Why I No Longer Watch The TeeVee

To be precise I watch virtually no ‘live’ teevee, that is I use the television as a monitor to display specific things I have recorded and DVD’s but almost never just sit and channel surf, that probably averages out about once a month. After a while your visual (and auditory) palate adjusts and the rapid fire commercial saturated environment of ‘live’ TV becomes a remarkable spectacle but not as pleasurable or seductive as it once was. Of course I can only speak for myself and my personal tastes so that prejudices me. But anyway, I keep tenuously connected to film and TV by postal DVD rental which while at times operates by an arcane and probably occult logic does make viewing a specific film or series very bearable. There are still annoying ads but you can zip through them (usually) or head straight to the menu if the structure allows. Where it really scores is- I am now firmly of the belief that TV is not conducive to the viewing of serial dramas. Commercials intrude, or times change, sport overruns and overrides, days or weeks pass between episodes and the continuity announcers stomp all over the credits (even now watching a non-broadcast source I reflexively reach for the control at the end to quieten the idiot jabbering of an announcer then realise there will be none thankfully). It is useless, worst of all if the series you are trying to follow falls from favour with the powers that be it becomes a game of hide and seek to even find when the show is on. Well I don’t have time for that bullshit, fuck that shit. This is the current example of how ludicrous it is to trust TV to treat creative works with any respect

Note: Three other episodes also feature in the series, however, there are no plans to show them alongside the others at this time.

Yeah, just don’t show a bunch of episodes, well done BBC Four, you geniuses. Tell you what next time I’m settling down to a new book could you send someone round to rip pages from the novel? Don’t just miss off the final chapters, shit go for it, pretend a football match overran and my recorder missed the adjusted timeslot, rip pages out in chunks at random, have a ball.

One thing my approach to consumption of audio/visual entertainment necessitates is the dampening of desire. When the mediaverse is full of reviews and interviews promoting a new film or TV show one must unlearn. One must become immune to the implicit message- you must see this, it will make your life better and people who don’t see it will be rightly shunned as ignorant losers!-. Once you have learned to deal with that marketing created sense of insecurity, of the need to acquire and belong, you can down shift from the machine. Then you will not mind not seeing the hot thing for some months and in fact often you realise the only reason you even entertained the idea of consuming a product was this frenzy of ‘must see’. So you become more discerning in what, of the loudly trumpeted shiny shows, you will decide to watch and at the same time the huge repertoire of DVD’s allows you to browse and explore works you want to see, rather than were encouraged to see by shills. It also helps if you know the open secret of the film reviewing racket, easily 80% of movies are rubbish, really just nonsense and a waste of time but most reviewing is paid for by ad revenue from the producers of said rubbish, so often it’s about finding the good in an otherwise hopeless mess to please one’s employer’s bottom line.

So search for things that have caused people not paid to promote them to declare they are a worthwhile experience. A fine site like Throw Away Your Telescreen is good, as is the army of enthusiasts who put interesting stuff online. If you need to paddle in the new film reviewing pool perhaps let the Unapologetic Mexican be your reviewer. But mostly removing yourself from the vicissitudes of marketing is a part of the process of intellectual self defence necessary to better see the atrocity that is the system into which we are currently enmeshed.

Now having said, erm, written all that let’s not deny the sheer enjoyment and also the brain tickling thoughts that good films/series can provide, for my part these are some of my recent-ish enjoyed works, {this is a list of what I have recently seen but also what I have recently enjoyed, ie. You might pick out a movie you watched years ago and enjoy it again and/or find news resonances in it.}

So with DVD rental I can venture into serial TV without the waiting or the ads, which has lead me to Battlestar Galactica (Adam Curtis’s interest in it caused me to swallow my reservations and take the plunge). At first I though it horribly obsessed with re-enacting 911 from the American perspective in an admittedly quite well re-imagined version of an old TV show. But it grows out of that and explores many current political themes without the inbuilt reactionary patriotism of say ‘24′. (Ok, I must say, I tried ‘24′ when it began, couldn’t make it past 3 episodes, just complete war on terror porn nonsense, and as it is reportedly used by US forces prior to operations to ‘get them in the mood’ an unconscionable enabler of the empire’s war crimes.) BSG while sometimes tiresomely militaristic is always entertaining and frankly I’m a Sharon Valerii man myself, plus y’know flying around in spaceships, looks like fun. (PS. It’s funny/sad/disturbing/understandable how so much TV SF has a large military presence in the future, that’s why I like Farscape, the protagonists are out of uniform and escaped criminals & terrorists).

The Wire- there is a lot more to say about this… suffice to say it is so much more than it appears to be. A complex meditation on capitalism’s institutions mediated as cop and robbers. When I’ve got through season 2 (should it arrive, you can ask for priority items but only the capricious gods of postal DVD rental truly know what will be sent next) I will hit this in detail. The Sopranos was alright (I’m tempted to say overrated, in the way almost all gangster drama seems to get an easier pass and to be honest if no gangster material was made for the next fifty years we’d still have way more than enough. Often I think it’s a way for rather dull men to appear to appreciate good drama while it’s really all about the violent stuff and the t & a). OZ was great & unfairly neglected in favour of the more conventional and less challenging mobsterama (needs a strong stomach though), The Wire is something else.

The Prestige- Splendid, although always a bit strange when watching a film with Christian Bale in it as I have a friend who resembles him. Anyhow, simply magical (ha!) also shot mostly hand held and with available light yet it is a feast for the senses. It’s so good that although you can divine the ending ahead of the revelation it in no way detracts from the dramatic punch of what the obsessed magician is going though every night in service of his tortured ego. And David Bowie as Nikola Tesla!

Stalker, in time I will get round to finishing and posting my article about this, the film and the story of its making and aftermath. I watch bits every so often, much better than the more famous Solaris (and I am quite happy as an admirer of Tarkovsky to say the Soderbergh remake was better, so there). I like long, sometimes meditative perhaps hallucinatory films. This and Klimov’s ‘Come & See‘ (ps. the newer DVD is better, I know I own that old one dammit) crumble my cookie.

I currently record Never Mind the Buzzcocks, well prepared ‘spontaneity’ yet funny, QI (if I see it is on) and Screenwipe, if I can find it and the reception isn’t fucked up (also online so that helps). The Mighty Boosh, not as funny as it is entertainingly freewheeling, reminds me a bit of Richard Lester’s finer exploits. Certainly displays a lot of ingenuity to provide in live action what would usually be reserved for cartoons and I think Julian Barratt is an incredibly fine actor (he was the cornerstone and greatest feature of Nathan Barley). Kath & Kim sometimes appears on Welsh TV as does Scrapheap Challenge which I have an unfeasible liking for.

Lantana, a beautifully paced slow burn Australian film of infidelities, corrupted relationships, a murder and a living hell. I do think though the really interesting character was Geoffrey Rush’s, ideally I’d want it to continue for an hour longer and dwell on him (assuming he lived that long, ahem).

Not that you asked of course, but there you go. Maybe what also inspired this was yesterdays announcement of new Channel 4 shows, I remember the red triangle days, or the small hours taken up with art video. Between Ch4 & BBC2 I saw most of the French new wave (and gawd bless ‘em for nudity) the rash of odd 70’s black comedies and 60’s experiments, live late night debates with swearing and substance abuse, a lot of the video and film art then in existence. All kinds of odds and ends and it was fantastic…now, erm…cooking shows and um, ‘reality’ kipple, allegedly more in a documentary strand. But that’s it, actual experimentation, real daring, none at all. Although to be fair the only show I really want to see is a group of genius prosecutors put together a watertight case against Blair, Bush & Cheney, then mercenaries are hired to capture them and a trial is held. Ho-hum. The banal homogenising suffocation of corporatism- was my proposed slogan for the new season, they went another way. Still it’s all about choice I suppose.