One of the few things I respect about mainstream TV is how utterly shallow and addictive it is. In many ways it’s like crack: it doesn’t pretend that it’s good for you but it gets you to where you want to go way more effectively than tofu or wheatgrass juice or organic dolphin-friendly tuna caught with rod and line. Sometimes it achieves high artistic standards too, but this is usually a fluke, which happens despite the medium rather than because of it. TV isn’t like film or opera or theatre or sculpture or any of that poncy stuff. Its main job is to get you out of it as quickly as possible — an opiate for the masses.
I got a sense of its true purpose the other day when I ventured up to the Rat’s lair to call him down for supper. The Rat is 23 now and soon to leave home, so I am making the most of all the final insights he has been offering me into the mysteries of early twentysomething existence.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘How It’s Made.’
The titles on the screen informed me that I was about to learn how a steering column in a car is manufactured.
‘Do I really care about how steering columns on cars are made?’
‘Oh, you will. Just watch,’ said the Rat.
So I did and he was dead right. You’ve no idea just how fascinating is the process by which a steering column on a car is manufactured. Well, not unless you’ve seen it for yourself on How It’s Made (Discovery). First they take a steel tube-y thing. Then they shape it and cut holes in it with a laser cutter. Then they smooth it some more. Then they weld it. Then they put a thingy over it to hide the welding. Then they micro-weld it. Then they polish it until it is so smooth that you can hardly see the weld. Then…
I’m guessing it doesn’t read as excitingly on paper as it looks on screen. But How It’s Made is one of those perfect TV concepts that you wish you’d thought of yourself: cheap to film; a never-ending supply of subject matter (anything that is manufactured, basically); and compulsively watchable because it casts ordinary household objects (pepper mills, say) in a completely new light, transforming the quotidian into objects of delight. Especially when you’re a skunked twentysomething, I would imagine.
After How It’s Made, the Rat flicked over to another of his favourites The Dog Whisperer (National Geographic). I’m sure I’m way behind the curve on this one: after all, South Park devoted a whole episode to it and it has been going since 2004. But in case, like me, you don’t make much use of your satellite TV channels, it’s about a Mexican–American called Cesar Millan who can do amazing things with delinquent dogs.
Really, it’s like a canine Supernanny and offers pretty much the same satisfying narrative arc. A couple are shown struggling to cope with their neurotic/aggressive/rabid hound but it’s hopeless: truly they own the most incorrigible pet in the world. Enter Cesar with his shiny capped teeth (his books have sold over two million, so he can afford that kind of thing). Cesar consults his inner dog. In a trice, with a few subtle snout/eye movements he has the recalcitrant pet under his complete control. Then he trains the owners. It’s their fault really. The problem is solved, everyone is happy, and lots of viewers have been entertained because it’s about dogs.
Just now I popped into see the Rat again and this time he was watching Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. This is a programme in which various zappy young Americans explode or — in rare cases — confirm popular urban myths/movie clichés/historical factoids. For example: is it possible to shoot a bullet at a target and have it ricochet on three walls so that it comes back and kills you? And: is it possible to use a live tree in order to project — catapult-like — a plague-ridden body into a besieged fortress?
These are good questions, important questions. But as is the way with US TV, the programme takes slightly longer to answer them than one might prefer, and with rather too much amused self-congratulation and with too many ad breaks. Still, it’s nice when you eventually get to the answers. (‘No’ and ‘No’, in case you were wondering.)
Oh, to be 23 again.
Comments