A search for meaning

This column first appeared in the Age on October 26, 2002

It has been a depressing fortnight and it is the drama of the news and current affairs that has had audiences glued to their screen, leaving 'entertainment' flagging in their wake. As well as the sadness of watching people deal with injury, loss and grief I have also watched the news with a foreboding that any cultural tendencies to be defensive, parochial and fearful are fueled by such things as the Bali bombings. There is a danger such events make us smaller and perhaps this is why I couldn't watch any television this week without seeing it: a crisis of confidence, a holding onto formula. To battle my ennui I lurched from show to show trying to ignite a spark of enthusiasm.

Encouraged by reports that MDA is getting better I watched this Tuesday's episode (ABC, 9.30pm). It is decent enough but still has a kind of earnestness that fails to engage. Yes, insurance companies are beginning to rule our lives but that doesn't necessarily make for good TV. White Collar Blue, (Channel 10, Tuesday, 8.30pm) is also a show with fine qualities but plays it safe, while reflecting anxiety about people whose lives step outside the mainstream. This week Harriet's mother is caught cuddling another middle-aged woman in a dressing gown, drag queens are too ditzy to handle a police interview, and the gays in the army are going to war on each other.

In general there is a holding onto the past, and fantasies that times were better once. Who best to embody that than Olivia Newton-John? On Wednesday (Channel 9, 7.30pm) we have A Night With Olivia, a woman who is somehow perceived as innocent despite the pseudo-raunchiness of her film clips (a confession: I wore pink leotards, head bands and leg warmers for a year after 'Physical' came out). On Tuesday night (Channel 10, 8.30pm) we have Village People - Unmasked, a Seventies band that captures the party-mood of the gay scene pre-AIDS.

I didn't actually attempt to watch this, but it is hard to imagine that Survivor V: Thailand, (Saturday, 8.30pm, Thursday, 9.30pm, Channel 9) is going to command much of an audience. Surely there can be no pleasure in watching young people fight for survival in a tropical paradise. Its value as entertainment, dubious 3 months ago, is farcical now. What people really do when the unthinkable happens is the subject of one of the week's more interesting shows. Moby Dick: The True Story, (tomorrow night, ABC, 7.30pm). It is a powerful but grim tale, tracking the fate of the crew of The Essex after a 25-meter sperm whale rams the boat and it sinks in late 1820. As one interviewee said, it was a moment where 'allegory and fact collided'. The crew, 20 young men, all from small town America, sailed for over 3 months in search of land, undergoing extraordinary suffering. To avoid what they called the 'cannibals' of Tahiti they attempted to fight the trade winds and currents to get back to South America. Then, in the most awful of ironies, they become cannibals themselves.

So, my search for meaning in TV this week was as meandering, and perhaps misguided, as the young sailors drift through the Pacific. In what might be a direct reflection of my mood the show I ended up enjoying the most was next Saturday night's episode of the now x-tremely-weird X-Files, (Channel 10, 8.30pm) in which Agent Reyes finds herself in hospital, in limbo, all medical equipment declaring her dead, trying to find a way of proving that she hasn't flat lined, that there is life left in her yet. So here was another allegorical moment: we all know there is plenty of life in TV, but some weeks we just can't see it, no matter how hard we look.

Posted by Sophie at 10:01 AM