Pavlov’s Remote

I’m conditioned, you’re conditioned, wouldn't you like to be conditioned too!

                One of us.           One of us.           One of us.           One of us.       

I haven’t watched commercial TV with any regularity in many years. I've recently started watching Hulu again, I was there in the beginning when almost everything was free, and I've come to appreciate the commercial break. Is it because I grew up in the first real TV generation when the formulaic wasn't a formula yet. A time of “Gilligan’s Island”, “The Brady Bunch”, “Nanny and the Professor”, and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”. We were the first latchkey kids and TV actually was our babysitter. I’m fighting the urge to make this about TV in the 70’s.

I've noticed that the brief commercial break on Hulu is perfect for a moment of reflection. This past moment was spent reflecting on my seemingly conditioned response to commercials. Of course that led me to reflect on if the commercials created the reflection or if the reflections determined when the commercials occur. Then I thought about pie.

So how did commercials come to be where they are? Did TV execs use a series of tests? Did they hire psychiatrists or medical doctors to create a double-blind experiment (I can’t think of how they’d do a double-blind test either)? Did they throw darts? Or could it be they determined how much they could cram in and not drive us bat-crap?

Sadly, it’s most likely the last one, but I think they may have gone too far. My evidence, scant or imaginary at best, leads me to ask another question: Did the ever growing amount of commercial time drive the creation of technology allowing us to take greater control of our leisure time? Of course, leisure time is probably not the best descriptor of time we spend watching TV; TV has become the white noise that provides background for our lives. Or at least it had.

Entertainment today is not the passive medium it once was. Entertainment today requires commitment, effort on our part, so the commercial break is sometimes seen as a nostalgic throwback, a forced calm in the storm giving us a break from our entertainment. Why should we need a break from entertainment?

We are conditioned to always look for something better. I think this is an innate quality, but still conditioned by somebody. When I was young I lived in Los Angeles where we had 7 channels, 8 if we include PBS, but I was lucky; when I lived in central Utah we had 3, so it took only minutes to check if something better was available. Also, TV was a linear, time-driven medium; programs came and went, never to be seen again for the most part (like formulas, syndication developed its roots here). So you made your decision quickly and lived with it.

Today the choices are effectively limitless. There are more than enough choices so that new programming is always available because there are more choices than time. Among all this comes the forgotten commercial.

Kick back and enjoy them.

Help, My Participle is Dangling!

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

I've been watching TV for quite a while, hours in fact. In that brief time I've been witness to a series of assaults on something we all hold dear, something that is as much a part of our life as anything ever has, or ever will be. It’s a code we pass to our children as individuals, as a community, and as a culture.

Lately, though, I've noticed the standards we held people to in the past are dropping.

There are always local deviations within a culture as large as ours, that is to be expected. They could be regional or sub-cultural differences, with smaller variations depending on population density (meme level); new parts constantly are emerging, traversing ever finer filtering as they spread, if they have what it takes they gain wider and wider acceptance; once established they will rise and fall in popularity, eventually earning spots in the numerous listings that are used to validate them.

Though the parts change, the rules for their use remain broad, simple in concept, often difficult and illogical in application. This is to be expected when something is this vital to the survival of our species, the growth and survival to be sure. It would certainly be a critical part of how our species rose to prominence, whether planned or unplanned, and how it plans on remaining there.

A question came to me while watching TV: Are the scriptwriters aware of their dangling participles?

I would be afraid to try and edit any of this. We read Huckleberry Finn and find the language quaint, but was it the way they spoke or is it the way Twain wanted us to believe they spoke? If the latter, isn't art affecting culture instead of reflecting life?

I've often paraphrased Leslie Slote in “Winds of War” when I point to art, in the broadest usage possible, as the “exhaust gas” of our civilization; that by examining this gas we can see the workings of the culture that produced it.

What, then, does our exhaust gas say?