The case for television

Like most people I know, I grew up in the suburbs. I went to school, I did my homework. And like a lot of people I know, my parents were too busy doing whatever it is parents do to spend a lot of time raising me. I was the youngest in my family – my brother and sister had both left home while I still counted my years in single digits. And most of the people in my street were in their fifties, their kids having already left home. I grew up alone mostly, but I wasn’t a lonely kid. For an eleven year-old whose school friends all lived too far away to visit, TV became a good substitute for friends, and in a way, for parents.

These days people like to dump on television. In the Seventies it was a convenient babysitter – I probably watched five hours of TV a night after getting home from school, and I went to bed earlier than most of my friends. These days it’s an all-too convenient scapegoat for society’s woes. I don’t buy it – if people don’t want their kids watching 24, change the channel or send the brat to bed. That’s all I’m going to say on that one. I’m not here to soap-box. Not today, anyway.

Saturday afternoons saw a young JD grow on a steady diet of John Wayne, Gene Kelly and Elvis Presley. I feasted on Rio Bravo, The Longest Day, Funny Face and The Man Who Knew Too Much. It didn’t matter what it was; I ate it up.

I grew up hoping one day I’d be able to dance like Fred Astaire. Well, that didn’t happen. I can’t ride a horse like John Wayne or sing like Danny Kaye either. But looking back on my childhood, I would have to say that television had at least the same level of influence on the development of my personality, my values and beliefs as my folks did, maybe a little more.

My parents tried to bring me up to do the right thing. The motivating forces they brought to bear in their instruction were guilt and fear, both strong motivators. And I like to think that I turned out fairly OK. I’m no kind of saint, but I don’t think I’ve left too long a trail of destruction behind me either. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the lessons I took away from my childhood are the ones I learnt watching movies. My ethical foundations, my sense of right and wrong owe more to James Stewart in Broken Arrow, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life than any number admonitions that I should be nice to others.

The key is the story, the narrative structure that frames the message. Every film has a story to tell, and every story has something to teach you. Stories create situations involving characters. These characters make choices and spend the rest of the story dealing with the consequences of those choices. It's like life, only you get to see the outcomes in the abstract. This is why stories are the oldest and still the best form of teaching. My parents did their best, but they only ever told me what; George Baily and Tom Jeffords and a hundred other characters showed me why.