Television is to America what the classical Greek myths were to ancient Greece. "Yeah, that's the ticket." I love TV, but still practice what Mom (and Aristotle, who'd a thunk?) preached, everything in moderation, especially TV, "because it's not good for you." Mom's ghost still conjures guilt, but "the truth is out there." So, like a Greek hero on a continuous quest for validation to prove Mom and past FCC Chairman Newton Minow wrong, that TV is not a "vast wasteland," comparing it to the iconic Greek myths seems like a viable excuse, I mean, reason to enjoy TV, guilt free.
Like TV, classical Greek myths were pervasive and powerful in Greek culture and still influence us today. They defined the ancients' world and their relationship to the cosmos. Like TV, myths conveyed a story, a message, and entertained and informed. They answered questions about the world and provided an escape from the ancients' dreary lives. And like TV, myths' answers were sometimes contradictory, ever changing, and not necessarily true. Their "dramas" and "comedies" moralized about love, sex, murder, deceit, incest, adultery, rape, and war. The classics' influence on western civilization can't be measured and even cliches like "Greeks bearing gifts," "Achilles' heel," and words like mentor, odyssey, and titanic live on today. FTD's logo of the wing-footed messenger is none other than the god, Hermes, and Nike was the goddess of Victory.
"Myths reflect the society that produces them," writes Barry B. Powell, author of "Classical Myth." In his article for Contemporary Review, Chris Arthur quotes scholar, Edmund V. Sullivan, "Television is the most powerful instrument for value formation within our culture today." Television is a social catalyst reflecting our character, values, norms, and traditions. George Gerbner, the Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania for thirty years, asserts "television is the central cultural instrument...a ritual mythbuilder - totally involving, compelling, and institutionalizing as the mainstream of the socializing process."
Like the ancient Greeks, we tune in to hear stories. We watch TV to get news, learn, be entertained, and escape from the mundane. Our gods are not Zeus, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Apollo, or Athena, but Peyton Manning, Oprah Winfrey, Clark Kent, Lucy Ricardo, Homer...Simpson, and all the heroes in "Heroes." Our "dramadies" like "Desperate Housewives" dispense love, sex, murder, deceit, "yada, yada, yada!"
So, "that's the way it is." "The tribe has spoken." "I love it when a plan comes together." I can finally watch TV guilt-free. Mom's ghost is exorcised. "How sweet it is!"
"Good grief." I can hear my sister's voice wafting through the house over the answering machine, "Hey, I know how much you love the internet, but I just read about this new study...are you there?"
"D'oh!" Mom always liked her best.