air, but people keep tuning in to whatever crap reality TV is on that night. We lose The Office, and American Gladiator becomes a huge hit. That ain’t right, people.

It can’t be that we watch just because we have nothing else to do, can it? Or out of habit? Or because, if we don’t watch television each night, we might have to talk to each other? I have been a staunch defender of television, and part of my argument is that people choose to watch because they enjoy characters and good stories, not because they are sad and pathetic drones who would rather be passively entertained than think for themselves. And I still believe that’s true, despite the fact that people chose to watch Crowned. Maybe I’m a blind optimist, but I’m okay with that.

Why do I watch? Because when television is good, it can create a whole new world. This can be the mythology-laden world of Buffy or Battlestar Galactica or the painful realism of The Wire. No one ever has to apologize for reading books, but the most common argument in favor of reading is that it opens new worlds. Well, I’m pretty sure I never would have made it to Dillon, Texas without Friday Night Lights, so I’m not apologizing for watching TV, either. I can already hear the nay-sayers, insisting that books demand imagination while television spoon-feeds its viewers. Clearly, these people have never tried to interpret one of Michael C. Hall’s expressions or visualized the Firefly universe beyond what was shown on screen. Perhaps they have difficulty viewing the television from their soapboxes.

I watch TV for the stories. I’ve already gone on at length about this subject in this blog’s very first post, so I won’t repeat myself. I’ll only add that I’m eager to wrap this post up so I can watch the third episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I want to know what happens. I’m curious and intrigued and already building scenarios in my head, because that’s what a good story does. It carries you away and involves you. When captivated by a story, you draw parallels to your own life, consider things from a new perspective, find new things to care about. There is nothing passive about it.

(Edited to add that I just watched the episode, and it really wasn’t very good. Stupid Fox, trying to ruin my perfectly valid point.)

I watch TV for the characters. Yes, I know they’re fictional…except, not really. Each character came from a writer’s pen, drawn from their own knowledge and desires and fears, and then brought to life by an actor, who infuses the role with their experiences, and then watched by a viewer, who interprets it through their experiences. You get the idea. Watching complex characters interact over multiple episodes is a crash course in psychology. Television can’t be a place to hide from the real world; it’s all right there on the screen.

Maybe people are still watching because the hamtastic posturing of American Gladiator can temporarily fill that need for characters, for stories, for other worlds. But it’s just a placebo, and I can’t see the effect lasting for too long. Eventually, we’ll need the real deal. And I hope that’s not just the blind optimism talking.

What about you? Why do you watch?