I used to work the graveyard shift at an alarm monitoring station. To combat my inevitable mid-shift drowsiness I would wash down ephedrine tablets with diet Coke. I would wake up around eight pm with my jaw and the backs of my eyes still tingling from last night’s dose, eat breakfast and watch primetime television.
Spike TV had just introduced its answer to the reality television craze, ‘The Joe Shmo Show.’ And although my contempt for reality programming was already considerable, the premise of this particular show peaked my interest: the entire cast, with the exception of one poor shmuck, were paid actors. Their job was to embody the over-the-top personalities normally sought out for reality television… and then take it one step further. We would watch as Joe – entirely unaware of his distinct status – did his best to negotiate “challenges,” while repeatedly shocked and appalled by the behaviour of his fellow contestants. The challenges themselves were often ludicrous. Part of the fun was seeing how far everyone could take it without Joe catching on.
The program also included a kind of backstage access, where the audience was let in on meetings between the actors and the actual producers (I believe some did double duty) as they strategized. While you watched, you were constantly switching your frame of reference to account for what was real, and what was simply pretense for Joe’s benefit. Perhaps it was the amphetamine cocktail I had prescribed myself, but one night after finishing an episode, I started doing the frame of reference switching thing while I was in the shower. My internal dialogue went something like this:
“I need to shampoo my hair.”
“I don’t really need to shampoo my hair because this isn’t for real.”
“Wait a second, OF COURSE THIS IS FOR REAL!”
“SHIT! I’M GOING CRAZY.”
I emptied the contents of the Rapid Slim bottle into the dumpster out back of my apartment. Why I didn’t just flush the pills down the toilet, I’m not sure. Maybe it had something to do with not wanting to go back into the bathroom for a while.
I never touched ephedrine again and I no longer work at the monitoring station (with the hours I keep at my bartending gig, it is debatable whether or not I still work the graveyard). I don’t even have TV anymore. The shows that everybody insists are must see TV, I watch a season at a time on my desktop computer.
In the age of outstanding HBO programming and TV on DVD, having the flu is no longer an unpleasant experience. A season or two of ‘The Wire‘ will keep you happily occupied through the long hours of recovery. The problem is, I’m noticing some leakage of all this quality programming into my quality of life. After eight straight hours of a single show, my perception of actual events becomes tainted.
I watched the entire ‘Generation Kill‘ miniseries in a single sitting, and by the end it seemed important for me to speak to people with the brevity of army radio speak. I took my dog for a walk and caught myself checking for muzzle flashes in my neighbors’ bedroom windows.
Don’t ask me why but all ten seasons of ‘Friends‘ on DVD occupy the middle shelf of one of my bookcases. And so, I end up watching them, sometimes ten episodes at a time. In my head, my relationship with Monica, Joey and the like, borders on close friendship – it also borders on unhealthy. Whenever it is time to put in season ten again, I begin to get that empty feeling that accompanies great loss. The only way to cope is to put season one back in and start again. Everything begins anew and the prospect of an end to all the good times seems like a distant, if not unimaginable, future.
Most of my actual friends will tell you that I have a history of thinking I’m going mad. But I think I’m on to something here. When television was first introduced, people worried about it turning them into zombies. When I was growing up, parents were convinced that prolonged exposure to the tube would turn their child’s brain to mush. But it isn’t television itself that’s dangerous and it’s not even unhealthy in large doses (though indirectly, it could make you fat).
What is cause for concern is the viewing of multiple episodes of a single show in a continuous stream. It has a hypnotic effect wherein the viewer may lose the ability to distinguish between television and real life. It’s just not how we were meant to consume weekly programming.
All of this makes me think back to Joe. Not because of the effects that program had on me, but because I can’t even imagine what a mind warping experience that week of shooting must have been for him. I have trouble removing myself from the fictional worlds I experience through a television screen. If I had been the subject of a ruse like that, I’m not sure I would have ever recovered. The rest of my life I’d walk around second-guessing people’s behavior – like screaming guy at the bus stop. Is he really that messed up or is he just screaming at me so that people can watch and enjoy my ensuing reaction?
– A. Vice
