An Ode to the Fifth Freedom: The Right to Zap

Fourth of July.

We celebrate our nation’s birth, but also toast the Berlin Wall coming down and revolutionary moves toward freedom throughout Eastern Europe. We rejoice in free speech surging through the Soviet Union under glasnost , feel the optimism of post-Pinochet Chile, share the hopefulness of a South Africa finally starting to emerge from the abyss of apartheid. We wave the flag, sing the anthem and give lip service to liberty everywhere.

We do this, all the while clasping the ultimate tool of despotism in American households, that lightweight 3x7-inch black plastic symbol of the technovideo tyranny we live under.

The Remote Control Device.

Tiny rows of tiny rubber buttons: You’ve got your VCR/TV buttons, your quick-view button, your cancel button, your off timer/QTR button, your mode button, your audio-video control buttons, your audio volume buttons, your enter button, your mute button, your input selector button, your display recall button and your VCR function buttons. Very impressive.

On the far right, in the shape of arrows, are the ones that matter most, however. Minute, yet significant, your channel-selector buttons beckon.

My itchy trigger thumb is poised as I behold that enormous bag of wind Willard Scott on NBC’s “Today.” From outdoors somewhere, the colossus exhales: “Look at me! Look at that baby face, 56 years old! Zoom in on me! This is. . . .”

Zap .

Don’t wanna hear him. Don’t have to. I hold the power. Like Billy the Kid with a smoking six-shooter, I have in my hand the means of destruction. If I don’t like what I see, if it ticks me off at all or even bores me just a little, I squeeze a channel selector button and blow it away.

Suddenly it’s “The Flintstones,” where Fred is on his way to the vet with Barney, who is barking because he’s been hypnotized to think he’s a dog.

Make me laugh. I haven’t got all day, not even a few minutes. My thumb is getting that itch again, so make me laugh--fast.

Fred to the vet: “This is my friend. . . .”

Too late.

Zap.

In a way, what exquisite irony, for instant zapping was created, in effect, by the very TV industry it now terrorizes. Our attention spans are fractured into a thousand pieces, the result of continual exposure to a medium that in the 1980s increasingly abbreviated everything out of fear that viewers would get squirmy and tune elsewhere when bored. Yet it’s this very fragmented condition, as if an automatic timer buzzed the brain every few seconds, that drives us to zap.

Clint Eastwood is on the screen as a jet pilot: “Contact time, nine seconds.” Can’t wait.

Zap .

Bill Bixby, alias The Hulk, is questioned by a man in a black suit: “You say a change comes over you? And who is that beast who broke you out of jail?” Can’t wait for the answer.

Zap.

It’s “Newhart,” and as Bob’s wife comes down the stairs, he greets her with a chainsaw: “I was just coming up to wake you.” Not funny enough.

Zap.

There’s a newscast: “If convicted, Raymond Buckey. . . .” Heard it.

Zap.

This isn’t tyranny, you say, it’s freedom. On the one hand, you’re right.

After several decades of slavery, of being imprisoned behind the Berlin Wall and barbed wire of our own apathy and laziness, of lacking the vitality to rise when displeased, drag ourselves a few feet, extend an arm and change channels on the set, we were finally liberated about 10 years ago. That’s when the Remote Control Device started becoming standard equipment on most TV sets.

Television programmers had counted on our inertia, and profited from it by correctly figuring that a good lead-in program was all that was needed to hold an audience through an evening. Hook them with the lead-in, and once that first domino fell the others would follow, because viewers were so solidly cemented to their sofas and easy chairs that leaving them to change channels was unthinkable.

It was the Remote Control Device that made the difference, giving us thumb power, the big Zaperoo, the hand-held ability to speed through a 40-channel universe on impulse. From mind to thumb to set in an instant.

On the other hand, whose mind? Whose thumb? Who makes the choice?

The person holding the Remote Control Device, that’s who. Oh, there may be another set in the house, but usually a lesser one in a less comfortable room. Fastest person to the No. 1 set gets to control it. This viewer is the omnipotent one, the tyrant sitting on the imperial throne instantaneously turning thumbs up or down based on whim, and doing so while deaf to the wishes of others in the room.

The picture flickers. Straight ahead on the screen it’s stony Miss Marple with another murder on her hands. Seen it.

Zap.

From elsewhere in the room another sound reaches my ears. It’s a faint protest that comes far too late, for my thumb has swiftly squeezed off not one zap, not two zaps, but the big triple, three zaps faster than you can say, “But I wanted to watch that.”

So get your own Remote Control Device, I mutter.

Aha. A thought. In fact, there is only one way to guarantee equality in front of the set, none other than dual Remote Control Devices: thumb against thumb, zap against zap, your very own Shootout at the OK Corral.

An extra Remote Control Device is an expensive solution to impose on someone in your house who is video oppressed. What the heck, maybe I’ll spring for it myself. This is the Fourth of July, after all, and liberty is never cheap.