Anti-American (Life, that is)

I have a confession to make about a specific quirk of mine: I do not like the sound of people talking on the radio. I hate it in fact; for me it's on par with nail-clipping on the subway, or people clicking their pens incessantly during a meeting or children singing. I suppose I'm aurally over-sensitive. It started with a hatred of radio commercials, which are of course, easy to hate. Then I had a car-pool buddy back in the days when I was working at Netscape, commuting down the 101 every morning, who counted Howard Stern among his guilty pleasures. It spread far beyond that though: sports radio (which I usually seem to be subjected to when in a car with a guy, that's me scrunched up in the corner, squirming and clawing the dashboard), books on tape, and yes: NPR is right out for me. I just can't do it. I have tried. I've got a lot of NPR listening pals in my crowd, and this quirk of mine is a mystery to them. (And I'm sure some think me a philistine too.) I've tried especially hard to bring myself around to NPR - a mildly lefty agenda, the occasional foreign accent, offbeat reporting on stuff that's just a bit more highbrow than mass culture usually allows, smart people talking. These are all things that I like, generally speaking. But no, no radio for Ms. Jen.

I was excited when I heard about This American Life coming to Showtime. I was looking forward to getting to know this Ira Glass character I've heard so much about from all my NPR streaming friends. (How these friends listen to people talking while they are working is simply beyond me. I can hardly listen to music while I work, and often don't.) The TiVo's been locked and loaded for weeks now and I've seen all the American Life episodes that have aired so far, and I'll probably see all the rest, but OMG I hate it. I hate it for it's purposeful cutesy alterna-nonsense, it's weird camera angles and ridiculous juxtapositions (Ira Glass is often behind his desk in a field of wheat, or say a parking lot.) I hate its filters and jump cuts and annoying music. I hate its uncanny ability to import all the photographic cliches that wear on me into moving pictures - the parking lots, the shopping carts (I'm pretty sure that there have been shopping carts, if not they're coming), the over-saturated colors. That classic and loathsome middle distance between narrator and subject which at the surface seems understanding and sympathetic, but really is just in service to making the subject look quixotic, pitiful or downright insane.

And here's the other thing - the show comes back on me like a bad dream. You know those dreams that you wake up from and you know they were bad, and there are snippets of memories just out of your reach that flit in and out of your consciousness throughout the day just enough to set you on edge, and never presenting themselves fully enough to be exorcised? That's what this show does to me. The episode about the cloned bull, Reality Check is the worst offender in that lot. The whole segment was produced in such a creepy way and it's totally stuck with me. I have a begrudging respect for its success - it's stubbornly implanted itself in my consciousness. I just wish that it hadn't felt so condescending and made the poor fella look so foolish.

One last thing: Ira's voice? It drives me mad. (Sorry Ira. Surely the love of millions far outweighs my own dissent.)

Comments

[alec]

Children singing? You don't like the sound of children singing! Who are you, Ebenezer Jen.

[Chad Muthard]

Jen, by any chance, were you too cool for school?

:)

[Jen Bekman]

Too cool for school? Nope, not me. I was(am) a nerd. I was a truant, but it had nothing to do with being cool.
As for Ebenezer, well, could be - let's hope my redemption's coming soon.

[eva]

Gee, I hope this doesn't put a dark cloud on our potential conversation. Maybe pretend it's just a phone call and not radio..?

[Theresa Duncan]

Amen. The show, audio or visual, is pretty false.

I hate the bullshit earnestness and strained whimsy. I overuse this phrase from Nietzsche, but "these too were created in hate."

Linda Barry describes Ira Glass (thinly veiled as some fictional character) as always repeating cruel things his mother said about her to her when they were dating long ago. In this spooky ventiloquist act light, ol' Ira kind of reminded me of Norman Bates.

[Jen Bekman]

Alec might think I'm Ebenezer, but with Ms. Wit on my side I am golden!

As for our upcoming chat... don't worry Eva! I'm very much looking forward to our conversation and I'm flattered to have been invited to be on your show! I'm sure I'll enjoy it, but the truth is that I probably won't ever listen to it - I am about as fond of listening to the sound of my own voice as I am of having my photo taken.

[kaz]

i too hate the sound of voices on the radio. i never get motion sickness (i can read in the car, sit backwords, etc.) but put on talk radio and i want to puke.

[carey]

while i do find myself capable of listening to NPR, i hear you on the noise sensitivity thing. no one is allowed to eat potato chips within ten feet of me.

[jimmy]

I'd say he made an impression, which as an artist I can only hope to do.

[mdm]

You might enjoy these, JB. Episode 2 of 2. TAL-spoof, replete with acoosta-music-cues.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/kasperhauser/kh13_moretal.mp3

[yp]

I love Ira´s voice and talk radio is actually one of the thing I miss most about being in New York, but I´m also the kind of person who can´t study in the quiet and can only concentrate with some degree of peripheral noise. My problem is more with television, rather than radio. I find the images glaring, the commercials annoying, the rapid change of narrative sequence usually schizophrenic.

[generalbonkers]

I agree that the reports about Glass' behaviour with Lynda Barry are more than a little troubling, but dang it...This American Life is a revelation and Ira's voice is something you learn to like if not love, after a breaking-in period. He's very self-deprecating about it, himself. Too bad the Showtime version uses the same artsy film conventions as a Chase Bank ad. Not Glass' fault.

[stevarino]

I have hated "This American Life" for a long time, but never understood why. I even felt guilty for hating it, even though nobody in my social network has even ever heard of it. Now I can more clearly identify my feelings of impotent rage. Thank you, Jen Bekman.

[jugel]

I can't stand Ira Glass. I hate his voice.. but more importantly I hate the demeanor of the show. His vocal almost always seems to influence the speaker .. so everyone has that same self-deprecating tone.

It's basically the opposite of why I like First Person w/Errol Morris. One of the best shows ever IMO. Errol knows how to stay out of the way and really let the things speak for itself.

I can relate my hate of the show to my gradual dislike of the old show Six Feet Under. Six Feet Under tried to make the extraordinary seem very ordinary ... where as lets say .... Twin Peaks. Makes the ordinary seem extraordinary.

btw - I love David Sedaris. His voice doesn't bother me. It's got spunk.

[fred]

I'm with you. The show makes me wanna barf. And the voice of Ira Glass is horribly irritating. His ridiculous speaking style is also irksome.