smellzlikefish
Contributor
This might belong in the whine and cheese section.
I remember looking ahead in anticipation of Shark Week when it was in its infancy. Tonight is the first night of a new season and its excitement and educational merit seems, well, missing. Have these aspects diminished over time or were they never there to begin with? Maybe I've since seen and studied sharks in their natural habitat and no longer entertain the stigmas and myths that get repeated and exploited over and again every year on Discovery. And don't get me wrong here, either. I love the Discovery Channel for Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs and the random assortment of other interesting shows that seek to educate and entertain simultaneously. And then every year they ruin it all for a week of interviews with shark attack victims. As a shark enthusiast, I probably take my specialty too seriously to enjoy the smut that gets sent to the masses but Air Jaws is a show that needs to die along with any program about what to do when getting attacked. Maybe we can replace them with a week of reruns of Blue Water White Death. I would much prefer watching Peter Gimbel, the Taylors, and Stan Waterman in masses of dusky and oceanic whitetips than another year of white sharks jumping from the water in super slow motion.
Am I just jaded because my experience has ruined a once awesome week or has Shark Week de-evolved into another Jaws aimed at drawing on and perpetuating fears for the sake of another penny? Or maybe it always exploited nightmares and I was too young and naive to notice.
I remember looking ahead in anticipation of Shark Week when it was in its infancy. Tonight is the first night of a new season and its excitement and educational merit seems, well, missing. Have these aspects diminished over time or were they never there to begin with? Maybe I've since seen and studied sharks in their natural habitat and no longer entertain the stigmas and myths that get repeated and exploited over and again every year on Discovery. And don't get me wrong here, either. I love the Discovery Channel for Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs and the random assortment of other interesting shows that seek to educate and entertain simultaneously. And then every year they ruin it all for a week of interviews with shark attack victims. As a shark enthusiast, I probably take my specialty too seriously to enjoy the smut that gets sent to the masses but Air Jaws is a show that needs to die along with any program about what to do when getting attacked. Maybe we can replace them with a week of reruns of Blue Water White Death. I would much prefer watching Peter Gimbel, the Taylors, and Stan Waterman in masses of dusky and oceanic whitetips than another year of white sharks jumping from the water in super slow motion.
Am I just jaded because my experience has ruined a once awesome week or has Shark Week de-evolved into another Jaws aimed at drawing on and perpetuating fears for the sake of another penny? Or maybe it always exploited nightmares and I was too young and naive to notice.