Thinking Outside of “Boxed In”
Before I get into what will likely be a somewhat negative diatribe about ”Boxed In,” by Grady Hendrix, I’d like to start out by saying how much I love online magazine Slate. I’ve read it daily for years and greatly enjoy its intelligent and savvy coverage of politics, pop culture, technology, and television (its TV Club series are some of the most fun you’ll have on the Interwebs). A typical online day for me, in fact, starts out with e-mail, Google Reader, Techmeme, Memeorandum, Drudge Report, The New York Times, Salon, and Slate.
Ah, television. That brings us to “Boxed In,” which is Hendrix’ exploration of why “giving someone a TV series on DVD is like giving them a life sentence.” So, first of all, I get that the premise is not to be taken terribly seriously. Seasons of television series packed into DVDs, often including lots of extra features and commentaries, are… well, they’re long.
They are long. Well, yes. That’s the point. They are there for fans to enjoy at their leisure or in great sweeping all night marathons over coffee or martinis or Cheetos or whatever. (I’m not saying I’ve done any of those… but don’t make me take a lie detector test, okay?).
But that’s not how Hendrix sees it:
The DVD box set is the newest and most terrifying form of ritualistic abuse we inflict on one another. In the past, a sick person received unwanted hardback books, but these days when someone is laid up with an illness, they are buried beneath an avalanche of DVD box sets containing hundreds of hours of television series.
This statement makes a number of assumptions that don’t sit right with me. It assumes that sitting through seasons of our favorite DVDs is a painful experience that the world populace is being forced to endure. It assumes that most people can afford to pay for “an avalanche of DVD box sets” at all. And it assumes that humankind possesses not the freewill to turn off the television when we are no longer engaged with the products we have purchased.
But even so, I can hang with the thread of the argument for a bit. The marketplace for DVDs is surely oversaturated with crap – Hendrix mentions Jake and the Fatman and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (which wasn’t that terrible, truth be told) as examples of shows that need not be foisted onto the innocent consumer.
It’s when Hendrix reveals that he doesn’t really respect the medium of television that I feel rubbed the wrong way. “Television should be a glorious time waster,” Hendrix writes. Really? Who made up that Law?
Tell that to the creators of The Sopranos
Perhaps, Mr. Hendrix, some of us enjoy revisiting these masterpieces to get even more out of the experience.
For five years running, I’ve received a season of The Sopranos from my wife’s family during the holidays. If I’ve been a good son-in-law this year, I’ll receive Season Six later this month and will block out a weekend during mid-winter when I can reconnect with Uncle Junior shooting Tony, Tony’s bizarre internal journey (to Purgatory? I’ve long wondered what’s going on in that house that Steve Buscemi / Tony Blundetto is standing in front of), and the delicious end run that leads up to the already infamous and controversial series finale.
And over Thanksgiving I introduced my mother to Mad Men Season One
So that’s to say that television is as worthy of preservation and reexamination as any other artistic medium. Of course there’s lots of garbage on the air, and plenty of it would be a huge waste of time/money to spend on the DVD version, but isn’t that true of music and books and movies as well?
Hendrix intones that “Boxed sets have transformed television from light entertainment into homework.”
It’s okay, Mr. Hendrix. You can put down your homework and go outside and play. You’re allowed.
