Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon
So. Television. The boob tube. Kill your TV. The great wasteland. Coastal elites love to hate TV. Oh, wait, that was from a Trump supporter. Anyhow, television.
Saw my first flickery images from the little box in 1952, election returns from the Eisenhower/Stevenson vote. Black and white. Dad and I stayed up until 3 am waiting for California. I watched Howdy Doody, Captain Midnight, The Cisco Kid, Sgt. Renfrew of the Royal Mounted, Sky King. This was very early for television in Alexandria, Indiana. My dad’s boss, Mr. Feemster, bought it for him because he thought a newspaper editor should have one.
In 1963 I was at home sick from school and reading Mallory’s “La Morte d’Arthur.” I watched the coverage from Dallas from the beginning. Moon landing. 9/11. Shock and awe.
We were like any television obsessed family, I imagine. Three hours a night together. Yes, I had to watch Sing Along with Mitch (follow the bouncing ball!) and Lawrence Welk. The horror.
Point is I’ve been watching TV for over 67 years. Neither proud nor ashamed of that. I’ve seen some amazing things, some awful things, but mostly schlocky episodes of dumbed down entertainment that had to appeal to families and fit within the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters.
Several years ago Kate and I cut the cord with Comcast. Too much TV, too expensive. And, real jerks at customer service. Since then, I’ve chosen what I wanted to watch rather than adapting myself to the broadcasters schedule and tastes.
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu. Those are my ABC, CBS, and NBC. Except. They have movies, lots of movies. Documentaries. TV shows. All that I can watch whenever I want. Or, not.
This is television’s golden age. The small screen has begun to compete successfully with Hollywood. There are many big name boxoffice stars now deigning to work in the used-to-be too stupid medium. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright were among the first. Now: Orlando Bloom. Julia Roberts. Billybob Thornton. For example.
Netflix has made the key move, in my opinion. With their globe spanning ambitions they’ve funded original local television series. Marco Polo was an early one. Designated Survivor: Korea, a recent one, along with the also Korean Possessed and Strong-girl Bong-Soon. Better Than Us is a Russian cyberbot series. Not all of them will appeal to any one segment of viewers, but that’s ok for Netflix. You pick your own. Like the buffet at Country Kitchen.
I love to watch these Turkish (Protector), Korean (see above), Russian, Japanese (The Naked Director), South African (Shadow), New Zealand, Australian, Taiwanese, Thai, and most recently, Fronteras Verde, The Green Frontier, from Colombia.
Since they use local script writers, videographers, actors, and settings, there is an opportunity to see Colombian videographic tastes, the styles of Japanese and Thai actors, the streets of Johannesburg and Istanbul, the country side in Turkey. Not to mention the story ideas are ones that appeal to the particular audience in that country. All of this is a fair equivalent to travel, minus the Montezuma’s revenge and expensive plane tickets.
You may not use this golden era to travel the globe (take that flat-earthers), but I am. And I find it exhilarating.
