This is the First Post!

Hi everyone! Well, here we are! It’s the first post of the blog, so it might as well be me who writes it. I’ll give you an idea of the kind of thing I’m expecting you to do when you do your own writing on this site.

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Lately, I just got a TV from another professor, who wanted to get it out of her office. This is great for me, because one of my Media English classes is very small, and we sometimes meet in my office. This way, we can watch programs together in the comfort of my office, where there’s a couch and a kettle and tea and so on. I find that meeting in my office allows students to relax and talk more freely, in a way that’s hard to do in a classroom.

But I was watching some TV — for the first time in five years, I was actually paying attention to a TV at all! — and I noticed something. Everything on the TV was stupid. Now, it might be that this was because it was the AFN channel, the TV channel made for American soldiers in Korea, but it seemed to me like everything on the TV was designed with the assumption that the person watching was stupid. The problem was that not only did the programs fail to entertain me, they even insulted me.

On the talks shows, people discussed everything in the most simplistic, uninteresting way. There’s usually more than two sides to every story, but they only focused on one side of any story. As for the dramas — daytime drama is made for people who can’t finish their own sentences, in my opinion! The acting is so obviously bad, the stories so obviously silly, and yet people watch this stuff. (Why?) Finally, the thing that made me feel sick to my stomach was the game shows. We’re living in a world where Global Warming could, in the next century, kill everyone, and yet what’s rewarded and encouraged on TV? Trivial knowledge about pop culture, and selfish behaviours. That’s what I’ve always thought about American TV game shows, since I first saw Survivor and it made the truth about all other games shows clearer in my mind. Seeing 1 Against 100, I got the same feeling.
I don’t watch Korean TV much, because I don’t watch any TV much. So I’m curious: do you find it similar to what I experienced, when you watch Korean TV, too? Do you find that programs are for people who are dumb, and do you feel insulted? And if you do, then do you keep watching TV anyway?

As for me, I don’t think I’ll be using the TV much, except maybe during my evening Media English class.

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Okay, now, why don’t you consider posting a comment to this post? As for your blogging work, as usual what you post about is up to you, but I’d like to encourage you to discuss something from everyday life… but discuss it in a new way, ask a new question about it, say something you don’t usually hear people say about it.

In other words, I want you to talk about something very common and normal, but in an interesting way.