Living Someone Else’s Life
Netflix. Why do we,
or I (me) anyway, get into these Netflix binges? There have been TV series(es) I have avoided
for years. Something about them
irritated me. After several years I
forgot why, but I remember watching one or two episodes and thinking, “Well,
this sucks.”
Coulda been the actors or the plots or simply the script
writing – the dialogue. Something just seemed
like it took long to get through an episode for what I got out of it. No value for the time investment.
Recently, just because … well, because … I’ve been burning
through seasons of those programs I avoided, and I arrived at a
conclusion. It’s the timing, the pacing of regular cable TV.
The commercials totally screw up the timing. The writers get you up to a dramatic point, a
place of tension, then blam! The
networks hit you with diapers and scooters for the disabled and beer and
make-up and other shit. And these days
those commercials go on and on and on.
You could take a nap before they get you back to your program.
So you subscribe to Netflix, or some similar service – you
really do have a choice these days. And
you can take in each episode without the interruptions of diapers and beer and
scooters and you can take in as many episodes at a stretch as you want, or
tolerate. The question is why?
Why do you, or me in this case, spend so much time – or waste it if you think you’re some hoity-toity intellectual – stuck on the
couch watching these shows … as it were.
For me, honestly, I have begun to realize, I am escaping my
own life by living someone else’s. Episode after episode, with the script timing
uninterrupted, truly puts me into the
lives of the plot characters. Why? How does this happen? The truth of this whole new phenomenon, and it is a fairly recent phenomenon, is that the
plot characters are only actors. They
are not really police detectives, cops, FBI agents, Doctors. They
are actors!
None of it is real! I find myself identifying with absolutely
total fiction – in every way. The story
is not real, the people are not real, even the places they are supposed to be
in are not real. That’s why, in part, it
never seems to snow in northern New England, the wind never blows in Chicago
(the Windy City), it’s never cloudy
in San Francisco, it never rains in Seattle.
No matter where the show is placed, it’s sunny and apparently warm.
All the women can wear super tight low cut shirts (lots of
cleavage) and never get cold (no nipples).
All the young muscular men can also wear tight t-shirts (but somehow
they do have nipples - ???) The comb-overs
on all the old men do not flap around in any kind of wind.
It’s all fiction
and yet we (I) get totally into
it. Binging on someone else’s life for
hours.
Admittedly – yes I have begun to accept – that I have to get
a life of my own. Soon … hopefully.
dalepeterson.us
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