Glancing across the first floor of Ackerman Union, I notice the
people who zone out by either staring blankly at a wall in front of
them or looking at one of the numerous televisions.
Either way, it’s all the same.
If you saw the sucky programming the College Television Network
has to offer, you’d be watching the wall, too. By presenting
a hodgepodge of news and music, CTN presumes to tell us what we
want to watch, which apparently is a lot of music videos.
The strange part about the videos is nobody’s really
watching it, because to “watch” means to absorb the
television screen with your eyes and ears. Yet, everyone knows at
Ackerman’s busiest moments, the speakers are inaudible
against the crowds of yapping mouths. CTN thus becomes not another
entertainment source but a receptacle of beautiful images trying to
wrest your attention away from your organic chemistry homework or
the appetizing smell of food.
The emptiness of CTN’s images are fine for what they are,
but it’s quite disturbing to see it at the Wooden Center.
There are folks running the treadmills and listening to their CD
players but yet are intently watching and thinking … well what?
They aren’t really thinking anything. Instead, they look like
a bunch of shallow zombies only interested in the flickering color
pixels.
I tremble with fear to think that Wooden’s and
Ackerman’s TV screens have reduced UCLA students to a corral
of image-mongers. I hope that isn’t true.
In fact, I believe CTN serves a higher purpose than that.
CTN functions as a cushion for people who can’t easily
connect with others. Some say, on the contrary, that TV
compartmentalizes everyone into their own little world and makes
them stay there. And you probably could say that too if those
people were watching a real good TV show, but since CTN chooses to
showcase lame videos, that isn’t the case.
The common drivel that CTN picks up and shows only serves for
ambience. It’s also a nice way to break a conversation or get
rid of those weird uncomfortable silences. Just the other day, I
had a cool conversation with someone in Ackerman because we were
making fun of a Moby video … CTN bringing people together …
yep, yep.
Watching TV at Ackerman and Wooden is meaningless. The videos
are easily replaceable and that’s a good thing. Just like
hanging out at the Coffee Bean or Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, people go
there for the mood, not necessarily to drink the coffee. It seems
the useless noise around such places makes people concentrate
harder on studying, or less conscious about themselves when
talking.
So the next time you walk inside Ackerman, thank CTN for giving
you crappy programming. If it had anything better, you
wouldn’t be able to make fun of it.
Dang’s television column runs Tuesdays.