I think I was pretty typical of my generation watching kids shows, and graduating to the news as I got older. who knows, if i hadn’t gone on the road I probably would have developed conventional televsion habits. But I only caught what was available where I was. If I was living with someone whose taste I didn’t appreciate I’d gravitate to a book. If I liked it I watch it. Being very poor, and wandering, a TV was not something I coud carry, so it wasn’t something I owned.
Losing a habit
What you don’t have, and can’t afford, doesn’t end to become a habit. just an occasional luxury. So by the time I was in grad school I was watching shows like “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” at friends homes, on the odd night, and never got a firm grip on the plot lines.
To an extent, this falling out of a major American habitation means that I failed to get the plot lines of a lot of American cultural life as well. Sometimes it was like watching someone else’s home movies. – interesting, but a bit obscure at the same time.
A friend once said that this was why I was so interested in being an anthropologist who studied American culture. It was because I stood outside in the weeds and looked in. And during my years working as an anthropologist, I got to observe plenty.
I was about ten years into my career when I went to work for the Department of Interior. There I was eventually straitjacketed into a supervisory position. When the purge of government (forerunner of what is going on now) came along, I found myself one day, free, and working in a boatyard. I went from the one doing the study to one of the traditional craftspeople myself. I could have interviewed, photographed, and studied ME.
During this transition I found myself. Literally. And for the first time I found myself with time to watch TV. When I was home I found myself watching TV with my kids. by comparison with the adult fare, the kid stuff was superior. So I found a closer match for me in public radio. Watch Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, and listen to National Public Radio. It beat the puerile pap that daytime television had become.
Lost and never regained
I never required a taste for TV; there has been no remastering of the model as streaming platforms remade what and where you would see anything you wanted. I listen to the radio. Read on the computer. Write my blog. Work in my shop. And go to work. All of this without any mediation from Fox or any of the other networks. Don’t miss it in the least—Sic transit gloria mundi.
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We never had a movie camera but when I moved to Australia, my sister brought her husband’s movie camera with her. She and my parents had come to visit–my parents’ first time out of the country, other than short runs to Tijuana when they lived in Tucson, and my sis took videos of my folks and perhaps me…I have it somewhere, probably on VHS. I should look for it. Thanks for reminding me…
Nice 👍🏻
“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”–that was my favorite TV show. I didn’t watch much TV but that show as a winner. I think of it as ‘Seinfeld’ but way ahead of its time.
I gave up on TV a little over a decade ago- this way I curate what I watch and have eliminated the annoying commercials!
Way to go, Violet!
My mom was always telling me to watch TV, and she even bought me one. Her argument was that if I did, I would fit in better. The Bit oops! I mean woman died and left my alcoholic brother a year old Plymouth and left me two TVs from the 80s. My Aunt Jo and I had good laugh at that. I left the TVs with my brother hoping they would keep him off the road…
Fit in? fit in…..WE don’t need no stinking badges!
Seriously… To give the woman some credit, i think she was authentically concerned for my happiness.