The strange thing is
that when I was travelling, the skin affliction completely healed up. It had
been terrible in Korea and I had gone to a dermatologist and been diagnosed
with Pompholyx, which sounds like a Bjork album not a type of eczema. But as
soon as I left Korea, it healed up quickly and within a couple of weeks, it
looked like I had never had this condition that had been troubling me for over
5 years.
I came back from
travelling and within a couple of weeks, the rash had returned and I was itchy
as hell again. I put it down to stress, even though I felt entirely relaxed. It
was like there was a fire on my hand and the only way to put it out was to
scratch the flames away. Unfortunately this just ripped the skin, which led to
infection and more swelling. It was a scratch-22.
And then the moment
happened. I was sitting on my bed looking at my hand, when an
idea just popped in there. There were only two things that I had been using for
many years that I did not take travelling: my electric toothbrush and my weight
lifting gloves. At that moment, I became Hugh Laurie in House. All the pieces
of the puzzle came together to solve the mystery affliction that had been
troubling me for so long. It was blatantly obvious – I had been a fool to never
realise it before. If Wilson had been there, I would have stormed out of the
room without explanation. But he wasn’t there, and I wasn’t wearing any clothes,
so I stayed in my bedroom.
It was a fungal infection (similar to Athlete’s Foot but on my hand) called Tinea Manuum, which
had been cured when travelling by my superhuman-immune system. When I returned
and started lifting weights again, the fungus in the gloves had re-infected my hand and it had worsened again.
The point of this
story is my ‘House moment.’ It
made me feel like a genius and I was happy to be experiencing it in this way. I
wonder how I would have reacted if I had never seen House? Would I have made
the link in my brain and solved the case? Who knows!? Maybe I would have used
my Scooby Doo mystery solving skills and then gone for a joint afterwards.
That’s right kids, Scooby Snacks were actually drugs...
In many ways how we react to the world shapes who we are as a person. If media can affect our
reactions so fundamentally then surely we have to be very wary of what we and
our children watch. If all I watched was “A Clockwork Orange” then I’m
sure I’d be a (more) troubled individual. But is watching it once likely to exacerbate any underlining tendencies in your behaviour? We may never
know but as individuals, I think we need to ensure we watch high quality
entertainment that shapes us into the type of person we want to be, along with
the more twisted things we enjoy.
How many times a day
do you find yourself knowingly saying a quote from a TV show or film? I do it
several times every day but then again, I have been called a quoter.
Okay, how many times have you asked the question: What would Jack Bauer do in this situation? It’s one of the fundamental
questions we ask ourselves. When Christians read the Bible, trying to learn
important moral lessons from it, and ask themselves “What would Jesus do?” They
use this book as a moral code to base their decision on. The rest of us use 24, Dexter,
Breaking Bad and South Park.
When we watch these
shows, we're not after the moral lesson, we are watching for entertainment
sake. But maybe it does affect our moral values and we just don’t realise it. How many times have I done
something purely on auto-pilot, with the instructions for my auto-pilot being
programmed by the media I had consumed that week?
This is why I want to
work in media. I want to shape people’s lives and hopefully educate, entertain,
and inspire. I want someone to have an experience and directly relate their
enjoyment to my show. If I can have a House moment, then someone else can have
a K-Town moment.
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