On Watching TV: A Small Rant

I started this as a piece of cultural criticism a few months ago and never returned to it.  I was reminded of it this morning, after seeing yet another TV bashing piece on Twitter.  Enjoy.

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Here’s the thing.  I like TV.  I grew up with the TV on in the evenings and even now when I visit my mom it’s sort of expected that I sit down with her in the living room even if there’s “nothing good” on.  I’ve gone through periods when I needed to focus, really focus, like when I was studying for my PhD qualifying exams, and can do without; I watched The X-Files as a Sunday ritual with my best friend, but otherwise, for the bulk of that year I had a sign taped to my 13-inch set that said NO.  I respected it.  I passed my exams with distinction and ended up having a minor Bell Jar episode the following summer.  I literally couldn’t read (migraine aura/distorted vision).  I did, however, manage to check out stacks of free movies from the public library and watched them for hours on end.

These days, with a little more balance in my life, I enjoy the act of sitting down on the couch and watching a story at night to unwind [update:  right now I can only watch in my bed in the dark but the general point still holds]; I use the commercial breaks to get up and do the dinner dishes or pack a kid’s school lunch.  Mostly these days I like binge watching a single series, watching a 23 minute episode in a night on DVD or maybe on Hulu and then turning to something new.  The past month’s rotation has involved my introduction to The Big Bang Theory, season 5 of Nurse Jackie, some episodes of Chopped while I was away at a conference, Gillian Anderson in BBC’s The Fall (it’s Gillian—I’d watch her in anything!) and The Good Wife, which is the only show I actually watch “live.”  Last night, I stayed up late to watch it, given the hype over THE MOST SHOCKING EPISODE EVER (indeed, it actually was) and then had a hard time falling asleep, despite Lunesta on top of a glass of wine.  It was worth it.  Oh my goodness it was worth it.  But I think tonight I’m going back to The Big Bang Theory; it’s funny, and it doesn’t hamper my ability to fall asleep.

I’m not saying much here that you don’t already know; Americans love to watch television, as statistics indicate.  (Even my two-year-old likes to sit down and watch his 15 minutes of Eddie Murphy in Daddy Daycare before heading to preschool, much to my dismay.)  But there’s also a growing narrative about time management or productivity that says if you want to do more, all you need to do is cut TV.  When you sit down on your death bed, the story goes, do you want to remember that you watched a lot of TV or that you learned to watercolor/studied Hebrew/knitted a scarf for your dog.  Particularly for an academic single mother of two who struggles to find time to do what needs doing, it goes without saying I “shouldn’t” be watching TV but reading/writing/doing the dishes/exercising.  And while it would be very easy for me to rationalize my TV habit and write it off as “research”—I have written scholarly articles about popular culture and am “core faculty” in our program’s new popular culture concentration—I’d like to own it for what it is.  An activity that I enjoy that I am choosing to do.  I’m choosing to spend those roughly 30 minutes per day (it really is rare that I can watch a whole hour long episode of anything) watching TV.  Not reading.  Not coloring my patterns coloring book I bought to unwind.  Not exercising.  Not sweeping the floor.  Not writing the Great American Novel.  And I’m okay with that.

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