Parsing TV
Wife Swap: Husband Edition
Last night, it was New Age Environmentalist meets Romantic Hairy-man Biker Dude, and about the only thing the two guys had in common were beards. One recycled trash; the other sort of lived in it. One lived in a communal setting with lots of interaction with neighbors; the other lived in isolation, treasuring alone time, except at the fun-loving biker bar. One had long-term vision, the other lived for the now. One cared about protecting the innocence of his children through mass media abstinence - no TV watching; the other let his kids watch at least 5 hours a day, all meals shared in front of the TV.
I had a great time watching - for entertainment value, it was great. If you haven't seen this show, the wives usually swap households for two weeks, and get a real dose of walking in someone else's shoes. The first week the new "wife" lives the rules of the host house, and the second week, she gets to impose her own rules on her borrowed family. Apparently, in Husband Edition, it's the husbands who trade.
The drama was predictable, but still interesting and fun to watch. It was pretty funny to watch the odd extremist Environmentalist (at least that's how he came off to the other family) singing a hokey song of peace to a stunned set of women (a blue-collar woman with three teenagers - two daughters and a step-daughter) that he was about to make "500 lbs. of mad" by taking their TVs away. (That will be my new favorite phrase - "500 lbs of mad" - antonym to "tons of fun," I suppose.) At the other house, the Romantic Hairy-Man Biker Dude obviously thought this whole community thing (not to mention no TV, recycling, and bicycling) was just this side of lunacy. Again, predictably, in the second week, he brought his love of the "now" to this family (a petite young woman with two precious daughters), and predictably, they all had a wonderful time.
War at one house, joy at the other.
I kept yelling (my daughter good-naturedly harassing me for it, and she wasn't even watching),"It's a clinic! It's a clinic."
It was a clinic in attitude.
But that's a discussion that lies beneath the surface, beneath the other lessons we walk away with in the show. On the positive side, the New Age Environmentalist Wife learned to loosen up, wear sexy leather clothes, and let her kids eat a bit of ice cream. And the lesson to loosen up, have some fun, and not take life so seriously is worth learning.
At the other house, the four poor women under siege (they're being "judged" for not recycling, not having meals together at the dinner table, not knowing their neighbors) banded together against the hostile New Age Environmentalist bringing discipline into their lives, and as a result, they bonded as a family and learned new appreciation for Romantic Hairy-Man Biker Dude.
But the macro discussion is the one that caught my attention.
Is anybody going to discuss that on the basis of practical wisdom, what we are watching are two lived-out processes of life and family, and one is going much better than the other? Why was it war at one house, and fun and games at the other?
My take: in this episode, it wasn't the husbands who determined the tone of the week. It was the family left behind. When Romantic Hairy-Man Biker Dude laid down the law for New Age Environmentalist Wife, and not always in nice tones, the wife smiled and laughed and went along, her spirit of life and peace and cooperation, the very essence of what she was championing in her own life, making her "a great sport" about the whole thing. But at the other house, when New Age Environmentalist Man began to ask questions about responsibility and community, the girls and their Mom very nearly spit in the man's face. And when, by the second week, our peaceful Environmentalist was about to lose control, and really lowered the boom of his rules, (No TV, recycle, clean the yard, bicycle to school) one girl simply refused, and another said she'd go along, but she'd be sure and "make his life hell" as he did it.
This post is too long as it is, but isn't it interesting that the Environmentalist, with his discipline, community building, and dinner-table conversation instead of TV, came out looking like the bad guy, and the Romantic, with his fun-loving, live it up, hang out at the bar, don't think about the future (or your neighbors) came off looking like the guy you'd rather hang with?
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Now, here's the question I keep coming back to: when it comes to engaging popular culture, as so many Christians are being urged to do these days, does anybody really want to parse TV with that kind of earnestness? Agree with my assessment of this episode or not: do people really want to have that conversation after the show's over? Don't we really just want to say, "That was so funny, did you see the way that family bonded? Man, they hated that guy, and they came together, and appreciate their Biker Dude Dad so much more. Man, that was great. What's on next?"
Parsing TV and popular culture: Ken Meyers, whose book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes was a textbook in my Christian Aesthetics class for several years, didn't think there was enough content in pop culture to warrant serious analysis. I think he was wrong. There's plenty of analysis worth doing; the problem is...
...does anybody really want to do it?
8:19:57 AM
