Make It Stop: When Did TV Become So Demanding?

When I was growing up, Friday nights meant Mom, Grandma, my sister and I sitting in the basement with the television tuned to CBS and the strains of the "The Dukes of Hazzard" theme music emanating from the console color TV's mono speakers. After the theme song came the commercial break, during which snacks were retrieved from the kitchen, conversations were had among us family members, and an occasional phone call from friends or extended family was taken. By the time the citizens of Hazzard had survived whatever misadventure the writers had managed to throw at them in the span of an hour, the closing credits would roll and another commercial break, during which we made bathroom runs, and then the opening credits and theme song of the next show would begin. It was a kindlier, gentler time for lovers of TV. 

Nowadays, though, TV has become a fully immersive process, with theme songs scrapped for cold opens that thrust the viewer immediately into the action, and closing credits that bleed seamlessly into the next show, leaving a viewer barely able to digest whatever dramatic action just occurred. And don't get me started on what happens within the show with non-linear narratives that circle and bend so much that they've yielded a new phrase: "twisty." 

Screenwriter Shonda Rhimes - the talented mind behind "Grey's Anatomy", "Private Practice", "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder" - is the Queen of Twisty, with plotlines that send a viewer to the edge of their seats in the opening seconds of a show and then grab you by the collar, pulling you onto your feet and up onto your tippy-toes before hurling you against a wall and kicking you in the gut after you've dropped to the floor. That's "twisty". "Twisty" could also be used to describe the level of physical gore that Ms. Rhimes manages to pump into, or, maybe more accurately, out of, her characters. So violent is the imagery that she puts onto the television screen that I'm forced to look away frequently with the mute button on until my husband yells "all clear"! Television has literally become all-consuming with a "don't-look-away-or-you'll-miss-it" attitude that's becoming a turn-off. I was three-episodes into "How to Get Away with Murder" before I realized what the hell was going on and by the end of the season I was glad for the summer hiatus.

And if the plotlines don't exhaust you, trying to stay caught up on your favorite shows on Hulu, OnDemand, and TiVo will. If you have any sort of a life and can't watch your favorite show during its first run, then you're doomed to schedule an alternate time to watch your shows. A work change forced me to watch an entire season of a show via OnDemand. I felt like I was handed a homework assignment. My adjusted viewing schedule also meant that I had to avoid all social media, since people love sharing plotline reveals as if they had some juicy gossip! Another thing I avoid is Netflix (sorry, not sorry) and the binge-watching trap. The idea of being tethered to my TV for a day and a night because I have to watch the entirety of a season's episodes of  "House of Cards" is astounding to me, especially when there's not a blizzard or I'm not recovering from a really awful flu that forces me onto my sofa for a 48-hour period.

Do we need this generation's version of former First Lady Nancy Reagan telling us to "just say no" to being consumed by television? Does current First Lady Michelle Obama have to personally come into our living rooms to say, "let's move", in order for us to step away from the flatscreen? I don't know what the answer is, but I know that the producers and writers and directors of TV aren't going to solve this problem, especially when they created the problem. They took the passive TV viewers of past generations and made them into active participants generating their own content based on the shows we watch. We tweet, we Facebook, we Instagram our way through these shows - sharing our reactions with the world, or just that little corner of our world where other fans of this particular show join in virtual community with each other. Who has time for snacks or the bathroom when there's breaking news about a character who was killed/not killed/kidnapped that has to be shared with your social media followers? 

You know, I'm starting to think that maybe TV hasn't become more demanding - maybe we've become more demanding and TV is just trying to catch up with us! Maybe we need to create a community for ourselves that stretches beyond our lonely couches and out into the world. Maybe we need television to consume us because we no longer allow ourselves to be consumed by things that really matter anymore. I mean I can always count on Shondaland to serve up twists and turns every Thursday night, but can I deliver the same high when I'm the screenwriter of my own life? 

OMG! Not Another Kim and Kanye Headline!

March is National Women's Month and the theme is "Weaving the Stories of Women's Lives". And, in a strange twist of fate, as we honor women like Delilah L. Beasley (1867-1934), the first African American woman to be regularly published in a major metropolitan newspaper, the rest of the world seems to be celebrating another woman who is, also, regularly featured in every major metropolitan newspaper around the globe - Kim Kardashian.  Kim and her husband, Kanye, have topped the headlines almost daily since New York Fashion Week when her daughter, North West, had a meltdown front row at a fashion show while seated next to Anna Wintour. And the Ides of March have only increased the Kimye Krazy factor as they took their show across the Atlantic. And maybe it was jet lag, or too much sugar from those United Airlines ice cream sundaes they serve in business and first class (so good), but there's been even more of a frenzy: Look!! Kim's dyed her hair blond like that kid from "Harry Potter"!! Kim and Kanye are at the center of a photographer scrum at the Louis Vuitton show during Paris Fashion Week!! OMG, Kanye's written a song called, "Awesome" that's dedicated to Kim which includes lines such as these: 

You look too good to be at work/ You feel too good to ever hurt/I hope you ready for tonight/I'm gon cook, you'll be dessert.

And let's not forget the visuals to accompany this love story, including video footage of Kanye casing his wife's scantily clad form as she stepped out to greet her public in a sheer bodysuit and plunging bra, as well as a photo of Kanye with a death grip on his wife's posterior while they walked. 

I get it, Kimye - you're a married couple with a young child and you're feeling frisky and trying for a second one. That's your business. But, what's troubling is that the family business also involves your wife's body,or, specifically, one piece of her anatomy, and there's a name for that and it rhymes with "flooring" or "ostitution" (OK, that second word isn't even a word, sorry).  Every piece of video footage, every rap lyric, every photograph - these become part of a larger story, of our larger story as women. I'm troubled that Kim doesn't see that her individual choices have a larger impact, and not just because she is a public figure. She has the financial means to dress herself in a way that highlights her beauty, but she chooses, instead, to squeeze into latex dresses that hug her bottom, see-through body-stockings, and visible G-strings to keep the cameras flashing and keep the money flowing. There are young girls in this world being savagely beaten just because they dare to learn to read and seek an education while Kim brags on-camera about sneaking off-set at a fashion shoot (where she's clad in ridiculously expensive designer duds) to have a quickie with her husband! 

Look, I don't want to slut-shame Kim K. She can wear what she wants - it's her body, after all. But, I think we should dumb-shame her. That's right - dumb-shaming, because she should know better. She was raised in privilege and given an education that most of us are still paying off, and yet she refuses to engage in higher-level thought. To put it simply, she should not only know better, but she should act better. As women, if the stories of our individual lives are truly woven together, then as little North West grows into her womanhood, how will her mom's story affect her? 

Microphone Check: On NPR, Race, and Code-Switching

When my husband emailed the link to an NPR news story last week, I rolled my eyes, as I usually do when he shares all things NPR with me. I'm not a fan of NPR. And it's not because I worked on commercial radio in a market where the local NPR station was competition for us. OK, it's not just because of that. No, NPR has always irritated me because of the vocal delivery of the on-air hosts and reporters. Their measured, vibrato-less speech, the vocal equivalent of wrapping oneself in a warm, but not too warm, blanket for a nap in your perfectly shabby-chic fixer Craftsman house with the assurance that everything is alright. The NPR voice has always been, for me, the voice of smugness. And so, I've rejected the NPR worldview as they report from war-torn ports of call around the globe while putting a reassuring hand on your tummy, rubbing gently and cooing, "There, there. It's OK."

So, back to the link forwarded to me by my husband. Well, the title sounded promising - "Challenging the Whiteness of Public Radio".  The author, Chenjerai Kumanyika, an African American man who is an assistant professor at Clemson University, had been putting the finishing touches on the script for a piece he'd done about fishermen, but as he was doing a final review of the piece before he recorded it, the only voice he could hear internally was what he considered to be the kind of white voice typically heard on public radio: "Without being directly told, people like me learn that our way of speaking isn't professional. And you start to imitate the standard or even hide the distinctive features of your own voice."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Throughout my life, I've been ridiculed by other African Americans for "talking white." My mom had always "talked proper", which I think was code back in the day for "talking white." Mom had been a studious child, and a voracious reader at one of the top schools in the area during segregation. Mom had occupied the hours of her childhood taking piano lessons, and watching great Hollywood movies, or visiting with her school teacher aunt who loved reading out loud. By second grade, I had transferred to a predominately white school and was also spending my free time at the piano, reading, and watching old movies with my grandmother. And so like other children, my vocal patterns mimicked my environment. 

So I wasn't aware that there was a problem until high school. My high school was about 70 percent African American. This was the first time since first grade that I was in an environment where most of the people looked like me. But, not everybody sounded like me, and so I learned that this could be a problem. I became socially isolated. It was a small school so you knew everybody, but friendships were rare for me. Mom was still over-protective and I wasn't allowed to socialize with anyone beyond the school day. So no parties, no Friday nights at the movies with my girlfriends, and definitely no sleepovers. I was missing out on first-person interactions with black culture. I relied on cable TV to educate me, with shows like "Rap City" and "Yo!MTV Raps." There were the trips to the beauty parlor and the ready supply of Ebony, Jet, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines. But even among the black women gathered for our relaxers and press and curls, my manner of speaking was either cause for laughter or alarm, though they all seemed to excuse me when they saw one of my textbooks tucked under my plastic cape, and then they'd all cluck that I was getting my education and so "talking white" was just a way of getting by and getting ahead. 

By the time I'd made it to undergrad, at another predominately white school where I was a super-minority, my fluidity in "talking white" was more muscle memory and no one made mention of it, not even the ladies at the hairdresser. All was well until just a few years after grad school when I took a job at a classical music radio station and listened to my voice on my first aircheck tape. In my head, my voice sounded deep and assertive but on-tape, it sounded leaden and overly formal. My boss coached me to smile more, get conversational and more friendly, to sound like the other women DJs on my station. Did I mention that those other women were white? What he failed to understand was that part of my on-air problem was a continual inner dialogue on race that I was having every time I opened the mic: Did I sound too black? Would the white listeners reject me for sounding black? And so I dug in, trying to hone my voice into a listener-friendly level of whiteness. This, in the days before we talked about things like code-switching. 

In the end, I failed. Anonymous listeners posted nasty comments about me, wondering if I was black and, if I was, what I was doing on a classical music station. The constant anxiety of trying to keep my black from showing distracted me from loving my job. Scrubbing every script so that my cultural references weren't too...exotic. Carefully crafting on-air smalltalk that embodied the smug familiarity of public radio. I had enough!
I remember one conversation with my former boss before we called it a day, where he was critiquing my on-air performance. He wanted me to get more comfortable, more relatable, to share my authentic self with the listeners. I didn't have an answer for him that day, but I do now. It's hard to give your authentic self when you've been suppressing so much of it for so long. I don't actually know what I really sound like. Writing this makes me so sad because that part of me - my voice - is gone and I can never reclaim it. Maybe that's why I don't listen to NPR. Maybe it's the realization that one of those highly-educated people of color reporting across the airwaves had to black-check themselves before they did their job. Maybe it's knowing that there is a cost to that behavior. 

Branding Your Brand New Year

Around this time, several years ago, as we were hauling the Christmas tree out to the curb and enjoying the last of the pumpkin pies, my husband and I got to talking about resolutions for the New Year. He shared with me a resolution that he and his sister had made some years before in order to jump start their fitness and exercise plans for the New Year. It was simple, yet effective: "Put the sneakers on." Those words fueled their actions. Had a tough day at work and don't feel like going to the gym for the day's workout? Well, just put the sneakers on. These were words that went beyond the vagary of most resolutions, and went into a direct action. Put the sneakers on. It was, and it is, still, pure genius.

Over the years, we've continued this tradition of branding the brand New Year. One year it was "clear the clutter," and that issued in a top to bottom effort to organize our household stuff. Another year it was "purge the circle" - ridding ourselves of toxic relationships that were dragging us down and not lifting us up. This was a hard one to execute, but the results were tremendously freeing and soul-satisfying. So what's on tap for 2015? Maybe "read more books," although Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has already claimed that with his New Year's promise to read a new book every other week, and Arianna Huffington has also pledged to read more good books. I like soup, so maybe our 2015 brand could be EAT MORE SOUP. Although that sounds more like a Campbell's Soup advertisement. "Just do it" has been done to death.

There were some years where the theme just presented itself, but this year, it's a bit of a jumble. We're being pushed and pulled into so many different directions with aging parents, our own aging bodies, and work, work, work. Never have we needed spiritual, mental and physical rejuvenation more, and never have we had so little time to achieve it. For now, though, I'll be content to stop, take a slow and deep breath, and hold onto the brief stillness of this brand new, unbranded New Year, like freshly fallen snow.  

Just Keep It To Yourself: Enough with the Public Marriage Proposals!

Well, it's the holiday season - a time when red and green can be worn at the same time on the same person, a time when fat-shaming is traded in for adoration of a chubby man bearing gifts on his long-haul flight around the world, and a time when jewelry is purchased and someone gets down on bended knee and says the two scariest words ever, "Marry me." The engagement ring - the ultimate stocking stuffer - is often the unexpected guest during the holiday season.  The period between Thanksgiving and the New Year is the busiest time of year for marriage proposals, and why not? After all, this is the usual time of year when couples travel to the hometowns of their significant others. And there, in the glow of the family hearth and home, surrounded by loving strangers in questionable yet kitschy Christmas togs, reeking of holiday cheer and nostalgia, things happen and soon you're watching the guy you've fallen in love with making his ugly cry-face while fumbling with an expensive ring while your nana and pop-pop watch in silent horror as their turkey breast gets cold.

As you may have guessed, I'm not a fan of the public marriage proposal, but, in this social media age, I've been outvoted. Instead of a quiet moment between two people, marriage proposals must go big, bigger, biggest, with stories abounding of elaborate proposals involving flash mobs and choreography that's more involved and twistier than a "Scandal" plot line. But, as anyone knows, the bigger the production, the more likely that things will go wrong, which is why a whole sub-category called marriage proposal fails now exists. This past week, a marriage proposal ended in a man dangling from a crane and a hole in the roof of his girlfriend's house. And the pitfalls of the over-the-top marriage proposal are not limited to property damage. Asking someone to commit to spending the rest of their life with you requires that they consider the question carefully, and that consideration might take longer than the few seconds of space after you say the words and spring the ring. Imagine the unbelievable pressure it puts on a person when this proposal of marriage is delivered in front of a roomful of family members and close friends, or on a jumbo screen in a stadium or other large, public event. Is this public proposal a hint of things to come? Will you tell my family at the Thanksgiving table that we're going to try to have children, in fact, we'll be "trying" in the guest bedroom after you serve the pumpkin pie! ?? Will you be live-Tweeting from the delivery room with pithy hash tags like  #cervix or #AhPushIt? 

So just keep it to yourself, please! It will be great practice for the rest of your married life:)

These Little Boys: On Life and Death and Race

This past Saturday a 13 year boy became a Bar Mitzvah, an occasion marked by the gathering of his family members and cherished friends, from camp, preschool, Sunday school, and junior high. Dressed in their finest, guests ate well and danced to everything from that old classic "Shout" to "YMCA" and the latest hits by Nicki Minaj. There were ice cream dessert bars for adults and kids alike, and amped up versions of childhood games like musical chairs and Coke and Pepsi. There were glow sticks, blinking plastic novelty rings, and plenty of smiles and laughter, all celebrating the greatest accomplishment, so far, in a boy's life. Maybe this doesn't mean anything to you, this religious ceremony that welcomes teenage Jewish boys into assuming responsibility for their actions and for their Jewish faith. But for these boys, and the girls who become Bat Mitzvahs, these occasions will help to prepare the ground for their future accomplishments as adults. 

I am not Jewish, but as a photographer, present for these important life events, I have often wondered about the lives of these little boys compared to the lives of my three African-American nephews and their friends of color.  Two of my nephews, ages 14 and 12 and attending struggling public schools, are already experiencing the frustrations of being left behind academically. And we're trying, my family and I, we're trying and praying with all of our might to right this ship, to protect these boys in their boyhood and, yet, prepare them for an adult world that is forced on them all too soon. Try as we do to give them ice cream filled Saturdays, and happy family times, on a night like this, I feel powerless, but not hopeless. My nephews, these 3 little boys, are my little boys, and your little boys. So for tonight, before I feel discouraged, I'm going to look at a photo of my little boys, and I'll keep on, we'll keep on, loving you and protecting you, and all of these little boys.

My beautiful three nephews

Lena Dunham Needs a Hug

Since I'm much too lazy to join the Netflix cult, my down times usually involve a marathon viewing session of whatever's on cable, which often means reruns of Sex & The City. And while I loved this show so much in my twenties when the episodes first aired, now, in my 40s and married for almost 13 years, I can honestly call out Carrie & Company for being drama-seeking jerks. You make yourself available sexually for a man who refuses to commit to you? Guess what? You've lost the right to be angry at him. You want to agonize over every little detail of your boyfriend, then guess what? You're definitely going to find something wrong with him. At a certain point you have to wonder if the original working title for Sex & The City was I Love Drama! 

So why bash a show that's been dead and buried for a decade? Because in the wake of Carrie Bradshaw, another over-sharing young woman hitting the sheets and the streets of NYC has emerged and is in the process of enraging, or engaging depending on your point of view, a new generation of viewers. Her name is Lena Dunham - and if simply seeing her name in print here is making you see red, then you've heard of her, and you might also hate her. People have been trash-talking Miss Lena for the past few years as her HBO series, Girls has become the media's poster child for the privileged, majority white, millennials who currently hold the title for Most Vilified. Poor Lena! Sure, she undresses, a lot, on her show, and in a way that can make viewers squeamish, but it's her body and it's her thing. I don't think she does it to titillate, in fact the act is more like that of a toddler innocently shedding their clothes and streaking through the house, you know, because toddlers are craycray that way. 

Lena's latest controversy is unfolding now while she's on tour promoting her book, "Not That Kind of Girl." One passage, in particular, has set off red flags as it seems to describe an act of pedophilia possibly performed by Miss Lena on her baby sister. Reading the passage, I wondered several things, including: did this really happen, where were their parents, why write about this, and WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS GIRL?  Seriously, what's wrong with this child? As it happens, I wasn't the only one curious about her motivation - both to do this miserable thing and to write about it. A Twitter war was declared, leading Miss Lena to take a break from her book tour and her nearly 2 million Twitter followers. 

It's the oddest thing, until you realize that this child grew up in the afterglow of Sex & The City and in the emergence of reality TV and celebrity culture. Somehow, Miss Lena, became confused. Look, I never, ever thought that Sarah Jessica Parker the actress was the character Carrie Bradshaw, but clearly, the fashion designers and stylists working with the actress encouraged her to embody the Carrie mystique every time she graced a red carpet. Soon, Sarah Jessica Parker BECAME Carrie, I mean she even has her own trendy shoe line, something that's so Carrie! So is Lena Dunham really her Girls character, Hannah Horvath? Or is Hannah actually Lena hiding in plain sight? Who knows, who will ever know? At some point, though, who will care? Let's not disparage Miss Lena, instead, hug her because, like those who've gone before her on those NYC streets, her genius and promise will air on a basic cable channel on a weekday afternoon.