So after a vast period of time when I was hardly thinking about Aeon Flux at all, suddenly I'm feeling red-hot pokers of interest in my personal mediascape. Reign on TV and DVD, and a Matrix short for the summer... drooly drooly drool.

So now I'm hanging about, listening to Eye Spy and idly downloading Thanatophobia (my favorit ep) from KaZaA, and I thought I'd check out the old board, see what's going on. NOTE: Far be it from me to thieve from Peter, (if you're still getting residuals, that is) but seriously, fuck MTV. I don't need to give them another dime. Plus I lack a VCR at the moment. And since I've already bought all three videos (the first one a second time, after I wore out one copy) and I'll buy the DVD the instant I can find it for less than $50, I feel justified in pirating just a bit. NOTE ON NOTE: Nice grammar, eh?

ANYWAY... did I have a point? Oh, yeah. TV. TV can kiss me where the sun rarely shines. It was great to hear Reign is available on cable, at least in bowdlerized form, but I ain't paying $40 a month when I'd watch about four hours a week worth of cable. Come to papa, uncut DVDs.

I have bigger misgivings about our popular entertainment, though. From top to bottom and stem to stern TV is getting loathsome. To quote one of TV's last thinking men, “It makes me want to vomit in terror.” What a world it is where your choices are between scrofulously horrible writing and no writing whatsoever. Damn reality TV. I scanned Fear Factor this week and watched sexy people get pierced – does anyone realize we’re a nipple away from showing BDSM porn on prime-time? Not that I’d mind pornography; it just infuriates me when they half-ass it.

I remember it wasn’t even long ago that I was willing to give TV a shot. Hell, I was enthusiastic as all get out when Alias premiered – because I can remember a fantastic show once about a sexy spy. But of course that promise got ruined in an avalanche of nauseatingly saccharine plotlines.

Can you make a show anymore without it being a stale do-gooders-overcome-evil hash? Do these people always have to whip out a hammer and bash us over the head while screaming ‘Bad people get punished!’? Could we not stand even the teeniest ounce of tasty moral ambiguity in our tasteless TV pablum? Or are we doomed to a never-ending kaleidoscope of Law and Order: New Timeslot? (Latest additions – Law and Order: CSI and Law and Order: Dragnet)

Aw, hell, I already know the answer; I’m nearly there already. No one's forcing us to watch this train wreck of pseudo-entertainment. The TV should be relegated to display duty for your DVD/VCR/Game Console. Crank out the antenna as necessary for important news, like a 20 year old space vehicle disintegrating with people on board, or the world’s biggest dumbest country killing a million Iraqis to keep gas prices down for our ridiculously oversized SUVs.

As you might have guessed, I’m feeling a touch bitter these days. I can’t imagine why – the world’s going to hell, and meanwhile there’s nothing entertaining to watch.

Well, here we are on a discussion board, and all I’m doing is ranting. Discuss… okay. Until I can get my filthy mitts on a Reign DVD, I’m satiating my lust for anti-heroics and great writing by watching The Third Man. Anyone here seen it? Tremendously fine film… If we could hop in a time machine, jump to 1949, and grab Orson Welles right off the set… well, we’d damn sure have an excellent Trevor Goodchild.

You like how I wrapped that up into a semi-Aeon-Flux-related bow at the end? No? Ah, well… Tell me how it is by you, old friends…

-- Charles Martin (bebop432@earthlink.net), March 06, 2003

Answers

And now I've taken advantage of insomnia and worked my way through almost a third of the board, dropping my comments here and there like some kind of crazed, snide, inctontinent carrion bird... My apologies to anyone relying on the 'New Answers' link, as I've filled the damn thing up. Do write...

PS: If you read one comment, please read my addition to the venerable 'When did you first see Aeon, etc.' thread. (Whatever they're calling it for now.) Ahh, what a life I've led...

-- Charles Martin (bebop432@earthlink.net), March 06, 2003.

Good post, Charles. Nice to hear from you again, as well. This reminds me of a post I made awhile back... Fantasy and Reality in TV.

I was struck even back then by the influx of reality TV, and I'm downright dumbstruck now. It seems to be all I ever see now... that, or "timely" plots "ripped from the headlines". I still like my comment about the perverse, exploitative aspects of reality TV, the "evil scientist" experimental aspect, however sensationalistic my comment might have been (I was, like you Charles, in a bad mood about the subject when I made that post). I think there's some small truth to this aspect, at least.

-- Mat Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), March 06, 2003.

At least. Great post Mat, I love it when people point out manifested metaphors like that.

-- Sam (janecherrington@paradise.net.nz), March 09, 2003.