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April 20, 2006 Vol 28 No.28

Reclaim your life from television
ZOË WILLIAMS
williamz@mscd.edu

   Dear reader, I am worried about you. I am worried about my friends, my family and anyone else who owns a television. I think we have an addiction to the TV, with its fancy cable networks, satellite dishes and other contraptions. I think it is time that we fix this problem.
   I was once in your shoes, comrades. There was a time when my nights could not pass without cooking shows and the evening news. After a few years, I decided to quit. It was not easy and I could not have done it alone. No matter, I am now two years clean and am here to tell you that you, too, can live without a television.
   Below you will find the six easy steps of the Zoë Williams Television Rehabilitation Program. With these steps, I am hoping you will find a light more natural and brilliant than that of the glowing box in your living room, bedroom, or wherever you watch TV.

   Step 1: Admit you are an addict. Does your primary bonding experience with loved ones consist of watching TV? Do you find that your greatest tool of relating to strangers is making comparisons between real life and television? Is it easier for you to identify with the characters of “reality” TV than to the people around you? Can you recite the jingles, slogans and illustrate the logo of your favorite products? Are your pets or children named after characters from your favorite sitcom? Do you find yourself saying things like “I can quit when I want, I just don’t want to right now” Is the concept of giving up TV frightening or angering to you?
   Answering yes to these questions suggests you have a problem. Don’t worry, TV addiction is occurring at near epidemic rates in these times and you can be cured. However, you will not be able to confront your dependency unless you recognize this problem exists.

   Step 2: Realize that there are greater things than television. The Guinness Book of World Records shows that the world’s largest television is 6,006 square feet, while the planet Earth is about 1,580,752,359,038,538 square feet. There has to be something better than television in all those feet. The numbers are in your favor.

   Step 3: Make the decision to reclaim your life from the boob tube. In the United States, the average person will watch over four hours of TV a day. By age 2, the television watcher will have developed brand loyalties. When this TV watcher turns 18, they will have been exposed to 200,000 incidents of televised violence. By age 65, they will have seen 2 million advertisements. By 70, they will have spent about ten years of their life staring into a television screen. What for, though?
   Television is not experiential entertainment. You do not give anything of yourself. You do not gain anything. Instead, you watch the happenings of manufactured bodies, people and lives you are told are beautiful, interesting and enjoyable; all things that you could never be (unless of course you buy the clothes, cars, pets, homes and food that the TV tells you to get). In reality, you are interesting: You are surrounded by beautiful people and millions of things to do.

   Step 4: Let go of the remote. Hide it in a locked safe if you have to. Put your TV in a closet, cover it up, make it into a sculpture, salvage the parts or smash it. Forget the home decorating shows, bid the morning news farewell and tell your kids that Sponge Bob was made to sell merchandise. Let go. You do not have to do this alone. Invite your friends, kill their tellies, too!

   Step 5: Live. Take your family for a walk in the park. Read a book. Build something. Plant a garden. Talk to your friends. Travel to places you have always wanted to go. Use the money you save from not paying cable bills to try new restaurants or seeing plays. Remember all the things you know you should do but haven’t? Now is the time to do them! Better yet, do something you never planned to do. Whatever it is, don’t let your hands near the “ON” button of that dreadful machine.

   Step 6: Carry this message to other addicts. Millions of people around you own televisions and are stuck in the mindless trap of processed entertainment. Take them out. Tell them what you have done and make it known that they, too, can recover from this all-American infirmity.
TV Turnoff Week is April 24th through the 30th. Kick the idiot box to the curb, friends—not just next week, but every week. You are stronger than your addiction and you deserve better.

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