Why channel-hopping is a bad idea

I really should only watch commercial-free television, at least when I'm alone with the set. This is because I can't resist flipping through the channels with my trusty remote while I wait for whatever I'm watching to return. I've been burned as a result, on three memorable occasions which left me fighting off disturbing images in my dreams and in my waking hours for days afterward. You'd think I'd learn.

There was the time about ten years ago when I stumbled on to a particularly vicious slasher film starring that noted thespian Corbin Bernson. As it was 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon, I was startled, horrified, and traumatized to catch a glimpse of a dentist using the tools of his trade to take revenge on a straying wife.

That cured me for a while, until 2006. Having been seduced by David Tennant (quick break for wishful thinking) into watching Doctor Who, I decided to check out Christopher Eccleston's episodes which CBC was re-running after midnight on Friday evenings. I don't know about your corner of the world, but Friday night in this corner of Ontario, which is in close proximity to the, shall we say, looser province of Québec, is Porn Night. Which, as a relative newcomer to Hades, I'd forgotten. Until I started flipping through the channels at the first commercial break: Lesseee...news...talk show....infomercial...YYEEEIIIKKESS!

See, I don't see myself as a rabid anti-porn crusader. I don't care for it; I don't think it's done any favours for how women are viewed in society, but I don't embark on letter-writing campaigns. However. I don't like being ambushed. Okay, maybe I need another word. Moving on...

You may have heard that Canada is hosting the Winter Olympics this year. If you're in Britain, your intrepid reporters have apparently been telling you that these are The Worst Olympics Ever. Well, maybe so. It's been less than a week, the Summer Olympics at Atlanta are heavy competition for the title, and I'm 3000 miles and three times zones away, so I wouldn't know. I would like to just gently say to the British media: Let's just wait until you're safely shot of the 2012 Olympics in London, shall we, boys? Just sayin'...

Anyway, we all know what the Olympics mean. Commercials. There are about fifteen let's-support-our-athletes-by-buying-this-crap ads in heavy rotation and we've been treated to them since last autumn. My fingers strayed inexorably to the remote....

Bad move, Persephone. On TV5, I was confronted by a rapid sequence of images of Nazis being hanged. By Americans, by Russians, by Poles... As you can imagine, the techniques varied in their efficiency. Frozen in horror, I failed to switch the channel before the documentary-makers felt it necessary to demonstrate why these fellows were being strung up. And I don't mean the stock footage of naked people being driven to ditches and shot, dazed prisoners staggering off freight trains en route to the gas chambers, or the bulldozers burying piles of bodies at Bergen-Belsen. You may want to skip the next paragraph.

A man in a laboratory coat is dispassionately flipping a naked girl. She's, I dunno, somewhere between six and nine. He's gripping her hips, and holding her out at arm's length in front of him, makes her body flick out like a whip, her head snapping back. Crying and crying, she hangs in the air with her knees drawn up to her chest and her back curved over. I couldn't bear to see what he would do next and flipped the channel, gasping for breath, leaning over my own knees.

I imagine, or least choose to imagine, that the makers of La Traque des Nazis (a documentary on longtime Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld) meant well. Why is it, then, that I feel this is feeding into yet another kind of porn? It seems to me that there is an appetite out there for footage of executions and tortures, ranging from those who get the glad-it's-not-me frisson to those who actually like watching this stuff. Does a documentary like this educate, or does it pander to such people? Does it stop such things from happening again, or does it provide (heaven help us) inspiration?

As for me, I've been sitting on those long bus-rides to and from younger daughter's school, gazing out at the bleak landscape and trying to chase away horror and despair with music. This was probably not the best week to get that Beautiful South CD out of the library (geez, talk about "bleak"), but there are songs on my iPod to make my heart lift for a while.

Here are a couple, if your heart needs lifting too. The first is a Great Big Sea standard, and happily, there's a classic 2006 music video by Almost Angst Free Productions (since we were talking about David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston, so why not drag Paul McCann, Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy into it?): I've probably embedded this one before, but I don't care...

The other is brand new (to me). I was listening to CBC Radio Two yesterday morning while waiting at the bus stop and Bob Mackowycz said this one just makes him "melt". So he played it and I did some mean back-up singer moves in the fresh snow. Fortunately, the street was deserted. Although I did dance into the bus... Forty Days. Hmmn. Well, Lent began yesterday, so there you go. Giving up channel-hopping seems a worthy Lenten goal...

The Rites of Mid-Winter

This has been a rather solemn week, liturgically speaking, particularly for a Unitarian married to a practising Anglican.

On Sunday, I decided to accompany the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter to church, having given it a miss for several weeks. I used to be a regular churchgoer, but the Unitarian church here in Ottawa doesn't feel so much like a church as a country club, only with a air of earnestness and social responsibility. So, after five years of banging my head against a brick steeple, I started accompanying my husband to his church, which sadly has only emphasized the fact that the one thing I've truly learned from all these years of being married to an Anglican is that I'm definitely not an Anglican. Still as Anglican churches go, the RFB's is not bad. I'd even go so far to say that it's the most Unitarian Anglican church I've ever attended. And that's saying something. This is probably due to the high percentage of gays that attend this particular church. I'd never met an Anglican church with a "rainbow section" before. (You don't have to be gay to be Unitarian, far from it, but the Unitarian church was blessing gay unions many years before it became legal in Canada for gays and lesbians to wed.)

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with why I decided to go along with the Resident Fan Boy last Sunday. It was Candlemas, a holy day I've always rather liked. (Groundhog Day has to be one of the lamest ideas ever.) I love watching younger daughter's face as she grasps the lit candles and the lights go off for the reading of the Gospel. And watching my daughter's face in the candlelight, I found myself choking back tears at the words of the gradual hymn, sung to the old English folk song O Waly Waly: "O little love, who comes again/ the Word reborn to make God plain..." For Candlemas, like most liturgical things, has a strong undercurrent of sorrow. It's based on the story of Simeon who saw the infant Jesus being brought to the temple to be presented, so it contains the Nunc Dimittis, the canticle of Simeon, the words you hear at nearly every Christian funeral: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace . . . ." And the not-so-comforting words to Jesus' parents: "a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also . . . ."

These strange shining pools in the centre of the dark, festivals in wintertime, are like roses with thorns for parents, particularly parents of special-needs children. But all the same, it is beautiful, and although I cannot in good conscience call myself a Christian, I do rather love the words from the opening of the Gospel of St John: ". . . the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not". Modern translations say: "and the darkness has not overcome it" which is no fun at all; I like the idea of the darkness saying "Huh?" Rather like my younger daughter shining out there in the sea of neurotypicalness...

Lent comes early this year, treading on the heels of Candlemas, so the service was supposed to end with the "burial of the alleluias" which we missed because the service went overtime and we had to catch our bus. All the same, this meant hauling out some of the best hymns for the last time before Easter, and younger daughter particularly enjoyed "All Creatures of our God and King" which is called the "Mr Bean Hymn" at our house. (Younger daughter adores Mr Bean who surely must be a little PDD himself.) And tonight we'll have pancakes and bacon and sausage for Shrove Tuesday. Tomorrow, the Resident Fan Boy will decide whether to brave the elements to get his forehead smudged on Ash Wednesday.