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I Just Like Being Well InformedI Just Like Being Well Informed
by Sheryll Quicho
In times of curiosity or rather sulking through immense boredom, desperate times calls for desperate measures. So without further implications, nature’s first instinct is to grab what is closest and most interesting. This usually, if not always, involves people’s lives nonetheless. Gossip and eavesdropping are a few choice words in describing such events. It seems as though society thrives very much on the knowledge of everything that is going on around them, even such things that don’t involve them. This episode of Will and Grace demonstrates how inquiring minds will seek out fulfilling excitement within other people’s lives, parallel to that of entertainment found throughout movies and television, sometimes losing touch with reality itself.
Other people, to a degree, lead interesting lives. Interesting in a sense that it is not our own, and therefore is something completely new and exciting to us. A person might perceive the things that he/she does as being acceptable and normal but to those who are looking in from the outside; it could be quite the contrary. In “The Big Vent” episode of Will and Grace, Will and Grace are exceedingly interested in uncovering news from the couple on the floor just beneath them. With the help of a vent they are able to listen to everything the couple is doing, including their intimate moments. As the voices moan and groan, “Um you taste good” and “That was amazing”, Grace exclaims, “Even disembodied voices are getting more action then I am.” This implies her, as well as society’s, jealousy towards other people like the couple downstairs that have someone to share their life with, while we are alone without a relationship. We seem to greatly envy those who are partnered up in life and forget the importance of our own. With that one comment, she is extending and comparing her life to that of people she doesn’t even know and making herself seem inferior.
Inferiority soon becomes superiority with the discovery of a twist that the wife is cheating on her husband with no other then the husband’s own brother. With this new information Will and Grace are even more compelled as they stick their faces down on the vent to hear more. This shows how low the people of our society would actually go to hear about the dirt in other peoples lives. We’d concentrate on all the dysfunction and ignore all the happiness because dysfunction is more interesting. Once again we look at another life in scorn, while we see our life as not being so bad anymore. Will exclaims, “Gonna get ugly” and Grace responds, “Gonna get good!” which signifies the uglier it gets, the better, and therefore the more exciting. It is much like the highway rubber-necking which Podhoretz displays in his article. We love to hear about “human wreckage” and feel superior to the people involved. “I’ll take painful things for 500,” Jack tells Karen. This is another quote that indicates that the more distressing another life becomes, the more stimulated and entertained we get.
We must be entertained to stay interested. In this case the vent serves as the means of entertainment much as the television does in ordinary life. In this episode, Grace demonstrates some common behaviors one does while enjoying a favorite program on TV. She lies near the vent in her pajamas and eats popcorn while anxiously listening to the developments of the “Days of our Vent.” This shows how we view the lives of others merely as entertainment and don’t really distinguish it from reality. We see it as being okay to invade other people’s privacy because that’s what we see on television day in and day out. We’ve been so used to watching other people humiliate and share their lives on TV, that it almost comes natural to need to know everything going on that has nothing to do with our own lives. We learn to love and hate certain characters much like Grace completely despises Judy, the woman cheating on her husband. Another habit that this episode portrays is how we yell and criticize much of the things we see on our television set. This pulls us from our reality into the reality of those we observe and therefore are more absorbed then ever.
We are at times so disillusioned that we forget we even have a reality while we concentrate on that of another’s. Will and Grace soon find themselves so engrossed in the growing tension between the husband and the wife downstairs that they start ignoring their responsibilities and friends. Grace skips work and is found sleeping on the vent with pizza on her face. Her priorities changed due to her need to eavesdrop on a life that she seems to find more interesting then her own. This total lack of responsibility shows how our society is so stuck on the unimportant and irrelevant occurrences that they heavily over shadow the important problems. It’s basically telling us, that gossip or missing a television program is a good reason to miss out on work and other tasks. Too often we find people glued to there TV sets, not for the news or anything relevant but to witness the world of make believe where we excitingly wait to find out who will be the next Survivor.
Friendships are very important to human nature, but what happens when we neglect our friends for something more important? Do they become, less important? Will and Grace ignore Jack, not once, not twice, but three times in the course of the episode. As Will explains to Jack, “We’ve been a little busy Jack… [the drama] is oddly riveting.” And when it came time to supporting their friend, they decide to, “Make an appearance at Jack’s play, and be back in time for the tearful breakup sex!” This reveals to what extent others lives have an affect on us. We not only miss out on our responsibilities but we also start to undervalue the friendships we have made. It has taken the backseat to the excitement of other people’s lives. Friends are no longer important to us because the thirst to know what will happen next overshadows it. Will and Grace forget the importance of life and get sucked into another reality not there own.
We are easily amused by other’s plight. We too often ignore the good things and choose to concentrate on the bad in most peoples lives. Being absorbed into someone else’s reality only further sets us apart from our own. It’s very important to distinguish between the two and to stay connected with your own.
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