CARTE BLANCHETV, invention of the devil |
Why ever did we let it in?
JOHANNESBURG - Albert Hertzog, the National Party minister of posts and telecommunications, who kept TV out of SA until 1974, was quite right.
It is the invention of the devil and we should never have adopted it when we were the only country in the world without it back in the early 1970s.
Those were the days. We had dinner parties twice a week and the conversation was lively, if not elevated. We played Dylan, Beatles and the Stones on our proudest possession, a B&O hi-fi with a tangential-arm turntable. We had so many friends. When not entertaining, we read books even at night and then snuck off to satin sheets.
Then on Saturdays we either entered a fun run, played hectic tennis or went windsurfing. We played "lion" with the kids, hiding in a cupboard then emerging with a roar, as they ran in terrified glee for den on the double bed. We climbed uKhahlamba and took in heavenly scenery.
Now Mom and I try to keep up some of these activities but most of our friends, not just of our generation but of our kids' generation, either can't or won't play games. Even the kids would rather watch TV. When we travel to Plett, we like to stop at the Mountain Zebra Park or Addo but the kids insist on doing the whole trip in one day while their kids watch DVDs in the back of the car for 12 hours non-stop.
As a long-haired liberal on the right side of 30, I did interview Hertzog with great scepticism. At the time I couldn't wait for the box. I said: "Surely we can keep the quality high". He said for commercial reasons the fare on TV would inevitably decline to the lowest common denominator. Well, how right he was.
The movie channels are either skop, skiet and donner and gryp, rape and escape or totally lame sitcoms.
So you select the quality news and magazine channels. On the BBC, CNN and Sky it's a repetitive story - more deaths in Afghanistan, excited Arabs burning Israeli or American flags or throwing stones, an earthquake in Turkey or Haiti, talking heads groaning on and on about global warming and the poor polar bears. EuroTV is too boring to be contemplated. Russian TV is amusing because it is staffed with Brits who will talk to anyone with anything negative to say about America.
The animal channels were great to start with but they too are repetitive - sensational rubbish about nature's biggest killers, one lion or shark attack after another - idiots like Steve Irwin or Austin Stevens, tempt snakes to strike them. Bear Grills purports to parachute into deserts, forests and ice fields and ostensibly eats insects and long-dead oryxes. He makes out that he sleeps in an improvised lean-to while the camera is on. I have visions of him creeping into his tent when the camera is off, sliding into a goose-down sleeping bag before ham and eggs cooked up for him next morning by his unseen crew.
Has anyone seen that Canadian git who, armed with a shepherd's crook walks close to a pride of lions. I bet there's a guy with a high powered rifle standing right behind him in case that "nice lion, big lion" takes a lunge.
My wife and kids are amazed that I can watch the history channel because it consists of endless replays of past wars.
Sport can be a wonderful spectacle but the TV has decimated live audiences. It has also done enormous damage by making the rewards so huge. Sportspeople have to decide at ten or 11 that this is their profession. After that they have to work six to eight hours or more a day. They become so good that none of their friends can give them a game. And then only five in a million pros crack the big time. Others, having sacrificed education, end up as coaches, car salesmen or estate agents.
Most of us don't play any sport after school. We watch it. All over town, the tennis courts and the cricket pitches are full of weeds. At the Bronkhorstspruit Dam, at Vaal Dam and at Knysna, hundreds of sailboats lie unused since the 1990s.
If we don't become obese couch potatoes, we go to gym and do mindless and repetitive exercises that delight us not. They build our bodies but do little for the cardio-vascular system or longevity.
Now, having said all this, why don't I give the TV away? I have to admit - it is a drug. I watch it with my mind switched off for perhaps 12 hours a week. And if I did give it up, there would be no one with whom to share the extra time. Every-one else is addicted too.
Write to David Carte: davidcarte@moneyweb.co.za
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