In the ’90s I frequented a long-gone cafe where an elder busser would advise, apropos of nothing, that the road to intellectual emancipation starts with “putting a bullet in the TV.”
His name was probably Mike—they all were. Bearded like a medieval scholar, he quoted liberally from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and by “elder,” I mean he was probably 30-something. Suffice it to say, his breed of working-class sage doesn’t exist anymore. Nor does a world where assassinating the boob tube is the first step to an emancipated intellectual life.
After the geeks inherited the earth in the early aughts, the cultural agenda—once stratified between the art haus and the frat house—was chucked in favor of comic book deities and our superheroic, social-mediated selves. Soon, our filtered faces were minted upon the coin of the realm via the smartphone.
Artists and thinkers are now crowded to the cultural fringe while a permanent open mic night of endless online auditions preens from the glowing rectangles in our palms.
Meanwhile, “second screen” doomscrolling whilst chilling with Netflix has forced filmmakers to reiterate plot points three to four times in dialogue and keep distracted viewers engaged with the pseudocelebrities on the other side of the cultural divide.
This has me thinking that the thrice-repeated “Oh wow’s” comprising Steve Jobs’ last words were probably a sanitized paraphrase of what he uttered when the gates to Hell opened before him for inventing the iPhone.
Anyway, this is why I taught myself to read again. Last week was National Children’s Book Week, so it was well timed. I still had the mechanics but not the patience. At one point, I even spread my fingers across the print page to enlarge the text.
After taking too many shots from Busser Mike and his ilk, the TV evolved, miniaturized like a toy dog breed so it can live in one’s purse. We didn’t domesticate it—it domesticated us, through flattery and distraction, colonizing every idle moment of our lives. Now, it auctions off our dwindling attention spans.
Which begs the question: What would Mike do?
Probably smash my phone with a hammer. But the road to intellectual emancipation doesn’t require that—yet. The first step is simpler. Open a book.
Daedalus Howell is editor of this paper, the writer-director of the feature film ‘Werewolf Serenade,’ author of the novel ‘Quantum Deadline’ and host of ‘The Drive’ on 95.5 FM. More at dhowell.com.
