Channel Surfing: Action Reflection Story

A few years ago I interviewed a young woman who told me that she took political action by not watching television. She explained that she relied on her friends to keep her informed of what was happening in the world. I was always puzzled by that statement. Sure, there is a lot of crap on television, but isn’t there some value in hearing or seeing other perspectives?

I’m not a big fan of reality television, and my friends will often hear me complain loudly about whether someone’s weight loss should really become a form of entertainment, but like hundreds of thousands of Australians I get a little sucked in by the reality TV bandwagon. If fact you could put money on the fact that, despite my protests, I’d know exactly how many kilos Adro needed to lose to win the Biggest Loser.

So my challenge was, rather than turning the TV off entirely, to switch the channel and watch something that taught me more than the calorie count of a can of tuna.

Surprisingly this wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be! Over the course of the week I watched an incredible documentary on coming of age rituals in countries around the world, a profile of a young woman who had chosen to be a nun, a fascinating story on 60 Minutes that took viewers inside the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor and a program that investigated how the modern day version of the bible was compiled, looking at issues of interpretation and mis-interpretation.

Switching the channel opened my mind to a range of different perspectives and ideas. For example, one of the young men that the documentary on coming of age rituals followed was a 16 year old from Uganda. In his village, when a male turns 16, they are expected to participate in a circumcision ritual. If they do not participate or if they flinch it is said that they bring shame on their family. What I found really interesting was what happened after the ritual: the local custom was that a few weeks after the ritual, the young men were expected to find their first sexual partner. However, the young men in the documentary had recently adopted the Christian faith and they found this at odds with the expectations of the village. Listening to the young men trying to reconcile their faith with the local customs was really interesting and demonstrated how complex people’s experience of these rituals can be.

I think that taking some time to understand issues affecting different communities is incredibly important and that switching the channel was one way of doing that. Reading a newspaper you don’t normally read (maybe an international paper?) or listening to a radio news bulletin you don’t often listen to could be another.

What the week taught me is that there is some quality television around and if you make conscious decisions about what you do and don’t watch, it can help you to learn more about the world around you. So from now on, I’m going to make an effort to watch one program a week that teaches me something new, or lets me hear another perspective on an issue – even if it’s a perspective I don’t agree with.