TV Turn-off
Your children don’t need Disney movies; being bored is far better than being brain-dead, or worse, soul-dead. Even Disney heroines don’t act according to Torah values...
When I was little, I watched an awful lot of TV. I watched stupid programs like the ‘A’ Team and Knight Rider; stupid cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry; stupid ‘kid’ shows involving people made out of modelling clay, talking toys and hand puppets.
As I got older, the programs I watched got even more stupid: singers miming the words to their latest hit songs; ‘celebrity’ interviews; shows about places to go on holiday; soap operas; comedies.
And so on and so on and so on. But even as a small kid, I realized that if I watched too much TV, as soon as it got switched off, I had a really icky feeling, that I couldn’t quite describe – even when it was good, clean, harmless fun.
Which even 30 years ago, a lot of it wasn’t.
I can’t tell you the number of nightmares I had – right up until I was an adult – from things that I watched. Some times, it would be a one off, but usually, I’d get recurring nightmares for years and years.Once, when I was eight, I saw a program called ‘The Triffids’, a dramatization of a book about strange alien walking plants that were kind of like daffodils, but six foot tall. The Triffids landed, and started killing people left, right and center.
I had a recurring nightmare that a Triffid was coming down my street, in the middle of suburban London, for two years solid. For two years solid, every night, I would wake up absolutely petrified, and unable to go back to sleep.
Good, clean, harmless fun. Not.
Even as adult, I learned I had to be extremely careful about what I watched. I steered clear of anything labelled ‘horror’ or ‘action’; and I also wasn’t a big fan of ‘thrillers’ and ‘sci-fi’ either.
Part of me was always so tempted to find out about why people liked movies like ‘Poltergeist’ or ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ so much, but the more sensible part of me knew it was just too risky. I’d be severely disturbed for months, if I tried to watch them.
I started to realize that TV was expendable my last year of university, when I moved into my own bedsit and simply couldn’t afford to own one. Instead of watching MTV, I had to listen to the radio instead – and it was a revelation to me how much more I could get done with my time!
When you are listening instead of watching, you can wash up! You can sweep the floor! You can revise! You can sew! You can write letters home! Amazing.
By the time I met my husband, towards the end of the Nineties, I was still happy to go out on Saturday nights to watch the latest movies, but TV had really lost its attraction for me. There was never anything ‘good’ on; and whenever I was bored or at a loose end, I’d get that disgusting ‘icky’ feeling if I tried to fill the time by watching a pointless TV show.
But it was only when my oldest daughter was born that I got rid of it altogether. When she was born, I started reading every parenting book I could find, and one, called ‘Positive Parenting’ by Rabbi Twerski, stated in no unclear terms that having a TV in the house was pretty much the worse move you could make, in terms of successful Jewish chinuch.
I had a shock. I knew a lot of TV wasn’t ‘good’, but I’d never realized how bad it was. Still, it took a few weeks for me to chuck it out. The breakthrough happened when I was watching ‘kid TV’ in the middle of the day, when a terribly suggestive advert involving a barely-clad woman suddenly flashed up. I had another shock. And there and then, we chucked it out.
Of course, I still watched videos on my computer, and it would take another five years until after I moved to Israel for that to go, too. Partially, it was watching the terrible affects that TV watching – even Disney movies – had on my kids. After just one hour of Disney, they were sullen, disagreeable, argumentative and naughty.
Partially, it was my increasing realization that TV and movies were damaging me and my husband in very profound ways. I always used to think I was fat. Always. When I stopped watching TV, reduced the movies and stopped with the magazines and newspapers too, all of a sudden, I stopped agonizing over how ‘big’ I was.
Similarly, when I stopped watching all of those endless ads, and endless movies making ‘this drink’ cool, or ‘that car’ the only one you could really be happy with, my consumer impulse dropped through the floor.
For the first time ever, I started to buy what I really needed, and not what I’d seen advertised.
When we realized that watching other men and women on screen – usually very immodestly dressed other men women doing terribly immodest things – was really as big a problem as eating treif, (if not even bigger) – we stopped going to movies.
And our shalom bayit instantly went up a whole other level.
But I still had a few DVDs in the cupboard. Until one day, my then five year old daughter gave me a test I couldn’t afford to fail:
“Right, Ima, you won’t let me watch videos because they are bad for my neshama?” I nodded. She marched over to the cupboard with the DVDs, triumphantly threw the door open and said: “So why do you still have your videos?”
What could I say? She was right. Dead right. And I knew that if I didn’t show her that clearly, I had lost the battle.
She was watching me intently. I got up, I went over to the DVDs – and I chucked every last one of them into the rubbish bin. I could see she was a bit shocked, but I could also see that I had made a profound impression on her. She understood at that moment that TV and movies were bad for all of us. Full stop.
Today, I know so many ‘frum’ people who kid themselves that Disney movies are OK; that cartoons are OK; that the shows they used to watch 40 years ago are OK.
They aren’t. They are just a weaker dose of spiritual poison, but sooner or later, if you have enough doses of ‘weak’ spiritual poison, your neshama will still get terribly sick.
At this point in my life, it is so blindingly obvious that TV, movies and internet are the biggest things pulling people off the derech, making them depressed, feeding their yetzer haras and causing them to completely waste and / or destroy their lives.
Just think of all the things you could do, if you weren’t watching TV! Think of the meals you could make, if you turned off the cookery show; think of the fun places you could go with your kids; think of the hobbies you could take up, the chesed you could do, the hitbodedut you could engage in, the Torah you could learn, if you weren’t sitting slack-jawed on the couch for three hours a day…
Think of the countless aveirot (sins) you are doing every second you are watching a scantily clad woman who is not your wife; think of the dissatisfaction that builds up when you see ‘perfect people’ with their ‘perfect hair’, ‘perfect teeth’ and ‘perfect clothes’.
Come on, admit it: either you think ‘I don’t look like that!’ and you get all miserable and down on yourself. Or you think: “I could look like that!” and you run out to spend a fortune on money on haircuts, cosmetics and outfits you don’t need (and lets not even mention how un-tznius it all is…)
So why o why do you still have TVs and movies in your home, when you know how bad it is for absolutely everyone in the family? My husband is living proof that a man can not watch a single soccer game for four years, and still function, have friends and be happy.
My kids are living proof that you don’t need Disney movies to babysit. Being bored is far better than being brain-dead, or worse, soul-dead. Even Disney heroines don’t dress tzniusly (modestly), or act according to Torah dictates.
Religiously, there is simply no excuse for watching TV and movies. Chuck them out! Ask Hashem to help you, and He’ll give you the koach (strength) you need to get rid of it, and give yourself and your family a new lease on life, and a much better, richer and closer relationship to your Creator.
We all have a choice; we can either switch on to G-d, with all the attendant peace of mind, joy and blessings that brings, or we can switch on the TV. But we certainly can’t do both.
11/14/2013
In addition Yes and for me personally looking into someone in tv's eyes who is not keeping the Brit and even hearing the voice of reality tv women who are immodest is damaging. Listening to Arabic is dangerous too. And also listening to music by angry musicians who aren't so holy is damaging too. even secular musicians whose songs we used to like.
11/14/2013
Yes and for me personally looking into someone in tv's eyes who is not keeping the Brit and even hearing the voice of reality tv women who are immodest is damaging. Listening to Arabic is dangerous too. And also listening to music by angry musicians who aren't so holy is damaging too. even secular musicians whose songs we used to like.