An oddish link popped up in my Facebook feed today, advising that a television series caled
House Husbands is to be discontinued. Apparently this is a Very Bad Thing, because it will be the bellwether for Ausralian TV being submerged beneath a tide of reality TV and American programming. Or something.
I don't really have an opinion on the premise, or indeed about the program (I've never seen more than five minutes at a stretch and don't think it'd really be my cup of tea). But I ask myself whether setting that much store by what happens in Televisionland is a good thing.
Television drama, it seems to me, has the job of creating on your behalf the pictures that ordinarily form in your brain while reading a novel. Well and good: it follows that both are decent ways to engage in the
storytelling that is a decent whack of human behaviour (it also lets me enjoy things like
Family Guy guilt free).
It strikes me, though, that both are still ways of experiencing something vicariously, and that's still not the best way to live. Yes, you don't have to dash off to war as a substitute for reading
Homage to Catalonia. But isn't it better to learn culture by going and talking to people? Doing things? Or at least build experience by feeling the sun on your back?
Nobody needs to go full-Sideshow Bob here. But, I think that if we lose too much sleep over local content in books or television or anything else, we're worrying about the wrong thing.
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