TV Monsters

by Dean Williams

Part IV

  So I sat myself down right by his side

  To watch my very first TV program.

  Oh the heroes, pretty girls and villains,

  Tragedy and romance, fists that went wham!

  And after the last bad guy had fallen

  And the story came to its happy end,

  Why, new adventures were waiting for us,

  Compliments of our new vacuum tube friend.

  I bet that the aliens’ super spaceship

  Couldn't have moved as fast as we did

  On beams of that magic flickering light

  With all the enthralling stories it hid.

  We watched comedies and adventure tales,

  Variety shows, commercials and news;

  There were cartoons, announcements, soap operas,

  And game shows with big prizes to win or lose.

  When the clock struck midnight I was surprised—

  Unbelievable! All those hours of time!

  I yawned and said, “Pops, let’s go to bed.”

  “But son, this next show is all about true crime!”

  And so it went. Our lives quickly changed.

  The fishing, stargazing: all that vanished.

  Farewell to endless leisurely afternoons….

  They were by this new companion banished.

  I went to the police and told them my story.

  They only laughed and called me a silly boy:

  “Alien invasion? Don't waste our time!”

  Run along home son, go play with your toys!”

  And that’s just what I did: I played and played.

  Or should I rather say I watched and watched—

  The television of course, every single day.

  I watched till I could watch and drink Scotch!

  As for that awful night, it slowly faded

  As all things do when not given sustenance

  In the mind or heart. And the imaginings

  Of a dumb kid now seemed—an extravagance.

  From now on our stories would come from a screen.

  We sat around the campfire watching the shaman,

  Cold light washing over our rapt faces.

  And the Tube as guru needed no mere laymen.

  Pops was there with me, every broadcast hour.

  We watched all our favorite shows together.

  Occasionally—not often—we’d fish,

  If nothing good was on, or in fine weather.

  My grandfather was still a very fine man.

  But where there’d been two there were now three,

  And everywhere we went it went too,

  An itch from which one was never totally free.

  He went in for cop shows, Westerns and sports,

  Where side fought side in weekly morality.

  I preferred dramas, nature shows, soaps:

  Escapism with a smidgen of reality.

  Once, the TV broke; how bored we were!

  Minutes turned to hours, hours to millennia.

  We cursed the repairman for being slow.

  When he fixed it, oh what shouts of hosanna!

  Yeah, I had teachers, got my education,

  But television was my real school.

  It taught me what was valued, what was not;

  What was modern, popular and cool.

  Adults had a hard time making us read.

  We were assigned Romeo and Juliet.

  Too long! We ended up watching the movie.

  It was great; haven’t read that darned play yet.

  Teachers and their earnest, boring lessons

  Seemed to come from some far-off fairyland,

  Where reading, writing, and thinking had magic

  Too strong for the moving image to withstand.

  But in this new and topsy-turvy world,

  What was best and true just got scattered,

  While the made-up world of television

  Seemed the only thing that really mattered.

  I didn't mind school; some classes were fun.

  More than one teacher told me I had talent.

  But as for college, that took discipline,

  Hard study, leaving Pops—I never went.

  Kids grew up never having known anything else;

  TV formed the entire pattern of their days.

  They were the first electric generation,

  Taking in with mother’s milk its silent rays.

  All the important events of our time—

  War, peace, and everything in between,

  We saw on the Tube in our safe living rooms,

  Just flickering images on a screen.

  Black and white gave way to glowing color.

  How thrilling to see a brilliant butterfly

  Float across the screen. But the brighter,

  The more numbing was this Muzak for the eye.

  The Tube came to rule our daily lives.

  Plans, schedules and events had to fit

  The strict time demands of the talking box.

  And watching prime time was holy writ!

  We knew an old man who did without one.

  I went to his house once—oh the silence!

  He claimed he got a lot more done, read books,

  And so on…but gosh, the inconvenience!!

  Before, we went outside to be by ourselves

  And inside for community. That now switched.

  We’d go out to see people and indoors

  To sit alone, bewildered and bewitched.

  Time and space were simply abolished.

  We all lived in a continuous present.

  For the first time we knew what was happening

  Everywhere. Existence was instant, omnipresent.

  We all did the same things at the same time.

  Naturally our thinking began to conform,

  Slowly but surely becoming the same,

  Reaching a safe and innocuous norm.

  Over time the transmissions paralyzed us.

  Humans tend to reduce the universe

  To their own interests—ours were fed back

  So skillfully, we evolved in reverse!

  Alertness, attention to detail, balance

  Weren’t required by the new sensorium.

  This tranquillizing sea in which we now swam

  Lead to a collective psychic delirium.

  Like lobsters in a gradually boiling pot

  We couldn't see we’d been put in harness;

  Every formulaic show, every commercial

  Taming once-proud horses of their wildness.

  Not that there wasn’t violence on the Tube;

  The screen was fairly drenched with gore.

  And no matter how many people were shot,

  Stabbed, punched or beaten—we cried for more.

  Like all new management, the Tube made choices.

  Retained was first and foremost, clarity;

  Also appetite, comfort, and thrills.

  Gone: paradox, subtlety, and ambiguity.

  As we changed television changed with us,

  Helping build our twentieth-century hive.

  It mirrored our culture’s every move,

  Telling the true story of our lives.

  In the early years it was variety shows,

  Westerns-- all done with innocent energy.

  Then wars hot and cold, assassinations—

  Sometimes the news seemed like one long elegy.

  Technology improved, pictures sharpened;

  Characters and plots became more complex.

  The comedies grew biting and ironic;

  Dramas began to depict—ahem—sex.

  TV brought us a whole new breed of stars.

  They had strangely interchangeable faces;

  Popping up in this series, now that one,

  Insertable in a variety of times and places.

  Those performers were truly protean:

  I saw the same actor play an Athenean,

  An Olympia
n, a Tennessean,

  And a pirate from the Caribbean!

  The women in the shows weren’t far behind:

  Girlfriends and romantic interests of every type;

  or femme fatales, temptresses, jealous lovers….

  Mainly it was their sex appeal that was hyped.

  But for almost every single character,

  We wanted to be the ones on that screen,

  Fighting those villains, dating that great guy,

  Getting all the laughs, stealing that scene.

  Naturally most actors were attractive:

  Beauty works. But wasn’t it disquieting

  There weren’t shows about the poor, outsiders,

  Artists, scientists or anything intellectual?

  Animal lovers could watch nature specials:

  Lions and tigers and bears on the prowl.

  The khaki-clad host wasn't fazed a bit

  By the gorilla’s scream or the wolf’s howl.

  Eggheads usually got just one channel,

  All stuff loathed by the Philistines—

  Theatre, orchestras, panel discussions,

  Documentaries: content that refines.

  But this was just a drop in the bucket.

  TV was there to soothe and reassure,

  To comfort us at the end of a long day.

  Not thinking but kicking back was its allure.

  And kicking back was easy with these shows!

  The sitcoms were hilarious, a real scream:

  Squabbling couples, precocious kids,

  Funny takes on the American dream.

  The dramas were city mouse and country mouse.

  Crime, or show with social critique? Urban.

  Black people apparently hated anything green.

  Happy white nuclear family? Suburban.

  What paid the bills for this high and low art?

  Why, commercials for products and services!

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It’s true:

  Money formed the base of the whole edifice.

  And what didn't they hawk on the Tube!

  Every possible type of product and brand,

  From make-up to rental cars, cleaners, and

  Food fresh, instant, microwaveable and canned.

  From morning till night the viewer was assailed:

  “Don't miss this chance, a fabulous sale!!”

  It was a golden capitalistic fairy tale.

  “But wait, there’s more: our prices are wholesale!”

  And who was doing the selling, you ask?

  People we admired, like athletes and stars,

  Adorable children, supermoms:

  Better versions of ourselves, slick avatars.

  Toothbrushes weren’t the only things being sold.

  Sports became a money-making spectacle,

  And politics became a contact sport; honest

  Government would have taken a miracle.

  The boys in the boardroom (if they were human)

  Didn't mean any harm-- just wanted their piece.

  So they had to sell, and we had to buy,

  And consumption could never, ever cease.

  Men were brutalized, women fetishized.

  Whether make-up or power tools, the apparatus

  Of selfhood wasn’t a luxury but key

  To maintaining our human status.

  We were:

  Stripped of our civilized individuality;

  Exploited of childhood, homemaking and femininity;

  Thrown on a desperate search for identity;

  And, in short, cast adrift on a sea of anxiety.

  With commerce in the driver’s seat and

  Pleasure riding shotgun, TV changed the world.

  What can I say-- we just got lazy.

  We watched from the couch while events unfurled.

  After awhile, it was hard to imagine

  A time before the Tube; it became as real

  As the physical world. And like a con artist

  It seemed to give, when all it did was steal.

  It tempted us with sweet morsels of now,

  While taking huge pieces of tomorrow;

  It offered delights of every kind

  Until fun was something we had to borrow.

  It promised to teach us, and so it did.

  The lesson? Consumption equals democracy.

  Shop, don't save; feel, don't think; trust us, trust us.

  The results would take us decades to see.

  A talking device that sat in every living room

  Could have revolutionized education,

  Civic discourse, even music and art.

  What we got were corporate consumer values,

  Sex, violence, and a shopping cart.

  What should have unified us ripped us apart.

  We were replaying the ancient archetypes

  Of violence, power, desire and control.

  A new tribalism grew from old stereotypes.

  Some said the programs were programming us.

  But weren’t we the ones behind the cameras,

  Writing the scripts, calling all the shots?

  And isn’t everyone responsible for what he does?

  In any case there seemed no going back.

  The years rolled on, unstoppable as waves.

  One summer afternoon, grandpa went too.

  I could never thank him for all that he gave.

  He passed peacefully, without any fuss.

  Just one time, he got a bit emotional.

  It was when they told him there was

  no TV in his room at the hospital.

  “Now son,” he muttered on my last visit,

  “You know I love ya….” My eyes blurred.

  “I get outta here, we’re gonna—“ His eyes rolled;

  His hand clenched; the rest was not to be heard.

  My life went on, in a dull sort of way.

  Work and TV, work and TV: the normal rut.

  For awhile I searched for that special person,

  But as the years passed that door seemed to shut.

  Was I lonely? Sure, but so were you,

  And everyone else in the viewing public;

  Or bored, or dissatisfied, or just weary.

  But perhaps what we really were was sick.