Lotusblog

Thanks to this site , I just watched the pilot episode of “Mork and Mindy”.

Nanoo nanoo!

I was completely overcome with nostalgia, and remembered myself wearing an itchy wool dressing gown over my flannel pyjamas, sitting down with my brother to watch the weekly episode. The sets, the jeep, the music shop, Mindy’s father- it was almost too much.

For a few moments I was eight years old again.

But Lordy Belgrano, what complete nonsense! How my parents could have tolerated me watching such a ridiculous TV show I will never know. Maybe standards were different back then. At least the show was non-violent, devoid of (overt) sexuality and moral (whatever that may mean). But I guess for better or for worse, I am now the sum of all the TV shows I have ever watched.

Perhaps it’s quite different from TV now. What do today’s eight year old boys watch on television?

I am trying to imagine whether I will ever permit a television in my home. And if I were to have a son, who would presumably become eight years old at some stage, how would I entertain him? Somafm? Wired? Jazz guitar? Perhaps I could just let him watch my archive of DivX 80’s television shows. At least there would be no commercials.

So we have regular blogging and moblogging, but when is mindblogging going to come along? There are several situations each day where I am completely relaxed and I don’t have to think about self-preservation, working or the minutiae of daily life. One of those moments was today, when I was soaking in a hot jacuzzi. I was thinking about TV quiz shows and about all the TV I watched as a child. Compared to most children (of the day) I think I probably was either average or below average in terms of my hours of TV viewed each week (after all, I spent most afternoons playing CHiPs on my bike with Robert, going to sports training or watching Robert’s pedigree collie eat boondies)

Quite a fun childhood now, when I think about it.

Anyway… as I was saying… there seems to be a real thing for preserving human culture. As humans, we seem to be obsessed with finding out not only where we come from, but who our ancestors were, how they lived, loved, dined and entertained. I remember as a child going to a Viking museum where the smell of a viking village had been thoughtfully recreated to make our visit more authentic. How important is this though in the context of our modern, fucked up world?
Our modern, fucked up world, by virtue of it being a for-the-moment disposable society doesn’t plan on leaving much behind (other than garbage). Our “culture”, which has been reduced to the lowest common denominator of being broadcast-able, exists in the air all around us; hundreds of channels simultaneously providing enrichment, edification and entertainment. But those on the fringe, people who don’t or can’t view television, are excluded and sidelined. But does this really matter? I contend it doesn’t- I for one, actually feel better being left out.

But back to my thoughts in the jacuzzi (which would have been much more eloquently posted if mindblogging existed, rather than my patchy, brains-to-fingers mechanical method of blogging) what happens to the millions of hours of television broadcast in the 1970’s, for example? Sale of the Century, Wheel of Fortune, Here in the West, the daily news bulletins… they existed for the moment they were broadcast, and continue to exist in the minds of those who remember them, but the fact that they are hopelessly dated and irrelevant means they no longer have any “re-run value” so are doomed to rot (or decompose, or do whatever video tape does).

Sites like archive.org are probably not the right place for such TV shows- so what happens now? When I die, the memory (and “existence”) of these shows will die with me. Eventually, over time knowledge of this culture will be completely erased.

I guess when you think about it, it’s no different from me not knowing the many types of card games my great-grandparents played during dark WW2 nights, or the radio shows they listened to in the ’30’s, or the proper way to make a pie crust, or going back even further, the best way to hunt, trap and skin a rabbit.

Am I a better or worse person for the lack of this knowledge?