TV and Nature

Posted on | May 13, 2010 |

The other evening I caught an ad for garden equipment.  You may have seen it. The scene was a perfect dewy lawn; the voice-over said “It looks like dew - but really it’s a cold sweat”.  Then there was the sound and images of power tools starting up. The message was simple, this lawn was terrified and was now going to be worked over by professionals.

When did we get so aggressive about our gardens?  When did the rhetoric of terrifying something become acceptable?  And since when have we been at war with nature?

This last question is perhaps disingenuous.  Any society that allows crude oil to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, and uses highly toxic chemicals to ‘clean it up’ and kill any surviving wildlife at all, is not a society that has emerged much above the slash-and-burn tactics of the stone age. But this rhetoric of war is beginning to get to me. A war on drugs.  If you must…  A war on terrorism.  I suppose. A war on nature…..  No thanks. I love my planet.  I do not wish to kill it. A war on TV though… that has some real appeal, at times.

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