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Cultural Sewage
I do not consider myself a "media critic", and I am certainly no high-falutin artsy type. I watch television – and plenty of it. While my tastes tend to run towards C-SPAN, The Weather Channel and the occasional sporting event, I do spend enough time surfing through broadcast TV to have noticed that it has become simply a vast wasteland. It is not only offensive, it is just plain bad. Remarkably bad. The writing is bad, the acting is bad, and the directing is bad. It is sewage.
Sure there are exceptions: The Simpsons, Frasier, Becker. But these exceptions serve to highlight the desperation of the rest of the lineups, and even they are affected by the most egregious problems. One general observation and one particular example stick in my mind as indicative of the depths to which the industry has sunk.
Somehow the "artistic" world has absorbed the notion that the primary purpose of art is to shock. Well, that and to soundly condemn bourgeois attitudes and values. This has been going on for thirty years or so, gathering steam through the post-modernist ‘80s and ‘90s. It was just a matter of time before this cultural attitude began to seep into television. Never mind that television is to art as Legos are to architecture. It came to be perceived as the duty of writers to "push the envelope". A steady march of envelope pushing ensued through the ‘90s, led by FOX, then UPN and eventually even the Big Three networks. The critical point, the crossing of the Rubicon, was when the "ass barrier" was broken in the mid-‘90s.
This word, unless used to describe a donkey, had been verboten on network television. It was rightly perceived as belonging to that category of words which, although having occasional useful applications in real life, were generally banned from polite conversation. As a child growing up, I know that using such a word in front of my parents, or teachers, or any adult for that matter, would have been immediate cause for punishment. I don’t think things have changed that much – I never hear the word used in the course of routine conversation at work, at home (you can bet on that!) or in school. Even in my Navy days, when I was surrounded by crusty salts who could string together entire paragraphs out of obscenities, I did not hear the word used as often as it now is on TV. In TV land, once the "ass barrier" was broken, it immediately became ubiquitous. I swear there are now quotas. In any standard sitcom, the word ass will be used at least twice per half-hour episode. It doesn’t matter whether or not it actually fits the dialogue or the characters; it will be forced in. I have seen it used by ten year old boys (both animated and flesh & blood) and in situations in which it would not possibly have been used in real life. And actors do not just speak the word, they flaunt it. You can frequently see a small sneer or a subtle glance at the camera, or hear the word emphasized out of proportion, as if to say "Look Ma, I’m using a bad word and you can’t stop me".
This is the "art" of perpetual adolescents, trapped in eternal battle against their parents.
One would almost suspect that this "shocking" is a tactic designed to draw our attention away from a complete lack of actual artistic ability. This theory was lent credence last night when I stumbled briefly across the single worst episode of television I have ever seen. The show "Nash Bridges" is a detective/adventure show "starring" the pitifully mediocre Don Johnson and the "used to be kinda funny" Cheech Marin. I surfed on in just as this week’s episode was approaching its denouement. The instant I tuned in I was stunned. There on the screen in front of me were some bad guys, I am suspecting drug smugglers, literally shoveling money – cash money – with a shovel – into a cargo plane. As they merrily prepared to abscond with the fruits of their criminal enterprise, Nash (Don Johnson) and his cohort of cops arrive. They rather quickly and easily subdue the bad guys, and we appear to be at the end of a rather routine cop show.
But wait! It appears that one of the cops is corrupt! He gets the drop on Nash and the sexy young female co-star, hops in the cash-laden plane with a couple of fellow conspirators, and begins to taxi down the runway. After a few complicating scuffles, he is airborne while Nash and buddies stare helplessly from the ground. Almost. Nash, thinking fast, pulls out a rocket launcher that one of the cops had thoughtfully brought along on the raid, takes careful aim on the departing plane, and calmly proceeds to blow it to smithereens. This is apparently great fun, as Nash and his buddies break into giggly laughter as money from the obliterated plane falls from the sky around them.
That’s right. They ruthlessly murdered the bad guys and found it to be swell fun.
I didn’t see the whole show, so I don’t know if there was more behind it. I could almost accept it if the Nash character had acted out of bitter revenge. But I don’t think that was the case. It was a bad cartoon. No, I take that back. Bugs Bunny was a veritable Laurence Olivier compared to Don Johnson. It is instead a show for the video age, in which death and destruction are rather harmless diversions, a mere test of skill rather than a glimpse into the searing cauldron of the human soul.
If I were a critic I might be able to summon forth the words to aptly communicate just how incredibly awful this show was. It was putrid, embarrassing, to all appearances written by a Junior High School media class and acted by metal shop dropouts. They even managed to sneak "ass" in there a couple of times.
This was for me far more than just another bad TV episode. It was an advertisement from Hollywood that all hope is lost. Broadcast TV is dead. Turn it off and save your brain.