16/4/93
The
Good Old Daze of TV
Instead
of only one channel I don't watch, now there are 24.
"Wanna watch TV?"
"Now don't start that again."
"You can choose this time."
"All right. I choose Israel TV. Our national
network, the telecommunications pride of the Jewish people."
"Then you'll watch alone. Good night."
Why is everyone so down on Israel TV now that cable
TV has arrived? Okay, so we've always been down on ITV, and now we're
getting high on its misery, satisfied to watch a monolith humbled, jostling
with a Johnny-come-lately.
But really, ITV hasn't been so bad. Not as bad as,
say, Jordan TV. Maybe it's even better than the Turkish television that
has so absorbed us since we got cable.
Fact is, a lot of people in this here country think
ITV is so damn good that they turn the volume up to full blast to get
the proper full effect. Yaron London so loud you can hear his nose-hairs
rustling. Those people know good TV.
Gad Ya'acobi thought cable TV was a good idea when
he was communications minister, and that should be good enough reason
for us all to think cable TV is a good idea, too.
I won't divulge my own opinion except to say that
I think my 308-shekel TV tax would be better spent if it went to the
Wakf.
So the last thing I needed was a cable TV salesman
coming to my home to tell me that now I can spend another 888 shekels
a year for another 35 channels. No thank you, I said, we don't need
it, we don't want it, too expensive, we're too busy, there's no baseball,
I don't believe in it, and the next thing you know I was hooked up,
and hooked.
Now we get it all. ג€The Bold and the Beautiful.ג€
ג€The Young and the Restless.ג€ ג€Lives of the Rich and Famous.ג€ The Old
and The Sexy Dr. Ruth.
And every program starts on time.
We have it better than in America even. There, they
have TV stations like we have felafel stands, but they're all of one
single type: American. How many Turkish TV stations do they have there?
None. We have two. And we're better off than the Russians. We can see
them, but they can't see us. I never watch Spain, but I could if I want
to. And if I was inclined to watch French TV, though I never in my life
have been, it's there. And German TV, God forbid I should ever let that
language in my house, especially when they're showing that disgusting
porn that no Person of the Book could ever look at. But it's good we
have it so we can brag to the rest of the world, "yeah, 35 channels,
even German."
Thanks to Gad Ya'acobi, instead of only one channel
I don't watch, there are 24.
And who could have dreamed we'd ever have such a
choice of Arabic fare? Before cable, all we had in Jerusalem was childlike
Jordan TV, and Arabic TV. "Arabic TV" sounds quite grand for
just the news and 25 minutes of rollicking fun with such famous Arabs
as Roseanne and Ferris Bueller. (What makes these shows particularly
Arabic is that the Arabic subtitles are bigger than usual.) It should
have been clear that these shows weren't authentic ethnic, because on
real Arabic productions nobody ever laughs.
With cable, we've progressed to a sort of pan-Arabvision,
the choice pickings of half a dozen Middle Eastern Hollywoods.
Where once our international viewing experience was
just Jordan TV, and we had our morals bent by its ban on heterosexual
kissing - though King Hussein can smooch with all the men he wants -
now we get racy late-night Moslem flesh, with pulsating, gyrating, titillating,
scintillating exhibitions of something I call aerobelly dancing. Cleavage
and midriffs and pupiks and thighs contorting and spindling into impossible
positions without any sweating. What will they leave to the imagination
next?
If you don't need so much sex on your boob tube,
but you wouldn't mind some sort of heart-throbbing excitement, there's
professional wrestling. Lots of professional wrestling. Professional
wrestling and soccer. An incredible amount of soccer, 20 games
going at any given time. And racing. Racing is something we really
enjoy. They race anything and everything these days, always with
the same human exclamation-mark doing the play-by-play. Round and round
and round and round and round and round and round these racers go, nothing
is happening and no one cares who wins, but this race is more dramatic
for this hysterical announcer than ג€War of the Worldsג€ was for Orson
Welles.
Do you know what Prime Sports was showing at the
very moment the World Series was being won? Snooker. Snooker! "Prime"
sports indeed.
But none of that really matters, because the main
reason I got cable was for the Movie Channel. (Now, that's a secret,
because my wife still thinks we agreed to get cable because of the kids.)
I love movies; the cable company knew that when they
sent their salesman around to our house. They seduced me with an unrelenting
schedule of wonderful movies. I swooned. I sighed. I signed. They got
me - and phht. No more irresistible movies, just a lot of ordinary ones
they replay over and over again, so often that it seems they're going
to keep showing it until I finally watch it.
YOU
KNOW what I really hate about cable TV? It's exactly what we don't need
in this country. What we need is what we had under Gad Ya'acobi; what
we need is one single station - Israel TV.
Remember what it was like? Whatever was on, everyone
saw it. The next morning, everyone discussed it. The newspapers reported
it. It was a national event, every evening. Even if you were at a party,
they had the TV on and everyone watched. Whatever it was, the news,
a talk show, an interview or ג€Kojak,ג€ you liked it, you hated it, agreed,
disagreed, didn't know, it didn't matter: you saw it, and you could
join in the analysis when the Jewish State said as one, "Hey, did
you see Levy on TV last night?" Of course you did, or you'd have
nothing to talk about all the next day.
We were a kibbutz.
And if you were on TV? You couldn't stand
at a urinal without being pointed at and gawked and slapped on the back,
as if you were the prime minister.
It wasn't unity as much as universality. ITV was
so pervasive that you didn't even need a TV, you just had to stick your
head out the window. Throughout your neighborhood, an eerie blue hue
flickered in unison from every crowded apartment. The hushed hum from
every TV speaker merged into a single ghostly voice, a kind of verbal
dust that tickled your ears, that you couldn't shake, couldn't escape.
You could be out taking a slow stroll on a still summer night and suddenly
be aware that the news was crawling into your brain. You caught an absentminded
thought. "Yavin's on tonight." It's not that you heard him;
you felt him, that tonal swarm from a thousand television sets
overheavy on the bass.
There was comfort in oneness.
All for one station, one station for all.
We were then, truly, one nation under Gad.
