MetaChat - I hate War on Terror TV

Man, PBS has been on a roll this week. Last nigth the American Experience with not one but two shows, first on the Spanish Flu and the Second on the Bubble Boy. Tonight was Frontline's show on the Tank Man of Tiananmen.

But, in between I'm flipping the channels in between and come across Mark Harmon on NCIS saving the world from North Korean car bombs. If it's not that, it's 24 or The Unit. Propagandistic, militaristic, jingoistic and cravenly cryptofascistic, to boot.

We may be getting get ours handed to us in real life Iraq but, man, on TV, we are whupping serious terrorist ass. And we win, everytime. It's like big network primetime is either CSI, Survivor, American's Next Top Model or, else, all these yee haw infomercials for the New American Project. It is so depressing.

I doubt I am the only one who finds all these TV cop/spy/special forces TV dramas more than a bit alarming--and you ?

posted by y2karl 12 April | 02:00

I've noticed the growing number of shows that have terror as a central theme. And movies.

Maybe its because we "win" in all the shows that Dubya thinks we're doing better than we are?

And I'll go on record again as saying 24 is one of the worst shows on tv, it is pathetically stupid.

posted by fenriq 12 April | 02:08

I'm depressed with the crime and murder shows: i'm tired of trying to avoid dead poeple shows.

posted by dhruva 12 April | 02:28

hell yeah frontline rules. coincidently someone in #tapes just linked to this interesting comment imho on frontline's discussion page:

There is another Tank Man. He was driving the tank and chose (or did he?) not to crush the one tank man we saw on TV. Those two clearly talked to one another. What did they say? And is it possible that, in the end, the reason why the man in front of the tank survived was that the one inside it refused to take part in this bloodshed? Was he resisting orders? If that was the case, then what happened to him? The drama that was unfolding during those few, intense minutes should really be entitled "The Tank Men". -Pierre Godin // Montreal, Quebec

the broadcasts are also available at their website... definitely worth checking out if you've missed them. i thought the insurgency was especially riveting. (and as i've said before,) shows like nova, frontline, and even sesame street are far superior to all the bland, unoriginal, stupefyingly stupid garbage on "commercial" tv by, like, several orders of magnitude.

posted by Wedge 12 April | 05:56

oh, i think you've put your finger on the answer to why dumbyuh was re-elected, why the populace continues to sink into a messianic daze, and any number of truly confounding situations. the american public is mesmerized. turn it off, for fuck's sake.

posted by quonsar 12 April | 06:28

Perhaps it renders me uncool, but I rarely watch TV. The only staples I stick to are Antiques Roadshow (makes Mondays bearable),american chopper,the weather channel, and jeopardy.

I agree it's sad that so many watch the garbage on the air, and believe it. I mean, if you want to meditate and zone out, why don't you, say, meditate?!

posted by chewatadistance 12 April | 06:47

Nevermore - The Tiananmen Man

posted by mike9322 12 April | 07:06

mornin, q!

without a doubt. most everyone thought/thinks mander was nutbar, but he was spot on:

TV encourages mass passivity, burns images permanently into our brain that are chosen by an elite few and trains people to accept authority. Television limits and confines human knowledge. It accelerates our alienation from nature and leads to its destruction. Television homogenizes those who watch it, making the population more efficient cogs in the economic system, making the population easier to control. Television is inherently antidemocratic--furthermore it aids the creation of societal conditions which produce autocracy, and it dulls our awareness that this is happening. Television, as a technology, is inherently biased towards these effects--they cannot be eliminated by better management or better programming.

of course, who would've guessed the bush administration would actually use the text as a how-to guide.

posted by Wedge 12 April | 07:16

Have you guys even watched 24 this season? Several high-ranking U.S. government types, including the president, are collaborating with the terrorists.

posted by danostuporstar 12 April | 07:25

Have you guys even watched 24 this season? Several high-ranking U.S. government types, including the president, are collaborating with the terrorists.

case in point re: unoriginality in tv programming... that plot was totally ripped off from c-span!

posted by Wedge 12 April | 07:39

The threat of 24 and its ilk is that it normalizes the idea of torturing suspected criminals and terrorists. Jack Bauer gets in deep, then finds the right guy to torture, guts are spilled, and the plot thickens.

The viewing public, caught up in the drama, accepts without thought the premise that torture yields valuable intelligence. It doesn't. Governments uniformly condemn torture not only because it is barbaric, but because coerced intelligence is suspect from the moment it is gathered.

I guarantee that, under torture, I could be made to admit any number of untruths: that I was a 9/11 hijacker, that my mother stands twelve feet tall in her stockings, that I was point man in the Iran-Contra affair. Anything to stop the pain.

But on TV, torture works, and advances the plot. It also advances the cause of the brutal bigots who would pervert the constitution and rule of law to pursue a threat they have created and fueled with, among other things, their attempts to first hide and then justify torture in secret prisons.

Ask a fan of the show; I've become distressed of late to find how many folks are saying, "Torture worked last night on 24, what's keeping us from using it in Iraq or Afghanistan?"

What, indeed?

posted by Hugh Janus 12 April | 08:07

Yeah, I'm with HJ on that one. That's why I don't watch that show.

posted by selfnoise 12 April | 08:30

This is why I only watch TV Land. TV the way it was meant to be.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 08:33

I find it quite difficult to express my feelings on this. I think the reason this kind of television is popular is that people feel really comfortable and protected, safe and untouchable.

It makes them scared but only in the way horror movies do, the horror itself being an unlikely and distant threat.

For example the feelings of detachment from the war in Iraq that people seem to have are very worrying. To go to war for so little is only possible when people can comfortably feel it's nothing to do with them. No sacrifice, no loss, just pixels on a screen.

While it's good that we no longer have the draft, doesn't it detach people even more? While it's good that this war doesn't put many of us in the poor house, doesn't it just make it easier to forget about what we're doing?

And when you don't have to think about it too hard, isn't it much easier to watch all this crap?

posted by dodgygeezer 12 April | 08:34

I'm sorry to hear that your life is so shallow and empty that you must fill up your time watching TV. Amusing yourself to death, indeed.

Orwell got it wrong. The drooling masses aren't controlled by watching them on TV. It's so much more economical to control them by having them watch TV. Big Brother is not a snooper, he's a spectacle.

I'm off to the centifugal bumble-puppy.

posted by warbaby 12 April | 09:06

Governments uniformly condemn torture not only because it is barbaric, but because coerced intelligence is suspect from the moment it is gathered.

Thing is, even if a TV show did do a scene where The Terrorist gives incorrect information after being tortured, the follow up scene when the lie comes out would almost certainly be one that blames him for not playing fair after our brave boys went to the trouble of genital electrocution.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 12 April | 09:06

I'm sorry to hear that your life is so shallow and empty that you must fill up your time watching TV. Amusing yourself to death, indeed.

While watchin' a whole lot of TV is no way to live, ignorance of your culture is not considered cool either.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 12 April | 09:13

My favorite show, 8th & Ocean, has been entirely terror-free during the first few episodes. Here's the highlight of last night's show (how I remember it anyway):

[young male model on date with young female model]
Male model: "So, what are you looking for in a guy?"
Female model: "Um, I want him to be good looking."
Male model: "But, what else beyond that? Like, what, in particular, should be good-looking about him?"

posted by mullacc 12 April | 09:28

ignorance of your culture is not considered cool either.

"culture"? can you say that with a straight face?

posted by Wedge 12 April | 09:32

There are some shows I like on TV. I'm not going to apologize for it, and I don't think it makes me shallow or empty.

posted by mike9322 12 April | 09:38

actually, Wedge, I've always found that popular culture like TV, records, comics and pulp fiction tell as much (if not more) about a culture than the stuff with intelligentsia approval. It's all culture, man.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 09:39

Yeah, disdaining TV-watchers out-of-hand is like disdaining blacks or women out-of-hand. They're all large portions of the population that are as varied in their outlooks as they are in their viewing habits.

Personally, I don't watch much TV. But I think it's stupid to discriminate against those who do.

posted by Hugh Janus 12 April | 09:53

"culture"? can you say that with a straight face?

Sure. For instance, Socialist Realist fiction of the Soviet age is almost entirely shit (though often hilarious), but you cannot understand the culture of that time without being exposed to some of it.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 12 April | 09:54

I think we've all been exposed to sufficient quantities of television.

posted by knave 12 April | 10:05

While watchin' a whole lot of TV is no way to live, ignorance of your culture is not considered cool either.

I feel the same ambivalence about the internet, myself.
I lived on the west side of Queen Anne for five years, where I could only get Channel 13 barely and had no cable. I got out of the TV habit. It was all NPR and internet. So, for a fact, I don't watch TV all that much. It really is a time suck. But then so is the internet, which is why I get the have been 957 posts and 13,554 comments since your last visit when I went to AskMetaFilter last week.

As for TV, I got one laid on me a few months back, along with a DVD player. So what I do is go to the library and check out DVDs. I've seen Baraka, Two Lane Blacktop, Marty, Rio Grande, most of Cover Girl and the whole American Folk Blues series these past two weeks. That's probably more movies than I watched all of last year and most of those were not new to me.

Since I got the set and dvd player laid on me after moving here, I watch movies and Enterprise reruns on Saturdays if you must know--there's my guilty pleasure--but there's that remote and I do click around the broadcast dial and that's what my comment here was about--my surprise at how many of these War on Terror shows there are.

I still listen to the radio mostly, and mostly that because it's a voice in the room. I get my news from the internet.

And the scary thing there is how easy it is for people to say whatever stupid and nasty thing that comes into their head without ever giving a thought as to how little they know about the people they are sneering at.

But mea culpa there, myself--if I only knew when I went online how everything is written in stone here...

But don't get me going about local TV news... I've been on a tear about that for the last two or three decades. Now there's about the most destructive thing there is.

posted by y2karl 12 April | 10:12

I have to say, though, that after those back to back American Experiences on the Spanish Flu and the Bubble Boy the other night, all I want to do is wash my hands every five minutes...

And, oh man, that whole Bubble Boy show was soemthing else. I knew about the story at the time in bits and pieces but, man, what a sad sad story.

posted by y2karl 12 April | 10:16

I just watch Criterion Collection movies. I'm a huge snob.

posted by sciurus 12 April | 10:19

mullacc, that is fantastic and exactly the sort of television I love.

well, that and Gilmore Girls. Don't hate!

posted by gaspode 12 April | 10:20

jonmc- agreed, sort of. but most of our 'culture' consists of, for instance, prefabbed gossip about whatever happened on survivor or american idol last night. it is carefully crafted by hack executives that focus-group the fuck out of it and cram it down our throats -- it's not art for art's sake -- it exists for the sole purpose of selling us more horseshit. i tell you i have never once willingly listened to britney spears, yet for some reason i could probably sing half a dozen or more of her awesome, deep & meaningful songs. wtf? how and why does this shite seep into people's brains, against their will? (stop abusing from satellite!1!~!!)

i'm not dismissing everything american (or even lowbrow!) as wholesale crap... i'm saying there exists a very plastic, saccharine, soul-sucking cultural black hole in this country. a pretend-reality manufactured largely by the circle jerking of media conglomeration and profits-at-any-cost capitalism. that the end result of such a consumer 'culture' is hegemonic, zombie subjugation is what troubles me the most. \

please dont confuse my (or anyone here's?) disdain for this all nonsense with hating on the populace, per se. yeah yeah it all sounds like antisocial elitist self-fellatio, but i'm actually a humanist and as i said, i watch tv on occasion. but seriously... what. the. fuck. proletariat?

posted by Wedge 12 April | 10:31

i'm not dismissing everything american (or even lowbrow!) as wholesale crap... i'm saying there exists a very plastic, saccharine, soul-sucking cultural black hole in this country. a pretend-reality manufactured largely by the circle jerking of media conglomeration and profits-at-any-cost capitalism. that the end result of such a consumer 'culture' is hegemonic, zombie subjugation is what troubles me the most.

I don't neccessarily disagree with you if we're talking about most of what passes for popular culture today. As author Mark Kingwell says it's at the junkfood level where standards become most important, and there's a world of difference between Mr. Ed and Two And A Half Men, or Lesley Gore and Britney Spears. But I'm too much of a populist to give up entirely.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 10:35

You gots to watch what you put into your head. It can have lasting effects.

This "culture" that you speak of, it vibrates? How much gibberish do you have to sample to know that it's shallow and mindless nonsense? I've seen TV. I'm firmly convinced that watching it makes people stupid.

Try this: go up to a stupid person (they're not hard to find, think of Bush voters) and ask them if they watch TV. Dollars to donuts, they'll say yes. QED, sunny pumpkin.

posted by warbaby 12 April | 11:10

warbaby, I consider myself a reasonably bright guy, and I consider lying on the couch with a jar of peanuts and a cold beer watching reruns of Good Times and Get Smart to be one of life's great pleasures.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 11:20

Go up to a square, and ask "are you a rectangle"? It will say yes.

The opposite does not hold.

Jesus, warbaby.

posted by mike9322 12 April | 11:22

that it's shallow and mindless nonsense?

In the right doses, shallow and mindless fun is good for you. I'd hate to have to forsake old monster movies, 'Louie Louie,' dirty jokes, pinball, and 'I Love Lucy,' simply because somebody decided that doing so would curve my spine, rot my teeth and keep the country from winning the war.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 11:30

The proliferation of crime dramas has really struck me this year. We have, what, five versions of CSI now? And then there's Cold Case and Law & Order, and a billion more that I can't remember the names of... and basically all the plots are the same.

1. Creepy scene ending in grisly murder (+/- rape).
2. Set up Fall Guy (but I'm on to them! I am not tricked!).
3. Super-detectives come in, poke around, it's SCIENCE!
4. Lead Detective Who Is So Clever notices detail that everyone else missed, and pins it all on Character We Never Ever Suspected.
5. Detectives ooze smugness.

Why do we need to tell this story every night? Why do I need to see murder and rape EVERY NIGHT? Is it so I can identify with Clever Detective and feel smug and vindicated? Is it because violence = glamour? What is the moral of these stories?

posted by heatherann 12 April | 11:37

I, once again, agree with mike9322 (twins separated at birth?!).

I like my crappy TV show (the only network TV I watch is 24. I usually watch HGTV, TLC, A&E, History, Discover, etc.). And I think I'm intelligent enough to discern the difference between a fictional TV program and the horror the US gov't is involved in. Sadly, though, I have to agree that there are TV watchers who can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. I somehow doubt that any of those people are Mechatters.

Besides, neither Henderson or Audrey broke under toture. Nyah nyah nyah!

And yeah, what jonmc said, too.

posted by deborah 12 April | 11:42

Even an unabashed fan of pop culture like myself has to admit that the quality has gone down. What's CSI but Quincy with a prettier cast? What's Law & Order but Dragnet with moral complexity? They even have the doink-doink as a substitute for the dum da dum dum.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 11:55

Oh, the humanity! Oh, the wasted prefrontal lobe axons and dendrons! I would point out in passing that people enjoy heroin, too. But that doesn't make it good for them.

* really enjoys getting another opportunity to do the anti-TV rant *

posted by warbaby 12 April | 11:59

Really? I see very little difference between sitting my ass on a couch and watching Battlestar Galactica and sitting my ass on a couch and reading Cryptonomicon. Both of which I have done.

posted by gaspode 12 April | 12:03

But that doesn't make it good for them.

Smoking, heavy drinking, reckless sex, fast driving and a host of other fun things aren't good for you either. You sound like our mothers telling us to eat our vegetables and be home before dark. Life is a sexually trnsmitted terminal disease and before it kills me, I'm gonna have as much fun as possible. Deal.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 12:03

Most of the books people read are trash too.

So I say make your own choices and be happy.

And don't let people tell you what to do or think.

posted by Hugh Janus 12 April | 12:10

The major difference between TV and internet/reading/radio listening is the near-total passivity of viewing. When you're watching TV, brain waves settle down to a state that mimics an early sleep stage. This doesn't happen with the other pastimes. The internet, to me, is far superior to TV because it's actually interactive; it enhances and supports real life, and it's participatory. Reading is one of the most active things your brain can do; it engages a lot of different skills at once, as you call upon your own mind for visual and auditory constructions, decode, wonder, and reflect as you read. Radio has the wonderful ability to occupy your mind while you listen, but you can unload the dishwasher while you do it.

posted by Miko 12 April | 12:13

When you're watching TV, brain waves settle down to a state that mimics an early sleep stage.

right. And at the risk of sounding argumentative, why is this a bad thing? I know 11pm at night I don't want to be firing up the brain otherwise I'd never sleep.

posted by gaspode 12 April | 12:44

I read while listening to the radio a lot. And I don't own a TV. But I love the TV that I do watch, even "America's Next Top Model" and "Deal or No Deal." Sports are fun, too. I like pop music, and I dig Spanish language TV, too. I'm also a hardcore intellectual and an opinionated social critic. I think I'm a model American. I hate my country, but I hate myself, too. And I make it no secret that I love my country, too. I'm self-absorbed and completely altruistic.

There's loads of stuff out there to bend your mind with. I figure if I bend it every which way I can, it'll eventually open up.

posted by Hugh Janus 12 April | 13:08

I dig Spanish language TV, too.

Well, thank Lola Hotchacha and her Abuelas En Fuego for that.

posted by jonmc 12 April | 13:14

If feeling like people who watch tv are stupid (er than you) makes you feel good, DO IT! The rest of us have TV to make us feel good.

Too much tv is bad for you. 24 is bad for America.

posted by Divine_Wino 12 April | 13:46

I love to be told stories. Whether that story is on tv or in a book or on film or on stage or in a song does not matter to me. I don't understand why one particular medium seems to take all the heat.

posted by jrossi4r 12 April | 14:10

why is this a bad thing? I know 11pm at night I don't want to be firing up the brain otherwise I'd never sleep.

I don't think it is in itself a bad thing, but it turn into a bad thing if you do it every night for six hours a night. It gets kind of druglike. I had a housemate who used TV that way - as kind of a numbing agent.

But as for getting ready to sleep, TV might not really be a relaxing sleep aid. I just read something saying that the quickly changing light levels from watching TV (or using the computer) stimulate areas of the brain that inhibit sleep even at the same time that you're producing these inactive wave forms -- so you're supposed to avoid TV and computer for an hour before sleeping.

posted by Miko 12 April | 14:12

What's CSI but Quincy with a prettier cast?

Be a man. Be a Klugman.

posted by dodgygeezer 12 April | 14:50

what I do is go to the library and check out DVDs. I've seen Baraka, Two Lane Blacktop
posted by y2karl 12 April | 10:12

Two Lane Blacktop is an all-time favorite of mine. Excellent choice.

posted by BoringPostcards 12 April | 14:54

Be a man. Be a Klugman.

Are you the lone geezer of the apocalypse?

posted by PinkStainlessTail 12 April | 15:21

"Tow Lane Blacktop" is also a good song on an awesome album (Joya Magica) by the 60 Ft. Dolls (an album that's pretty damn hard to come by).

posted by Hugh Janus 12 April | 15:26

Two Lane Blacktop is an all-time favorite of mine.

I remember when there was a spread about it in Esquire at the time but never saw it until last week.

It was an interesting movie, all things considered.

Warren Oates was great in it. Can't say that for Harry Dean Stanton, in his role as the gay hitchiker, though...

And all that babyfat ! How did he get to be so cadaverous ?

posted by y2karl 12 April | 19:01

Hitchhiker, that is...

posted by y2karl 12 April | 19:03

True, but Stanton's role was basically just one (lame) scene... Oates was indeed freakin' brilliant. I also love the unspoken strain on the relationship between the Driver and the Mechanic as the movie progresses. Neither one will mention the Girl... all they can talk about is the car. It's a strange but effective flick.

posted by BoringPostcards 12 April | 19:41

12 April 2006