gruesome grimaces

Already in the 1990's I began to notice the evils of television sets in public places. I know that because Professor Lucas, hero of "A Neurotic in an Exotic Land", my novel whose early chapters were composed in the mid 1990's, complains about the evils of the televisions in the Chicago airport.

This evil has only increased in the intervening years.

Today I found myself in the waiting room of a hospital, in a room dominated by a "large screen" television. I managed to find the volume switch and turn it to the silent setting. Nonetheless, the images on the screen continued to be horrifying: young, healthy people distorting their faces, their eyes, their lips into an exaggerated imitation of living creatures engaged in normal conversation. It made my head spin and made me want to throw up.

I spoke to a man in the room about this. His laconic comment was: "That's why they have a mute switch." What a cocky, arrogant answer! No, the mute switch is not the solution. What we have here is the tip of an ugly ice-berg. Those are not real people, or they are real people engaged in unnatural acts. And it is a case of anti-culture. The fact that he could regard it as "normal" speaks volumes about the low level of culture in the United States. Indeed, in Slovakia, I had teenage students who clearly formulated the proposition ( and without prompting from me) that while they had a real life, with things to do, places to go, and people to meet, they had no need of television.

Earlier I had watched a Spanish language channel featuring music. Again, with the sound off, the exaggerated, ritual gestures of the singers and dancers seemed grotesque. Every woman was dressed in a way to draw attention to the fact that she was a woman. And the men, too, seemed to be grotesque parodies.

It was hellish.

And then there was the conversation segment of the program: four bimbos sitting in four chairs talking to one another in an artificial way. Yet, I thought I could discern a difference in the intelligence levels of the four imitators of human life. One looked at the camera with stupid sincerity. Most seemed completely unaware of the inanity of what they were doing. They believed it. But what they were doing, I would say, did not even reach the level of bad acting.

Only one woman, I thought, laughed in a way that suggested that she alone, of four people, realized what a pathetic pretense the whole thing was.

GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Note

Talk about arrogance and delusions of power. A stern note on the television instructed all those present that they were not allowed to "adjust" the volume. The hell with that! I am only sorry I didn't shut the god damn thing OFF! WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? HOW CAN THEY IMAGINE THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO TORTURE US WITH SUCH CRAP? And what idiotic passivity that people accept this intrusion!