"I'll Ponch your lights out"
by Harum Scarum
Once again, I'm in debt to Ted Turner.
For staters, he keeps my television fully stocked with re-runs
of CHiPS, which I tape every morning at 10:30 Eastern Standard time so
that when I come home from work at approximately 4:45-5:00 P.M.,
depending on the amount of bicyclists, joggers, and other unsavory
types out on the road, I can take off my flip flops, unbutton my
Hawaiian shirt, strip off my shorts, and sit buck-naked on the sofa
with a Pabst in one hand and an asthma inhaler in the other (that
way the foam really does go straight to me brain.)
I do this until the first commercial break after the first
commercial break after the opening introduction and theme song comes
on (that commercial really doesn't count anyway since the opening is
just a teaser of a trailer for the episode anyway, an adverstisement
if you will.)
After that I head for the bedroom, open the closet doors,
and take down a navy blazer, a pair of khakis, a white Oxford, and a
Rush Limbaugh tie, and slip into something a bit more comfortable
and respectable before Ponch and John are back on the scene, fighting
crime and impressing the ladies with knee-high socks and plum-
snuggin' gym shorts.
About the time Ponch has cracked his first joke, John has
slapped Ponch on the back and made some sort of sarcastic remark in
retaliation, and the Sarge has met with them in the hall with a
clipboard in hand and has given our two heroes a fatherly scowl, the
Pabst-Primiten Mist combination is really kicking in, and I'm feeling
rather respectable. So for helping me wind down after a tough day
at work, I'd like to thank Ted Turner, not to mention the good folks
at Pabst and Parke-Davis.
But CHiPs is just the first reason I'd like to thank Ted
Turner. The second reason I'd like to thank Farmer Ted has to do
with another one of his networks and what I saw on it.
Over and over, we keep hearing about how we, the current
citizens of the United States, are desensitized to violence, and we
all know that by and large this desensitization was caused by Arnold
Schwartzenegger and the brothers, Mario and Luigi, through their
thrilling and disgestable portrayals of violence in all of its
glorious forms (This I'm not going to argue. It's a proven causation,
much like the fact that a packet of Nutra-Sweet causes cancer
because laboratory mice who have been fed nothing but that handy
artifical sweetner in doses that are thirteen times greater than
their own mousey body weights get cancer after eight weeks of this
torture. Nuff said.)
I used to believe this too myself, that is, until Ted Turner
helped me see the light.
And how did I come to see this great and shining, bloody and
red light straight from the fiery eyes of Mars the God of War
himself? Well, I just so happened to be flipping through the
channels when I came across TCM. Normally I don't stop on that black
and white land (well, one time I stopped there because they were
running this short film about cops and robbers, but all the actors
were actually fully dressed dogs with strings on their lips and
chains around their necks, evoling them to erect with a bit of
choking authority. It was quite a hoot and rather touching,
especially when Henry the Hound was about to be gased for a crime he
didn't commit.)
This time I stopped there only because I heard quite a
commotion. Seems, I'd come in right in the middle of a World War II
propaganda film, and interestingly enough, it stared not only Ronald
Reagan, who was quite a dashing man in his youth, but Burgess
Meredith too, who wasn't much more than a crooked nose.
Well, it was all pretty entertaining and not much different
then Nazi propaganda films that I'd seen in the History Channel
except that ours were a lot funnier and didn't feature bikini briefed
Nordic youths running obstacle courses and frolicking in the pool
(No lie. You need to check 'em out. Believe me, there's a direct
correlation between fascism and homosexuality. Not that this is
surprising; they're both heavily into black leather.)
Anyhow, the moment I changed my mind about the cause and
effect relationship between Mario Brothers and our present
desensitization to violence came about the moment when Burgess
Meredith opened his mouth and said with much enthusiasim and glee,
"Come on sarge, save some of those Japs for me. I can't wait to kill
me some Japs."
And then all the other gentlemen begin to chant, "Kill the Japs.
Kill the Japs. Kill the Japs," until they've worked themselves up
so much that they have to strip down to their boxers and frolick
underneath cold-water-spouting shower heads (Nah, I'm just joking.
Ours guys wouldn't do that. They'd just polish their guns for an hour
and maybe diggle a prostitute or too.)
After that, the narrator, a kindly old gentlmen reminiscent
of Burl Ives, says, "Don't you worry about a thing Private Pee Wee
and Company. There's plenty of slant eyes for everyone."
Well, besides getting me in touch with my inner racist, I
realized at that moment that Hollywood hadn't desensitized us to
violence. We always have been. It's with us from birth and has
absolutely nothing to do with Hollywood. In fact, we are not only
born desensitized to violence in the sense that it doesn't make us
weep like the anti-litter Indian chief, that Hippie epitome of the
peace-loving soul (I guess they never heard of scalping and/or the
Apaches,) we are stimulated and captivated by it.
Now I know that some of you out there are probably wondering
how this bit of war time propaganda proved that Hollywood's
portrayal of violence and encouragement of it has nothing to do
with the desensitization of Americans to violence since the very
thing that triggered the thought in my head that movies aren't
responsible for desensitizing Americans was itself a piece of
celluloid that probably encouraged half the farm hands in Kansas
to enlist, but to that I idea I say this: the silver screen and
all other screens, whether it be the TV or monitor, are simply
mirrors to our very own, dark, dark hearts. Seek and ye shall find,
see, and be entertained by, that is the Law of the Screen.
This love of bloodshed has nothing to do with Hollywood at all,
although it has an awful lot ot do with entertainment.
For example, if you can remember your history, you'll remember
the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War or the War Between the States
or the War of Northern Aggression, take your pick. Well, the
interesting thing about the Battle of Bull Run has nothing to do with
the battle itself.
The interesting thing about the Battle of Bull Run is this:
hours before the battle, the good gentlemen and women came out to a
hill overlooking the scheduled battlefield and picniced, conversed,
read each other poetry, and set daintily under their parasols until
all the pieces were on the field and ready to start fighting. Once
the first shot was fired, everybody stopped what they were doing and
started watching the bloodshed; if they'd had past-life regression
therepy back then and you'd hypnotized one of two of those gents and
ladies, I'm sure that they'd have told you that the Battle of Bull
Run was ten times better than a hundred Christians on the floor of
the Roman Colesium fighting a thousand lions with nothing more than
their bare hands and a little faith.
To those fine folks of the Civil War era, the Battle of Bull
Run was one helluva rush and a splendid afternoon of entertainment.
I'm sure their only complaint was that they couldn't watch it again
on tape or control the battle with their hands. If only they'd been
born in a different era? Oh, the horror, the horror.
So basically what I'm trying to say is this: We, as Americans
or human beings in general, haven't become snarling, devolved brutes
who are desensitized to violence and bloodshed because TV and movies
and video games have corrupted our minds and our desires. We've just
updated the ways in which we enjoy the carnage.
All work on this webpage is copyrighted by Harum Scarum and the Infinity
Monkeys.
