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February 28, 2005
So you like the Oscars -- quit apologizing and own up.
The people who strive most vigorously not to be bourgeois are doomed to be the most nakedly bourgeois of all. This universal maxim is never more obvious than when Oscar time rolls around.
Most people are unashamed about their celebrity-worship. But there's always a certain contingent that wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of the Enquirer — oh, no, they're more the New York Times type, thanks. Yet mention a celebrity's name, and they'll blurt out a piece of disapproving, up-to-the-minute dish.
These are the very people who chatter about the Oscars weeks before the show and avidly enter Oscar pools, but insist they're not really going to watch it. Well, maybe they might dip in and out. Because, you know — (this is my favorite) — they "only watch to see how bad they are."
Really? I could save you a few hours: They're really bad. I mean fall-into-a-nihilistic-depression bad. I never watch them, personally, for just this reason: because they're bad. Even the "shocks" are mind-numbingly predictable. And this is why you like them?
I'd like to make a plea to all watchers of televised dreck: Stop being so defensive. No one cares about your low-prole viewing habits. You're only revealing how afraid you are that someone will mistake you for an ordinary American, who watches the show for ordinary reasons, like seeing celebrities in their designer gowns, or watching the entertainment, or some other frightfully middle-class, Jesusland reason. Quelle horreur!
Now, of course, if you watch the exact same thing as those Jesuslanders, and for the exact same length of time, but watch it ironically... well, then you're engaging in a critique of our celeb-centered, consumerist hegemon. (So edgy! And you laughed at Chris Rock's Bush-bashing — you really get it.) And if you spend the next Monday snarking about some actress' gown, or ragging on some singer, hey, that's not trashy middlebrow gossip. No sir. You're doing it ironically, and that makes it cultural critique.
Personally, I'm not ashamed of my own dreck-viewing habits. I watch "World's Wildest Police Chases" about once a week. I've also been known to take in "The Planet's Funniest Animals." Oh, and "Unwrapped" on the Food Network. And I don't watch them "ironically." I watch them because they're stupid, diverting, and distracting, and they don't pretend to be any higher-brow than they are. They don't lecture me, and they certainly don't edify me. All they do is help me relax by whiling away half an hour in a pleasantly brain-dead way. You got a problem with my viewing habits? You think you're gonna judge me? Okay. You pay my mortgage, food, and cable bills, and then we'll talk about how you should be the judge of what I watch on TV. Till then, deal with it. My house, my TV, my eyeballs. Capeesh?
There, see? That's not so hard. Self-conscious Oscar watchers, stand up for yourself. Watch your worthless dreck without apology, and quit bending my ear with hypocritical bombast about how you don't take it seriously, oh, it's so silly — please! who do these stars think they are, they're so vapid and shallow (and did you see that dress on her?), who watches these things, anyway?, etc.
Get over it. Only the bourgeoisie care about being thought bourgeois.
Posted by EtherPundit at February 28, 2005 10:40 PM Category: Film , Media , Television
Comments
I am NOT ashamed. Nay, I am PROUD. Proud to pronounce that I did in fact watch with hungry eyes the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, featuring host William Shatner's classic rendition of "ROCK . . . IT. . . MAN!"
You got a problem wit' that?!
Posted by: Korla Pundit at February 28, 2005 11:11 PM
By the way, WHAT have you done with your blog?!
It's . . . it's . . . so suddenly ethereal!
Posted by: Korla Pundit at February 28, 2005 11:13 PM
uh-huh.
i watched.
i am better for it.
for at least i can say
i partake in the
h e g e m o n. . .
wanders off to look
up that big word. . .
p e a c e
-- tae, out.
Posted by: tae_diggs at March 1, 2005 08:07 AM
Sorry, can't watch the Oscars. Can't even watch the movies the Oscars are all about. Unless the Coen brothers have anything to do with it, I won't spend the bucks for the usually unpleasant megaplex viewing experience. But no high-brow, moi, I love to endulge in the god-awful Lifetime movies on Lifetime, Television for Women. You talk about a brain massage--vulnerable female strikes out on her own; various issues plague her, usually unresolved romantic history; dark, handsome stranger intervenes; future looks bright again, but, lo! Stranger is too dark! Indeed, sinister! At exactly one hour and forty minutes into the story, she discovers his horrible secret. At one hour and fifty minutes he discovers that she has discovered. Car chase. Resolution. Perfect.
Posted by: mary at March 4, 2005 06:50 PM