The dichotomy between today’s television and film is interesting and suggests a similar duality in today’s consumer sentiment – the delicate balance between optimism and negativity, of lightness and dark. Countless cooking shows, face-offs and back-to-back home, garden and paint improvement shows entrance us with visions of domesticity. House Hunters allows us to fantasize about our dream homes by following the lives of those buying homes in amazing places like Costa Rica or Naples. CWNS reports that family television is making its way back into our homes this fall. During the past few years, we watched as network dramas and comedies became increasingly dark and grisly, while the family comedy was dying a slow death on the sidelines. There were few co-viewing opportunities. Kids went in one room, and adults, another. Yet, this year there has been a marked change. Kinder, gentler crime-solving shows, more family comedy, and family “dramadies,” such as Ron Howard’s Parenthood, Sons of Tucson, Modern Family, The Middle and, of course, the joys of Glee, which is in a category all its own, are making a comeback. CWNS notes that a lighter, “more chatty crime-solving template” has evolved: Bones, Lie to Me, Human Target, Numb3rs and Castle – all seemingly closer to the days of Moonlighting. While TV has lightened up, film has remained dark and fantastical, think Avatar, Inception, Alice in Wonderland, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which looks really dark. I recently walked out of a PG movie for kids called Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole as it terrified me (let alone my 5 year old) with many strange corollaries to Muslim extremism and visions of baby owls being kidnapped into servitude. The darkness continues into the world of vampires, from the Twilight series to Let Me In. I challenge us all to consider these opposing but complimentary trends. Where are you seeing it in the world around you?
Posts tagged ‘television’
A Big Rat’s Dream
Recently, a rat chewed through a couple of wires behind my television set. I lost my sound to the receiver. I was able to catch that rat and get my revenge, but it reminded me of how much I hate the wires. We get closer every day to the end of wires, dishes, cables, television tethers that keep us pulling out the set and figuring out the inputs and outputs. It is not fun.
Today, I felt like the end was really in site with the new Hulu Plus. Hulu Plus is the subscription service of formerly free Hulu. With the new wireless television sets, Hulu Plus, Roku, Netflix and a host of others will allow us to watch TV without much more than a plug. We can rent movies, watch television shows, buy movies, listen to books and cruise the net all at the same time. Not only that, I can also watch Hulu on my computer, iPhone or iPad.
Right now, I’m paying for cable, which is more than $150 a month. Hulu Plus and Roku together would run $20 a month unless you want to rent Amazon movies, which are $4 to $5 each. Eventually, everyone will figure out that it’s better to turn on a TV and have everything you need as long as you have a wireless connection. It’s cheaper, cooler, easier and just plain smarter. And someday, the channels you now get with DIRECTV or Cable will come without a DIRECTV guy or cable guy. It will all be in the TV and available through your wireless connection. Add wireless stereo receivers and speakers all in one big bundle and you never have to worry about wires again.
Maybe some of us will still keep paying for cable and satellite. We’ll just add Hulu Plus, Roku, Sony’s system and anything else that will give us enough options to make our couch time roll by in pixilated bliss. And we’ll watch a giant split-screen with a Netflix movie on one side, football on the other and a Hulu’d Office episode in the middle. If we’re lucky, we’ll see about five minutes of each since we’ll be trying to watch YouTube videos from the computers on our laps and make FaceTime calls from our iPhones at the same time.
If a hundred channels weren’t enough, why would 2,000 channels do it? It’s like the Gillette 5 Blade Razor. Three blades were good. Four blades were great. But if I only had one more blade, then I could be sure I was getting the best shave. Well, until they have six blades, that is. And seven, if I had seven blades.
If that’s the way it’s going to be, it’s just more for the rats to chew on. I long for the day when they have nothing but the plug and that small piece of cheese I leave on the sticky trap to gnaw at.
