hanneblank (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hanneblank) wrote,@ 2005-07-18 09:49:00 |
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Last week our household was asked to participate in a major media survey conducted by a company called Scarborough Research. As part of the survey we were asked to fill out a television diary for a week, a la the Nielsen Ratings booklets that some of you might be familiar with.
This was a ridiculously simple thing to do because we don't watch TV in this household. It took about 3 minutes to go through the booklet and write "None" and put a zero in the "hours" column, sign it, and get it ready to send back to the survey people.
As I was doing so it occurred to me that while the Belovedary has only been a non-TV watcher for about 7 years, since moving in with me, in a little more than a year, I will have been a non-television watcher for 20 years. And, as I periodically do when something brings it to my attention, I got to thinking about television and not watching it and just how very different that makes me in a culture – in a world, honestly – where watching television is pretty much the norm everywhere the infrastructure and economics can support it.
I didn't set out deliberately to become a non-watcher of television. At first it was temporary. September 1986 was when I stopped watching TV because I didn't have one and I didn't have the money to buy one. But then by the time I had money, I had gotten out of the habit. It didn't occur to me to go spend the money on a television. And because I just didn't think about it, TV stayed outside of my life.
Later I tried watching TV with some friends a few times and discovered that stutter-cuts and handheld camera motion and other things that were (I guess) coming into vogue around that time were prone to give me headaches and make me feel motion sick. Avoiding television moved into the realm of "I feel a lot better when I don't do that, so I think I'll continue to not bother with it."
By now it's mostly just a habit, like anything else. My life hasn't had television in it for so long that in some ways, TV just doesn't exist for me -- I vaguely know that it's there and that some people I know really enjoy it, but it simply doesn't enter into my thoughts very often, and when it does it's usually in the form of "oh, right, they're talking about a tv show, that's what that is!"
I do watch movies and DVDs (even sometimes DVDs of TV shows!) on a television now sometimes -- the Belovedary had one when he moved in with me, and it's nice to have a monitor around for DVD/VHS and for the Belovedary's video gaming. We're very slowly making our way through Firefly and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but my patience for sitting in front of television, and even movies, is pretty minimal and I have to be in the right mood for it or I just fidget and get cranky.
Every so often it occurs to me that this is unusual or odd in the culture I live in, and in the circles I run in, which tend heavily toward media fandoms. It's hard to write about it or talk about it, though, because people automatically get defensive and bristly -- I have learned that for the most part I can't really raise the subject of being a non-television-watcher, because the people I mention it to tend to take it as my being critical of television and more specifically of their television preferences. They take it upon themselves to tell me what I'm missing and why TV is genuinely worth watching and so on and so forth, generally in rather tense tones, trying to make it clear that their choices are valid and making it doubly clear that they need me to show respect for their choices because otherwise, somehow, I am being an asshole by saying "It's kind of weird sometimes when you realize that you don't do something that just about everyone you know does as a matter of course.
This, mind you, always confuses me on some level, because as far as I'm concerned, I might as well be saying "I don't eat mangoes." It's not a denunciation, it's not a slur, it's just a statement of fact. I don't eat mangoes (they disagree with me). I don't watch TV (it also seems to disagree with me). And the two facts are about equally momentous insofar as they affect my daily life. So when someone's talking to me about TV and I say "Oh, I don't watch TV, I haven't seen that," I'm not saying "...and you're a ghastly Philistine because you do." I'm saying "I'm sorry, I can't really participate in this conversation very well, because I don't have the background with which to do so." And I may also be saying "I'm afraid I can't express a lot of interest in that subject because I don't participate in it and I don't know anything about it." But that's about it.
I do realize that in general TV has a bad rap and people are often encouraged to feel guilty about liking television. I'm sorry about that, really. I've seen some TV programming that I thought was pretty darned good. I'm sure there's plenty of crap out there too, but really I look at it as a continuum -- just like books or movies or music. Some of it is stuff I do like, or that I probably would like if I were of a mood to give it a whirl. Some of it is stuff I don't find particularly interesting at first glance and probably wouldn't like on second glance either.
Inside any mainstream bookstore, a Borders or B&N or whatever, you can find the classics and the award-winners and the critics' picks, but you can also find Firmer Buns in 30 Days and The Incredibly Incredible Adventures of Bulge Centurion and the Planet of the Lost Mary Sues. If someone wants to read about Bulge Centurion, I say bully for you and thanks for reading and my personal handshake for helping to keep the cogs of the book industry greased with your dollars and next time maybe you'll take a risk and buy one of MY books to keep ol' Bulge company, who knows.
I look at TV the same way. You want to watch Wheel of Fortune? Knock yourself out. You want to watch nothing but PBS and Alton Brown and Nick at Night? Get down with your bad self. You want to gorge on 120 consecutive hours of Buffy and Angel? Or sit and watch sports? Or swoon to a combination of This Old House, Invader Zim, and Touched by an Angel? Don't forget the popcorn! It's no skin off my nose what you watch or whether you watch at all. I am pro-choice.
Here's the thing: I don't watch television. It's not a political statement. It's not a social statement, or at least not one that's intended to be one in any critical way and particularly not in any more-intellectual-than-thou sort of way (given all the trouble I've had to go through in order to learn what I need to know to do even small amounts of pop culture historiography and analysis for my current book project? sssshyeah, right, I'll be finding a nose to look down real soon, you bet, because for me, doing this research has been almost like having to learn a new language – it's been difficult and demanding).
I just don't watch it. I haven't in nearly two decades. I'm out of the habit and I have been out of the habit now for longer than I was ever in the habit to begin with. I go into a hotel room and don't even see the television because I'm not in the habit of looking at them; when the Belovedary turns it on to get a weather forecast on the Weather Channel, I am always sort of stunned when the big glowy box comes to life and it's like suddenly there is another Presence in the room. Just last week I happened to look at a list of Baltimore area TV stations that was part of a survey I was filling out and realized that it was the first time I'd ever been aware of how many broadcast stations this area has or what their call letters might've been. It's a whole aspect of things to which I simply don't pay any attention. I spend about as many brain cycles on things televisual as I do on remembering the date of my next prostate exam, and for the same reason... it simply does not apply to me or involve me in any way whatever.
Think of me as a visitor from another planet, maybe it'll be easier that way.
-- Hanne
This was a ridiculously simple thing to do because we don't watch TV in this household. It took about 3 minutes to go through the booklet and write "None" and put a zero in the "hours" column, sign it, and get it ready to send back to the survey people.
As I was doing so it occurred to me that while the Belovedary has only been a non-TV watcher for about 7 years, since moving in with me, in a little more than a year, I will have been a non-television watcher for 20 years. And, as I periodically do when something brings it to my attention, I got to thinking about television and not watching it and just how very different that makes me in a culture – in a world, honestly – where watching television is pretty much the norm everywhere the infrastructure and economics can support it.
I didn't set out deliberately to become a non-watcher of television. At first it was temporary. September 1986 was when I stopped watching TV because I didn't have one and I didn't have the money to buy one. But then by the time I had money, I had gotten out of the habit. It didn't occur to me to go spend the money on a television. And because I just didn't think about it, TV stayed outside of my life.
Later I tried watching TV with some friends a few times and discovered that stutter-cuts and handheld camera motion and other things that were (I guess) coming into vogue around that time were prone to give me headaches and make me feel motion sick. Avoiding television moved into the realm of "I feel a lot better when I don't do that, so I think I'll continue to not bother with it."
By now it's mostly just a habit, like anything else. My life hasn't had television in it for so long that in some ways, TV just doesn't exist for me -- I vaguely know that it's there and that some people I know really enjoy it, but it simply doesn't enter into my thoughts very often, and when it does it's usually in the form of "oh, right, they're talking about a tv show, that's what that is!"
I do watch movies and DVDs (even sometimes DVDs of TV shows!) on a television now sometimes -- the Belovedary had one when he moved in with me, and it's nice to have a monitor around for DVD/VHS and for the Belovedary's video gaming. We're very slowly making our way through Firefly and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but my patience for sitting in front of television, and even movies, is pretty minimal and I have to be in the right mood for it or I just fidget and get cranky.
Every so often it occurs to me that this is unusual or odd in the culture I live in, and in the circles I run in, which tend heavily toward media fandoms. It's hard to write about it or talk about it, though, because people automatically get defensive and bristly -- I have learned that for the most part I can't really raise the subject of being a non-television-watcher, because the people I mention it to tend to take it as my being critical of television and more specifically of their television preferences. They take it upon themselves to tell me what I'm missing and why TV is genuinely worth watching and so on and so forth, generally in rather tense tones, trying to make it clear that their choices are valid and making it doubly clear that they need me to show respect for their choices because otherwise, somehow, I am being an asshole by saying "It's kind of weird sometimes when you realize that you don't do something that just about everyone you know does as a matter of course.
This, mind you, always confuses me on some level, because as far as I'm concerned, I might as well be saying "I don't eat mangoes." It's not a denunciation, it's not a slur, it's just a statement of fact. I don't eat mangoes (they disagree with me). I don't watch TV (it also seems to disagree with me). And the two facts are about equally momentous insofar as they affect my daily life. So when someone's talking to me about TV and I say "Oh, I don't watch TV, I haven't seen that," I'm not saying "...and you're a ghastly Philistine because you do." I'm saying "I'm sorry, I can't really participate in this conversation very well, because I don't have the background with which to do so." And I may also be saying "I'm afraid I can't express a lot of interest in that subject because I don't participate in it and I don't know anything about it." But that's about it.
I do realize that in general TV has a bad rap and people are often encouraged to feel guilty about liking television. I'm sorry about that, really. I've seen some TV programming that I thought was pretty darned good. I'm sure there's plenty of crap out there too, but really I look at it as a continuum -- just like books or movies or music. Some of it is stuff I do like, or that I probably would like if I were of a mood to give it a whirl. Some of it is stuff I don't find particularly interesting at first glance and probably wouldn't like on second glance either.
Inside any mainstream bookstore, a Borders or B&N or whatever, you can find the classics and the award-winners and the critics' picks, but you can also find Firmer Buns in 30 Days and The Incredibly Incredible Adventures of Bulge Centurion and the Planet of the Lost Mary Sues. If someone wants to read about Bulge Centurion, I say bully for you and thanks for reading and my personal handshake for helping to keep the cogs of the book industry greased with your dollars and next time maybe you'll take a risk and buy one of MY books to keep ol' Bulge company, who knows.
I look at TV the same way. You want to watch Wheel of Fortune? Knock yourself out. You want to watch nothing but PBS and Alton Brown and Nick at Night? Get down with your bad self. You want to gorge on 120 consecutive hours of Buffy and Angel? Or sit and watch sports? Or swoon to a combination of This Old House, Invader Zim, and Touched by an Angel? Don't forget the popcorn! It's no skin off my nose what you watch or whether you watch at all. I am pro-choice.
Here's the thing: I don't watch television. It's not a political statement. It's not a social statement, or at least not one that's intended to be one in any critical way and particularly not in any more-intellectual-than-thou sort of way (given all the trouble I've had to go through in order to learn what I need to know to do even small amounts of pop culture historiography and analysis for my current book project? sssshyeah, right, I'll be finding a nose to look down real soon, you bet, because for me, doing this research has been almost like having to learn a new language – it's been difficult and demanding).
I just don't watch it. I haven't in nearly two decades. I'm out of the habit and I have been out of the habit now for longer than I was ever in the habit to begin with. I go into a hotel room and don't even see the television because I'm not in the habit of looking at them; when the Belovedary turns it on to get a weather forecast on the Weather Channel, I am always sort of stunned when the big glowy box comes to life and it's like suddenly there is another Presence in the room. Just last week I happened to look at a list of Baltimore area TV stations that was part of a survey I was filling out and realized that it was the first time I'd ever been aware of how many broadcast stations this area has or what their call letters might've been. It's a whole aspect of things to which I simply don't pay any attention. I spend about as many brain cycles on things televisual as I do on remembering the date of my next prostate exam, and for the same reason... it simply does not apply to me or involve me in any way whatever.
Think of me as a visitor from another planet, maybe it'll be easier that way.
-- Hanne
