Kitsch Overload...Whoring Your Time

So this is a piece of an old post that I started but didn't finish, from a few weeks back.

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I od'd on TV last night and I feel kind of gross today about it...it wasn't even good tv...it was kitsch (a la Kardashians and Holly Madison and Chelsea Lately)...which is great in the moment...like twinkies...but then when you're done...you just kind of feel like you whored your time out like bad sugar consumption that you should have held out against.

Anyway...ugh...yesterday does not go down as a good habits and choices day.

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To set the stage of why I said what I said--

I had spent a late evening alone browsing t.v. to my hearts content, eating the dregs from the potato chip bag, and I watched all the stuff that when anyone else is around they wonder if you've lost all of your brain cells and what kind of a person you really are deep down inside.  What they don't know is that you're still a good person that has read Dostoevsky and Dickens, and understood them, among other things.

There is just something about pablum t.v. that appeals to some kind of inner 15 year old idiot and sometimes I can't believe the things I see, the things I laugh at and the things that are seared into my brain in the name of mindless entertainment and escape.

Through the years...

Yes--I have laughed at Beavis and Butthead.  Yes--I have laughed at South Park.  Yes--I have enjoyed game shows.  Yes--America's Funniest Home Videos has put a stitch in my side.  Yes--I have watched car crashes and stupid human tricks on YouTube for too many minutes in a row to tally and then admit to.  I love that little pagan weirdo Bam Margera and I have hours of Jackass in my t.v. viewing history.  I've got a strange soft spot for Ozzy Osbourne and his family from watching episodes of The Osbournes and I think my mom should cut her hair like Sharon Osbourne. I must admit that Gene Simmons is a funny, arrogant, vain ass of a man, and frankly his show, is much more boring than most of the other reality shows.

Then of course there have been a couple of marathon Saturday afternoons of America's Next Top Model, wherein I have the t.v. on while doing laundry, watching Tyra Banks and these megalomaniacal, egocentric, narcissistic teenagers, and listening for my husband's key in the lock so that I can change the channel to Law and Order before he comes down the stairs and asks "What are you watching??" and I have to admit to my everlasting voyeuristic shame that I'm watching the dramas of other lives.

Have you ever read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? They've got the "Feelies" and though I'm not popping pills or hooking into some kind of a machine to feel what I'm watching, the effect is still somewhat the same, but only different...anyway...the point is that it is pointless.

This particular evening it started with the train wreck of the Kardashian girls, on other nights it has been Toddlers and Tiaras...and don't even get me started on that one...

What is it about these crap shows that make them so appealing?  I was going to say that it's not like you learn anything, but you kind of do I guess.

If you want it you get an interesting insight into the life of the vain and frequently vacuous rich and famous, or at least those that aspire to it. Some of the lives are such train wrecks that you can end up feeling better about your own life and the fact that, while you may not be rolling in money and plastic surgery, the peace and quiet and relative order that you enjoy is better than selling yourself to the highest bidder.

Of course there is also the psychological aspect of it all.  Some of the people I've seen obviously need some kind of intervention, whether professional, or familial, there is definitely a need for some counseling there.  I briefly mentioned Toddlers and Tiaras earlier.  Right there you'll find an enormous need for family counseling as well as some solid, consistent one-on-one counseling for the maniacal parents as well as the uber-spoiled children who are going to have some serious social balancing issues when they get older.

At any rate, it's an interesting entertainment and social phenomenon that we, as a human race, have become very accustomed to and very tolerant of.  You can find kitsch t.v. all around the planet, some of it translated, some of it localized.  What does it say about us as a people that we have disposable time to spend and/or waste on such frivolity?  We are the ones that fund it, through watching it, and supporting it through a variety of means.

For the most part, I try to stay away from it so it's not a consistent norm in my life, but it's true--I am attracted to the gossip magazines and the cheap and tawdry lifestyles of the rich and famous. I like to know what's going on so that I, too, can participate in those water-cooler conversations with their ensuing whispers, gasps and raised eyebrows.

Anyway, there you have it...more of my humanity.

Happy kitsching...try not to let it run away with you and all of your time.  In the end it's just empty sugar calories that will rot your brain and your teeth and end up manifesting itself in your gut and on your butt. ;)

...Unless you find something really juicy and awesome, and then you need to let me know so I can take a peek too...  ;)