Does television help shape our national memory?

This will be a different sort of post, at least for me. As I start writing, I’m not sure I will finish and submit it, or if it will even eventually be posted. And, unfortunately, it is a day late. The day snuck up on me … I’d seen it on a calendar recently, but it wasn’t until I saw the many posts memorializing the date that I realized that twenty-five years ago, I was a kid, watching a national tragedy from my playground.

My family had been living in a little town in Florida called Satellite Beach for almost half of a year. We’d been there long enough to see one launch of a Space Shuttle … we’d driven up to Kennedy to one of stretches of road that the public would go to watch launches (We still have that on Betamax tape. Yep, I said Betamax tape). But the Challenger launch was going to be different. First Teacher in Space! REAL people could be astronauts now! This was going to be special.

Naturally, students across the country would be tuned in to the launch, watching it in classrooms, in cafeterias and in auditoriums. My school would be no different, but there were two classes getting an extra treat. As two of our classmates were invited, as friends of the family, to the NASA Family Viewing area, our teachers decided for our two classes, viewing the launch outside on the playground would have something special. A teacher had brought out a radio for us to listen in.

I didn’t even know anything was wrong. Like I said, I’d only seen one shuttle launch before, and well, I was six. It wasn’t until I saw the look on my teacher’s face that I began to catch on. I, like so many kids my age, lost a little bit of innocence that day.

Oddly, though, what I remember most vividly about day was the afternoon spent glued to the television. I had pulled my little stool into the living room, and sat there transfixed. I didn’t move until the President gave what was one of the most memorable speeches of my life (The line from Magee’s High Flight , “… slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God” was so incredibly perfect). My parents, rightfully so, figured I had had enough.

Who would have thought 75 years ago that images from television would shape our national memory? When Pearl Harbor was invaded, the country’s first TV commercial was only months old. Yet when I ask my parents about the Kennedy assassination or the landing on the moon, it is pictures from the television that frame their thoughts. My generation should be so lucky that the Challenger disaster would have been our only national tragedy to endure.

I remember an amazing amount about September 11th, which only serves to illustrate how much I’m certain I’ve forgotten. Sitting around my fraternity house, with many brothers from both NYC and the Washington, D.C. area, watching the news ticker and waiting to hear from disconnected family members. Even past the horrible day itself, important moments came from the television. From Mayor Giuliani taking the SNL stage telling us it was OK to laugh, and Jon Stewart reminding us it was still OK to cry, I remember those moments on television as vividly as the friends I shared them with.

In a different world, monumental moments in television would be the perfect M*A*S*H finale, and the imperfect Lost one; Super Bowls and States of the Union; Miss Universe Pageants and maybe someday, our first steps out of this universe. Unfortunately, we do not live in that different world (Though, if we did, maybe the Lost finale would be perfect too, no?). But we have what we have, and in my eyes, that’s not so bad. There’s something oddly comforting about being able to pull up YouTube and be reminded of things both good and bad, and we owe it to each other never to forget.

Clacked by Ivey West
on Jan 29, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT