That’s Entertainment
The other night my husband and I used a commercial break during the newest Shark Week episode to go outside and smoke.
I said, “You know, I’ve been watching this for over twenty years, and I remember back when the shows were more information than gore-fests over attacks and bites. This episode isn’t doing it for me at all. I like the shows where they actually teach you something better.”
Then, last night, he said to me, “You know, after watching several days of this I’m pretty sure I never want to swim in the ocean again.”
He was serious.
I thought he was joking.
Nope.
The man was dead serious.
You can laugh, if you like, but this isn’t funny in the least.
See, in all of the years we’ve been together this is the first year he hasn’t gone off and done his own thing while I watch. This is a man who is going to be forty-seven years old on his next birthday, and he’s thought nothing over his entire life of jumping into the ocean on trips to the beach.
Now he’s done.
And I’m pissed.
I can respect a person’s fears. For chrissakes, I’m scared of clowns and scarecrows. What’s the chance of my ever encountering a homicidal clown or a walking scarecrow?
Right.
But I was trying to reason with him last night, and I even gave him the old, “More people die from bee stings every year than are attacked by sharks, let alone killed by them. You survived a very bad hornet sting a few weeks ago. You’re good.”
Didn’t make a difference. He told me since he’s been in the ocean at least a hundred times over the years, he’s had the experience, and he’s ok with not going again.
Did I mention I’m pissed?
I’m pretty sure I was around seven or eight years old when the Shark Bug got ahold of me. They fascinated me. Beautiful, ancient, completely alien to this landwalker. I sought out all information I could find.
I never stayed out of the water.
Over the years myths were debunked and more information was gained, and my appreciation for them got even bigger. I never, ever stayed out of the water.
I did leave the water once. Swimming at Wrightsville Beach, I was in about seven feet of murky water, deeper than I usually go because if I can’t touch bottom I don’t feel in control, and I was having a blast. Suddenly every hair on the back of my neck stood up, as did the wet hair on my scalp, and without making a big deal out of anything I simply returned to the beach.
I’m not one to argue with Lizard Brain.
That didn’t keep me out of the water either. I went back in later and stayed closer to the beach.
So this morning when I got up I started to mosey around the Internet, and I found this article on Huffington Post, written by Chris Palmer and Peter Kimball, about the sensationalism involved in Shark Week and its programming every year. The damage it’s doing. How it’s one more example of society’s lust for in your face entertainment rather than the teaching example it could be.
SHOULD BE.
And they’re right, in my opinion.
Did you know shark finning is still allowed (via a legal loophole) off the coast of North Carolina? I had no idea until I was alerted a few weeks back and wrote my Congresspeople asking them to vote to end it.
I received an email reply from Senator Kay Hagan’s office.
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Shark Conservation Act of 2009. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important issue.
The Shark Conservation Act (S. 850/ H.R. 81) was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 6, 2009, and was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources. The bill would amend the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to improve conservation of sharks by strengthening provisions regarding shark finning, a practice that involves cutting off shark fins and returning the live animals back to the ocean. This legislation closes a loophole that currently permits a vessel to transport fins obtained illegally as long as the sharks were not finned aboard that vessel. On March 2, the House agreed to H.R. 81 by a voice vote, and the legislation was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
I appreciate your concerns regarding the protection of sharks, and I pledge to keep your thoughts in mind as I review the legislation.
Again, thank you for contacting my office. It is truly an honor to represent North Carolina in the United States Senate, and I hope you will not hesitate to contact me in the future should you have any further questions or concerns.
Can you believe this?
The best programming I’ve seen over the course of the past week was the very first show, Ultimate Air Jaws, because while the photographer seemed to have a bit of a death wish (taunting is taunting no matter how well meant), the program did a wonderful job of showing the majesty of these animals and might be one of those things that could prod people to respect them for their very existence alone.
The rest of the programming has been one bit of Shark Porn after another (and thank you to Patric Douglas of sharkdivers.blogspot.com for that term as well as leading me to the HuffPost article in the first place).
After Rich made his declaration last night I paid even closer attention to what I was watching. It’s a shadow of its former self, this yearly extravaganza, and I think I might be done.
Or maybe every year from now on I’ll write one of these posts during the week while watching.
via sharkdivers.blogspot.com
And I’m damn sure going to keep emailing my Congresspeople.
12 Responses to “That’s Entertainment”
Leave a Reply
Are You Gonna Eat That? by Julie Summerell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at jasummerell.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sheltergirl.blogspot.com.
Share This
Trash Talking
 | gillyfraser on If Wishes Were Horses… |
 | Julie on If Wishes Were Horses… |
Agreed. I was having this very same conversation with someone Monday evening about how there’s little to no educational value to the shows this time ’round.
I grew up in the oceans around central Florida and the only times I feared the water were during those rare times when the beach would be awash with man-o-wars.
Jellyfish fucking creep me out.
Let me repeat: Jellyfish fucking creep me out.
But I never gave a thought to sharks, even after seeing Jaws as a little kid. But, the more we know, the mroe sensationalistic items we’re shown, the more our brains subconsciously build up aversions to putting oneself into a situation where you might look down and see that photo you posted above.
The older I get, the fewer places I go – I don’t go deeper into the ocean anymore, and I FEAR swimming in most lakes and small creeks/cricks (close brushes with LARGE snapping turtles and cottonmouths did me in for that fun summertime excursion).
Happily, I still have no problems wading rivers for fishing or camping by myself (even after waking up to piles of still-steaming bear shit DIRECTLY in front of my tent and pot-induced flashbacks of Blair Witch in the wee hours).
The rivers and lakes thing is my own doing, but the ocean… the more I know, the less happy I am about flopping about in deeper water. Maybe more education will cure that, but once a fear is ingrained by show after show of bite after bite, it’s very hard to shake that monkey from your back.
I got stung by a jellyfish at Wrightsville in 2002 I think it was. That fucking hurt. It hurt so badly, and it was a small sting as far as those go, that I started keeping an eye on water temps if I was planning to go to the beach.
I don’t swim in lakes. First of all, I can’t see. Snapping turtles are nasty around here. Second of all, the lake beaches here close off and on on an annual basis due to fecal content. Swimming in shit doesn’t sound very appealing to me at all.
Most of the programs this week have given the perfunctory, “I got bitten for being in their environment, I’m still going in the water, blah de blah” lip service, but you know…
It was funny when I thought Rich wasn’t serious. When I realized he was very serious I got angry at them. Which then made me think.
So at least they succeeded in making me think.
It’s sad, isn’t it? This is the very reason I don’t watch the news at all or much TV in general. Sensationalism.
There’s a real disservice being done to viewers by all the shocking video footage, shows, and news on TV. Consider that show The Biggest Loser. When I first heard about it I thought, “What a great idea. Teach people how to exercise and eat right.”
Wrong. I think in a 2 hour show they show about 10 minutes of working out and less than that on eating right. They’d rather show obese people doing ridiculous challenges and walking around half nude so we can all stare at their bodies. That or contestants fighting with each other. Drama, drama, drama. I’ll pass.
The news is worse. According to my local news I’ll be kidnapped, raped, and/or murdered the moment I step out my door.
So, I pass on most of it. The history, science, and discovery channels used to be havens from all that sensational bullshit. Too bad some of their programs (like shark week) are slipping to the lowest common denominator.
There’s so much of it out there. My biggest pet peeve is Arts and Entertainment. Remember when they were more art than entertainment?
Jeez, remember even Horatio Hornblower?
The History Channel sucks now, The Learning Channel dropped the bullshit and just call themselves TLC now, because who’s learning, and even National Geographic is becoming suspect.
Animal Planet? I don’t even bother anymore.
I read today that someone has started to confine his viewing to NOVA and other PBS offerings, and I realized that Rich and I actually do watch quite a bit of them and learn things.
Seriously. This culture is insane. Hoarders? Feh.
Too true.
I still hit up History Channel for The Universe.
NOVA is the shit. But it’s sad that the pool of decent shows is shrinking so much.
At least some of the good old stuff is online now. Ditch the TV and watch James Burke all over again!
The Discovery Channel may have started out with a scientific bent, but somehow it seems to have morphed into “junk food” tv. Just look what happened to The Learning Channel (TLC) once they bought it – a lot less learning and a lot more Jon and Kate +8, Mermaid baby, Maternity 911. Crap that doesn’t educate and actually exploits the subject matter. I have been boycotting the Discovery Channel and its subsidiaries because I really hate what they have done to this whole genre of tv. Ugh.
What. The fuck. Is Mermaid Baby?
Never mind.
Sharks freak me out because the ocean freaks me out, mainly because it’s an environment I don’t have a lot of experience with (not a lot of ocean frontage in Montana, you know). That said, the times I’ve been near the ocean I’ve gone in, but not deep like I swim in the lakes around here. Which are nothing like the lakes you folks seem to be talking about — no snakes or snapping turtles or anything like that.
But when I was watching the World Cup and they were showing people in the water in South Africa, my first thought was, “I don’t know if I would do that,” given the relative risk of Great Whites in that part of the world. And I’ve never even watched any Shark Week.
I think it is what one is accustomed to. I’m regularly in black bear/mountain lion/grizzly bear country, and it never bothers me. For one thing, lions and black bears really don’t frighten me, and the odds of running into a grizzly are pretty low. For people not accustomed to living near that kind of wildlife, my attitudes may seem crazy . . . it’s just what I’m familiar with.
Good post, Julie. This is a GREAT book you might like:
Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen
http://tinyurl.com/2bfdz5a
That book is now holding in my cart. That looks fascinating.
I’ve always sort of been half amused by the attraction people have toward being reminded that, really, at the end of the day we’re all just meat. And then the denials. “We can’t be meat. We think. We create. We crush our enemies.”
We’re meat. I think the real reason why the idea of death disturbs so many people is that aside from cremation, we end up worm food.
Heaven forbid we get eaten.
I’m right there with you on the Lizard Brain. I don’t need to understand a sudden feeling of fear before acting on it. I figure my subconscious recognizes something I don’t and I should just go with that.
Haven’t watched Shark Week since…can’t remember. And you’ve given me reason not to alter that behavior.
I once saw a walking scarecrow clown…creepy!