Just a few thoughts-TV at work

TV at work.  One of the resources we have at work is a large activity room with a large screen TV.   When I first began my volunteering at the center, it had been open only four months.   You might say that some of the final arrangements for things like cable television and internet had not been finalized or actualized.  So for many months we could only play CD’s on the large screen TV.  Children would bring favorite CD’s from home to watch at the center with the group.  One best loved series was Tom and Jerry cartoons.  The physical, slap stick comedy made everyone laugh without the use of any language.  We could watch these day after day without ever getting tired of them.  Otherwise almost all of the other CD’s were Disney stories in Russian, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King.  For me, who was just trying to catch onto the sound of Romanian being spoken, this was quite frustrating.

When we finally got cable television set up, the options were many.  We could have a channel that had strictly children’s programming (cartoons) in Romanian.  We could watch the India channel which had wild west serials based in India but dubbed in the Russian language.  The older girls liked to watch the India channel for the romance and dancing that was a part of all the programming.  We had access to Moldova 1, which is their public TV station.  We often had this on first thing in the day to catch up on the weather and news.  Once the regular programming started we usually switched off from it. 

There were Russian speaking news stations and also stations from Romania.  If you searched high enough on the dial, you could find an English Euro news channel and a sports channel in English (soccer), and the Discovery channel dubbed in Russian.  But most of the time when the children were present, we had the Minimax  (cartoons) channel on.

During the mornings, when we usually didn’t have children present, the TV was often tuned onto one of the modern music video channels.  In almost 100% of these endless videos, the women are the sexiest things possible.  The style is to move fast from one image to another showing as much enticing skin as possible with romantic moves and slithering.  It always surprised me that no one was embarrassed by these.  As in  “what’s this type of programming doing on in a public place where vulnerable people come for social assistance?”.   I don’t think this thought ever crossed anyone’s mind. 

I felt that this must be a real cultural difference in me.  What was even more surprising to me was the total lack of concern if there were children present sitting around “watching the television”.   And times when a parent came to enroll their child in our program, they often were sitting in this television room watching girls hopping in and out of bed with little clothes on.  I wondered if they thought to themselves, “what kind of place is this that allows this type of programming on when children are present.”   But probably they didn’t think this.  Culturally speaking they found these videos perfectly normal.  Or I could also suggest that they could totally ignore what was on television as it was not something they normally paid attention to.