Professional wrestling. And roller derby.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
It should go without saying that the Chia Pet and Shag Carpeting are tied for second place.
Dr. Watson
“Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.” – (I Don’t Remember, but not me.)
Ummm…anything “teeny-bopper” in nature. And cigarettes.
And the eggplant. shudder
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
Harumph. That comment has rankled me ever since I first read it. I yield to no one in my admiration for Cecil on factual matters, but when we veer into matters of taste . . . .
A case can be made for the proposition that Green Acres may in fact have been one of the most culturally important television shows ever. Much of what was being said in the writings of French philosophers like Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Paul Barthes, etc., was being shown, at about the same time and certainly before these writers we well known in America, by Paul Henning and crew in Green Acres. You want a treatment of the notion that reality is a social construct? How 'bout the episode in which Mr. Douglas is planning a trip to Washington, D.C. Each of the other characters individually asks whether he plans to see the Eiffel Tower. He of course ridicules them for thinking that the Eiffel Tower is in Washington. He arrives there, checks into his hotel, and opens the drapes of the room revealing a splendid prospect of . . . the Eiffel Tower.
Mr. Douglas, while nominally the voice of authority (wealthy, politically influential male), is undercut at every turn by nominally powerless figures who manage to subvert the structures by which he attempts to manipulate and control his environment. Language, identity, kinship structures (Eb, Arnold Ziffel), economic systems – all are turned sideways and skewed, revealed as mutable and very fallible fictions instead of unchanging verities. Whether you have much use for French structuralist, deconstructionist, and other postmodern thought (I don’t really), you have to look more than once at a television sitcom that week after week explored these same issues.
Or so I would have argued in my graduate student days. I do still think both Green Acres and Henning’s other major work, The Beverly Hillbillies, are much better than they’re given credit for being.
Hmmm, worthy nominees all, but a few remain to be considered:
-
Martha Stewart: stitled, pretentious android as a role model!
-
made-for-TV movies and all docudramas
-
condensed books
but my sincere opinion:
- talk radio.
Veb
Grecian Formula for Men
MaxTorque – gotta love Groo – don’t tell me all the frays around here lately haven’t gotten you just a bit nostalgic for the little guy. ??
Explain please.
I’ve changed my mind – I nominate the French philosophers.
In fact, rather than expound on that thought, I’ll just nominate France instead and be done with it.
Dr. Watson
“Metaphysics: 1. An attempt to define a thing and by so doing escape the bother of understanding it.” – Elbert Hubbard
Kathy Lee Gifford AND Regis Philbin (or however you spell his name).