Banking On a Myth

Today my brother and I had spent a good four hours in front of the television.Why? To what purpose do we watch these shows besides the fact that they're an attractive way to kill time and effort and to help you take an escape from the day? And why do we as humans strive so much to re-create this suspense, wit, and humour in our own lives? Don't we get enough of this drama on that screen daily? Each and every single day, we humans become so absorbed in our own tiny little soap operas; that we tend to forget about what we are really obssessing about. Ourselves. Now you might take a step back here and say, "Hold it. One second ago we were talking about television, the ultimate advertiser, master of attractive. Television was made for our entertainment, for our brains to fry as we watch funny little quirks for an hour."Hold out with me here for one second. Have you ever really thought about how they manage to keep you in? Because eventually, every joke gets old. Our parents are living proof of that fact and always will be. Maybe you have an uncle who always says the same joke at Christmastime. We've all been there, we know it's awful. So what is it about these sitcoms, which are really just the same material over and over again, that makes us want to go back to them?The answer is simple really - television is human. Television is created by humans, watched by humans, and paid for by humans. We see our own insecurities in that television screen, we sympathize with the character flaws and the slip-ups. We all like to see people fail to feel better about ourselves. Haven't you ever realized that more often than not, the best villians are too perfect to be true? And that that's what really makes them that scary, doesn't it? The fact that the other side is too quick and too beautiful and too heartless for our minds to grasp. The possibility that we just may die, because we're not good enough. And the opposite can be said about the hero. They are always the ones with the signature flaw, which is why we identify ourselves with them the most. But why is this all such a bad thing? Isn't this just merely a very clever way of keeping an audience interested, by making television and media "human?" And the answer is no, it's not. Because in order for them to be able to make you hooked on these shows in the first place, they need to convince you to assume that you ARE insecure, that you are imperfect. And this is where television and media goes wrong. We spend almost every waking moment swarmed by the media, all of it telling us that there's something missing, that there's farther to go, more hours to work, more sex to have had, more weight to have lost. And what is this then, but all a cheap sell on everybody's pursuit of happiness? This is where each and every one of us is being told in almost everything that we do, that we have a problem. And if something is repeated enough, you sure as hell will begin to believe that it's true. This is where the money makers "up there" want you to think about yourself, since it's so easy to fall into that self-centered loop; and to start thinking, "where did I go wrong?" Well let me tell you honey, you're asking yourself the wrong question. It's "where did WE go wrong?," and if I was able to answer that question, then we wouldn't have television.