9.26.00
Television is a lie. An insidious, poisonous lie.
I'm not stupid, I know that the things on the screen aren't real. I know that the characters are just actors on a set playing pretend. I just never realized exactly what kind of lie television is, until now.
There was an article sometime ago about how unrealistic Friends is because there was no way that a cook at a diner and a waitress in a coffee bar could afford such a primo apartment. Monica's great aunt (or something like that) has a rent controlled place, and Monica lives there. Perhaps that's implausible, I don't know.
What I do know, is that a bunch of twenty-somethings can't afford furniture that nice unless they have much, much better jobs that Rachel and Mon. Christ, my parents don't have furniture that nice, and they both have decent, respectable, relatively well-paying jobs. The only people I know that live that well are either rich baby boomers, or are my age and the spoiled children of rich baby boomers.
And yet, we watch shows like Friends and believe that we are supposed to have nice furniture, and that we should wear designer clothing, and that we should be beautiful and have meaningful lives, or at least pointless but entertaining ones.
People criticized 90210 for being unrealistic. At least their houses looked like college students lived there. The furniture might have been nicer, but then the characters were supposed to be spoiled children of rich baby boomers.
And love. Watching the WB, you'd think love was forever. You meet your soulmate and s/he's the one for you, for the rest of your turbulent life. What the hell do 17 year-olds* know about true love? I'm sorry, I'm 28, and I've never seriously dated anyone for more than 6 months. Hell, the first guy I dated that long was cheating on me with my best friend the whole time. The second guy, who I lived with, took great delight in getting drunk and telling me what a bitch I was, and how I ruined his life because I didn't love him as much as he loved me.
I was barely capable of dealing with those two things. I seriously doubt my coping ability if I found out that my boyfriend, who I loved oh-so-very-much, was a space alien or a 240+ year old vampire. As much as I loved him, which couldn't be very much because I'm 17 remember, and I don't know much about anything at that age**, I think I would totally freak out, and not let him drink my blood to save his life, or walk the ends of the earth and put my life in danger regularly to save his freaky ass.
I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical and neurotic. I know that I'm lonely and frustrated, because my daily life doesn't even live up to the worst days of my televised peers. I know that I shouldn't care. But like a junky, I'm drawn back to the poisonous box for another fix.
*I choose this age arbitrarily, because it's a good high school age. In reality, these actors are at least my age.
**Probably because I*** never seem to actually go to high school, much less spend any time studying for anything. My existence seems to be daydreaming about my freaky boyfriend, saving his sorry ass, having my sorry ass saved, sucking face, and being vexed by the forces that seem to be conspiring against our happiness. Or, in WB-land, just another day in the neighborhood.
