I’ve watched English language TV series for quite some time. I’ve been hooked on to the sitcom Frasier in the last couple of months. I’m shifting to a new house, so a little low on the show, these days. But my current landlord is being an extortionist. Every tap I make on the keyboard makes me want to tap him on the head with this laptop. Or maybe, with the door he constructed between our bathroom and kitchen.
But in Frasier, life’s so fun, witty and easy. Dr Frasier Crane and his brother Dr Niles are billionaire sherry-drinking psychologists, and their beer-drinking dad Martin lives with them. As well as Martin’s physical therapist and their English home-maker, Daphne, who later marries Niles. Then there’s the dreamy, man-mad Roz Doyle, Frasier’s producer. He has a lovely apartment, with a balcony that lets his guests ravish the Seattle skyline. You can also see the Space Needle from it. I guess he ravishes it too. A major pleasure in the sitcom is the array of characters, and every episode, I pick he person I want to be.
Now there’s an obvious class difference between me and Frasier. And well there’s an obvious class difference between a middle-class Indian viewer and a middle-class American viewer, because the cost of living is higher there.
I shan’t rationalise.
I’ve been watching the show for the past couple of months. Yeah, it’s addictive. I’m on the second last season, and sometimes, it takes a lot more to laugh these days. It’s something that took over my evening life completely.
Who am I kidding? The fact is that I watch it to escape rather than to enjoy myself. A load of shit happened in between. A dear teacher passed away unexpectedly, we decided to start moving, and I consequently found sweet solace in emotional death. It was like an artificial anaesthetic infused with some hope—as Eliot said: “…like a patient etherized upon a table”. After a time you’re just watching it because it made you laugh a few days ago. It‘s some unfounded and aimless satisfaction of the id; the ultimate reality that the urge is just no longer there then makes you feel like hanging on for dear actualisation whilst slipping lower and lower down Maslow’s great pyramid.
Come to think of it, Freud makes more sense than Maslow from a humanistic point of view. If humanistic existential psychology is based on experiential and observational learning, then it’s just like slipping down back to a sex drive in the pyramid, as giving in to the id.
I’m a monkey; I like shiny. And when I see shiny, I want to have it. So imagine my spherical self with a drought-stricken tuft of curly on top, on a beanbag; eyes and moth wide open, making a mixture of hyena-ape excited sounds, possibly clapping wildly in the air. Or when I’m watching Criminal Minds, limp legs, a characteristic slouch and loose hands, my face in awe of the scene with round eyes and a round mouth. Now say ooooooo.
This is what Frasier did. Now I need to be human. Stop waiting for jokes? Or laugh at the less funnier ones. Or perhaps, look at how humorous the sherry could be, or further explore the personality of Martin’s old recliner which is too shabby for the rest of the house, but settles in after a while.
I evolved in two months, and the catalyst is no longer with me.
I’m much calmer now and much more accepting of the troubles I’m dealing with. I guess what Freud and Maslow forgot to mention was that evolution was what made us capable of thinking beyond the id and the physiological needs.
But the one thing I did take well was the idea that it’s possible to live for myself, and I don’t need to depend on others. They both talk about inherent independence in the form of drives, and acquired independence in the form of the super-ego and self-actualisation. I figured this out by watching Frasier and Niles be snobbish; they could afford pulling up their nostrils to taste wine, they could fuss over their expensive floors without drooling over them, and make a big deal about figuring out what someone says about them, yap and yap about the opera no matter how bored the other person might get; just being themselves, their priggy, perfectionista selves.
It’s all so beautiful, this psychology—a synapse between reality and escapism.
Just Blahgging 