Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00185)

Liesel:
>Titillation reminds me of the crapola you can watch on American TV
>any time day or night. Lunchtime today I was cruising around looking for
>something
>interesting to look at while I ate my tofu chili. I found this talk
>show where they were interviewing this pretty young lady who was
>saying that she loved her disabled boy friend & that she was a
>prostitute to get money for them both to live on. Why would she do
>that for him? Because he was very kind to her.
>So help me that's what I saw on TV this noon before I turned to
>another channel

That's pretty much the norm for most TV talk shows. Wish I had a dollar for
every time one of those shows brought out the male strippers and female exotic
dancers. Last week I taped a documentary on the life of Rod Serling on PBS.
They showed many clips from the dramas he wrote for early television and the
Twilight Zone. They were in black and white but they far outstripped most of
today's television in their acting writing dramatic presentation and ability
to get across a real moral point of the story. The show talked many times about
how Serling had to fight with the TV executives because they were sure this
heavy drama wouldn't "sell" and how they were afraid their advertisers would
stop paying for air time.

Televison is a wonderful technical and communicative tool that has been
prostituted since the Golden Age of television ended. And the movie industry
isn't far from that description. People with good ideas and solid stories are
often shoved aside for gimmicks or remakes. The guys in power are so afraid
they won't make another billion on a project they'd rather bet on a "sure"
thing. Like the "Brady Bunch" movie or some other piece of nonsense. Heard
they're going to make a movie out of Mr. Ed. For those not in the US he was a
talking horse that starred in a sitcom in the late fifities. I remember my
family eating waffles in front of the television on nite while we all
watched this great looking horse spout horse sense to his owner.

- ann