Really Bad Media
By James Grahn
Do the lesser works our culture produces serve a purpose?
In Brave New World, the perceived attitude of the author is one of
disgust. The main character is appalled by the ‘feelies,’ which
barely have a plot at all. Really bad media is held at a distance;
it is something to be abhorred. Huxley sees no redeeming qualities.
This is a completely valid view of bad media. It does
constitute a complete waste of time. Why spend your time watching
Xena: Warrior Princess when you could be watching Hamlet? And
it is, on some level, also vaguely evil. The youth of the world
today are being raised on absolute tripe like Power Rangers.
‘T’NBC also reeks of a mockingly evil intent to destroy budding minds and
fill the void meant for knowledge with mindless gossip, endlessly clichéd
‘moral lessons,’ and absolutely pointless drivel they believe is the only
things teens can relate to.
Which brings me to one of the reasons I’m writing this essay on bad
media: there’s so much of it. Children’s programming is an
easy target. Disney’s Saturday morning lineup has probably
caused countless cases of attention deficit disorder. While
there are a few shows of true merit (Beast Wars and Looney Toons come to
mind; both contain the occasional Shakespearean quote and they both have
complex storyline, though Looney Toons might be a bit formulaic), bad media
is the rule.
So other than wasting time, other than being a corruptive leech on
our society, other than assisting the decay of the hearts and minds of
our youth, what effects does really bad media have on our society?
Are there any redeeming qualities?
The Gernsback Continuum, by William Gibson, argues this point.
In this story, really bad media is a force for good; it drags the main
character back into sanity. Bad media is a tool for batting
down overactive imaginations; it’s a way of putting a stranglehold upon
the mass unconsciousness which would drive us mad and show us things which
are not possible.
There’s a mad sense to this; Jerry Springer to dispel those lingering
semiotic ghosts that drift into your mind, a little Cleopatra 2525 to end
disturbing flashes of the futility of life. There’s something
about bad media that brings this to reality. Watching rednecks
get abducted by UFOs can somehow end the Byzantine machinations of the
right brain (always the more troublesome lobe). It so utterly
decimates all suspension of disbelief that the user is dragged back into
a more practical viewpoint of the world.
There’s also a certain value the intellectual mind can extract; while watching
something of genuinely loathsome quality, your problems can be replaced
by the authors. The realization that you could pen a plot more
worthy of a screen then an actual screenwriter churned out is an utterly
fulfilling one. By probing every flaw of a show, by creating
your own running critique of say, you can learn just what to avoid should
you ever put pen to paper.
Getting to know the worse products of our culture also enhances your appreciation
for the better. In order to have knowledge of good, you must
also know evil; it’s all in the same apple.
So next time you’re contemplating the sheer ludicracy of closed captioning
Baywatch, don't change the channel, twist the filth to your own purposes.