Why I Don’t Comment On Many Things

I don’t watch television live.  I’m not even sure what channels my television receives; I think the answer is ‘very few.’  I’m not a cord cutter.  I never had a cord.  I miss most movies in theaters during their first run.  I rarely listen to the radio.  As a result, I don’t often have informed opinions about pop culture, except in a longitudinal “How does this film fit into Quentin Tarantino’s career” sort of way.  And I try not to talk about things concerning which I lack an informed opinion.

The problem with this strategy is, often, silence looks a lot like acceptance, especially of a majority viewpoint.  Terms like “the silent majority” exist for this reason.  If I don’t speak up when others do, I must be okay with this or that absurd thing some guy on talk radio said, or I must think Seth Green did a great job hosting the Academy Awards, or, recently, I must feel Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance was unremarkable.  Often, I don’t—or I wouldn’t, if I knew what was going on.  I’ve just missed the events that led up to the conversation, because I’m not watching TV.

What do I do instead?  I read, a lot.  No wall of my house that could have a bookcase lacks one, and all those bookcases are full.  I write.  I fence three nights a week.  I draft Magic.  I keep up with news via the Internet, NPR, the Economist, and Rolling Stone.  I have great friends in the area, and we hang out.  We play board games; we go to pubs.  I cook.  I play video games long after their release, and rarely.  I watch shows on DVD, with my wife or with friends.  (My wife and I are working through the first season of Orphan Black now, and the second season of Escaflowne, not to mention our stalled watchthrough of Samurai Champloo.  We’re also paused at Game of Thrones s01 e03.  This is the rate at which I watch television.)

I don’t mean to say that television is unimportant, or bad, or that people who consume pop culture and talk about it are wasting their time.  Quite the opposite.  Pop culture is enormously important—18 million Americans see each episode of the Big Bang Theory, give or take.  (I know this because I looked it up.  The Big Bang Theory, to me, is that show that Walter’s human alter-ego from the new Muppets movie stars in; I’ve seen the first episode on DVD.)  On any given Thursday, just under twice as many people tune in to watch The Big Bang Theory as there were copies of Mein Kampf sold or distributed through the entirety of World War 2 (says Wikpedia).  Even moderately successful television shows have viewership that makes average book print runs look tiny.  What we as a culture consume in such quantities says a lot about us, and should be discussed.

I’m just rarely the person to do it.  For me to talk about much of this stuff would involve hunting down the original source material, researching the context, and offering a pith-helmet-wearing anthropologist’s position, which would sound paternalistic and weird and be very much an outsider’s view.  Alyssa Rosenberg is an observer who knows what she’s observing; it’s thanks to her journalism, and to the work of others like her, that I understand the pop-culture world to the limited extent I do.

Now, that said, the fact that I am posting this essay places even more of an onus on me to speak out when I do know enough to have an opinion.  That’s an area where I need to do better, and try harder.  In the meantime, I’ll keep working to write good books, and leave the swift cultural response to people who have knowledge of, and investment in, the context.