Choosing Culture: When Your Radio Is Broken and You've Cancelled Cable

For the first time in my life, I just turned off cable.


I didn't know that actual fear would be involved.  Pair that with a broken car radio and it's amazing how fast the "out of touch" feeling sets in.  But once I powered through that initial panic, what I also realized was the incredible freedom of choice we have to redesign the way we consume our media and identify its purpose for us.

This feels to me like a small win against the machines.

I also became very aware of just how much garbage we're fed everyday while we're not paying attention.  The first thing to go for me was my car radio which, I think, was the victim of a blown fuse somewhere "up there in the front," possibly caused by a potentially dangerous leak that I think is coming from my air conditioner.  Anyway, I've been steeped in the podcast world for about a year and have never looked back.  When I say there is a literal universe of interesting and well-made podcasts exploring every topic your imagination can conjure, I don't overstate.  Given this, my old "Eric and Kathy" show in the morning on local radio looks and tastes like stale carnival cotton candy:  it melts into nothing and doesn't even taste good going down...and leaves you with sticky fingers and I hate that.  What I'm even more aware of now is how vapid that programming was.  I listened to nothing for hours everyday in my commute.  A total waste of time and brain cells.  Now, I might still be listening to fluffy content, but it's not absent of thought or value.  The quality of content on mainstream radio, on the other hand, pales in comparison.  And while I have no control over that, I can create my own ala carte menu of podcasts offering a range of topics, production value, and discussion.  I'm in.  Choice is the American way, right?

It wasn't until recently that television caught up to this.  The cable revolution of the early-mid '80s represented the "first wave" of independent programming.  Honestly, content has never been better on television than it is right now.  Premium cable (HBO, Showtime) pushed Basic Cable (TNT, TBS, USA, BRAVO) to be better pushed Network tv (ABC, CBS, NBC) to be better.  The viewer has only won with a steady flow of really excellent television choices and genres that have pushed the boundaries of this kind of story-telling whether fiction or non-.

BUT, the delivery system is a major injustice.  A big one. Huge.

I'm not sure how cable companies today have not been prosecuted as monopolies because there is no such thing as free trade in the cable market.  In Chicago I can choose been RCN (evil) and Comcast (evil-er) and that's it.  ATT U-verse is not available in my area (not that it matters because they're just as bad).  That's it.  And the prices got ridiculous.  So when a snotty customer rep for RCN told me, "No, just because you've been with us 9 years we can't lower your bill to under $120 per month) it was time to break up.  I just wasn't that into them.  And the moment I returned my cable box I had a strong urge to reverse my decision--so much to watch...going away...

Enter streaming.

Talk about a new way.  I have an AppleTV that I never really understood the value of until that cable box and I parted ways.  From either my phone or directly from AppleTV, I can stream content from all the major networks, HBO and Showtime, Hulu and Netflix, and most basic cable channels including ESPN. Many of these have a "live" option that let's you watch what's on at the moment which is particularly handy for sports of all kinds.  This, friends, is free; I pay the cost of my internet which is approximately $80 less than my cable bill used to be.  And then there's the freedom.  I can watch Survivor on Thursdays because that's better for me.  I can binge on Veep because I plan it that way because I think it's more enjoyable.  I can watch Game of Thrones faithfully every Sunday because that's when it's on and people at work will be talking about it Monday.  I've never been happier because television is now on my terms.  Suck it, RCN.

Of course, this is not nor will it ever be a panacea.  There are hitches here.  First, all of this streaming business requires that I show proof that I have a cable account that includes the channels I'm trying to stream.  I've bootlegged this information off of a couple generous friends who assent to being repaid in wine and laughter.  Once again I win.  Some stuff I just can't get.  I can't watch Conan live anymore because that app doesn't allow for streaming live.  I've had to say goodbye to a lot of crap that was on the CW.  Funny that I don't even remember at this moment what that was.

And there's the issue of filtering out the current crap.  The one thing I'll say about choosing your own media, especially in the podcast world, is realizing it's an open media: anybody can make it.  This, of course, means there's a lot of junk out there.  Where once radio or television execs would make those quality decisions for me, I'm on my own to trial and error stuff.  Sometimes, it feels like another job...at which point I remind myself I can just shut that off and go read a book.

Yeah, right.

"Happy-ish" and Existential TV

To say I love TV is an understatement.  Someday, I'll catch you up on what it is about TV that has made it my #1, go to all the time, "find happiness and joy there" medium of entertainment.  I think it has something to do with the amount of choices I have and the lack of commitment it requires (as juxtaposed with, say, movies in which I literally feel stuck for two hours even if I'm having a good time).  Suffice it to say here that not a day goes by that I don't delight in television programming: the good (True Detective, Veep, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Survivor just as a tiny sub-set of examples), the bad (anything on Bravo) and the ugly (The View and The Chew...both on ABC, go figure). In fact, though I'm calling this online place "Active Culture," it might as well be called "Let's Talk About TV" because that's usually what I'm talking about...or thinking about...or reading reviews about....or looking forward to.

If I'm really going to boil it down, I think I love it because it's enjoyable but equally fascinating.  So much sociology and critical review work has been written about the intimacy of this medium: it's in our homes, at our command, and now with Genius playlist capabilities it gets to know us and our tastes.  TV for me and for many is where we flock to escape reality...but not too far. And while I enjoy that experience, what's much more interesting to me is that the shows on TV tell us so much about who is living in this country right now...or who producers believe that group to be. And the dialogue between those who offer shows and put them on television and the critical and mass response to them makes my heart skip a beat--I don't have to know everyone in America to know that American Idol gets the response it does because a majority of Americans deeply believe in the idea of the "American Dream."  Living in a metropolitan center like Chicago, I have to remember that there are people who relate to and enjoy Duck Dynasty and Toddlers and Tiaras... and that they (are allowed to) vote in presidential elections. The fact that so many delight in the trainwreck television of the Real Housewives franchise on Bravo tells me many face hard times: who else watches that stuff except people who need to feel better about what they're doing right now? I'm much less concerned with what gets absorbed via TV than what our watching preferences and the studio offerings tell us about the conditions in which we live, whether privileged or not.


So, the appearance of Showtime's Happy-ish struck a chord with me...because it's so damn bleak.

Just in case you missed it but so as not "spoil" anything, here's a trailer:

Doesn't it just look great?  

I've been hearing about this show and seeing Kathryn Hahn (who I can claim to know kinda) on the morning shows promoting and solely out of my love of my 2nd-degree connection to KH, when the pilot showed up on my streaming app I was like, "Oh YEAH...another good show in the mix."  It was already a rainy, somewhat cold Saturday in what should be Spring here in Chicago and I was looking forward to savoring something good.  I nestled into my "serious TV watching" position on my couch and there got lied to for 30 minutes.  This isn't a show about modesty happiness, as the title suggests.  It's some man's producer's mid-life crisis acted out on a gray-scaled screen.  

Thankfully, mercifully, my streaming connection was sluggish so that about every ten minutes the show would pause; this became a welcome reprieve from the story of a man, Thom Payne of course he's named, who is depressed to the point of potentially needing some medication and for reasons I cannot understand.  Of course, it could be his much younger, beautiful, artist wife who maybe was a child bride, if timelines are to believed who is also a kind and understanding mother to their very cute son.  Perhaps it's his marketing job, complete with his own office, located in a building that looks like it could be owned and operated by Google.  Maybe it's the kick-ass house they live in. Or everything other trapping of privilege this ex-pat Brit has amassed over the years.  

Alright...I'm being reductive.  Of course, this life has it's problems.  Just in the first episode we learn that Thom doesn't want to try Viagra but his wife wants him to (maybe that was a joke I missed in the haze of sadness) but she worries that her pussy is too loose and considers a rejuvenation.  Because of his new Millennial boss who wants this old "Mad Man" to get on board with social media, Thom has to cancel his 5 Guys plans with his son, who he worries is another kind of pussy, to which his wife responds, "All dads cancel on their sons.  He'll be fine" (again...not sure if that was supposed to be ironic but if it was: fail).  At the Town Hall style company meeting Thom ends up pitching a fit in front of his boss (Bradley Whitford, of course, in another "walk with me" role) that involves Keebler elves and discuss of his asshole leading to a bizarre and disturbing fever dream involving Mrs. Keebler elf.  See...his life is hard and bizarre.

Aside from the washed out visuals that I'm sure were intended more so for figurative punch, I found myself wondering about what the appearance of a show like this means for us.  Why does Showtime think this will sell? And, quite frankly, to whom?  What does this say about what these executives think about their viewers?  Thus begins my rant about overly existential TV.

I remember back in the good old Golden Days of the 80's there was a show called 30 Something. 

My mom and her friends referred to it as "Yuppie Whiners" because at that point in their lives, as forty something, this show was so unabashedly navel-gazing and, frankly, stupid that they couldn't handle it.  For a reason I cannot access, I loved it.  I don't even have to tell you what it was about.  Just look at the picture and glean from it.  Then, not too long ago, TNT gave us Men of a Certain Age which mom subsequently called "Middle-aged whiney men."

This show exhibited the same tendencies although this time focusing squarely on the awful banality of middle-aged life when you're a man...I guess. A man who has a good job and some kids or an incredibly successful sports career. I wanted to love it just because these three were in it.  I found it awfully terrible and impossible to tolerate.  "Privileged whiny bastards" is what I called it.

Now add to that Showtime's Happy-ish.  This is a genre of television I don't understand.  Who wants to watch shows about how hard and terribly boring lives of privilege are? (No, I'm asking that question seriously...who?)  Do we watch because it makes us feel better of if we're not in those categories?  Like, "Hahaha...that ad exec thought his life would be so great but nothing is all that special?"  Do folks watch because they actually relate to this?  

I ask those questions carefully because I don't really care about the answers. Instead what I find myself wanting to saw to these show runners is something along the lines of, "Who do you think you are?" First, because you're obviously so rich you've lost touch with reality to the point you think your own mid-life crisis will make for compelling tv. But also, you think you have something important and real to safe about life in these United States and it's so misguided.  There is A LOT to say about this life and you're wasting an incredibly powerful platform on the "earth shattering" issues of whether or not to give Viagra a try or what to do when your complacent, lazy self gets edged out of a job by people performing better than you are.  These are rich people problems.  No one wants to hear it.  More to the point: it's only pertinent to very few lives in these United States.

Fundamentally, this is the beef I have with any television shows that try to make some important statement about social life from a vantage point of privilege which usually involves some combination of 1) whiteness 2) middle-classness 3) and hetero-normative relationships.  And to approach that as a drama, almost sneering about how terrible that lot is makes my blood boil.  A lot of television has gone through the ringer of social consciousness in the past. Social critics have taken Norman Lear's shows (Archie Bunker, Good Times, Maude to name a few) to task for reinforcing damaging stereotypes.  Back before Bill Cosby was a sex predator, The Cosby Show and its offspring (A Different World) were skewered for not representing the "real" black experience just as Diff'rent Strokes and Facts of Life were.  

While these critiques are well-taken, the fact is that these shows brought race, class, and the concept of inequality to the forefront of discussion in American homes that otherwise would have been (and typically were) oblivious.  And they used satire and comedy, as comedians do still, to approach topics that are inherently uncomfortable and difficult.  What differed in these and what was most valuable about them as catalysts for conversation was the character dealing with change in some way drew empathy.  Even Archie Bunker, the prototypical racist asshole, was able to not be outrightly hated or resented in the long-game (the short-game was the exact opposite, in fact.)  His arc was one of coming from ignorance into tolerance, as long a road as that was and it started in a house, on a chair that looked just like those in homes everywhere. 

The real bummer for me about Happy-ish and the others mentioned above is that I think they do touch on life experiences that are real and that call into question the gilded idea of the "American Dream" which is one of the most heinous capitalistic ideologies at work in our world today. There is plenty to say about that whole construct not working out and, frankly, the more discussion we have about that not being real, the better all of our lives would be.  But if the writers and runners of these "existential shows" really wanted to bring the "experience" of mid-life to television in a way that created some kind of dialogue they have to tell a different story.  At the end of my workday, in which I'm being payed less than my male counterparts and fighting gender stereotypes in the tech workplace, the last thing I have one moment of sympathy for is the white guy with the life I aspire to whining about how terrible it is that he has all of this and still isn't happy.

Fuck you, dude.

"Invisibilia" and the power of Categories

I am a podcast junkie. 

 Since the radio in my car broke a year ago, I find that I can't get enough of this format. In one hour or less you can learn something new with few to no commercials.  It's the perfect format for great storytelling. I bank This American Life episodes like currency for long drives: 6 TAL's and I'm in Cleveland or back to Chicago.  A week wouldn't be worth living without Pop Culture Happy Hour, Planet Money, How Stuff Works...don't even get me started on Serial and what that did for my love of 1) journalism 2) Sarah Koenig and 3) GREAT, HONEST storytelling.   With these and a whole host of others (maybe I'll make a big list below of my favorites)  I move myself thoughtfully and meaningfully from Point A in Edgewater to Point B in Bronzeville and beyond.  Without them, It would literally be radio silence.

I'm also well aware of the clear emergent NPR pattern here.  There is a staggering world of podcastery out there to be explored, but NPR is my peeps and so, when in an episode of PCHH they tell me to check out Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me or Radiolab or The Moth or Freakonomics, I do it.  Why go any further when my intelligent, liberally minded folks at NPR keep churning out excellent listening material.  

Thus I stumbled upon Invisibilia which is my new, absolute favorite thing. In the intro they say it's a exploration of the invisible forces that shape our lives.  In other circles I run in, we call this Sociology.  Anyway, I've been powering my way through their inaugural season this past couple days and they hit on all the obvious forces you might imagine: computers in our lives, thoughts, something they call "entanglement"--their topics are oddly esoteric and real at the same time.  So when I was listening to the podcast on "categories" and our need for them, my ears especially perked.  This is so sociological in concept but their treatment of the idea completed freaked me out.  Let's say it was, in no way, sociological.

Since I started studying culture, I have fascinated on the conundrum of categories: we need them but are also changed and developed by them.  Developmentally, there's a fine line between using them to help us make sense out of the world (and so they serve us) and falling into the trap of being defined by them (which is where we start to serve them, reinforce them, and come to be slaves to them).  In no way is this not a daily activity; categories always work on us as we use them ourselves to comprehend the world around us.  If I think too long about this, I start to feel claustrophobic.  It raises questions like: To what degree am I free to determine who I am? To what degree can I break free of categories? Why do I feel so comfortable relying on categories?  What are the real consequences of these categories?  Heady questions and we see some of the disturbing answers around us every day.

What worried me a bit about invisibilia's treatment of categories was that they lumped comprehensive, biological categories and social categories into the same pot.  For example, their treatment of the topic suggested that categorizing an object, like a coffee pot and coming to understand its similarity in function to other kitchen appliances, is the same as categorizing the social particulars of people.  In other words, gender, race, and class were likened to those characteristics exhibited or observable by people for use in comprehending what another means in the context of life.  In other words, they ended up talking about stereotypes and how different individuals manage or cope with living in between opposing stereotypes.  

Their first story was of a man/woman ghost-named Paige, because of a hormonal disorder reported experiencing a "flip" experience of gender.  That is he/she would feel a distinct moment in time when "something inside of him/her" changed and all of a sudden the man would "flip" into "woman" mode and then later "flip back" to man mode. To be clear, he exhibited male sex characteristics and biologically showed no signs of hermaphroditism or any other biological "causes" of this (although later, they would determine he had a massive hormone imbalance which caused the usual physical symptoms of lethargy, weight fluctuation, etc). Primarily, this was strictly about his behavior and the "flip" he described was between the polar opposite gender constructs: he would go from being what he described as a "reserved, not talkative, somewhat impulsive" guy who liked to go to the gym into a "chatty, emotionally open, feminine" version of himself who felt and reacted to the world differently.  Psychologists ruled out any notion of "disorders" like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia (good grief).  He just said he felt different.  At the end of the story, having gone through a painful divorce at the hands of a wife who couldn't deal with his category-hopping, he finally decided to pursue gender-reassignment surgery to become a female full time.

Admittedly, the whole time I listened to this story I felt very mixed emotions but perhaps not typical ones.  This case was mystifying because, in my mind, this was a social struggle. Biology could provide no answers, psychology finally provided at least a group of others with a shared experience and (what I consider) a weak link to some kind of hormonal imbalance.  But as he talked I just kept thinking, "This is a guy's guy who feels like he wants to act like what he think a woman acts like and he doesn't feel free to do it."  I was sad he had to appeal to biology and/or "science" to validate his feelings, I was sad his wife couldn't handle living with a man who wanted to be chatty, more emotionally open, and probably, all things considered, a better partner than he'd been before.  I was very conflicted about his choice for sex-reassignment surgery, not that he chose it, but that he himself couldn't imagine being a male and exhibiting "feminine" or "womanly" characteristics.  

Of all the social categories, I think gender (and it's power) is possibly the most difficult to 1) comprehend and 2) circumvent or change in real life.  It's cool right now to be a gender-bender when it comes to sex.  That's even a turn-on because it feels edgy and possibly somewhat risky (see anything Miley Cyrus has done to get more attention over the past years).  But when it comes to life, most are generally not comfortable with direct challenges to gender norms.  My biggest concern, though, is when knowledgeable, socially conscious media sources make mistakes like they did here.  GENDER IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.  People make it, we use it, we adjust it, we negotiate its meaning.  It is not "caused" by biology or or psychology although it is informed by both.  Instead of focusing on the questions and reactions I had--which were primarily of the context of this man who felt so out of place in his own body because of the way others interacted with him about it--they chose to focus on him as a psychological abnormality, thus making the problem one of chemistry and not society.  Also, thus making the problem one of an individual trying to respond to static, unchangeable categories instead of what it actually should be which is the ways in which those categories are challenged, negotiated, and can and do bend.

When do we start framing this question in terms of how Paige himself and other people using traditional gender expectations changed the trajectory of this man's life? 

The second story the presented called "Children of the Dirt" just made me want to scream.  You can check that out and ponder it on your own if you choose.

There's another post in here about the role of trusted creators of information morphing seamlessly into creators of bad "knowledge," but I left this podcast which I still love for its willingness to step into really difficult questions and topics feeling let down in the storytelling.  If we're going to open the window to talking about this difficult "invisible" forces--all of which are socially constructed and maintained--then we have to responsibly discuss them correctly...and know the basic difference between psychology and sociology...and know the difference in the framing of these difficult topics.

Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller, call me.  I'll catch you up.