| September, 1996 |
Seriously. Junk it.
Why, do you ask, am I talking about television on a page obviously dedicated to the honor and remembrance of the Confederacy? Well, it's because television has many effects, most of them bad. They're bad for all people in general, but there are a couple effects specific to Southerners that I'd like to touch upon. First, I'll just briefly mention that television has a homogenizing effect upon its watchers. This can be explored in many ways, but to keep it simple, let's just use TV's effect upon the southern accent as indicative. Nothing is more beautiful to me than the gentrified Southern drawl. When people think of the South, they may think of many different things, but it's safe to say that one of the first things that come to mind is that wonderful Southern drawl. Now, we get our speech patterns by emulating those whom we hear speaking most often; until recent years, we got them from our parents. But now that we have the idiot box that serves as a replacement for both the family dinner conversation and the babysitter, we now spend far too much time listening to performers who have been trained vigorously to adopt a non-geographical, bland, colorless accent. And our own speech patterns begin to follow suit. And after we have been stripped of our colorful inflection, we lose one more tie with the generations that came before us. I think of my grandfather and his wonderful Virginian accent, which, alas, is not to be found in his grandson. And I consider that a tragedy.
But more importantly, television has a deeper, less obvious effect that is nonetheless much more insidious and detrimental. Excessive television watching robs one of the use of his mind. Exercising the mind, like the body, takes practice and discipline--critical thought is active. But television undermines critical thought, because it is essentially passive in nature. It's different from a book; reading a book, even a novel, forces us to use our imagination and engage our thought processes. Television does not; it provides the visual for us, so we do not have use our own imaginations or develop our own perspective. One facet of the sinful nature of man is his laziness; if a picture or point of view is already provided, then why should we work to develop our own? So with television, we merely absorb what is provided us without question and evaluation, and soon we become unable to critically evaluate anything at all. Since we have allowed our own thinking abilities to atrophy and decay out of disuse, we become unable to determine the nature of the truth of a matter. There is not only a homogenization of speech and culture, but of thought process--or lack thereof--as well. The ultimate effect of too much television is the loss of the ability to think.
What does all this have to do with the South? Well, to remember, understand, and honor our southern past, we must understand history. And history is complex. Television, due to its narrative nature, simplifies history in such a way as to render it impossible for the watcher to comprehend its nature. Even an eleven-hour Yankee documentary like Ken Burns' "The Civil War" can only tell a story; it cannot provide understanding. To have understanding is not just to know names, places, and dates and be able to recite the Gettysburg Address; to have understanding is to know the whys behind all those names, places, and dates.
Honoring the South isn't about flying the battle flag and knowing the words to "Dixie." It's knowing that brave men fought, bled, and died for a cause they believed in. It's remembering that our ancestors fought against tyranny and for self-government; they fought against an invading, plundering army that eventually ground them into submission and has continued unchecked ever since. It's seeing the irony in Lincoln's Gettysburg address when we speaks of "government of the people." It's not just saying "The War Between the States," but BELIEVING it.
But mostly, it's about pride. And that's why we southerners need to get rid of our television sets, because we have a proud history that is a part of our everyday existence, and we must not lose the ability to understand that proud history. Faulker was right; to the southerner, the past is not dead, it's not even past. It's with us every day and we must fight 'til our the deaths to defend it.