Assignment 5-- Daniel Mendoza Vasquez

I can say for certain that neither I nor my family has ever exhibited stereotypical TV-obsessed behavior: eyes glued to the screen, minds long gone, and a lack of any sound besides the screen. We don’t even have cable television; we wouldn’t know what to do with those hundreds of channels. That being said, we certainly aren’t Amish-like with our entertainment either. We have Netflix and Amazon Prime, and we make good use of them, frequently. Essentially, we don’t watch TV just for the sake of watching TV, it has to be something we are actually interested in. And I, for one, love entertainment in the form of television and movies. Crafting a good story and then displaying it visually and audibly is something that requires creativity and originality (from more than one person) and it merits recognition in my opinion. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Realities like Keeping Up with the Kardashians don’t do much else besides set up cameras beside wealthy people, and its popularity despite that is likely what leads many people to claim or imply TV is inherently mind-numbing and thoughtless; that the lack of involvement from the audience is what makes it so popular. But, once again, not all TV is created equal, and I would argue that good television is good precisely because it makes you think or feel. House of Cards (except for season 6) displays the pervasiveness of corruption and greed, while Dexter brings forward issues of morality and what it means to act humanely.
On the other hand, it is true that television gets exponentially more attention and buzz than intellectual or academic achievements. As alluded to in the prompt, the Emmy’s get three hours worth of primetime whereas Nobel ceremonies barely make the news at all. Thus, while I do think that good television is worthy of celebration, I also believe that academics are more existentially important, and they are deserving of much more glamor. So to me, it’s not so much that television has gotten out of hand and needs to be brought down, it’s that academics need to be brought up.