This week I did the Un-TV experiment and through out the time, I kept wondering what the purpose of this exercise was, but after this week I've come to realize the trance that TV puts us in. And as Sal said, it tricks us into thinking we are being entertained. At first, I was a little skeptical about this idea, but today at track practice today, everything clicked. We went out for a long distance run and at one point I look at my watch to see that we still had 30 minutes left. I thought, "Oh man, I don't really feel like doing this today" but then I told myself, "30 minutes is nothing, when I watch TV, 30 minutes can pass so quickly, its just one episode of a TV show." Then I became appalled at myself because I thought about what we had been talking about in class. We get so engulfed in a TV show that we lose all sense of time; and that is what I thought about to get through a difficult run! Its embarrassing.
My parents even used to do this to us when we were younger. When we were on long car trips to Iowa, we would ask our parents how much longer, and they would answer us in a number of Arthur shows that would take up the amount of time left. They would say for 15 minutes left, "1 Arthur left," 30 would be "2 Arthurs left" and 45 would be three. Relating the time we had left to our favorite TV show made the wait seem less torturous, but now I have realized that it is actually negative and has effected the way I think today.
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