cinderwick

So you wanna take a step away from the media…a total ban on TV-watching and internet-surfing right? Not! How can anyone give up the very connection to the world, news, information, or worse miss out on the next American Idol? If I can’t talk to co-workers the next day about who was canned, then what can I talk about? Our connection to media has taken the form of passive watcher, to interactive contributory exhibitionism, which in itself is addictive.

Around 1999 the group Adbusters proposed “Turn Off TV Week”—a social experiment of sorts to get as many people to shut off their television sets for one whole week and see what creative craziness could arise. Adbusters’ mandate is to “topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century”. Each year the number of people tuning out has grown to a world-wide phenomena. After all it’s only a week, how hard can it be.

Pre-internet gaming addiction, when television was the bigger drug, we took a deep breath and unplugged it for one week. Not only did we unplug it, we rigged some rudimentary booby trap so that it couldn’t easily be plugged back in during moments of weakness. Oh, and there were many moments. Sadly the contraption was more for our sake, rather than the kids.

Day one—Ouch. A lot of pacing happened, walking into the living room, leaving and walking back again a few minutes later just from sheer habit. We didn’t know what to do exactly. What could possibly fill the void of TV? It’s like when the power goes out, you think ‘oh well, I’ll just turn on the kettle and make tea while I wait’.

Day two—Okay we realize we have to talk to each other. Time is excruciatingly slow and barren. The kids start whining about what they are supposed to do with all this extra time and how we are torturing them. Once they realized we weren’t going to cave – they relented. Well hey, let’s do something together.

After that it was surprisingly easy to find things to do. The kids became incredibly creative doing art projects; we laughed, talked and got a loads of old ‘to dos’ done. After a week of having time to cook full meals, read and relax, we turned the TV back on and it was like being assaulted with images. The bright lights and hyper-masculine-voiced commercials hurt the precious quiet. Wow.

Turn Off TV Week (now Mental Detox Week) is coming around again, but since August 2006, we cut off our cable anyway so it’s no big deal. We have one snow-filled channel, but it’s a good one, the CBC. We mainly get the news and some great documentaries—oh and Hockey Night in Canada; we can’t see the puck but we get the general gist from the location of the players.

Since our frightful withdrawal from TV, a new temptress has drawn our attention and those smart people at Adbusters recognize this new distraction and now want people to turn off not only TV’s but laptops, XBOX, PSP’s and yes, even iPods. *gulp* I’m not sure how music contributes to their overall ideology of banning corporate media messages, but hey it’s about unplugging, taking back simplicity and all its silence.

Adbusters want to shake things up by showing people that in turning off mainstream media, we are “challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the very real political and environmental crises that we all currently face”.

Can we do it? I don’t think I can. For many, including myself I have school to contend with, some work from home projects and various dalliances to fulfill *ahem*. If there wasn’t school or work from home, what is the big deal? It’s a tough and painful descent into one’s psyche. Well I want to stay in touch, connected, know what’s going on….uhm check the weather, horoscope…is Tuesday a good day for me? Anyone using their computer every day can come up with dozens of reasons why they can’t give it up for one day, let alone seven. It’s too scary to think about, let alone do.

I’ll think about it some more and see if I can figure out what it is about the little screen or that clickety-click sound that so dominates me. I can only compare it with what it would be like to shave my head bare. I have to ask myself what’s the big deal about hair? It grows back, it doesn’t define me, it’s not important to my well-being, I don’t *need* it. But it DOES define me, it IS important…but why? I don’t really know why—except that society has convinced me it is.