assignment #5—emanuelle sippy—i used to hate tv a lot. now...

When I was little, I refused to watch T.V. shows, and movies, and music videos. I don’t know if I thought I was too good for all of it. I know I was much more intrigued by evesdropping on adult conversations and playing high school, which my friends and I made out to be so much better than it is, or singing songs at ant funerals. (We may have murdered them first). 

My brother would beg and plead for more screen time, whereas when adults expected me to be entrained
for even a few minutes, I went off and did something else. While my friends swooned over Dinsey,
I would play with their siblings or help their parents. I know it sounds ridiculous but this is not hyperbolic. 

Then, I was corrupted. Pretty gradually I started watching what Zach watched and enjoying
Parenthood with my mom, even though she was on season six (I went back to the beginning later),
but never picked anything for myself or watched shows in full. 

In seventh grade though, everyone I went to school with, and I mean everyone, was obsessed with Greys
Anatomy. I swore I wasn’t gonna watch it. I was okay with knowing enough to follow the conversation
and nothing more. But thanksgiving break was upon us, and I was incredibly bored. It felt like all of my
friends and their mothers were out of town, so I was like what the hell, I’ll watch an episode. That promo
turned into twelve seasons in one year. I would come home from school, watch Greys, go to dance, watch
Greys, finish something for SVT, watch greys, have friends over, get them hooked or make them rewatch
Greys. It was equally intense as my aversion had been, and again, no exaggeration. 

Sandra Oh is a god. The story is kind of compelling, especially before everything started repeating itself.
Someone dies, someone has a baby, someone flirts, they get together, they break up… on loop. I was just
conforming to an extent, but now most of my friends have stopped watching and I won’t until the show
ends. 

In a way, the exact reasons I could not stand T.V. as a kid, are some of the same reasons I’m obsessed with
Greys. I love people watching. Cartoons and High School Musical didn’t appear to be real people
(of course, Greys is glossy and fabricated too), but it does occasionally address real issues, from rape to
abuse to gender non-conforming surgery to abortion to cancer. Both on and off the screen, it has been radical,
created by one of the most well known Black Women of our time, and at the forefront of equal pay
in entertainment. I’m not claiming that watching is an intellectual pursuit, but it's good to see people in
the industry, who aren’t suppressing their (so-called) political views. 

Ironically, when I was staunchly anti-T.V. and went to bed before my parents, they watched Greys.
I love that entertainment has intergenerational audiences. But that bright spot isn’t limited to T.V. and
was true long before with good old books.