When trying to think of something to write about today my first thought was to give a listing of recent programs that I have found above par. What crossed my mind was the notion that with so many of life’s usual distractions foreclosed to us we must all be either reading, exercising on home equipment or watching television. Television being so easy I am sure more people are enjoying an hour of HBO Max than a 40-minute walk in 20-degree weather.
Watching television to me is like eating popcorn, it is fluffy, lacking in material substance, and disappears almost instantly upon ingestion. As a result, the things I have watched over the past year plus have vanished from my upper levels of consciousness. In order to give myself a cheat sheet to work from I pulled up my watch histories from Netflix and Amazon Prime. Time travel, witches and wizards and a smattering of police procedurals came up as the most frequently occurring programming
I could come up with an easy rationale for the last item on the list, my watching police procedurals. The world is a sprawling mess on a good day. In the middle of a pandemic life is akin to spin art. You remember spin art, right? It was a boardwalk/carnival attraction where you applied acrylic paint to a high gloss paper fastened to the agitator of an old washing machine. When the spin cycle setting was hit the paint spread outward and viola-spin art. Our lives are all being thrown out of whack by the spinning forces of a virus and of political unrest. We are nervous. We are ill at ease. We need comfort. We need assurance.
‘Scuse the digression. Crime dramas have a simple formula. A heinous act occurs. Logicians (the police or private detectives) apply their brains to the traces of evidence at the scene of the crime. Hypotheses are tested and eventually the wrongdoer is revealed. Upon discovery the perpetrator is usually punished, sometimes in a grisly and ironic matter. Programs like Law and Order, New Tricks (British-Amazon Prime), Cardinal (Hulu) or Bordertown (Finnish-Netflix) are clear examples of the genre.
We like these programs because they reinforce the not really accurate notion that life progresses logically and good wins out over bad more times than not. Plus, smart good-looking people in tailored clothing sorting out conundrums are engaging images. Comforting to think there is justice and that it is a predominant force in the universe. Comforting yes, but true-not so much.
But why time travel and sorcery? Sometimes the programing contains both, e.g., A Discovery of Witches (Amazon Prime). Trust me I have watched a great number of time travel and magic based programs in the pandemic. For me such programs are not a new thing, when I was a kid ABC in the 1960s had me with Bewitched and the Time Tunnel. I have an idea as to the why.
The primary theory I have about why I (and I believe others) are captivated by such shows is that we humans have regrets about what we cannot change in the extant material realm. There are so many things we cannot make better with all of our talents and skills in the here and now and it hurts us. But if we could go back a day, a week, or years we could correct that one act that has ruptured a friendship or allowed someone to suffer needlessly. If we could weave spectral threads together and incant a few obscure vaguely Latin sounding phrases we would heal the sick or change our economic position. Magic of course, unlike time travel, could make us prettier, either in fact or using glamours, and more likely to be loved or at least desired.
We humans have a great burden of regrets for choices poorly made, for social status dictated by the vagaries of whom you were birthed to, and for our lack of success or our dearth of material acquisitions. In almost every scenario posited by a time travel show or a show about covens and the like, there is a wrong or a failing that will be ameliorated over 10 episodes by a good heart, proper motives and the zing that a trip to 15th century France by a 21st century human will add.
We all regret what we have lost in the past two years. We have been denied freedom. We have been denied pleasures. No concerts. No movies. No large birthday gatherings. No office Christmas parties. No ____________ (fill in the blank) that we used to enjoy so very, very much. We have been denied and we have been hurt. We are tired and degusted. Our spirits are at the breaking point.
If only we could travel back to a point where we could ride on an open road with the top town in route to a good time concert on a hill somewhere. If only we could wave a wand and Omicron and Delta would quickly fade and vanish leaving us to resume our lives in full, no masks and no distancing. If we could slip through the cracks in reality like they do in those television serials our lives would be some much better and without regret. Yeah, there are reasons why such fantasies are so alluring right now.
Maybe I am wrong about these things, it is clearly possible. Of course, I am not saying my opinion covers every reason for the popularity of such programing. But as I sit here, I keep wishing a magic button would appear on my desk and that simply by touching it I could make it all better.
No comments:
Post a Comment