High-Def, Low Culture

Shortly before the holidays I had a journal entry written in my mind about Christmas gifts. It was a humble little homily in which I was going to admit that we hadn’t exchanged gifts on Christmas day for three years, or gone in together on something for ourselves for quite some time, in favor of things like mortgage payments and food. I was going to confess that I always felt uncomfortable and put on the spot whenever someone would ask what Santa brought me, because saying nothing always seemed to make the person asking the question feel awkward and intrusive. It was going to be a sweet little tract about how I was happy to forego presents during the holiday season; it was going to meditate upon the True Meaning of Christmas and end upon a shining note.

Then my dad sent the Mont a fat check—a bribe for putting up with me essentially—and we went out and bought a high-definition television, and all that sanctimonious nonsense went out the window.

I’ve never really been around HDTVs very much. Oh, I’d seen them in the stores, of course, playing the latest Disney movies or featuring impressive vistas of penguins frolicking upon ice floes. I’d seen them playing sports in bars—but honestly, I don’t pay attention to sports. I don’t have any friends who have one, or at least friends who invite me over. So I’ve been very surprised, now that it’s all installed and everything, at how compelling the image is. When the cable guy showed up to upgrade our boxes to carry the high-definition channels, I found myself sinking down onto the sofa when he was gone and staring at the pretty, pretty screen, with its bright colors and sharp, crisp shapes. Everything was just so clean and distinct, so colorful and strokable.

Everything was so beautiful, in fact, that it took me a whole half hour to of mesmerized watching to realize that I’d been watching the absolute nadir of television programming, one of those Real Housewives shows with which Bravo clutters its airwaves. That’s when I leapt up and fled.

I realize that at this point in the technology curve I sound like an aboriginal fascinated by a Bic lighter, but goodness, everything is gorgeous in high definition. I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs in which Mike Rowe climbed the Mackinac Bridge to change a light bulb, or some such nonsense, and my stomach roiled when the camera switched views to display the lake below, visible and churning violently beneath the bridge’s vivid, fragile-looking grate, hundreds of feet below. I can’t watch anything on the Food Network without my stomach growling. And I found myself fascinated by an episode of Maury simply because baby daddies and back-stabbing ho’s are that much more compelling when they’re larger than life and twice as crisp.

It's a shame that high definition does nothing to improve my low standards of entertainment.