My dream
In my dream, there is silence. Across the land, entertainment venues are shut down. The writers have not gotten their just rewards, because the moguls do not want to release their miserly grip on any penny of their profits. And so the television shows, writerless, founder and sink, never to be seen again. Movie theaters are dark, their celluloid visions forever locked inside the minds of striking writers. But is there sadness throughout the land?
In my dream, there is no sadness. People writhed in agony without their fix of CSI, House, Pushing Daisies, and The Office. They were ecstatic when the late-night talk shows returned, but without their writers, their jokes were stale, and their audiences dwindled. Not even Hugo Chavez's appearance on The Daily Show couldn't help Jon Stewart's ratings. The moguls believed that the people in the land would demand that the writers cave, while the writers believed that the people in the land would demand that the moguls cave. Yet something strange happened.
Everywhere, televisions were turned off. Everywhere, no demands were made on the writers or the moguls. Instead, people started reading books. People started spending time with their families. People spoke to other people. Yes, some people played video games, but they did so with other people. People did puzzles! And there was happiness throughout the land. Living rooms were re-aligned around a central area rather than everything pointing at the television, and people no longer pictured their favorite actors when they read books, instead using their imaginations to create their own pictures in their heads. They learned unusual words by doing crossword puzzles. People discovered secret passageways in their houses that had been bricked up long ago. It was a Golden Age!
It's only a dream. Someone will cave, and there will be new episodes of Two and a Half Men, Back to You, and Samantha Who? Multiplexes throughout the land will light up with new releases of Michael Bay movies, Will Smith vehicles, and animated features with wise-cracking animals. We will all return to the warm cathode-ray glow and Dolby Surround Sound, and everything will go back to normal. Ah, modern entertainment!
But I can dream, can't I?
In my dream, there is no sadness. People writhed in agony without their fix of CSI, House, Pushing Daisies, and The Office. They were ecstatic when the late-night talk shows returned, but without their writers, their jokes were stale, and their audiences dwindled. Not even Hugo Chavez's appearance on The Daily Show couldn't help Jon Stewart's ratings. The moguls believed that the people in the land would demand that the writers cave, while the writers believed that the people in the land would demand that the moguls cave. Yet something strange happened.
Everywhere, televisions were turned off. Everywhere, no demands were made on the writers or the moguls. Instead, people started reading books. People started spending time with their families. People spoke to other people. Yes, some people played video games, but they did so with other people. People did puzzles! And there was happiness throughout the land. Living rooms were re-aligned around a central area rather than everything pointing at the television, and people no longer pictured their favorite actors when they read books, instead using their imaginations to create their own pictures in their heads. They learned unusual words by doing crossword puzzles. People discovered secret passageways in their houses that had been bricked up long ago. It was a Golden Age!
It's only a dream. Someone will cave, and there will be new episodes of Two and a Half Men, Back to You, and Samantha Who? Multiplexes throughout the land will light up with new releases of Michael Bay movies, Will Smith vehicles, and animated features with wise-cracking animals. We will all return to the warm cathode-ray glow and Dolby Surround Sound, and everything will go back to normal. Ah, modern entertainment!
But I can dream, can't I?
Labels: Americana, Culture, Movies, Television
posted by Greg | 9:28 PM
2 Comments:
There wsas a piece on CBS Sunday Morning about the lost art of conversation last week. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/16/sunday/main3623367.shtml
the most interesting part for me was this:
In the "I Love Lucy" episode, "Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio," Lucy asked her friend Ethel, "Whatever happened to that game we used to play before television was invented? It was called conversation."
The two friends reminisce about how they used to sit around all evening and talk, and how in millions of homes around the country, other people were having the same kinds of conversations.
The punchline came when Ethel's husband Fred quipped, "Yeah, that's why television was invented!"
That show aired over 50 years ago when there were three or four networks, 1 to 7 stations available on your TV. Now there are 570 stations and still nothing on. Or not much.
It's a nice dream. I think people would start making their own shows on the internet. Eventually some shows would get bigger and make a profit and we'd be back to square one.
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