A recent British study found that an increasing number of elderly people were mixed up, frightened, often belligerently defensive and sometimes happily oblivious because television had taken over their minds, at least temporarily.
According to a London Observer story on the study: “The evidence is alarming. It includes one 90-year-old woman who remembered the themes of television programs but forgot the identities of the main characters. To compensate, she transposed their identities on to people she knew well, leading to bitter accusations against her family.
“Among these were claims that her grandson was being led astray by prostitutes; that her son-in-law, a retired doctor, was facing charges of assault for beating a man in the same room as her and that her doctor was a transvestite. She also accused a ward sister of being a stripper.”
Remember, this is in a country not heavily tuned in to Jerry Springer’s universe.
Anyone who has ever dealt with a parent or loved one suffering through Alzheimer’s disease, or related ailments, understands it’s one of life’s grayest emotional areas. On the one hand, a thinking, loving person is slipping away, forgetting family members like fading pictures. On the other, there is an element of grand, sad-funny humor to it all.
Some people say the humor is the only thing that gets them through.
What’s most disturbing about this study is that it’s from Britain. You know, that island that gave the world Shakespeare and “Masterpiece Theatre.”
Let’s be honest here. When it comes to bad television, we have it. If any country is ripe for extending the ramifications of this study to its zenith, it is ours. Television dominates our lives, our culture. Many of us were raised on it. The British may have created the Teletubbies, but we are the Teletubbies.
Already television is blamed for destroying the moral fabric of our nation — from bad children’s programming to the MTV generation to parents who can tell you Ward Cleaver’s work phone number.
Just wait. This television-is-poisoning-the-elderly thing is going to be the topic du jour among The Concerned Thinkers and People Who Worry.
Not all of us will be caught up in the emotional riot of Luddite finger-pointers and hand-wringing elder counselors. Some of us will put a little faith in science, hoping for an Alzheimer’s miracle. If it doesn’t come by the time we get ready to go, so be it. We’ll be prepared. In our wills we’ll make stipulations — right next to that power of attorney clause — that expressly detail what we want to watch.
Think about it. It’s like turning this whole V-chip thing on yourself. Censoring your mind before you can’t spell the word anymore. For those of us with vision, this is an opportunity to shape our future reality. Imagine a world where you’re the fifth “Seinfeld” cast member. You could be the seventh friend on “Friends.” If you start taping C-SPAN right now in anticipation, you could be a member of the British Parliament, shouting down your neighbors at the retirement home.
An optimist will not get sad or paranoid about what television will do to him in his wilted salad years. Yeah, the mind is going to go for some people. It’s the truly television-savvy who let it live on “Green Acres” or with Bob Newhart or as a rugged thinking person’s detective in “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
Imagine yourself imagining — no, believing — that you’re the third snobbish brother living a truly examined life along with “Frasier” and family.
The key is to plan now. Most of us have been hoarding up pathetic television images for years, and the possibility of crossover-dream interference is more than likely. You could buy the entire collection of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and live in a fantasy land free of worry. Get the tapes ready for constant viewing. It’s like planning your own elder-sitting. You don’t want a lot of “Dateline” or “Geraldo” memories creeping in.
Television and movies have always played on our fascination with technology, portraying a world where we can live out our dreams. Until this British study, who knew that we were carrying around just the right kind of faulty hardware to do the trick?
Some of us already know what it’s like to watch people waste away. Some of us already fear it’s in the genes, that it’s a horrible foregone conclusion. Thinking like that is wearying. Taking the glass-is-half-full approach gives hope to our fate.
Some of us are going to start taping the Golf Channel 24 hours a day. The Travel Channel too. We’re going to walk the most beautiful fairways, strike the ball perfectly every time, then put the bags down and travel the world, soaking up its beauty while forgetting the dingy confines of our little warehouse, where vaguely familiar smiling faces come and call out our names.
We’re going where the reruns are brilliant and there are no commercials.
