Tough Choices
Most of our lives we are seldom faced with really tough choices. We play with the cards that fate has dealt us. How we look, for example: the color of our skin, the size and shape of our bodies, and most important of all, our gender. Yes, in recent years sex changes have become possible, and that would make for very hard choices, but for the most part, we try to cope with the realities of everyday life. We are happy and take for granted the gifts that almost all of us are born with, sight and hearing.
Yes, even at my advanced age, I have good eyes and ears. I know that I am very, very lucky to get by with drugstore eyeglasses, and the hearing gadgets offered at some theatres. A less frugal person might scoff at these, but if they let me keep those gifts of sight and hearing, and enjoy life, why not use them?
Recently, it is the quality of what my ancient eyes and ears are absorbing that disturbs me. Even with ridiculously low maintenance costs for ways to make me see and hear better, I am more and more troubled by the amount of pure trash that I look at, totally bemused, on the TV.
There was a time some years ago when my husband and I spent lovely, escapist hours on freighter cruises. For periods as long as eight or ten weeks we lived very happily without any reminders of the outside world: the tiny ship’s lounge offered no TV or radio. Once in a while we would get a copy of the International Herald Tribune and catch up on the latest news such as the Chicago convention hoopla or the Watergate scandal, but we never got really het up about it. How pleasant it was to feel a sense of isolation from the violence and corruption of daily life as we cruised over the Mediterranean. For relaxation we played bridge and backgammon, did needlepoint, read avidly, and conversed with all kinds of interesting people. Life could indeed be beautiful without TV.
Those travel days are over now, and as other avenues are closed, TV becomes an increasingly important part of my life. Unfortunately, it has also become an increasingly tasteless, sordid kind of entertainment. I guess the Age of Innocence vanished when it was discovered that reality shows that “expose all” could be so cheaply produced without hiring writers, set designers or actors. Why pay for talent when you can peer through a peephole and watch ordinary people cast off all dignity and shame. Every human emotion or physical act can now be seen on TV. Even on scripted scenes, action is sometimes set in urinals, and one story even went so far as to picture a man “enthroned,” his pants around his ankles. Yes, on TV we can almost picture it all: urination, defecation and fornication – but do weneed it?
TV or not TV? That is the question. Do I really want to keep up with our world, and all its ugliness and depravity, or with a touch, turn it off completely? It is a very tough choice. Right now, a set of Jane Austen’s novels looks pretty good to me.