Editorial

Watching TV and Afraid

SEVERAL DAYS AGO I HAPPENED to catch the recent movie, “Europa Report.” It is an exceptionally well-done piece of “hard” science fiction. Very realistic and technically correct. There is an impressive listing of scientists and scientific organization presented with the end credits. The movie, about an expedition from Earth to explore the ice encapsulated moon of Jupiter in search of potential extraterrestrial life, is available on Netflix. I happened upon it because I have a habit of searching the Netflix streaming library when there is nothing good on Dish Network, for which I am paying exorbitant amounts of money to access programming treasures like “Duck Dynasty” and “Swamp People.”

This is the problem. I don’t have a real issue with “Duck Dynasty”; although it is nowhere near my must watch lineup of TV shows, at least I have to give the bearded clan credit for creating and successfully marketing high-tech duck calls. “Swamp People” is another story altogether and it speaks to a jaw-dropping trend that I have been noticing on the boob tube lately.

There seems to be quite the fascination for programming that extols people living “off the grid,” primitively, without the benefits of any modern conveniences. Why? Mankind has struggled against all odds for hundreds of thousands of years to get to the advanced stage where we can actually contemplate undertaking a manned mission to the moons of Jupiter in search of alien life forms. TV should be offering more series like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” (also available on Netflix) instead of reality shows that demonstrate how to build a log cabin in the woods.

Is this trend something along the lines of Alvin Toffler’s future shock? Fear of an upcoming Zombie Apocalypse, or jihadist Armageddon that will devastate us back before the Dark Ages, and we will again have to learn to live with little more than loincloths and Clovis points?

Except that I don’t take away any cautionary admonishments from these presentations. “Would you know how to build a shelter?” “Boiling water is essential to prevent disease.” “Here’s how to make fire in several different ways.” I get the impression that most of the people in front of the cameras honestly prefer the Paleolithic way of life.

A common explanation I’ve heard often is that these “back to the land” movements are in reaction to extreme social or global crises. Pundits often cite the Vietnam War as an example, which spawned the hippie counterculture movement of dedicated nonviolence, commune living far away from civilization, and an awkward sort of secular spiritualism. The 21st century has been even more egregious: unending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts Middle Eastern; religious terrorism; economic disasters; epidemic disease outbreaks.

Dr. Ann Gimpel, a psychologist, is also a successful writer with a strong interest in science fiction. Her stories have appeared in “Perihelion.” Dr. Gimpel conjectures that, “Humankind have been on this planet for 276,000 years. It’s only in the last hundred or so we’ve lost our intimate connection with basics like growing (or killing) our food, and accomplishing things with muscle. My grandma had a wringer washer. Sure, they ran on electricity, but they were hard work to use. Before that, hauling water from a creek was even more difficult. Ditto for cooking over a wood stove--or a fire.

“We have a lot of physical characteristics left over from the humans who came before us, including fight or flight reactions that have become a hindrance in our modern lives, leading to ulcers, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

“I believe there’s a part in many of us that yearns for a simpler time, one that challenges us on a physical as well as a mental level. Because living vicariously is the modern way, survivalist and adventure challenge reality television has come into its own. We may not want to be that naked dude in the Amazon jungle, but we’re fascinated by watching what he does, because it makes us think what we’d do, and brings us just a shred closer to our atavistic roots.”

Perhaps. I have to admit to a perverse fascination with those survival shows. Only because I can’t help ROTFLMFAO watching those deluded Homo erectus wannabes subsist for days on a handful of snails and some termites. I couldn’t do it. I’m not fooling myself into thinking I even remotely could. I can fish, at least, if I had to. But by the same token, I seriously doubt the local grocery store won’t be up the street for the rest of my life. Should civilization collapse, so too will the human species, and survival skills become moot.

Reality shows on TV have taken a stranglehold not because of any public clamoring for them, but because they are cheap to produce, much cheaper than dramas which have to be scripted, filmed, acted, directed. All those working artists to be paid at least scale.

Explains Charles B. Slocum, WGAW Assistant Executive Director, in “The Real History of Reality TV Or, How Allen Funt Won the Cold War,” an excellent article on the beginnings and development of this curious televised genre: “The economic role of reality-based programming is to permit a network to cost-average down the price of programming across the entire primetime schedule.”

I don’t know how much the dynasts of the Anas genus are paid for their antics, but I can safely presume it isn’t as much as Mark Harmon or Seth Green. I wonder how much the “Naked and Afraid” twosome are compensated (if anything other than bragging rights) for nibbling on a bit of undercooked snake while the camera crew filming them is scarfing down foot-long pepperoni and cheese subs? That is, presuming any of TV’s reality is real at all.

Sam Bellotto Jr.