The eternal bond of bad television
REMEMBER when watching TV as a family was considered antisocial?
“Talk to your children of a night,” experts would say, “have dinner around the table”, “help them with their homework”, “read together”, “play board games”.
In a time before everyone in the house had multiple screens of their own, the thought of sitting around staring at a box in the company of others was not considered “quality time”.
Now we don’t even watch the same screens. And it’s not even necessarily so we can watch different shows.
I, like many others, have been guilty of texting my relatives the running commentary we would have once bantered around the living room from a separate room under the same roof. “Ten bucks says that stage five clinger gets a rose from the Bachie #producerspick”, I message my sister from shouting distance away.
Perhaps that’s what’s so strangely appealing about the Channel 10 series Gogglebox.
It’s a reminder of television as a spectator sport. Something to be enjoyed and shared together. So many of my warmest family memories were times spent in the lounge room. Whether it was pulling a mattress on the floor of the living room to watch rolling coverage of the Olympics during school holidays, or sitting cross-legged on the carpet, fixated on the farfetched storylines of Summer Bay, knowing it was bedtime when the credits rolled. My dad was an early riser for work, so typically fell asleep on the couch about four minutes after having claimed an “I pay the bill” veto on the remote. The delicate operation to pry the remote from his hands without waking him not only fostered a sense of teamwork between my sister and I, but was also the biggest adrenalin rush available to a 12-year-old.
Now with multiple devices and catch-up TV, feuds over schedule clashes are a thing of the past. How do kids develop persuasive communication skills if not by making a case for
McLeod's Daughters over Blue Heelers?
Before social media and episode recaps on blogs, there was no one to debrief your reality TV show outrage with but those beside you.
“I can’t believe people voted for Damien Leith over Jessica Mauboy,” sung the chorus of non- Australian Idol voters in my household in 2006 — our shared disapproval its own unique type of bonding.