Opinion
 

Stupidity saturates entertainment

By Jennifer Jackson

For two seasons now, the MTV show The Newlyweds has earned tremendous success and high ratings by showing the intimate and everyday details of the life of Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson as newlyweds.

The blonde-haired Jessica Simpson learns a million new things that have nothing to do with being married and should not be a revelation to any person of her age. For instance, her husband is kind enough to inform her that buffalo wings are not made out of buffalo, while helping her learn how to wash clothes and cook -- both completely new experiences for her. Speculation that Simpson isn't as stupid as she appears and that it's only a fake personality intended to make the show "sell" doesn't help the situation. After all, it did make the show sell. Those who laughed at her ignorance and mocked the show were the same consumers sending a loud and clear message to MTV and other media syndicates: "We like watching stupidity!"

Examples abound of our society's love for idiocy. Take your typical beer commercial: The pudgy, middle-aged, balding guy with a one-track mind is always concentrated on just getting his beer, and then life will be good. Then there's usually a stunning and, of course, smarter "babe" with little clothing involved making the guy look even dumber by manipulating him out of his beer. This "humor" sells beer quite successfully.

Other lows in our culture, which are obviously highs for some people, are Judge Judy and other TV court shows. This is a setting in which people's private and stupid mistakes, that could be resolved with a little old-fashioned communication, are dragged onto national television, effectively mocked and belittled by the judges and audiences and then dismissed with all the ceremony of a principal punishing an elementary-age delinquent.

Do I even need to mention reality TV to further my point?

But while these shows may be easy targets that we can all agree demonstrate our culture's love of mindless entertainment, there are still millions of viewers out there making these shows successful. You don't have to hang out long at UH to know that large numbers of those viewers are college students.

So if we're the ones watching these shows what does that say about us? Does it mean that we enjoy watching others behave stupidly so that we can feel smart? Or does it simply mean that we've been trained not to think and therefore shows like this can amuse us because they don't require any brainpower? 

The answer is "all of the above," but the overriding theme is a refusal to think. For example, many of you are probably trying to read this with bloodshot eyes and a pounding headache. The college definition of Spring Break "fun" is to get plastered to the point that you forget the world exists for a week, then endure headaches and vomiting the subsequent week. You probably didn't think it was a really smart thing to do, but we're not in the business of thinking, because it's easier to follow the crowd.

Another example is voting. Our age group has a lower voter turnout than any other. If you think it's a good excuse that you didn't know there was an election or that you didn't know anything about the candidates to not cast a vote, you're wrong. It simply means that you didn't want to take the time research and thoughtfully consider the qualifications of each candidate. 

So before we go gravely shaking our head in self-righteous disappointment at the stupidity of that ambiguous entity we love to blame for everything called "culture," we should think. 

Jackson, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at jenny@mail.scholars.uh.edu.