TV, guide

Living by the light of the tube

by Jumana Farouky

First it was rock and roll, then it was the Russians. Now television is the great American whipping boy. According to rabid anti-televisionists, TV can be blamed for almost everything that's wrong with society today: racism, obesity, homelessness, snap-on toupees. First-graders start using each other for target practice, and politicians react by wagging their fingers at Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now that it's hip to hate TV, tube lovers have resorted to hiding in chat rooms when they want to debate the odds of Ross and Rachel getting back together on Friends. Despite the stigma, I've been a card-carrying member of the Idiot Box Club since I was a little girl, watching wide-eyed as Big Bird desperately tried to convince people that Mr. Snuffleupagus actually existed. I felt Big Bird's pain -- nobody believed me, either, when I said that a friendly troll lived at the foot of my bed. I followed Bird through his struggle for acceptance, through his persistence in the face of ridicule, and I was inspired to stick to my guns. Of course, in Bird's case, everyone finally saw Snuffy and eagerly accepted him into the Sesame Street fold, while at my house it was more like, "Yeah, yeah, friendly troll. Get your finger out before you poke your brain."

But what I took away from the experience -- and this is why I still adore television -- was a realization: TV is not just entertainment, it's enlightenment.

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I realize this isn't a popular position. When I tell people that I've learned to incorporate my favorite shows into my life, that I've developed a give-and-take relationship with TV that no marriage can equal, I get a look of disgust usually reserved for roadkill. Monster-truck enthusiasts and Stephen King fans know what I mean.

Over years of dedicated viewership, I have discovered that television shows generously and regularly spoon out life advice better than anything my friends or mother could offer. With friends or parents, advice only amounts to hearsay; they can tell you what to do, but they can't promise it'll work. Television, on the other hand, presents you with the choice and the consequences, arming you with all the facts necessary for making educated decisions.

Example: every night, parents all over America try to explain to their children that they should stay away from drugs. They deliver carefully rehearsed speeches containing words such as "addiction," "jail time," and "high on life," fully aware that their children only hear "blah," "blah blah," and "high on blah." Those same parents should instead try sitting their children down in front of ER some Thursday night -- one of those episodes in which drug addicts vomit and bleed all over themselves as doctors attempt to gouge out their intestines or pummel their hearts back to life before they die of painful cardiopulmonary infarctions. An hour of that and a child would swear off Flintstones vitamins.

Even when I was young, television helped shape my views on the adult world. The Care Bears Family made me face questions about spirituality: who controls the fate of mankind, an almighty being or a gang of rainbow-colored bears that inspired a set of fully posable action figures? I eventually decided on the almighty being, but for a while it could easily have gone the other way. The Bugs Bunny Show introduced me to the complexities of sexual identity -- he's male, but sometimes he dresses up as a woman and kisses Elmer Fudd. My conclusion: let bi-bunnies be bi-bunnies. And a weekly dose of ALF taught me that eating the family cat might be funny, but in the end it only hurts the people you love.

Through my teen years, I kept turning on and tuning in to help me through some of my more important life choices. After Kelly finally admitted to Zack that she had a crush on him one Saved by the Bell afternoon, I took her cue and told the cute guy in my math class that I liked him. If I hadn't taken that risk, I would never have known what it's like to have a group of boys laughing and pointing at me.

When it came time to make a decision about college, I turned to the TV guide -- maybe I'd be a lawyer (L.A. Law), a doctor (M*A*S*H), or an astronaut (Mork & Mindy). I finally decided to study English, because Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote seemed to be having a blast: write a few chapters, solve a murder, finish another bestseller, solve another murder. I could get used to that.

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Although I still use my remote control as an electronic I Ching, I've learned that to get the most out of TV's wisdom, you have to ignore some of the babble. Don't follow the advice of commercials, for instance; you'll just end up with a closetful of chocolate-flavored laxatives. Disregard anything you see on "real life" shows such as Cops or The Real World -- without the help of aggressive video editors, the people on those shows would be just as boring as you are. And women, pay no attention to any of the Lifetime original movies, because they'll persuade you to barricade yourself inside your home, kidnap your own children, kill your husband and then have him arrested for stalking you, and finally become a nun who honeymoons as a hooker, and who wants that?

Otherwise, anything on TV is a potential path to enlightenment. If you sit through an episode of the E! True Hollywood Story where yet another promising starlet dives into an abyss of drink/drugs/both, winding up dead and naked in a trailer, and you find yourself thinking, "That looks like fun," you might want to consider a career change. Can't decide whether you should date the FBI agent you met at the bar last night? Check out The X-Files -- there's a reason everyone on that show is alone. Hungry, but can't think of what to eat? Do a little channel surfing: if you come across Emeril Live!, problem solved, but if you land on Crocodile Hunter, you might need to find a specialty grocery store.

Don't get me wrong, I know the difference between real life and TV; I just choose to ignore it. Everybody needs somewhere to turn for help -- some people go to their therapists, some consult the tarot, I look to the little screen. And it hasn't steered me wrong yet. There's only one more thing I need to complete the fulfilling synergy between me and my TV. Next Christmas, I'm asking for a laugh track.

Jumana Farouky can be reached at jfarouky[a]phx.com.