A Vindication of the Rights of Television Addicts
I spent two months of my college junior year watching every Jim Henson creation my friend and roommate Ted could pirate for me. It all began with a nagging desire to watch the entirety of the classic, The Muppet Show (1976-1981) but quickly developed into a hunger of insatiable proportions. Fraggle Rock, The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Dark Crystal, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Labyrinth, and more were deftly consumed via the projector Ted had set up in the living room/his bedroom. From time to time, others would join me on the couch while I bounded through years of puppet mastery with zealous fervor. Ted, by virtue of the fact that his bed was situated in the same room as the projector and because he doesn’t sleep much, was a passive participant on this excursion. Like a spider who accidentally builds a web inside a car being driven across country, Ted would often accompany me on my journey through celebrity cameos and felt. Jim Henson was my drug and Ted was my dealer, my supplier, who showed up at the door with the salve I needed and hung out on the couch while I tweaked out on “Manha Manha’s” and songs about rainbows.
One could infer from this anecdote that I am a person who really likes The Muppets. Just another college-aged individual with a passion for puppetry. I wouldn’t be the first. In 1996, a 21-year-old man from New Zealand held the manager of a radio station hostage and demanded that the station broadcast the Muppet song “The Rainbow Connection” for 12 hours. Why? Because he wanted to “tell people how he felt.”(felt!) But this obsession wades further into the swamp Kermit was raised in; I am a person who is deeply in love with television. I am Al Bundy, mouth agape on the couch, one hand tucked slightly down my pants, staring at the screen. I am Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, and Archie Bunker; television dads with a penchant for a quiet day in front of the boob tube. I am Mike Teavee getting shrunk into a TV at the Experimental Television Technology Room in Willy Wonka’s Factory. (Which, when you think about it, seems entirely out of place at a facility that manufactures chocolate.)
I don’t just watch tv, I consume it wholly. My idée fixe.
You probably assume it’s genetic. Al and Homer, Peter and Archie, they weren’t alone on that couch. Watching TV was a family affair. And yet, I don’t come from a family of “TV watchers.” My obsession was born out of necessity. As the lone hyperactive child in a family of indoor kids and the daughter of a mother who wasn’t the type to “play,” television became my medicine. Ritalin to control my nervous energy, Lexapro to soothe my anxiety, Prozac when things got depressing. If I woke up at night from a bad dream or an irrational thought, my mom would instruct me to go watch some TV to calm me down. It was the cheapest and most effective therapy she knew. With tears in my eyes, I would guiltily shake my mother awake and patiently, but swiftly, she would herald me down to the living room to channel surf through late night TV. Reruns of the Porky’s franchise and other films I was probably too young to be watching helped inform my adolescence and soothe me to sleep--as effective as any lullaby--a pattern which followed me into early adulthood.
Those two months of Jim Henson were the inevitable aftermath of a difficult half-year of college. I had just returned to my junior year of college from a semester in Brazil and the high of studying abroad faded. I was lonely and depressed and dissatisfied with life, so I followed the need in my belly until I was full. Watching Rita Moreno perform “Fever” with Animal or Madeline Kahn struggling to pronounce “r” sounds were the little moments of joy I could manufacture in my life. My friends waited patiently for me to get better, found it amusing that I was so intent on finishing the Jim Henson canon, and often fell asleep on the couch with me while I binge-watched before binge-watching was a category Netflix could curate for you.
I’m not the only person out there with this particular predilection for television consumption. The average American watches 3 hours and 46 minutes of live TV each day, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co. That's more than 52 days of nonstop TV-watching per year. That’s a glorious nine years of your life dedicated to television watching by the time you are 65. A woman can earn a doctorate and a mole can live three lifetimes in the time we spend watching tv. Add in all the content we consume through streaming internet videos on a computer, tablet, or smartphone and the average US adult now spends nearly half a day interacting with media. Moments to disconnect from the oppressiveness of day to day living. What a wonderful transcendent virtual reality we’ve created for ourselves.
And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find an article written in praise of our collective television admiration. Instead of embracing this love of television, we are actively trying to thwart it. Pop psych articles abound: Life Hack’s “11 Reasons You Should Stop Watching Television Now,” Huffington Post’s “9 Ways Watching TV Is Bad For Your Health,” Live Science’s “Too Much TV Really Is Bad For Your Brain,” and Time’s “Watching TV Is Linked to Blood Clots, Even If You Exercise.” Professing your love for TV has become a transgressive act. A dirty secret to be ashamed of. Even Jim Henson’s Muppets succumbed to the pressure. An early Sesame Street character, Telly Monster, was originally a television addict, with antennas sticking out of his head and eyes that swirled hypnotically from watching TV. In his first episode, Telly mused, “My set’s here, I’m here, what else do I need?” When his addictive personality didn’t resonate with parents, Telly’s character was changed to a neurotic worrywart fond of playing the triangle and bouncing around on his pogo stick. Forced, like all us lovers of television, to reform to an oppressive societal expectation. To toss away the warm comfort of television and embrace a “healthier” lifestyle.
Still, I watch.
Every once in a while, a storm will gather inside me, like the Muppet Tsunami of Junior Year. A nagging, itching, compulsive need to watch something, anything, everything. When I feel that rumble deep inside my stomach, just as I did 12 years ago, and even though he no longer lives in my living room, I’ll ask my good friend Ted to board his pirate ship once more and sail the internet seas for me, in search of that sweet, elusive, obscure television booty.
Gahl Shottan is a groundskeeper living in Philadelphia, PA. She spends her days writing stories in her head while emptying trash cans, weeding garden beds, and moving lacrosse nets. Day dreamer, plant admirer; a bit too into Henry David Thoreau. And she has a radio show: https://lastrefugepod.com.