Better Community Through Television

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that America's "social capital" (values arising from social networks which help society run more smoothly and healthily) is radically on the decline. More Americans are "bowling alone," by which Putnam does not mean that individual bowlers take up entire lanes by themselves, occasionally pausing to cry about how they have no friends. Instead, he means that there is a decrease in associational organizations; rather than joining a bowling league to meet like-minded bowling enthusiasts, people instead go bowling with their friends. While you might think that going bowling with friends helps foster community and social ties, it actually leads to the degeneration of society! As a notable example of the value of social capital/associational organizations, Putnam recounts the story of how Andy Boschma, a white 33-year old accountant, donated a kindey to John Lambert, an African-American 64 year old retired employee of the University of Michigan hospital, simply because they got to know each other through a bowling league. Few people have adequately considered that bowling offers a viable means of crossing the racial divide.

This past weekend, I attended a conference on community, with the occasional group angst of "what is a community? Are we being a non-community right now, thus indirectly destroying the social fabric of America? AAARRGGGHHHH!!!!" As we were discussing the Putnam reading, the implicitly very bad activity of "watching television" came up a few times. Now, I admit that I tend to jump on the bandwagon about how bad watching television is, except while I am actually watching it. This post shall be a rare instance in which I'm actively sympathizing with watching tv at a moment in which I am not succumbing to its lure.

In the context of community, one of the very bad things about watching television is that people are "watching television alone" instead of creating social ties with others. This seemed thoroughly pernicious and wicked until I considered that much of my day is spent reading alone--normally, obscure 18th century texts. At least "bowling alone" meant you were presumably bowling with friends and being less hermitlike--when I am "reading alone," the closest moments to community are when one of the cats sit on my lap. What am I supposed to do? Say, "No, no, Pippin, please do not leave! without you, I will be contributing even more to the degeneration of community!" Perhaps interrupt my wife while she's working on her dissertation to say, "Please listen to this obscure 18th century fact, or I will implicitly be capitulating to the badness of social incohesion!"

I then started wondering about the whole "watching television alone" thing. If you think about it, we probably more often "read alone" in the literal sense than we "watch tv alone" in the literal sense. For example, I have some friends who get together weekly to watch Gilmore Girls. This is not mere "watching": during the advertisements, they evaluate what just happened--who's a "good guy" or a "bad guy," whether a character's actions/perspective is "right," etc. My friends evaluate the plot and coherence of the storyline, often prognosticating/imagining what future events will take place. They actually voluntarily perform some of the same activities that take place in a literature classroom. And even if tv gets a "bad wrap" for failing to promote imagination--e.g. that it's "inferior" because we can simply look at a visual image instead of having to imagine it on our own--I would argue that tv series are more likely to promote the "imagination" in the sense of envisioning/prognosticating what will happen next. If you want to find out what happens next in a book, you turn the page; if you want to find out what happens next in the tv series, you might have to wait several weeks, during which you shake your fist at the tv and endlessly consider possibilities. But I digress. The point is that television allows my friends to have a kind of "community" experience--a simultaneous sharing of an experience--that is harder to find in literature. Heck, even the great works of literature that are intended for such a shared experience, e.g. Shakespeare's plays which are meant to be performed for a group, are more often experienced in solitary experiences of reading. And I have to say that advertisements can actually serve an aesthetic purpose. In the 18th century, sometimes people would talk a lot with each other during the performance, so there's little aesthetic experience. When we see plays nowadays, so long as we are not in middle school, we tend not to talk so much during the performance, so our only chance really for "discussing" the work is at intermission (i.e. in the bathroom) or at the end (when we are tired, and there is no mystery of "what will happen next?"). However, the frequency of television advertisements means that viewers don't have to choose between paying attention to the whole episode or discussing it: advertisements provide a natural pause for muting the tv and reflecting/discussing what has taken place so far.

So what happens if you watch Gilmore Girls without friends nearby? Well, there is the internet. I'm not trying to say that the internet provides the valuable "social capital" that interests Putnam, but I am interested in probing what it can provide. After Gilmore Girls (especially the season finale), a lot of fans will go on-line to the WB and post comments. Admittedly, many of them are stupid, incoherent, etc. However, they do enable the individual immediately to share a reaction or experience with a wider community. I know that some Catholics really like a uniform liturgy because they have a greater sense of ecclesial community--that around America and/or the world, the same rituals are being observed, the same words of institution spoken. Now, to secularize this for a moment: Americans do build a strong "sense" of community through simultaneously sharing the same aesthetic/transformative experience at the same time in front of the boob tube. Sure, they're not sacramentally united or incorporated into the same religion or anything--in fact, the very lack of such a religious identity may be why they feel so drawn to identify with fellow television watchers. But it does seem like something's goin on.

Television shows themselves can do more to foster a kind of community and discussion. When I was in Canada, I saw a tv show (I can't remember what it was called). First, it would show sketch comedy: for example, they showed a sketch based upon the idea, "What would you do if, as a college student, you got back from a trip to Africa over the summer only to find out that your mom had just married your best friend, who now wants you to call him "Dad?" It was really funny. But what was particularly interesting is that, after the sketch, three women/hosts sat around and discussed the sketch for a few minutes. One would say, "You just have to tell someone when they're being incredibly stupid (like marrying your best friend from college)," another would say, "So many Canadians have adopted a perspective of non-judgmentalism, you live your life and I'll live mine, that they're afraid of offering advice." They then would refer viewers to the website if they wanted to pursue the discussion. I was simply floored that there would be a show on television that would encourage this level of reflection through sketch comedy.

There are ways of approaching any medium that may make it more beneficial. "Reading alone" is perhaps not so beneficial (especially with young children) without discussing the work together. "Television" itself may not so much the problem as how we use it, and the same goes for advertisements. Besides, you need some topics of conversation once you join a bowling league.