In defense of television

How about something a little different this weekend? I promise I’ll get back to stand-up comedy tomorrow.

One of my favorite blogs is called The Genius in All of Us, by David Shenk. It covers a lot of Outliers-type territory; namely, the idea that genius isn’t a spontaneous act of expression so much as it is a long hard slog of cultivated excellence. David is usually spot-on with everything he writes, but I took exception to his recent jeremiad about television.

It’s the same tiresome argument you’ve heard before: TV is evil, not owning a TV is the height of modern-day enlightenment, blah blah blah. Anyway, it made me cranky, and I responded at length. An excerpt from my response:

…as a writer, David, I’d think you’d be supportive of the flourishing landscape that TV has recently provided for excellent writing. The center of gravity for great storytelling in Hollywood has long since moved from movies to TV (I’d say “the small screen,” but many of them are pushing 50″ these days). The proliferation of cable channels has led to some daring artistic choices, like the use of serial-arc narratives over the course of a full season. When you can tell a story for 13 or 24 hours instead of just two or three, you can breathe a lot more life into the characters; a lot more subtlety into the plot; a lot more complexity into the narrative.

Good writing is good writing. Complaining about the medium itself is literally pointless; it’s the refuge of the curmudgeon. Does the exact same story become “better,” in a normative sense, simply because it’s shown in an arthouse cinema or on a theater stage instead of on television? Of course not.

“We’d all be better off if we watched a lot less.” Speak for yourself. It’s a part of the human condition, traceable at least to Homer, that we like to be told stories. If it takes dreck on TV like “Two and a Half Men” to get network executives to also give us The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Lost, Dexter, Rome, Rescue Me, etc. etc. then so be it. Nobody’s forcing us to watch anything we don’t want to.

The rest is at the original story, Is Losing Your TV Signal A Bad Thing? My full comment is the second one down. Sometimes it’s fun to rant.

Housekeeping

Whenever I hear the word “housekeeping” I always hear it in David Spade’s fake maid voice from Tommy Boy, when he’s trying to get Chris Farley up in the morning. “Housekeeping… you want me jerk you off?” “What kind of hotel is this…?”

Anyway! Until recently, the “Friend CJ on Facebook!” link on the side of the page was apparently broken (special thanks to Jenna for pointing that out). It’s now been updated with my brand new, home-at-9pm-last-Friday-to-register-it alias:

http://www.facebook.com/cj.alexander

Go ahead, click it. Let’s be e-friends!

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