I’ve been scraping the bottom of the pop culture barrel recently. All in the name of journalistic research, you understand. Television is fascinating precisely because it’s so popular, there is no better representation of general human preoccupations: this is who we are. And yet, my fascination is also a sort of macabre masochistic experiment: how long can I subject myself to lobotomy-by-broadcast before I reach rock bottom and am able to count my brain cells with the fingers of one hand.
In a strange way, I’m looking for clues in the hive mind; if I allow my brain to pickle long enough in the soapy brine of group-think, maybe I’ll get the message, see the light, unlock the code, find the key. Find a point of reference in the manipulative media matrix that connects with me at some meaningful level, or repulses me enough to jolt me back into remembering what it was like to be an individual. With every channel scrapping in the mud to find the next Lowest Common Denominator of entertainment, maybe I’ll unearth some undiscovered jewel, a Prime Number, something incorruptible. Something original. I’m like an alien observing Earthlings for signs of intelligence, a couch-potato fifth columnist. Under cover.
It’s massive self-delusion, of course, escapism at its most banal; but there are worse ways to escape. Far worse. But it’s still pap; the word comes from the mixture of flour and water that poverty-stricken mothers used to make up for their starving infants; looking like the real thing, but completely useless for nutrition. Maybe if I pour enough of it down my throat I’ll eventually gag and start screaming for the real stuff, the real food of life. Lord, let me switch off the remote. But not yet.
I have seen enough gritty American crime drama to give me a thorough grounding in forensics. I know exactly how to leave a clean crime scene behind me, in the wake of whatever nefarious atrocity I choose to commit. No flies on me. Only on the corpse. I’m certain, now, I could pass a lie detector test, and am sure I could resist the devious methods that clever cops use to get a perp to confess. I know all about psychological profiling and could easily frame someone else for my crimes, if I had the whim. I can predict whodunnit within the first five minutes of each show. It’s all in the casting.
On the medical front, I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to know how to diagnose all sorts of ailments, know when to call for an MRI or CT scan, when and how to intubate, and am a dab hand at knowing when to call the time of death. It’s always when the doctors start sweating. An armchair God, I can recognise which character is a goner, before they even know it. Again, casting is the clue; but in medical dramas, it’s who is playing the relative/partner/parent that matters. Whoever gives good grief.
I don’t buy into the bourgeois notion that we are civilised, as a species; perhaps I’ve been listening to too many stories in the day job, of how badly people treat each other. It’s a jungle out there, I tell you. Give me unexpurgated base behaviour on television, when people are in extremis, battling away for something that matters, fictional or real, and it relaxes me. I’m odd, I know. But, I’m not alone.
But, rest assured, I still have standards. I’ve avoided the TV equivalent of crystal meth: resisted the entire series of Big Brother this year, as have many people I know; hopefully that brand of sadistic TV has had its day, subjecting talentless exhibitionists to the torture of months of boredom. TV presenting is a skill, I grudgingly concede, but there has got to be a less mind-numbing way of auditioning for the next generation of airhead presenters than 13 weeks of trial by tedium. I will probably tune in for the final week, just to see what character type has floated to the top of the Big Brother Bog this year. Clues. Looking for clues.
My fix of choice, however, my TV smack: fashion. I’ve been compulsively watching reruns of competitions such as Project Runway, Next Top Model and Make Me A Supermodel. What’s weird is that I’ve not been a fashion queen before – prior to this summer of goggle-box gluttony I paid no notice whatsoever to women’s frocks or even pretended to understand labels or seasons or what style is in or not. When a friend of mine lamented that she hadn’t a clue what to wear for a date, I told her that’s when a “gay best friend” would be useful, if she knew of any. I could do with one of those, myself.
But, I’m getting into it now. There is something magical when a model gives good face in a photo, or struts her stuff down a catwalk; something mesmeric, archetypal. Why some beautiful women are photogenic, and others are not, remains a mystery. Those who succeed are instinctive artists, masters of a curious alchemy, producing breathtaking results. Ever since I got hooked, I’ve been noticing women far more; the line of a jaw, the smile in an eye, the set of a shoulder. This is not the same as eroticism; because the multi-billion dollar fashion industry, and modelling itself at its highest level, is all about women performing and posing for other women, judging each other, competing with each other, seeking praise from each other. It is women who define and refine beauty.
At the opposite end of the gender spectrum, about as far as you can go, the Olympics has me watching our lads try to knock the lights out of as many men as possible, in the “noble art” of boxing. And, getting medals for it; more than the USA has managed. A boxer is his body; there is no concern about one’s image, action is all. The clowning, genial, unassuming, warm blast of masculine energy that is Kenny Egan, when he won his place in the boxing finals, caught my attention, arrested me. The ultimate in unreconstructed retrosexual maleness, when he found himself surrounded by cameras, he minced around like a model in the ring, play-acting, pretending to revel in the adulation. But the boxing world is one of the last bastions of a type of masculinity that, in Ireland at least, is blissfully un-self-conscious and dignified. Watching the RTÉ panellists discussing the matches afterwards was a joy. The former boxers discussing the “sweet science” were the epitome of proud, passionate, eloquent working class Irish men. I’m in love, again.
TV. All human life is there. If you watch it long enough.