A FEW GOOD PEOPLE? NOT ON TV!

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—A FEW GOOD PEOPLE? NOT ON TV!

 

Apparently, current TV and movie script writers were all in Helen’s “adult living” and “family relations” classes in high school.

Talking about marriage one day, she asked the class, “What is the best marriage you know of? Doesn’t have to be your parents [she knew better than that] but grandparents, friends, just people you know… People you can look at to see what a good marriage is like.”

Silence. Awkward silence. Finally, one student said, “I don’t know of any good marriages.” The others all nodded. No one knew of even one good marriage, even one relationship they would want to emulate.

So, those are the people writers put into their scripts. The people they know. Mean people. Addicted people. Insensitive people. Self-destructive people. Self-centered people. Angry people. Arrogant people. Vengeful people. People who choose to be stupid.

You can’t get good relationships out of those people. You can’t get good stories out of those people.

When you’re old and can’t get out much, TV shows and movies are a very helpful way of passing the time, and even learning about the world. That is, about one in ten is a good way to spend your time. We love Netflix. Gives a lot of opportunities. Most of the shows, though, we don’t get through 30 minutes before switching off and looking for something else.

We don’t like stories about bad people living bad lives, doing bad things to other people. But bad people living bad lives is about 90% of the movie and TV offerings. It’s rare, and thus quite precious, to find a movie or TV series about people trying to live good lives.

By “good,” I don’t mean either the silly cheeriness of Sunnybrook Farm or the stiff-necked righteousness of keeping all the rules. “Good” is an honest attempt--howbeit imperfect, since we are all imperfect—to “do unto others…” It’s an attempt to side with the weak and oppressed against the predators and oppressors. It is siding with the sacred against the profane.

You can tell when a comedian or a script writer doesn’t have any good jokes or good stories because they fill in the many holes in their materials with profanity. Profanity is an attempt not to communicate, but to avoid communication.

David Letterman said that when he was a stand-up comic, he loved it when someone in the audience would heckle him, because it took up part of the 10 or 20 minutes he was supposed to fill with comedy. “I didn’t have much material,” he said. “Hecklers helped me avoid showing how little I had.”

The profane comics know they aren’t funny, that they have no material. They also know they can get a bunch of drunks to laugh just by yelling the f word or the s word. Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld have both said that they didn’t use profanity, because if they did, they wouldn’t know if they were really funny. They had to get people to laugh because of their material, not because of their non-language, which is what profanity is, a non-language, to avoid communication.

Well, I have to go watch “Call the Midwife” now. Yes, I’m squeamish about birth scenes, but those stories are about imperfect people trying to live good lives, helping others to live good lives. Those are people I can emulate. Stories that make me want to be a better person.

John Robert McFarland