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ENTERTAINING NOT INFORMING
by Daren Foster

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DAREN FOSTER PODCAST September 1 2009 - PRESS PLAY TO LISTEN

ENTERTAINING NOT INFORMING
by Daren Foster

***If you get your entertainment from the news, where do you get your news?***

I don’t know what other people do with their time but I sit and ponder a lot. It takes up good chunks of my day. I think I may be particularly good at it. Or, at least, I prefer it to having a real job where I might have to think about things other than myself. That would suck.

The downside to all the pondering or leading a contemplative lifestyle as I like to think of it, is that, well, one can find oneself pondering about nothing. I’m not talking about the concept of nothingness or anything nearly so philosophically elevated. No. I’m staring blankly at nothing in particular, thinking absolutely nothing in particular. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow, meow.

Once you go there and that Homer Simpson moment gets lodged in your semi-self-consciousness, it inevitably dawns on you that you’re probably hungry. At which time, all the pondering becomes about what you’re hungry for, what’s in the fridge and just how old is too old for mayonnaise.

This kind of brain freeze (mmmmm, freezee…) is especially prevalent when it comes to pondering points pop cultural. Thinking about, reading about, watching, writing about television and the movies forces you to spend a lot of your pondering time pondering nothing, emptiness, all that which is devoid of meaning. Man, did you see that last episode of Lost? It was mind blowing, man!

?????????

Or: Did you see that bit on SNL last week? It was hilarious! What’s that now? SNL? Hilarious?! Did they change something up? I mean, they haven’t been hilarious since… well, never mind. That would just date me.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. Coming this Christmas to a cinema near you! I shit you not.

You’re killing me, here. How am I supposed to contribute anything of value if most of what I’m watching is value-less? Anything times zero equals zero. Sure, the odd piece of red meat gets thrown my way; that certain something I can really sink my teeth into and I embrace it to my chest as if I’ve just discovered a cure for cancer (getting my metaphors all mixed up in the process). Unfortunately, the tasty meals arrive on my plate fewer and farther between. Mostly it’s gruel that’s flung in my direction and I think it no accident that ‘gruel’ and ‘Squeakuel’ almost rhyme in a weird sort of way.

I’m starting not to give a fuck is the shorter way I could’ve said it and saved you about 400 words and a bunch of annoying Google ads in the process. (How to tell when a writer is approaching the end of his creative tether? He goes all self-referentially postmodern on your ass, paraphrasing Tarantino along the way.) I can’t muster the enthusiasm to pretend that these things matter because things that are made solely for the purpose of selling shit to people, whether through slick TV commercials that often times overshadow the show, or the over-priced confections you pick up before the main feature, don’t matter a hill o’ beans or a tinker’s dam.

It’s all product and what can you say about product other than it’s good or bad or loud or nothing but pure and utter snake oil?

Besides, when it comes to leisure time diversion these days, the news and information departments of the media conglomerates that fill up our movie screens and own all the channels on our TV sets have it in spades over their co-workers in the entertainment arm of the companies. Are you kidding me? Have you tuned into the Glenn Beck Show over at Fox recently? Caught any Bill O’Reilly clips on YouTube lately? Watched Wolf Blitzer try to pretend he’s anything other than a robotic survivor from Westworld?

News and information programming are no longer filled with newsmen but with stock characters from the shows you used to watch growing up. The Blitz as the dim and ineffectual but ultimately benign father figure. Like a bearded version of Max Wright’s Willie Tanner in ALF. Bill O is the aggressively opinionated widowed uncle or father-in-law who refuses to let an argument go and is prone to walking in on people in the shower because he wants to restate a point he made hours earlier. A WASP version of almost any character Jerry Stiller plays. And of course, Glenn Beck is the crazy neighbour; not so much Kramer on Seinfeld as Newman. Overweight, certifiably insane and unable to act.

These are the folks that fill my days with entertainment. Gone are Deniro and Pacino, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks. If the world of entertainment is now trying to pawn off the likes of Dane Cook, Adam Sandler and hell, even Leonardo DiCaprio, I’ll take a pass, thanks very much, and flip up through the channels to where the real action is: cable news networks and their roster of performing monkeys -- if you subtract a few IQ points and a large chunk of self-awareness. And like chimps, they are certainly willing to throw their shit at you.

Sure they’re bad at what they do -- unless you count stirring up small factions of ill-informed and irrational white people into a blind, incomprehensible fury. But can’t we say the same thing about those who bring you Two and a Half Men or Tony Scott? The difference is, Charlie Sheen thinks he’s funny and he’s not. Beck, O’Reilly and Blitzer don’t think they’re funny and they are. There’s a very important difference and it is in that finely nuanced space where I find my entertainment these days.

Think of it as another platform for interactive programming where the viewer determines exactly how to watch the content. While I’m sure those providing the content hope that at least a portion of the audience takes it at face value as a legitimate form of diligently researched and objectively arrived at news or information, there are those of us who sit back and see it more as a circus freak show. Modern day P.T. Barnum, Rupert Murdoch’s Stable of Unstables. Blubbering, blathering, bloviating! Step right up and see the grown man pop a gasket! Over at CNN, see the world’s most lifelike avatar. It talks. It reads a teleprompter. It’s almost human. Almost.

But honestly, such ironic detachment can become tiresome. I really do want to like what I take time out to watch. It certainly makes writing about them a whole lot easier. What’s that they say about it taking more muscles to frown than to laugh? I want to laugh along with sitcoms, not at them. I want to grin and nod my head appreciatively at an intelligent, provocative hour long drama or movie. Yet playing it straight and hoping for the best only seems to lead to inevitable disappointment. It’s the lowered expectations with the hacks and cranks that holds my attention and keeps me amused.

Does that say more about me or the state of entertainment these days? That’s a question I’ll have to ponder for a bit to figure out if it’s all still worth the effort.