the impact of tv shows on our precious young people
We got our first television at the age of thirty-five. I'd watched plenty of TV as a kid. In that respect, it was an all-American Seventies childhood. But for much of the Eighties and almost all of the Nineties, TV was an empty signifier. It only got filled up when I stayed in hotels, and for those TV pig-outs, it was like visiting a foreign land. Who were all these people on the TV?
In prime time terms, I stopped watching in the early Family Ties period and resumed with The Office. Touchstone series I missed almost completely include Seinfeld, Roseanne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and a lot more. I'm feeling that lack of knowledge a little bit (including that attendant feeling of stupid, smug superiority) now that the Sex and the City movie is out.
These things have been on my mind because I just read this article from a couple days ago, about the impact of Sex and the City on one younger viewer. The real question is not how many teenage sluts did the series help to create, but how many 22 year-old Mormon housewives?
