Yalies unite before the tube

The warm, protective glow of the screen. The company of good friends and more than a few strangers. A soft couch and a feeling of safety, because you're where everybody knows your name. And, of course, they're always glad you came.

Television has an extraordinary way of creating place--a sense of the familiar week after week, year after year, well into syndication. Whether it's a bar in Boston, a psychiatrist's divan in Seattle, or a coffee shop in New York City, there is something secure about a simulated world where nothing ever changes--unless, of course, it's in the script. In the frenzied, high-stress realm of Yale, free time isn't to be squandered. Real friends can have real mood swings, parties can turn out lame, but the laugh track on Friends keeps chuckling no matter how mediocre the episode.

Of course, some reasons for watching television aren't nearly as idyllic as all that. "I have a sexual fixation with Groundskeeper Willy," Nicky Beer, BR '98, admitted. Beer is a member of the loosely confederated "Branford Simpsons Club" that meets every weekday from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. to share friendship, The Simpsons, and, apparently, a lot of repressed sexual desire. "There's this amazing scene where he bursts into the cafeteria lunchroom, and goes [in a Scottish accent], `Lunchlady Doris, have you any grease?' and she goes, `Why yes, yes we do,' and then he rips off his shirt and goes, `Then grease me up, woman!' That's where it all began, and now I have to watch every episode in case Groundskeeper Willy rips off his shirt and I get to see bulging pectoral muscles," Beer said.

As she is saying this, Beer is grasping the bulging pectoral muscles of her couch-mate, Tomer Mark, BR '98, who admits to similar fetishes for Marge. "There's that hair, and she has so much stuff in there.... There's that episode where she takes a can of change out of her hair and I've always kind of wondered what it would be like if there was a porn version of the Simpsons. Because there's so much potential for pulling stuff out of her hair."

The Branford group meets in the TV room "every night" according to Beer, and consists of anywhere from eight to 15 people at any given time. They are extremely vocal, reacting to the episode with hysterical laughter, and often talking back to the screen.

And not only sexual appetites are assuaged. As Joe Cavender, BR '97, explained it, The Simpsons "aids the digestion" after a particularly unrewarding visit to the dining hall. But the most important aspect of the club would seem to be, to an outside observer, the social camaraderie. As Douglas Rubensson, BR '98, confessed, "I really don't get out much. To tell you the truth, [the group] and the Simpsons are my only friends.... I get to stay down here, I don't have to talk to people, and I get to laugh."

Anti-social sociability characterizes many Yalies' TV habits. Laura Apfel, MC '99, routinely watches Friends and Party of Five, because "it's like real life." Although her suitemates sometimes join her, it is "not a social event." Beer seconded this view: "Well, we don't speak to each other, so I wouldn't call it social."

Pia Luedtke, ES '99, watches ER every week with a set group of friends, but also denies any social implications. Like the Branford group, however, she does admit to watching the show for less than wholesome reasons. On Anthony Edwards as a phallic symbol, she explained that "his big, shiny bald head really turns me on." Luedtke also gives another important reason for her interest in the show: she is a premed student, and empathizes with the ethical and organizational dilemmas the cast faces every week.

Despite the openness of Luedtke and the Branfordites, TV at Yale is generally a taboo subject. Like the herds of buffalo that once roamed the great plains, great groups of ghostly Yalies are rumored to frequent butteries during Melrose Place, 90210, and Seinfeld, among others, yet no one will admit to indulging in these habits.

Most Yalies don't even avow knowing anyone who watches television on a regular basis. Ask Matt Sandler, MC '99, if he knows anyone with an affinity for a particular show, and he'll reply, "No, not really. People at Yale just go to the bathroom and eat."

The idea of being obsessed with just one show is an even less appetizing subject to most Yalies, even those who would sooner lose a kidney than miss an episode of Chicago Hope. Only students like Lauren Willig, BR '99, a member of the Society of St. George and a co-sponsor of British Comedy Night in Crown Towers, will acknowledge their TV fetishes. Willig, whose favorite Britcom is Rowan Atkinson's Black Adder, feels these high-brow comedies are "incredibly witty...10 times better than any American sitcom."

Why does a need exist to justify watching television? At one time or another, fads over anything from Elvis Presley to Hula Hoops to pet rocks were national crazes, not public sins. Why is it a secret vice to be "obsessed" with the plight of Ross on Friends, or thrilled by the manic energy of ER?

Debora Paterniti, a sociology professor who teaches a seminar on the construction of self and identity, may have an answer. According to Paterniti, television is a cultural bugbear. Justifying it as a way of letting off steam, rather than as a social activity, makes it acceptable. "It could be agreed upon by the group to call it an anti-social activity, because that makes it look cool," Paterniti explained. "People like to think of their identity as acceptable, but they like to think of it as different.... So, part of describing it as anti-social would be denying the whole factor that `I'm watching TV, I'm into TV, this is a trend.' If I can call it something against the mainstream, then it makes it a little bit more acceptable to be doing things that might be categorized as unacceptable."

Paterniti also has a speculation as to what makes certain shows more popular among Yalies than other programs: ethics. "Chicago Hope is all about ethics. And ER is all about organized activity, except that you find with these shows that what interests people is not just the ethical dilemmas or how to organize disorganization, but the relationships among characters. That's what draws people in. After watching people for awhile, you get this sort of identification: `I want to be a doctor, like this particular doctor.'" There is, Paterniti explained, a vicarious, escapist thrill to most profession-oriented television, but there is also a great deal of empathy for the characters.

According to Joseph Soares, a sociology professor specializing in popular culture, television watching is inversely proportional to education--which may explain why college students, especially ambitious Yalies, tend to choose one and only one show per week. The hour or two spent watching TV per week that most Yalies will admit to, or even the hour per day by certain members of the Branfordite group, falls far below national standards. Most televisions in the United States are on for approximately four hours a day, and most TV watching is done alone. This makes the "anti-social" watching typical at Yale seem downright convivial.

Careful selection of shows and shared insights among watchers might even be healthy.

The American Medical Association released a report last week to roughly 16,000 physicians stating that violence on television leads to violent tendencies and antisociability in children. They found that some "children's television" encourages blatantly misanthropic behavior. By comparison, the fixation of most Yalies on one or two particular shows tends to be benign: the goofiness of Friends, or the moral crises and gritty realism of ER.

For the majority of viewers, though, television isn't something to intellectualize--it's simply something to do. Affection for a certain television show is a means of finding short-term company, winding down after a long week, and alleviating academic stresses. And even if, as Us critic John Mason Brown once said, "Some television shows are so much chewing gum for the eyes," they are still relatively acceptable vehicles for relaxation and a transcendent, vegetative state.

Or, as Branfordite Rubensson succinctly put it, "It really sucks when the Simpsons aren't on."