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A few weeks ago, the NY Times Magazine ran a great excerpt of Steven Berlin Johnson's new book, Everything Bad is Good For You, which proposes that society has not been dumbed down by TV recently; in fact, if anything, TV watchers have become more skilled at juggling multiple storylines and ideas while watching shows like The Sopranos, Lost, Alias, E.R. or Twin Peaks, offering up the suggestion that a lot of TV drama has gotten better since the '70s and '80s. Of course, this was instantly intriguing and inspiring to Gothamist, as it reaffirms our position that our TV is one of our bestest friends (even if there's an implication that Law & Order's single narrative isn't brain-exercising - we happen to be wondering where an exterior was shot or which headline it's ripped from!). Personally, we think there needs to be a balance of complicated (most anything on HBO) storytelling along with simple (most any sitcom, as 30 minutes leaves you little time, Arrested Development not withstanding) or else our brain will explode and then how will we watch the next Will Ferrell movie? Read the article yourself here, and let us know what your favorite complicated shows are as well as the fluffy ones (high on our list: Anything on the Learning Channel!).
Tonight, at 7:30PM at the Apple Store in SoHo, Johnson will be speaking about the book, with some movies and other visuals. EBIGY was on the cover of Time Out New York this week, as this is the issue about what to read, and Anil Dash on how information was presented in Johnson's NYT magazine article.
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Pop culture doesn't make you smarter, it only makes you more able to engage in current cultural conversations.
And anyway, without having a solid educational background - basically, being fairly smart to begin with - many of today's jokes or sitcom plotlines would go over your head. Is the classic "Streetcar!" episode of "The Simpsons" funny to people who didn't read "A Streetcar Named Desire" in high school? Not that one needs a college degree to be "smart," but those who have a more well-read background might be able to better appreicate the dramatic arcs of "The Sopranos" and the skill it takes to put together the multiple plotlines of "Arrested Development."
As for TV getting better in the 90s and 00s than it was in the 70s and 80s, that's probably true, if such a thing can be measured. The writing on "L&O," "The West Wing," "Alias" and "E&R" is the arguably the best there is on TV right now, but that seems only because TV is a great medium for writers, whereas movies are becoming less and less so. When people talk about the great movies of the 70s - "Chinatown," "The Godfather," and much of the auteur-directors' work - what they are really talking about is good writing. Robert Towne, who wrote "Chinatown," would probably be a staff writer for "Law & Order" if he was getting his start today. Now that movies are more about sequels and big explosions than good character development, it seems only natural that smart writing would find a place in the 500+ channels of modern TV.
I wonder if the growing complexity of television will produce the same response that the increasing complexity of many musical forms have seen. Classical music and jazz have both gone from simple forms to very complex structures and both, at least in the US, have tiny audiences today.
Despite its bad reputation, I don't think television is inherently bad. I think it's the excessive amounts of TV people watch that is bad. Many Americans watch TV more than they do anything else, which is not healthy.
I've never read Steetcar, but that Simpsons episode is one of my favorites.