Reminiscing “The Box”

Of my degenerate youth, I fondly remember watching “The Box” on cable in my father’s apartment. I was twelve or thirteen; it was summer. Friends came over while my father was at work and we’d smoke New Waves and Dorals because they came with a thumbs-up from the jovial one-eyed tobacconist on 94th street who also proffered a host of nudie mags.
“The Box” worked like a jukebox: for $2.95 you called in a request for three music videos and after a half to one hour of the other guys’ picks, your videos would appear on the screen. I’m not sure if it was nationwide but I came to think of it as a new form of pen-palship.
My had-to-orders were Denis Leary’s “Asshole,” Black Moon’s “You Know I Gotcha Open” and Ed OG and the Bulldogs’ “Love Comes and Goes.” The show lasted a little less than a year, if I remember correctly, but it was a nice run and made for a fine respite from the muggy doldrums of an early adolescent summer.
What made it fine? Or, if I may be so bold, what made it an innovative breakthrough show for the television medium? The short answer: it included us. “The Box” was the first interactive television show for my generation and although it was overpriced and exploited the fact that kids are commercially thrill-seeking and stupid, I believe there’s nothing more welcoming and wise than asking, “What do you think?” “The Box” asked the people, “What do you think?” And the people who responded got results. Man and TV conversed and the TV worked for the people.
If we’re going to fondle machines more than one another, the least we can do is be aggressive fondlers, which is so rarely the case. All too often the teachers talk and the students listen. The networks play and people watch. Books express and readers let words fly over their heads. In my humble opinion, everything should be, like a letter, in search of a response.
As much as I loathe ushering in the new world of technology and sincerely feel the world’s going to hell in a hand-basket, the Internet shows great possibility in this regard. Most literate people in America have access to publicly express themselves (if you don’t own a computer, go to a library). The Web asks, ‘What do you think, PEQ78R?’ What did you think of that Dave Eggers book, PEQ78R?’ ‘Which design would you like to see replace the World Trade Center, PEQ78R?’ ‘Any ‘Comments,’ PEQ78R?’
Of course there are complications this most voting systems are illusions. Fat cats, ideologues and idiots decide on a large part of airtime content, the books in the bookstore and the movies showing at the movie theater down the street. Money makes us — we’re accustomed to that (the phrase makes me roll my eyes, too). There’s also so much information and such a burden of voices as to render that precious commodity — soul — pretty gosh darn obsolete. Nowadays our TV votes are pooled and put into percentages. And, as ‘The Box’ proved, people choose a lot of garbage; of hundreds of music videos that must have come out that summer, I can remember seeing ten at most and they were all the popular ones.
But to end on an answer to the question why the hell did I write about ‘The Box’: simply put, the nostalgist in me pines for that show, the one to represent me.

—Will Schutt
College senior

May 2
May 9

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