Cape Karen
If you are a television watcher, prepare to be stressed-out. It seems the producers of the latest shows are all in serious clinical depressions and they want to share their fear and anxiety with the world.
The Germans have a word for it: "Schadenfreude" - the enjoyment of the misfortunes of others.
As we click the remote looking for nightly entertainment, we are now assaulted with programs like The Discovery Channel's, "I Shouldn't Be Alive." We watch as a hiker is trapped alone on an island with a huge boulder crushing his leg, cutting off blood supply to his vital organs. Not good enough to just show the rock on the leg, the camera then zooms in to show the inner workings of his crushed leg. We get to watch, close-up, as gangrene sets in and the blood vessels begin to explode ~ and we get to see all this in living color! How gross is that? (If I wanted to see such things I would have gone to medical school.)
Recently on “Alive” we’ve seen true stories of men surviving multiple avalanches in Alaska, a father and son battling dehydration and frostbite in a cave in the mountains of Turkey, and boaters suffering from sunburn and delirium on a desert island in the Sea of Cortez.
In January the Weather Channel began airing a 30-minute weekly series, the ominously titled, “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” Using interviews, archival footage and computer generated images, it has projected a major hurricane hitting New York, catastrophic failure of the levee system in Sacramento, CA., and a scenario in which Boulder, Colo., is washed away by a massive flood. They take a relatively low-budget approach, and it serves up its 30 minutes of vengeful weather scenarios with a dash of basic showbiz, personified by Howard Parker’s melodramatic narration delivered in a breathy baritone: “The earthquake unloads with the destructive force of 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs!”
Then there is “Perfect Disaster,” whose tag line is “when conditions are right, it will all go wrong.” The show projects a series of calamities that could be just around the corner: a monster typhoon laying waste to Hong Kong, an enormous twister slamming into Dallas and a firestorm devastating part of Sidney, Australia.
I think these show producers need to get ahold of some Prozac, pronto!
And, it doesn't stop there: just last week, on the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the National Geographic Channel rebroadcast “The Great Quake,” a two-hour documentary on the subject, complete with re-enactments, CGI-assisted scientific analysis and musings and unambiguous predictions that it will happen again — "it’s not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when."
Why all this televised mayhem? Why now? It began after real life disasters like the 9-11 event and the tsunami in Indonesia. "Some viewers undoubtedly tune in out of morbid curiosity," said pop-culture expert Elizabeth Bird, chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida. "It satisfies a hunger that used to drive people to disaster films, horror movies and sword-and-sandal flicks," she claims. The problem is, all these 'potential' catatrophic events are just a little too close to home. For instance, the first planned program for The Weather Channel's ICHT show was going to be a category 5 hurricane devasting New Orleans with a direct hit. But then, before the show could air, it actually happened - or almost happened, (Katrina was not a direct hit) so they had to scrap that show and do another 'potential' disaster scenario instead.
We have entered a brave new age of television, I fear. The line between “educational” and “sensational” blurs more with each passing TV season. And cable television has surpassed all expectations in bringing human suffering into our dens and living rooms. Trying to locate something uplifting and entertaining that doesn't cause nightmares and bring on an anxiety attack is becoming more and more difficult. In our house, the DVD player has saved our sanity. We get to watch movies that we choose.
Now, if only someone would come up with a way we could all select just those channels we want to have access to; and we would only have to pay for our own selections as subscribers to cable television. There are at least 50 channels in our local line-up that we pay for, but don't ever watch. The channels we used to enjoy watching, like Discovery, National Geographic and even NOVA are now apt to bring on a bad case of the hives and cause nervous tics.
"Where are the shows like "I Love Lucy?" Even "The Carol Burnett Show" would be a welcome reprieve these days. Anything that would make us laugh would be nice. Where has all the laughter gone? I think we need it now more than ever; not all these depressing, frightening television productions.
Oh well, I guess I shouldn't complain ~ after all there is always "The World Poker Tour," "Deal Or No Deal, and all those creepy Friday night ghost shows, when I need to get away from reality.
It seems I have little use for Schadenfreude. . . so, thanks Bob ~ for the gift of a DVD player - it's been a godsend!