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From the Middle School Issue (Dec 2000):
Degrassi Junior High Was your middle school like this? Eshe Mercer-James When have you not compared your life to television? Isn't it true that when you see your life reflected from that box, which periodically threatens to enslave you, it somehow becomes more real? Furthermore, isn't the artificiality of television proportional to its similarity to life? As TV becomes increasingly fake, connections between you and the characters become stronger. I refer you to Degrassi Junior High, a show about young Toronto kids -- real life kids in real life situations. Compare this to Three's Company, a show about young San Francisco swingers -- randy young people in randy young situations. I went to a downtown junior high in Toronto (not Degrassi but the same premise) and I have never been to San Francisco, or California for that matter. The Degrassi presence being a constant in my life leads to a certain familiarity, which is unfortunately lacking with the Three's Company. I forge ahead, regardless of this unfamiliarity. Over the summer a friend took me to a party with the guy who played Shane-- remember him? He impregnated Spike at twelve. His father, the Catholic priest, tried to make Spike give the baby up for adoption, but she wouldn't. A year later, Shane went to a concert, dropped acid, jumped off a bridge and landed in a coma. At the party, he got drunk and fell down the basement stairs. At twelve, nobody I knew was having sex, nevermind having babies. I was friends with a devout Catholic who was convinced for a few months that she had immaculately conceived. Obviously, she was crazy. At thirteen, the hardest drug we had encountered (other than alcohol) was nicotine, and that was something shared only with your closest friends. Although, later I found out a friend of mine was dealing marijuana to high school kids, and in grade four he had a Mohawk and got into the occasional knife fight in parks, so he was a little ahead of his time. Three's Company... how real it seemed. Remember that episode where Jack, Chrissy, and Janet wanted to throw a party, but Mr. Roper wouldn't let them? They asked Mrs. Roper, and she said it was okay. Then Mr. Roper made a sign that said the party was cancelled. Mrs. Roper got fed up and left him. Mr. Roper tried to win her back and, in the end, they all threw the party together. That is taken almost word for word from my life. Mr. and Mrs. Roper are exactly like all my friends' parents: slightly loopy and crusty but affectionate nonetheless. Aren't Chrissy, Jack, and Janet reminiscent of junior high friends? The virginal blonde bimbo, whose idiocy we loved and sometimes envied. She was my science partner. Janet, the dark-haired, pseudo-lesbian, was serious, pretty, and insecure. Weren't we all? Well, without the pseudo-lesbian element, I was Janet in junior high. And Jack, the sexy, flaky, straight guy, pretending to be gay. Wasn't that the grade eight guitarist we all had a crush on? It was. Need I say more? I think my point has been proven conclusively at this point. Degrassi Junior High relates to me as closely as the Golden Girls, with its four old ladies, or Full House, with its three lame dads. Whereas Three's Company is so familiar as to be scary. This just shows, without a doubt, what I have been telling my little brother for years: television is real. It's when it stops believing in its veracity and trying consciously to be something it already is that it becomes unreal. Television is a mirror into our lives. On the other hand, maybe I watch too much TV.
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