By: Jim Taylor
Television
gets it wrong
I seem to be watching less and less television
lately. I see little point in watching programs that upset me.
I don’t mean the documentaries
that deliberately try to be a burr under my mental saddle. Programs about AIDS in
No, I’m referring to what
passes for drama on American television. The programs with a
prevailing ideology that the solution must occur through an act of violence.
That’s distinct from American
comedy, which doesn’t end with violence, because it’s verbal violence all the
way through. The laughs come from trading insults – or obscenities – with other
characters.
I suppose that’s a slight
improvement over the days when comedy consisted of Laurel and Hardy whacking
each other with 2×4’s. Some friends watched a collection of old comedies
recently; they didn’t find them funny any more.
Stand-up comedy today often
consists of scoring points against an invisible foe. Then, having mercilessly
ridiculed wives, husbands, priests, or lawyers, the comedian bows and says,
“Thank you very much, you’ve been a wonderful audience” and simpers off stage.
Slices of life
These
days, I intentionally watch television only on weekends, when public service
channels program some of the more recent Britcoms: Heartbeat,
The Royal, Doc Martin, Monarch of the Glen…
They’re not really comedies,
although they can be hysterically funny – they’re slices of life populated by
often eccentric but rarely malevolent characters.
They derive their humour, and their pathos, through the interaction of
personalities. Which is also how life works.
Even the crime series – A
Touch of Frost, Inspector Morse, The Last Detective
– rarely resort to a final outburst of violence as a means of achieving
justice. There is violence, inevitably – you can’t have a murder investigation
without at least one murder. But there isn’t a final car chase, shoot out, or
explosion that wipes out the miscreants and thus restores peace and order.
Cultural biases
If
American television reflects the American psyche, it’s
little wonder that George Bush and his buddies resorted to war in
Bush, after all, had no
experience of any other society or culture but his own – mainly Texas, with a
brief exposure to Eastern Seaboard Ivy League – before winning a minority of
the popular vote and becoming president.
What else could he do? Justice
always comes about through an act of violence, doesn’t it?
I hope not. Especially
if someone happens to hold a grudge against me.
The Bible specifically
restricted violence when it said, “An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth…” It meant, nothing more than what was done to you.
Jesus went far beyond that when
he taught his followers to pray, “Forgive us… as we forgive those who wrong
us…”
The Lord’s Prayer does not
say, “...as we destroy those who trespass against us.”
Too much on the television tube
seems to invert God’s intentions for us.
*****************************************
Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
*****************************************