I Hate TV

I had to watch an episode of House for my school work.

I hate TV.

I hate how everything is broken up into tiny clips, chopped up by ads.

I hate how they build each clip to a roaring emotional rage, so you will stick to the channel even through the ads.

I hate how the roaring emotional swells make you glad for the commercial breaks to let your adrenaline come down.

I hate how every sound, every camera focus, every facial expression is design to jerk at primal emotional reactions. Pain. Rage. Lust. Fear. Danger. Grief.

I hate how well it can work.

I hate the subtle or not so subtle ways they say that living by raw, unrestrained emotion is okay, normal, good.

I hate that it can be so hard to tear one’s self away from a very vivid game of emotional puppetry, and yet there is never anything worth taking away from it.

I hate that it always pounds on the most primitive reactions of the body, and never goes deep enough to stir the soul.