The Kolog

Thank You Ted Turner

Several years ago, while on vacation at the beach with Katie’s family, I fell in love with the Turner Classic Movie channel.  You see (curious phrase, no?), the honeymoon suite (apart from the main structure of the house) came with a minibar, an overhead shower head in a tile sauna and a television above a fireplace.

So, for six nights straight, I stayed up a few hours later than Katie in order to catch the likes of Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or Peter Fonda and John Wayne in John Ford’s Fort Apache.  Years later, I find myself screening Gunga Din, the film about which I’ve heard Dylan singing for years in “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.”  All of us should tune-into this free movie channel (broadcast without commercials!).  In many ways, it puts the HBO’s to shame.  One can earn quite an education in film simply by picking up the remote (searching through your guide to find TCM) and taking the time to watch film rather than television shows.

It doesn’t surprise me to be thinking of and writing about television.  I’ve been contemplating recently of adding some analyses of television in my dissertation.  It may not make the final cut, but it’s worth persuing at this stage in the process.  For instance, my brother and I like to discuss the trope of listening as it functions within the relationship between Tony and his therapist in The Sopranos?

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