<\/p>\n
What happened to American television? Sitting naked on the living room I don’t know what the name of the episode was, but it was about Of course, three months on the trail with the cows has them all tweaked That’s all in the first 10 minutes. The rest of the show is the chase – Of course, our anti-heroes all die horridly. One returns to his girl, Epilogue. The stone grave of our hero, Dillon and Festus standing sadly Just another episode of Gunsmoke<\/em>. And it was a piece of 45 Even the campy 80’s trash, which I love with a secret passion, Unfortunately, of course, there’s no grand conspiracy. The choice is So how do we change it? How do we take back our entertainment? My
\nfloor and drinking vodka straight from the bottle while watching TV
\nLand, I had a revelation during an episode of Gunsmoke<\/em>.
\nI didn’t switch the channel because, if I were to move too fast, I
\nwould have thrown up. In your later years, you get a feeling for things
\nsuch as that. So I held very still and watched the entire episode and
\nrealized that our generation is being shortchanged. This is something
\nI’ve long suspected since, after all, the worst episodes of Are You Being Served?<\/em> are better than much of the stuff coming out today. But this episode of Gunsmoke really put the situation in focus.<\/p>\n
\nthree cattle hands who come into Dodge City after a particularly
\nstrenuous cattle run. They’ve each earned 100 bucks and plan to head
\nout and settle down with the money. One has a girl waiting for him,
\nanother has a plot of land in Texas that he wants to work and the third
\nis the main guy’s old buddy who doesn’t have any plans; which means
\nhe’s the gay one.<\/p>\n
\nout, so they head into the saloon to whoop it up, as you do, and end up
\ngetting in an argument with a group of railroad engineers. The railroad
\nis undercutting the cattle driving industry with their fancy schmanzy
\ncattlecars and what not, so there’s some luddite tension on the part of
\nour three cattlehands. After posturing with the ladies and buying
\ndrinks for everyone, they become involved in a fracas with the railroad
\nengineers. Chairs are thrown, girls are punched, bottles are smashed.
\nAfterwards, our boys wake up in Marshal Dillon’s jail where we learn
\nthat the head cattle guy and Matt Dillon are old buds. That gets them
\nout and on the streets with relatively little problem, at which point
\nthey realize that all their money is gone. In a bit of a snit, they
\nreturn to the saloon and accuse the owner of ripping them off. He
\nprotests innocence, shots are fired, the cashbox is stolen and the
\nchase is on.<\/p>\n
\nour three cowhand anti-heroes make a run from Dodge City to Texas with
\nDillon and Festus in hot pursuit. Of course, our three boys are
\nhonorable men. They want to do the right thing, but find themselves on
\nthe wrong end of the law every time. Why? Because they don’t have
\nmoney. In what my grandmother would call a wicked turn of the devil’s
\nhand, the stolen cash box was empty. Our boys can’t survive with 32
\ncents between them, and so they become increasingly frustrated. Several
\ntimes on their fugitive journey, they stop and try to get a job in the
\nhopes of paying off their crimes. At every turn, they find that the
\nrailroad has stolen all the jobs and that cowpokes are becoming a thing
\nof the past. Modern America versus the old ways is the theme, we even
\nget a narrated ending about the conditions and pay that the old
\ncowhands had to face and how they were “the backbone that really built
\nAmerica” not the thieving, carpetbagger railroads, thank you. Luddite
\ntension appears to have infected the writers, as well. Or, perhaps,
\nfailing grades in history.<\/p>\n
\nonly to be shot unjustly by a sheriff. Another gets belly shot by an
\nunscrupulous general store owner and dies as soon as he crosses the
\nborder into Texas. Our main anti-hero, though, survives. At least,
\nuntil Matt Dillon and Festus catch up with him. He delivers a powerful
\nspeech about honor, modern morality and life as a cowhand, then, to a
\nswell of music, he rides into the middle of a herd of cattle, driving
\nthem to stampede while old friend Marshall Dillon screams frantically
\nfor him to stop. Our anti-hero, riding amidst the stampeding cattle,
\nlooks up sadly and then lets go of his horse, falling into the churned,
\ndusty earth. The camera lowers to a POV stampede shot, then lifts
\nslowly as the cattle thin out to reveal the twisted, ruined body of our
\ntobacco-chewing, straight-talking, honest as the day is long anti-hero.<\/p>\n
\nover it, saying nothing. The scene fades back to an overhead shot of
\nthe cattle, where the “builders of America” narration takes over. Fade
\nto black, silently roll credits.<\/p>\n
\nminute art. It was beautifully shot, perfectly cast and written with a
\nskilled hand. The suicide was a breath-taking scene and, as I watched
\nwith wide eyes, I realized that this is something we don’t get on TV
\ntoday. Today, we get sanitized episodes of trash that barely make sense
\nif you actually stop and think about them…which you’re not supposed to
\ndo. Oh, there are always exceptions, and they often do get the
\nrecognition they deserve, but those exceptions are rarely successful
\nratings-wise. The critics howl about them, but they are shows that are
\ncancelled, briefly saved by write-in campaigns, and never do well
\nenough to be labeled a “hit.” Gunsmoke<\/em> was always a “hit,”
\nwhether it was a mindless bad guy kisses Miss Kitty episode or a
\ncomplicated character study. It lasted for decades and, at its worst,
\nit’s better than most anything coming across the networks today. These
\nold shows dealt with complex characters, racial tension, controversial
\nAmerican history and delivered prostitutes with hearts of gold, hanged
\nmen and men that couldn’t be hanged, real mysteries, personal
\nrevelations, madness, hatred and love. Hell, The Waltons<\/em> were
\ndealing with Japanese-American internment camps 20 years before Clinton
\ndelivered a waterhead apology. The stories didn’t always end well.
\nSometimes, the good guys died. Rarely, compared to today’s formula, was
\nthe story wrapped up with an innocuous “family friendly” finale.<\/p>\n
\noutstrips today’s TV. So what’s the problem? How can these outdated,
\nsometimes goofy classics do so much better than a multi-million dollar
\nper episode network series in 2003? Is this the horror of the PC
\ngeneration? I think John Carpenter hit a nerve, nearly 15 years ahead
\nof his time, in They Live<\/em>.
\nThe entire entertainment industry is not only controlled by an
\ninterstellar marketing corporation, but all the TV really says is
\n“Obey” and “Spend” and “Sleep.”<\/p>\n
\nour own. For every one of us who questions the bullshit that gets
\nshoveled down our throats, there are ten people who follow it blindly.
\nYou know them – the people who come home after a 12 hour day, turn on
\nthe TV, and stare at it blankly. Ask them an hour later what they were
\nwatching and, more often than not, they won’t be able tell you. In this
\nsilent, lonely world the TV is companion, lover, mother, father. When
\nyou have an exhausted, overmedicated, overworked society, then you have
\nto provide simple stories written by simple storytellers. Even the
\ncritical successes are fading. As we move deeper into the hollow,
\nshallow life, the critics have begun to focus on shows like Monk<\/em>,
\nwhich fail to deliver an ounce of intelligence. Critics have given up
\non the real edge and, instead, they wallow in a strange sort of
\ndefeatism. Monk<\/em> will succeed because they say so but, most
\nespecially, because it’s mindless entertainment. You can see this
\nhappening because it’s clumsily handled. Monk<\/em> is on the cover
\nof the TV Guide and the Washington Post’s TV guide on the same week,
\nand the articles raving about it being the best show on TV are
\ndisturbingly similar. In the industry, don’t they call that “block
\nadvertising”? Where you get the same commercial on multiple channels at
\nthe same time? I sat down and gave Monk<\/em> a fair trial and, well,
\nit’s mindless, it’s cute, it’s made for the masses. Our modern day
\ncritical hits are on par with run of the mill bubblegum TV from
\nyesteryear. Of course, the critics are on the payroll these days.<\/p>\n
\nsolution has been to read books and get a Netflix subscription. But I’m
\nquick to surrender. The truth is, there is strength out there. The
\nbiggest niche in the DVD market is that of television box sets. The old
\nshows are selling so well that they can even afford to put out a
\nlovingly restored boxset of the shameful Planet of the Apes TV series.
\nSo my best advice is to keep buying those boxsets and weather
\nout the PC generation. All of this must end in social revolution, and
\nit’ll happen in our lifetime. Until then, in between watching episodes
\nof classic TV on state of the art entertainment systems, we can keep
\nour minds alive by defacing billboards, destroying advertisements and
\nsurrounding our suburban homes with razor wire and cyclone fencing. Oh,
\nand don’t forget to have half nude women and mock pagan ceremonies in
\nyour backyard. That really gets the neighborhood committee fired up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,352],"tags":[403,353],"class_list":["post-2553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2870,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}