A friend told me about a phenomenon called “Hidden Gems,” an online community for people who regularly watch “Dancing with the Stars.” Every week as people tune in to watch the show they are entertained not only by the dancing and colorful characters, but by a treasure hunt for hidden gems. The whole thing got started by people who were literally looking for hidden gems on the participant’s bodies and clothing.
Ballroom dancing requires sequined costumes, lots of makeup and high hair and the dancers have gotten very creative in their use of the sparkle. Ladies paste them to their eye lids, the back of their necks, shoes, etc. Audience members are invited to search out hidden gems on the dancers. Eventually this mushroomed into a weekly search for anything out of the ordinary—someone in the audience wearing a strange hat, an accidental shot of a cue card or someone making a mistake. After the show has aired, viewers go online and share what they saw with one another.
Lisa Cole Smith
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At first I thought this was a sign of something positive coming out of reality-dominated TV. It would be great if audiences like this one started teaching themselves to see beyond the fluff and look not just for easy entertainment but hidden gems of truth and insight into our shared experience as a culture. But that isn’t where this site goes. Instead, it is now a commentary on everything weird, ridiculous or embarrassing that happens on the show.
My problem with this is that while viewers are learning to look more closely, they are developing the wrong kind of eyes. The site asks viewers to become more sensitive to people’s gaffes and mistakes or what is easy to make fun of instead of the special moments between people or greater life lessons in the critiques.
I’m not criticizing “Dancing with the Stars” or those who watch reality TV. Nor am I saying that there shouldn’t be time for passive enjoyment of entertainment. I’ve certainly watch my share. But when we participate in enough of such entertainment, it does become a source of subliminal education, tuning our brains to see the world in a certain light. I wonder how active we are as viewers in deciding what we are really tuning in to. In her book, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard commented, "The writer is … careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know." This is true not only for writers but for all of us. How conscious and discerning are we of the lessons we are learning when we are tuning out and tuning in?
I used to bristle when I heard pretentious people talk about how they don’t own a TV or only watch PBS—until I became one of them. Initially it was involuntary. I couldn’t afford cable service so I hung out the window with my laptop to get internet from our church next door but never found any such solution for cable and so was left without my late night companion. No more shows telling me what not to wear, multi-millionaire moguls throwing temper tantrums as a business model, housewives who seemed like no housewife I’ve ever met, “Law and Order” reruns and documentary style reality shows about recovering from addiction.
At first it was strange not to be able to just turn on the TV and see what was up. Sometimes I still feel disconnected because I can’t watch the news or participate in water cooler conversations about the latest TV shows. But, while I have since activated cable for internet service, I still don’t have it hooked up to a TV. After a while, not having that easy escape became good for me. I found that because I had to stop and think about what I wanted to experience or how I wanted to feel, I often chose to read a book or take a walk rather than watch anything at all. I still watch my fair share of television and movies, but I choose what I watch from Netflix or Blockbuster and that extra step of conscious choice has made me more protective of my down time and what I am putting in and how it affects what comes out. As with food, it is certainly O.K. to indulge every once in a while, but it needs to be an indulgence, not a steady diet. In the end I think my hidden gem of not having cable has been that of learning to be intentional even with my “tune out time” because inevitably whatever I turn on is asking my brain to tune in.
Lisa Cole Smith (lsmith@convergenceccfnet) is pastor of Convergence: A Creative Community of Faith, a Baptist congregation in Alexandria, Va.