Television, music aimed at teens is a waste of time
By Ryan Eanes

Christmas Break is nearly upon us. Most people are rejoicing and dancing around in the Quad, but I am not. Really, it comes down to the fact that I’m worried about my younger sister. She scares me.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here. I’m sure that many of you have younger siblings, and a significant number of them are probably odd people that you are quite worried about.
Before I can fully explain what I mean, you have to understand that we don’t have cable at home, which can be annoying. It means that we have to wave large rabbit-ear antennae about, just to gain some semblance of clear reception on our television. Most of the time it doesn’t work and someone just ends up getting hurt. Regardless, I’m sort of glad we don’t have cable, because as it is now, all that my sister does is sit in front of the TV.

Even if there is nothing good on TV, she’s still watching something — perhaps a rerun of Change of Heart, old editions of Family Bible Theater or perhaps even that horrendous low-budget educational science program that comes on public television sometimes. Oh wait, that’s all of the shows on PBS. Whoops.

Anyway, if you were to add on an additional 100 channels, all with sparkling clean reception (unlike the reception we get here at school), you’d end up with my sister on a ventilator with her gaze locked permanently on the television. She’s come close, but has never passed that threshold.

Even though we don’t have cable, I have noticed that when she does have access to cable TV (such as at our grandparents’ house, our beach condo or in the television section at Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse), she likes the Disney Channel, maybe a little too much. And, as anyone who has ever even briefly watched this horrid excuse for a “network” (UPN is more qualified to hold that title) can attest, this is not entertainment. Each “original show” (again, a loose term, considering the network in question) is somehow able to suck some of the very life essence from a viewer’s body.

Basically it appears that the Disney Channel “people” are attempting to convince their somewhat impressionable viewers (i.e. my 15-year old sister) that they too can be attractive and should be in photo shoots! Like, totally! This is a blatant and gross misinterpretation of the viewing audience.

Let’s consider your average pre-adolescent female girl viewer, who typically reeks of cheap perfume, is slathered with far too much makeup and wears much too little clothing just because Britney Spears does.

I am surprised we haven’t started hearing alarming reports about teenage girls mashing their breasts together, moaning and bringing snakes with them to school merely so they can straddle them.

Anyway, my sister has a little more common sense than most girls her age, but she still thinks that all Disney programs are “high quality,” when they are, in fact, clearly trash.
Whenever I attempt to comment on them, or if I try to tell her to stop writhing perversely on the couch and shrieking whenever freak-of-nature Justin Timberlake appears, she tells me to “shut up” (her stock response to life in general), or to “get a life” (I guess she can’t be perfect, huh?)

I can’t understand how anyone can voluntarily watch these programs. It causes me great physical pain to endure the mindless excuses for a premise that any of these single-season attempts at entertainment try to offer. Plot is always minimal, character development is worse than that of minor characters on Beavis & Butthead and the overly-saccharine moral endings (often featuring such “enchanting figures” as dolphins, talking dogs or Santa Claus) that each “program” provides is enough to send me into a diabetic coma.

The problem is that popular teen culture has been reduced to watching popular teen culture on television while the teens themselves disintegrate slowly due to worm infestations, rotting and cavity-filled teeth and the grease that congeals in their revolting, unwashed hair. If this trend continues, TV viewers will be slowly reduced to morbidly obese people lying naked on beds, draped with king-sized sheets staring blankly at pictures of themselves taped to the wall in front of them.

This is a dangerous problem that extends well beyond my sister and the Disney Channel (and “Zoog,” whatever the freak that is). For example, consider the slowly-but-not-a-moment-too-soon dying trend of “boy bands.” The one that I love to hate the most is the group titled “O-Town.”

I think what peeves me the most about this “singing group” is the fact that throngs of female fans (and let’s be honest, there are probably more than a few males) exist who scream/faint/fawn/pant/etc. over how “hot” so-and-so is, and this and that and the other.

My response to this pathetic “drool-fest” is simple.

All four/five/six/however-many-there-are-of-them are contest winners, meaning they had to win a contest. And these winners were, more than likely, pulled from a contestant pool full of (gasp!) other men. The contestant pool probably consisted of a fairly moderately cross section of all men in the United States. Therefore, I surmise that there have to be more “hot” guys around for these obviously desperate girls to get to know.

If the screaming fainting drooling teenage girls spent a mere tenth of the energy that they use on screaming and fainting and drooling whenever O-Town is present (or merely on TV or in the newest copy of Tiger Beat magazine), then I think it is fair to assume that they could easily locate boyfriends at approximately the same “hotness” level as any given member of O-Town.

Personally I think they’re frightening, and it’s good that they didn’t let a little thing like lack of talent get in their way. But that’s just me.

So be careful over the break. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but Disney is out to destroy your younger siblings! Save them!