Sometimes, on my drive in to work, I catch
Dick Estell‘s
The Radio Reader program on the local NPR
station. Estell reads contemporary fiction and non-fiction. I almost never
catch an entire book on his show, but he’s a nice alternative to talk radio
when I’m not in the mood for music.
So, when I caught a few episodes of Estell reading
, by Ellen Currey-Wilson, I thought it
was a really bad novel about a mother who decides she’s going to try to raise
her son without exposing him to television. It had all the characteristics of
a bad novel: there was no plot to speak of, there was little indirect
characterization, the dialog was agenda-driven and stiff, the point-of-view
character (it’s written in first person) was smug and basically unlikable
(and–as a Volvo-driving, health-food store shopping Democrat from Portland,
OR–a rather blatant caricature of a middle-class liberal), and the few efforts
at description were largely an exercise in listing product brand names.
These things annoyed me, but I started thinking I wasn’t giving the writer
enough credit. Perhaps, the author, though this incompetent narrator, was
trying to make a larger point: that someone inundated with television viewing
would only be able to describe her world in such a bland, lifeless way. Since \
the plot involves abstaining from television–and since the narrator is new to
that idea–I figured the descriptions would become more detailed and the
narration more complicated after she had distanced herself from her steady diet
of TV, nicely underscoring the main point.
What I found out was, this is bad non-fiction, not bad fiction. It really is
the tale of a mother on a mission to raise her child without the influence of
television.
Mind you, when I say “without the influence,” I don’t mean that the parent in
question seeks, as any reasonable parent would, only to limit her child’s
intake of TV. Her goal is to prevent her child from seeing TV and movies
entirely, not only in her own home but in the homes of others and in the public
sphere as well. This complicates play dates, of course (and oh, what a
fascinating oportunity for plot complication that makes). But we’re also
treated to a ridiculous episode of the mother attempting to shield her son
from TVs playing in the background of some store. She has decided–based on,
I suppose, intuition, as no scientific evidence is presented–that the child
will be allowed a reasonable amount of TV viewing (“reasonable” = two hours per
week) once he reaches the age of seven. Why seven becomes the magic number,
I’m not sure.
Movies are included in the ban as well.
is dismissed as “obnoxious.” And that level of “nuanced” critique is what makes
Currey-Wilson’s entire project so uncompelling. While the alternatives to TV
that the author presents (hicking, art projects, board games) are solid
recommendations, I’m troubled that at the smug pride she takes in choosing
Harry Potter novels over television. You read that right: not Shakespeare,
not Joyce, not Faulkner, not even–to stick with the genre–Tolkien. No
friends, it is Harry frickin Potter who will save western culture from itself.
Perhaps I’m just being defense. I watch quite a bit more TV now than I would
like. In the past, I’ve taken TV abstinence to the point of obnoxiousness.
I’ve only secommed to cable TV recenctly. For several years, my only television
was a black-and-white Philco that I kept on top of my refrigerator and only
took down on special occasions. I even read Jerry Mander’s
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
and largely agreed with his central points. But there is quite a bit of good
TV out there, and film is a serious art form. Beyond that, I’m always troubled
by temperance movements. What kids need are the tools to dissect the messages
that come at them, via whatever media. This head-in-the-sand approach, based
on the idea that bad art is somehow viral and will infect the mind and the soul,
is different in degree but not in kind from the logic that delights the
heart of censors and book burners everywhere. People like Currey-Wilson lack
the historical perspective to realize that many of the same objections she has
to television (that it limits creativity, encourages idleness, wastes time that
could be more valuably spend in more important pursuits, etc.) were, not
long back, aimed at
.
Too much of anything is a bad thing. Water is a good thing, but drinking too
much of it will kill you.
While I admire Currey-wilson’s desire to give her son alternatives to what my
own mother always described as “the idiot box,” there’s little to admire in
the thinking that gets her there and the prose in which it is couched.