| A MODEST PROPOSAL TO THE TELEVISION NETWORKS |
| Published (with two small cuts) in The Monterey County Herald, October 24, 2000 |
One of the most effective strategies for standing your ground in a conflict is to give your opponents a false sense of their own power. Case in point: A growing number of outraged parents, industry critics and zealots in high places have been trying to pressure you into cleaning up your programming. They point to the proliferation of violence and sexual content on television to which children, they claim, are regularly exposed. They would have you believe that these images have somehow warped their impressionable young minds, rendering some of them morally, even criminally, unstable.
Preposterous, you say. Nevertheless, you must realize that in order to keep a lot of busybodies in Congress from meddling with your artistic decisions, you will need to take steps to protect, or make it appear that you are protecting, vulnerable young viewers from potentially harmful programs---without, of course, depriving more “mature” audiences of the carnage, sensuality, mindless humor, shallow formulas and car-screeching, shoot-’em-up mayhem that keep them (and your profits) returning to you season after season. Here’s how:
Be diligent. Rate the content of network shows and movies. Issue parental warnings. That way: a) Concerned parents can know what garbage to avoid; b) Hardened viewers and unsupervised youngsters can locate it more easily; and c) You guys can receive credit for taking a moral stand without really changing anything.
Be patient. Placate the opposition one season at a time. Stall a little, push a little. Remember that even the purest of tastes become calloused over time. Material that was out of bounds only a few years ago is standard fare now. Whatever you can’t ram through the system today, you can slip under the table tomorrow. Bear in mind that controversy is good for business. It keeps you networks in the hot spot at a time when home video and the Internet are trying to steal your thunder.
Produce more “family entertainment”. Enslave your viewers with the notion that not everything on television is condemnable, that they can somehow preserve the good, yet purge the evil. Inundate them with options. Persuade them that the power to choose lies, not in their will (for that is something they surrender the moment they turn on their TV sets), but in their remote control units. It’s all right for viewers to pick the card. But YOU must always, always control the deck.
Be responsible. People who cannot, or will not, police their own minds, or their children’s minds, expect you, the networks, to do the job for them. Consider how, for decades, the infamous “laugh track” provided viewers invaluable support by identifying humor and triggering a response. Now would be a perfect time for you to introduce a “scream track” to accompany acts of violence. Also: gasps and yelps to alert audiences when something terrible is about to happen; “yuck” tracks when a scene is particularly disgusting; chants of “a-w-w-w” when something is sentimental or cute, “boo-hoo” when it’s time to feel sad, and so on. So that viewers don't lose all sense of reality, messages like "munch", "swallow", "slurp", "snooze", "tinkle" and "plop" should flash across their screens every so often to remind them of their bodily necessities.
Oh yes, and how about a loud bang every 30 or 60 minutes to indicate when one program has ended and another has begun?
Lastly, take heart. Your standing is secure. Viewers can haggle all they want to about taste and content, but they are not going to fight to reform an institution which they do not intend, ultimately, to support. There is only one response that could bring you or any other industry to its knees: total abstinence. And that is not likely to happen. People simply do not want that much power.
The Almighty Tube, which has chattered and laughed and sung and applauded its way into the human consciousness, has created a niche in the rhythm of family life that is like no other. It is the daily fix, devotional, baby sitter, tranquilizer, companion and lullaby rolled into one. What it has planted in the American home, no amount of controversy is going to uproot. Whatever it may have stolen in the process, no one will ever miss.