PULLING THE PLUG
When the kids start clamoring for ‘Netfwix,’ it’s time to consider disconnecting the TV
When my wife and I graduated from Mt. Lebanon renters to Brookline homeowners, my first move was to buy a large but (I felt) tastefully sized television to hang over the mantelpiece. Until then, we had contented ourselves with the little tabletop number I had used in college. About the size of a large computer monitor, it had served me well. On my little Samsung, I had watched Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal in the 2010 Winter Olympics, played countless hours of dorm room Nintendo 64 and marathoned the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy on a single rainy day — director’s cut, because this was about endurance more than enjoyment.
With our new wall-mounted Sony, a new era had dawned. Sure, I had some misgivings about hanging the imposing black mirror in the living room’s — and the home’s — place of honor, a spot traditionally reserved for fine art or heirloom photos. But I had bought a home in the Year of Our Lord 2015, damnit, and I was getting a decent TV.
At the time, we had two children, age 20 months and aboutto-be-born-so-let’s-make-this-movesnappy. I knew, at least in the abstract, that these children would grow older and probably more attached to the ever-looming, ever-alluring screen than my wife and I would like. But we (mostly I) figured that would be a manageable nuisance compared to the greater good of Quality Entertainment.
Cable was the first part of our television lives to go. After baby number two in 2015, each odd-numbered year brought another odd tiny human into our family, and in short order we realized that “Frasier” reruns, laughing at “House Hunters” and maybe one hockey game a month weren’t worth what Verizon was charging.
We still had broadcast channels, at least for a while, until some still-unsolved hardware issue knocked them out, as well. It was different, especially losing weekend football, but we were fine — and the kids hardly noticed because their programs were all streaming or on DVD anyways.
In retrospect, the writing was on the wall the moment the kids started casually talking about, and begging to watch, “Netfwix.” There was something deeply unsettling about this multibillion-dollar corporation, which didn’t even exist during my own childhood, needling its way into my children’s consciousness. And, by subscribing to and using and talking about the service, my wife and I knew we had let it in.
So, sometime after I binged “Tiger King” in the early days of the pandemic, we canceled it. We were down to DVDs and Prime Video.
And yet the screen itself remained, 6 square feet of void in the most prominent space in the house begging at every moment to be activated. I had threatened to “take the TV off the wall” in response to whining and tantrums over the device but hadn’t yet followed through, in truth because I wasn’t ready.
Until one day my wife calmly said, “Let’s just do it.” And so we did.
The kids showed some consternation, but mostly fascination, as the television came down to their level. In fact, seeing the screen that had occupied so much of their desires and imagination laid low seemed to break the spell it had over them. Its magic had lost its enchantment; in dismounting it my wife and I had proved, once and for all, that the television — and indeed all the physical objects in the home, from toys to tech — served at our pleasure.
The end of the tyranny of the TV has not ushered in utopia. The kids still fight and whine and moan, but more often about interfering with each other’s watercolors or who will be the gallant knight in make-believe than about which episode of “Octonauts” to watch.
There’s something more completely human — more active, more embodied — about bonking each other on the head over swordfights than over television. They’re interacting with each other, even if sometimes poorly, rather than with a screen.
And if we really want or need some digital distraction or movie-based family time, the trusty old Samsung lives in storage and can come out to play as needed. The kids (and their parents, for that matter) aren’t completely cut off
from popular culture and have come to love the worlds of “Star Wars” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
But not having the constant, menacing presence of the big black mirror has given us more control, physically and psychologically, over the worlds they have to choose from, and when they get to enter them.
And what do we miss out on? Ubiquitous commercials for whatever Dr. Oz is hawking these days? (Himself, as it always was.) The new seasons of “NCIS: Kansas City” or “CSI: Duluth?”
In “Spanish Pipedream,” the late singer-songwriter John Prine sang:
Now, I am professionally obligated to insist that you do not throw away this paper, and theologically obligated to warn against the tinge of spiritual individualism. But in the age of perpetual outrage and social distancing and Zoom, John Prine’s emphasis on tangible, everyday goods — a sturdy home, a garden and family to love and to care for, a beautiful piece of fruit — is more important than ever.
In fact, his advice is echoed by another John, very different but equally clever: John Senior, a 20th-century Catholic writer and professor known for his radical rejection of modern notions of culture and the good life. In “The Restoration of Christian Culture,” published a decade after Mr. Prine’s song, he famously wrote, “The Catholic Church is not opposed to violence; only to unjust violence; so smash the television set ...”
For Dr. Senior, the TV represented intellectual and physical passivity, specifically the thoughtless acceptance of the norms of mass culture. Whether we take as dim a view of modern mass media as he does, the principle is undeniable: For all the connectedness with the world and with the human experience that television, and other screens, can facilitate, it also disconnects the viewer — especially the child — from his immediate surroundings.
And so, like anything else, media consumption demands a balanced approach. For us, having the television as a prominent, permanent fixture made that balance impossible to maintain. If the fantasy worlds of “Netfwix” are, at every moment, one tap of the remote away, then books and board games and imaginary play are always option B.
In a world of constant access to media content, the producers and distributors of that content thrive on thoughtlessness. Removing the TV was an assertion of intentionality that, in turn, makes it easier to be intentional moving forward.
Andwhat did we replace it with? For now, a print by the Swedish Arts and Crafts painter Carl Larsson occupies the space above the mantelpiece, a domestic still life called “Cosy Corner.” Rather than inviting us into a world mediated entirely by corporate media empires, it invites us into an image of our own world, or at least what we’d like our world — our home — to be: hospitable and peaceful, lovely and well-loved.
It’s one upgrade that will never be obsolete.
Blow up your TV Throw away your paper Go to the country Build you a home Plant a little garden Eat a lot of peaches Try an’ find Jesus on your own