PrintIn Barnard’s Hewitt cafeteria, the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting is playing on TV. As Rod Stewart begins to sing, two students can’t resist providing commentary. The first undergrad grimaces, saying, “Nice flat-ironed hair, Rod.” Her companion, unable to control herself, chimes in: “How very Clay Aiken of him.”
After a few minutes of exchanging cracks about TV personalities, they clear their trays and resume their conversation, which seamlessly shifts to a comparison of Thomas Jefferson and his predecessors in office.
This moment provides a peek into the TV double lives that Columbia students lead. Most students who “can’t” take the time to finish all their CC reading always seem to be able to find time for fifteen minutes of “I Love Money 2.”
Thoughtful, high-minded students set aside time each week to intersperse their studying with viewings of significantly less intellectually stimulating television shows. What is it that makes diligent, worldly-wise Columbia students equally engrossed in their Roman History classes and “The Real Housewives of New York City”?
The general sentiment is that Columbia students delight in the utter dissonance between the two modes of culture. After spending so much time poring over the ideas of Freud, Hemingway, and Kant, students crave activities that allow them to turn off their brains and “watch celebrities in rehab falling off the wagon, getting lost, and crying,” as Laura Vican, a Barnard junior, says.
Even though they have the option of tuning into critically acclaimed, plot-driven shows like “Fringe” and “The Mentalist,” harried, over-worked Columbians seem to prefer series that feature cat fights and shopping sprees when choosing to take a break from homework and exams.
For Columbia College sophomore Sophie Meislin, the reason is simple. “It’s just really entertaining,” she said. “Not everything has to be something to think about.” She justifies watching “The Biggest Loser” and “Say Yes to the Dress” as forms of mindless entertainment—in fact, she’ll watch “any show having to do with weddings. It’s shameful.”
Gigi Clark, a Barnard sophomore, is also an adherent of “Say Yes to the Dress.” She ascribes something of a fanciful element to the show: “I like to fantasize. Watching other people buy their wedding dresses gives me an outlook like I already have my wedding planned, thanks to Kleinfeld Salon.”
As students are happy to admit, this type of “low-brow” TV is unsophisticated. But according to Meislin and Clark, it can reveal an underlying penchant that we may tend to ignore in our practical-minded, work-obsessed lives. Watching these programs gives Columbia viewers a chance to indulge in their daydreams without significantly interrupting the reality of a fast-paced, grounded academic lifestyle.
Vican sees this tendency as more than just a reflection on college students’ habits. It’s also a possible sign of the changing trajectory of television. “You sit in classes all day, and the last thing you want to do when you come home is watch a TV show that makes you think. That’s not the point of TV anymore,” she said. “It’s not about stimulation, it’s about vegetation.”
Although reality TV is arguably past its early 2000’s hey-day, channels like MTV and VH1 are always airing a staggering number of mind-numbing reality shows at any given time. In the past couple of years, cable networks in particular have made an effort to intellectualize their offerings to appeal to a different class of viewership. Nonetheless, Vican’s statement is representative of viewer percentages: where “The Biggest Loser” reels in an average of 10 million viewers each week, the second season finale of the Emmy-winning series “Damages” managed to capture an audience of just one million.
And while most students use lowbrow shows as breaks from their heavy workload, finding a plethora of excuses for why that twenty-two minutes can be spent “just vegging out,” some take their excuses one step further. Barnard sophomore Rachel Abady not only relaxes by watching “Tool Academy” and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” but also sees ways that her academic interests can be applied to the shows. “Admittedly, this is not considered intellectual or edifying television, but I really like the psychology of the shows and I am amazed at how exploited some of the people on the shows are,” she said. “Some people are really willing to let cameras invade their lives for fifteen minutes of fame.”
The average professor might wonder, “What has the world come to when Columbia students are not only contributing to but also justifying the popularity of ‘trashy’ television?”
But those learned skeptics should rest assured—watching lowbrow television is not a sign of their students’ deteriorating commitment to academics. Vican’s thoughts emphasize that student preferences for mindless TV are not an indication of declining ambition. She explains her forays into “Rock of Love 2” marathons as a way to balance the amount of time she spends thinking through problem sets and physics formulas. “I’m taking such an intense course load that I feel the need to turn my brain off and watch something that’s just plain stupid once in a while,” she says.
It’s easy to see why TV has become the go-to source of guilty pleasure entertainment. 99 percent of the student body has a laptop and twenty minutes to waste: the only prerequisites for engaging in “just plain stupid” TV. And if watching real people make fools of themselves makes students feel better about their own daily habits, has their time really been wasted?