COLUMN: Thinking inside of the box
I once went to one of those think-out-of-the-box motivational/creativity/professional development/tax deductible seminars where you play word games and draw funny shapes on colorful scraps of paper. Afterward, the instructor told me I was frightening him and I really needed to get back in the box.
I explained to him Slightly Off Center is not just a name, it is a lifestyle. He explained to me that universities, prisons and asylums are all called “institutions” for good reason. I explained to him “consultant” was just another name for unemployed.
Apparently as much as we want to promote creativity, having people in the box is a lot safer and less confusing for everyone. Having the citizenry box hoping when it comes to choices in colors of stoplights could be a little deadly and the physical universe more or less depends on a common definition of numbers.
Some free thinkers we lock up, others we applaud. Thinking out of the box worked for Einstein, but not so well for the Donner party.
I’m pretty sure radical out-of-the-box thinking is how we ended up with reality TV. Some young production assistant fresh out of college with a liberal arts degree jacked out of the box and said, “We could save money on all those writers and actors by just filming real people behaving badly.”
And quicker than you could say, “Isn’t that the definition of professional sports?” we had a plethora of shows like Survivor, MTVs The Real World and People Sticking Gross Stuff in their Mouths.
After a couple of years of this, people have become shocked and appalled that they are actually made of the same genetic material as the morons on these shows. Besides, everything you ever needed to know about modern day tribes and being voted off the island was already covered in “Lord of the Flies.”
Just as thinking out of the box is fine in moderation, too much reality is more than we can take and most people went stampeding back to the simple dependable pleasures of Bay Watch reruns and animal mating rituals on PBS. True, animal mating rituals are a form of reality TV, but I’m guessing they are done without the animals’ consent. Though it is popular to say “reality is stranger than fiction” nobody really said that what we want is something stranger.
Thinking outside the box in a stupid and wrong way was probably also responsible for the Pontiac Vibe and Aztec. I’m sure there were some middle-aged execs just back from an out-of-the-box seminar saying “Let’s see if we can unload these butt-ugly cars by communicating with the young people on their level. We’ll hire some actors to drive them around and say things like “phat” and “party wagon.”
What we want from TV is something a little more soothing that won’t task our minds and that we can count on being over in 30 minutes. The real world is already too confusing and it hardly ever runs on schedule. It’s safe and warm in the box and we know where the boundaries are.