TV Show Brings Hope

The Boston Herald

'We read to know that we are not alone.'

The celebrated British author and lecturer, C.S. Lewis, whose life is depicted in the movie 'Shadowlands,' must have said these words often for they are repeated throughout the film 'We read to know that we are not alone.’

When asked, I always said I read because I like to read. I read to learn, to escape, to live vicariously, to be scared. But having heard Lewis' simple truth, I know now that his is the real reason I read. I read to feel connected, to learn how other people feel and think, to know what other people do. 

Before movies and television, reading was the primary way people could connect with someone they didn't know. Book characters were like real people The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer. Historic figures came to life in books Julius Caesar, George Washington.

And yet Lewis' words do not contain the whole truth anymore. If he were still alive, he would no doubt amend his statement 'We also watch tv to know that we are not alone.' For today we watch movies and television and videos to see how other people live, how they deal with problems, illness, divorce, pain, despair, how they suffer, how they celebrate, how they react. Most of our information comes through television; it's on in the average home eight hours every day. It's on in waiting rooms, in restaurants. It's everywhere. And almost all the information it transmits is negative, sad, violent and discouraging.

Two national polls taken last month report that Americans are unhappy about the state of the nation. The Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press asked the question 'All in all, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today?'

Some 71 percent said they were dissatisfied.

Richard Wirthlin, a GOP pollster, asked whether Americans think the country is going in the right direction or is on the wrong track, 62 percent replied the wrong track. Both polls showed a dramatic increase in national pessimism. Crime, drugs and the decline in moral values are the country's biggest worries.

Back in December 1971 when the television movie 'The Homecoming' premiered, the level of pessimism in America was about the same as it is today. The war in Vietnam was dragging on. There was My Lai and anti-war demonstrations and drugs and the Pentagon Papers and the massacre in Munich and the sense that the bad news just wouldn't stop.

'The Homecoming' was Earl Hamner's autobiographical story of a boyhood Christmas spent in rural Virginia in the middle of the Great Depression. It was a story of a large, loving family that looked to the whole world as if it had nothing but had everything a family could ever need.

Americans loved the show. It gave them what they were looking for a confirmation of old values, a story that told them that times might be tough but tough times passed, and that family and community were what endured. The public reacted so positively to 'The Homecoming' that CBS built a series around it. 'The Waltons' ran for nine years. We watch to know that we are not alone. 

We watch TV today and we feel more alone than ever. Wit has replaced wisdom. Sarcasm has replaced depth. Between the sit-coms and the talk shows and the news shows and the real-life drama shows there is precious little that edifies. It's no wonder that 'Christy,' the new series that premiered last Sunday night, got such positive audience response. America is in the doldrums. Americans are tired of beatings and abuse and drugs and guns and drive-by shootings. America is tired of beating up on itself.

'Christy' is about values, about a 19-year-old girl who leaves the comfort of her home to teach in rural Tennessee in the early 1900s. It's about how effort and faith and determination and respect and love can change things.

It's what America wants to see. It's what America needs to hear that there are good people in the world; that good people, working together, can change what is; that life has always been a struggle, but that even the biggest problems, when confronted and worked at, can be solved.