Long form TV

Since young I didn’t have a television in my house, my parents thought it was better to for me and my brother to play with each other and to read than to watch TV. I have never own a TV and from my childhood I had the idea that TV was mainly a commercial devise that didn’t let children or adults develop intellectually or creatively; my parents and my older sister used to refer to the TV as “the stupid box”. TV was for me for stupid viewers who are being fooled and convinced easily, and that ate people’s life away, TV was an addictive bad thing, almost like cigarettes. Cartoons were OK, sometimes, but besides that nothing was acceptable under my parents eyes or even mine at a time.

As expected, in the US the TV culture was even bigger than at home which made me even weirder in comparison with everyone else. I had never seen really seen a long form TV before 2 years ago, it never felt worth it and it was eating my friends time and life, so why would I want to watch it? Almost like an accident I started watching Grey’s Anatomy from my roommates laptop. Grey’s Anatomy is a series about medicine residents in The Seattle Hospital, watching it over a period of time made me believe that I knew the characters, and that I was learning from medicine. From watching that show I got introduced to the TV culture, many of my friends argued that it represented much of today culture and that I could learn a lot from it, it was still a foreign concept to me by then. Since then, two years ago, I have been “hooked” into a couple of different TV shows, each of them really different from each other. Unlike what I had learnt, this shows related the audience in a challenging way, making me feel for the characters but also think about it, watching it only once a week gave me a lot of time to think about them and make my mind about my position towards their acts.

Since many of my friends were watching it and we talked about it in class, I decided to watch Orange is the New Black, the Netflix TV series. This more independent driven show has been a clear sign to myself of the power of long form TV and an elevation to a form of art, like I had seen in movies before. I believe this show is a great new idea, to show prison in the female side, unlike what is has been shown of jail in the past in TV, cinema and literature, creating an intriguing side of incarceration, the duality between the expected softness of women and the roughness of this women and the fact that they are in jail.  I also see in this show a clear representation of today’s society in many ways, the show is multi racial, but approached from a really realistic way, respectfully showing the difference of each group it really represents the Unites States we live on, with White, Black, Latinos, Asians and others. Furthermore I really admire the director’s choice of showing homosexuality and transgender that is also defiantly part of our society.

Besides the great representation of today’s society in a usually unseen location, I believe the way it is told is also revolutionary. Every episode introduces a different character or a different aspect of their life, told in different ways, even though the main character Piper is usually narrating, this gives importance to every character present in the show and it hooks the viewer to keep watching and find out the story of each character. This individualized module lets every episode be independent from each other and different enough so that they can become a little film by itself.

Even thought I still believe that our society is too exposed to TV and entertaining media which is not necessary and many times it has a negative impact on the viewer, now I see that they are certain things on TV that deserve to be watch and that tell a lot about our generation and our time, now I see the movement to long form TV as something overall positive and creative.