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But Geraldo has trumped her. He offers makeovers as a solution to social problems. A couple of weeks ago he did a show of makeovers for battered women. I must admit that the inherent value of this procedure eluded me, unless it was part of some witness-relocation program. But Geraldo made it plain that the issue was self-worth, a fresh start, empowerment. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him look more proud than when he showed off how these women looked in their new power-lunch suits. Regrettably there wasn’t time for a follow-up show where we could see how they coped when their one good outfit was at the cleaner’s. In fact, I had the impression that there was a mob of production assistants backstage ready to snatch back the glam wardrobe the instant the show finished taping. But again, that wasn’t the point. It was the reflected glow the makeover gave the host: he’d made his guests look like they belonged on TV, so as far as he was concerned, they were now invulnerable.
The clear message is: TV is happy when we look good. We should all take this to heart. I think we should dress up even when we’re going to watch our favorite shows at home. Which leads us to the question of how else we behave when we watch TV–because, let’s face it, our living-room banter is just not witty enough.
Joey: Tongues?
I don’t think it’s an accident that the only TV the Friends are ever shown watching is cutting-edge slacker kitsch like Mexican wrestling movies. They’re way beyond watching shows like their own. It would be too involving in some spiritually cramping sense; they might be called upon to have emotional responses, and that’s not what they think real TV watching is about–or even what living is about. The Friends practice what I’m coming to think of as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 lifestyle. It grows out of the feeling that contemporary life is so self-evidently and all-pervadingly grade Z that the only possible response to it is to sit around and emit an unending stream of self-conscious jokes–just the way the Mystery Science boys keep finding in movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches the clear influence of Bresson. God knows, we’ve all had nights when we could connect with the Mystery Science premise of being trapped on a spaceship and forced to watch the worst movies ever made for all eternity. It’s the insomniac horror any of us feels at 3 AM, faced with the choice between 30 cable informercials and one bottom-of-the-barrel rerun of The Rat Patrol; Nietzsche, under roughly similar circumstances (he was thinking of Wagner’s operas), describes such moments as “those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, where cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder.” The Friends have simply applied this style of despairing comedy to their daylight life–and it works just as well, because life and TV are opposing poles of the same icy domain of disaffected irony.
So maybe we’re missing something here. Maybe these unrelenting lessons are really meant for somebody else.
Here’s what I think must be happening. For more than 50 years now TV signals have been radiating out into space. We’ve all along assumed that the aliens would be baffled by them; I myself have had nightmares that fleets of flying saucers would one day show up and demand we explain Supermarket Sweep or face planetary obliteration (a moment, by the way, when the job of TV critic will take on the historic importance it was always meant to have). But that’s all wrong. TV has from the beginning been meant for them. We here on earth are just eavesdropping. This explains why TV has to keep rehearsing how to dress and talk like a successful earthling–and why the emotional tone of TV is as icy as the interstellar void. They’re obviously on their way now: impeccably groomed, amazingly witty, and ready to apply for a job at the media studies department of your local university.
