Channel surfing can surprise

Is there anything better than the glorious rush of turning on your television and finding… Is there anything better than the glorious rush of turning on your television and finding out that the show “Cops” is on? Absolutely not. This show is magic, like Jesus, or like Sarah Silverman, or like that Sarah Silverman movie, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic.” “Cops” is a glorifying, mainlined burst of excitement that rattles, endorphin-crazed, across our screens, bringing us arrests, beatings, public humiliations and so, so much more.

So what came over me the other night when I lingered, advancing not to Court TV and their “Cops” marathon, and instead stayed on the random program upon which I had accidentally stumbled? What’s better than small-town cops chasing drug-addled prostitutes? I’ll tell you what’s better: the reality show titled “DMX: Soul of a Man.”

Of course, everyone remembers DMX. The gravel-voiced rapper responsible for classics like “Who We Be” and for his predilection for getting arrested multiple times, most recently for refusing to put on his seat belt in an airplane. He has also previously impersonated a federal agent while carjacking someone. Get at me, dog.

Somehow this guy has a reality show. A reality show that I had heard absolutely nothing about. A reality show that was airing on the Black Entertainment Television channel.

The episode I watched was, oddly enough, a little boring for such a seemingly exciting guy. He wound up going to the dentist, talking the dentist into giving him painkillers and then he met his friends for golf. His friends were all middle-aged and kind of nerdy looking, except for the fact that they were inexplicably strapped with visible guns on their waistbands. To add to the already surreal, David Lynch-like atmosphere, the show also seemed to take place in Arizona, not the gritty inner city in which I would assume DMX would be playing golf. Who knows, maybe X is reclaiming the desert.

As I watched, fascinated and bored, I realized that I never watch BET. Things like this are occurring and I have no clue about them. It’s as if they are in some totally secret world that is, despite my ability to easily access it, forever separate from my life. The same thing goes for CMT – that’s Country Music Television, for those of you not graced with this on your basic cable package.

Anytime I alight this channel, I have no idea what’s going on. Weird reality shows about non-brokebacking cowboys, bizarre “America’s Funniest Home Video”-style country-themed things and old reruns of that horrible “Hee-Haw” show, something my sister Theresa loved, seem to be in an unending Mobius strip of boring rednecky entertainment on this channel. They even have a show called “Trick my Truck,” where some guy’s crappy truck gets pimped – excuse me, “tricked” – by mechanics into a really sweet ride.

This Balkanization of pay cable creates not just more channels to enjoy but, instead, a few channels that, regularly watched, allow someone to participate in defining a cultural identity. What does it mean if someone watches “Trick My Truck” instead of “Pimp My Ride?” “DMX: Soul of a Man” or “Breaking Bonaduce?” As an audience we are consuming our definitions and defining our consumptions. We have become active participants in our own acts of segregation.

No one can watch all of the channels on their television all of the time. So people pick and choose, develop favorite shows and then, frequently, favorite channels. We brand ourselves as people who really like “E!” or “Lifetime” – which has the best movies ever, always someone being stalked or someone fighting the temptation to go back on the pills, cheat on her husband, stalk somebody, just tawdry, tawdry stuff – and then we begin to craft our actions to match the themes of our favorite channels. I’m not kidding, by the way. Show me somebody who watches a lot of TNT and I’ll show you somebody with a woefully underdeveloped sense of irony.

I’m not arguing that television is bad – good God, I love it! – but maybe what I’m suggesting is that finding ourselves faced with an unending amount of choices, we start to intentionally limit our decisions in order to develop a more consistent self. Maybe what we need to do is try to watch channels we never watch, find new favorites and align ourselves with different points of view. Maybe in that way we’ll be able to actually become more complex people, instead of the pale repetitions of corporate, branded, marketed ideas that are what we find ourselves becoming.

On the other hand, there’s always the possibility that if you watch another channel, you’ll totally miss the best episode ever of “Cops.” It’s one of those high-speed chases, you know the sort, they wind up turning into a footrace and then they finish with a violent round of tasing. And that’s always the best. A good solid tase.

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