Special thanks to Christian for making this one happen.
I have a framed black-and-white photograph of two-year-old me. I am sitting in front of the massive Zenith TV. In terms of composition, is the photograph about me or the TV?
My late aunt took this picture and, while she was a good photographer, what is interesting is that she didn’t angle the snapshot to frame me. All she had to do was stand by the TV. Perhaps that would miss the point.
Mine was the TV generation. Wasn’t it on Mad Men that Don came home the day JFK was killed to find Sally abandoned to the boob tube, alone, while Betty lay in bed upstairs?
My mother might have looked at me and saw that TV had taken over, as well. Consider the Shake-and-Bake moment.
We were standing in a grocery store on Elmhurst’s Roosevelt Avenue. I wanted a box of Shake-and-Bake.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Because I saw it on TV,” I said.
“But I can make this myself,” my mother answered, incredulous, as she examined the box.
She was a good cook who made simple nutritious meals. Why her silly child wanted bread crumbs in a box was beyond her. Oh, and the added price for the plastic bag to do the shaking in. By the way, this moment took place less than a decade after Desk Set’s Spencer Tracy showed Katherine Hepburn his version of Shake-and-Bake: flour, salt, and pepper in a brown paper bag.
My mother missed the part where the product, to say nothing of the red chicken image on the box, captivated me. Because I saw it on TV.
Has TV, like the image in the photograph taken over? At one time, it did. There’s no question I would have been a better student had I not done my high school homework to The Odd Couple. On the other hand, years later I watched my middle school students beg for music as they wrote their in-class assignments. The teenage brain may need more stimulation. These days, I can’t write unless in total silence. There’s too much surrounding stimulation.
What I love about the Shake-and-Bake moment is that my mother tried to reason with me, as if I understood that there was a connection between her lovely meals and a bag in a box.
She totally missed the point: I saw it on TV.