Tag: TV

House M.D.

Somehow a show about “medicine” and “doctors” is more about psychology than anything. The clear pathology that House displays essentially every episode would never ever be allowed. If one were to take any of this seriously then it only works in perspective if all the characters are Jungian shadows in House’s head engaging in some sort of cerebral self-examination.

The Shadow allegory holds more strongly in the first few seasons as a person only has so many shadows. However even the patients could be seen as problems for House to solve as a means to incrementally examine his knowledge, beliefs, and experience while moving towards reality. This is mostly just me making high-minded examinations while I watch entertainment television which ironically has its own diegetic dumb day-time television doctor show, a meta-acknowledgement of its non-reality. Though for me this is how I have fun watching television, scrutinizing it and trying to pull some greater meaning out of what is essentially, entertainment. With absolutely zero medical experience it’s not like the constant volley of medical terms has any real meaning to me nor should it be used as a replacement for real world medical knowledge. Which is why I think the character’s constant need to psycho-analyze each other is reflective of the real focus of the show: psychology and sociology. In the end that’s all one can really hope for that at least it’s fun to watch and watching House be House in House is fun.

Just to entertain possibilities, House could be seen as a doctor who’s lost themselves in their Vicodin addiction and he’s making his way through it by working at a mind palace, the hospital, populated by shadows who are projections derived from real people in his life. Wilson is his conscience though being house’s conscience means he too has his own problems. The various female characters like Cuddy or Cameron are tokens of his sexual objectification, desires, and inability to treat them like actual people. Though he doesn’t treat anyone like real people, even though he wants to heal his patients, they are more puzzles than people. Someone like Foreman or Chase are who he could’ve been or couldn’t be and uses them as more counterbalances against his inherently arrogant expertise.

Breaking the Habit

Perhaps I was just in the right frame of mind, but I was reflecting on how over-exposed I allow myself to be to those things I enjoy. For as long I can remember I’d played video games nearly every day usually much more than I should have. This also extends to film, TV or music. While games require participation to function these others do not so I could always fill my time with them even if it’s little more than ambient noise. Thus, over years this became less a conscious choice and more a habit. Having, over the years, indulged in alcohol and seen what happens when over-indulged it made sense to ‘quit’ playing games, watching movies, or listening to music just as I might quit drinking alcohol. By the time I had decided to do this several days had gone by being busy with my daughter, maybe making the choice easier. With my wife out of town for work I became a solo dad and couldn’t afford to indulge. When she came back I could but realized I shouldn’t. That was at the beginning of December and while I now decompress at the end of the day with some TV and listen to music during my morning exercise, I still haven’t played video games.

It’s funny for me to think that this may be the first time I’ve spent so long away from gaming since I was maybe a child. Even in my roughest college semesters putting in 80-hour weeks I found time to play then, but now I don’t. This isn’t going to be an indictment of gaming but an examination of ‘breaking the habit’ of playing and what it’s like, for me.

First and foremost, I’d like to point out my mental and emotional stability
is obviously not as stable as one would like but I do try to do better. That
said I’d been playing games consistently since I was young, began smoking weed in high school, and began drinking in college. For all that time it might be said I was distracting and self-medicating myself and after a week or two
without it my head felt like a room full of people shouting over each other.
Once that started the first few days were the worst. My attention was
constantly jumping, and I had trouble remembering what I was doing. Breathing exercises, journaling, and keeping a to-do list helped in the beginning (and still does) but after a while instead of maybe 30 voices it was down to three. Then two. Now it’s usually just a single line of thought with occasional interjection. I’ll try to avoid any armchair psychology or speculation but here are my thoughts.

I’m finally growing up. After an extended adolescence through my late 20’s I’ve finally had the self-control and will to try and be an adult…. all the time, as opposed to just when things need to be done. I have a schedule for when I exercise, when and what I eat, and never sit down to rest if there’s ‘easy’ labor to be done around the house. ‘Easy’ labor being started laundry, folding it, running the dishwasher, picking up clothes and other things out of place, etc. Basically, anything that takes less than five minutes of effort. Instead of playing games when I have ‘free’ time it’s now spent reading, writing, and preparing to change jobs. This has revived my passion for stories and writing in general. I did try to write two trashy young adult novels as a middle schooler but gave up because they were dumb and trashy. Now I have a full ten-chapter book planned with world building, character arcs, and historical research in effect. Already I’ve got the first chapter written with editing left to do. While it’s hard to focus sometimes journaling and lists keep me on-track. Not to say I’d left all this labor to my wife previously but now it’s a seamless single-person process to do it all and have it always done every day. I think what this really means is that these addictions I had were crutches I relied on when I needed to face the world but instead found a way to shield myself from it, in them.

At best this may be self-aggrandizing or at worst a self-indictment but by sharing I hope others can turn a critical eye to habits in their life and how those habits affect them both daily and over time. (If a certain Linkin Park song comes to mind while reading, yeah that’s intentional).