In Binged, Mashable breaks down why we binge-watch, how we binge-watch, and what it does to us. Because binge-watching is the new normal.
If you were born a working-class kid near the English city of Leicester before Queen Victoria's reign, then you may have been one of the first people in the world to use the word "binge." Which, back then, meant "soaking wood so it swells and won't leak in the rain."
The first writer to record the word, in 1848, also mentioned Leicestershire locals had started to use "binge" for another kind of soaking: getting wasted. And that's how it spread around the world -- from alcoholism (binge-drinking) to excessive food consumption (binge-eating, introduced around a century ago), until finally, around 2014, largely thanks to Netflix, we began to talk of binge-watching.
But now, five years later, it's time we reconsidered this nasty linguistic turn.
SEE ALSO:The quest to binge-read 'Lord of the Rings' in one dayYes, I know, this is a strange thing to say in an article that's part of a series called "Binged." English is democratic that way; enough people use a word and we all have to adopt it to be understood. But that doesn't mean we can't also fight back against a word that starts to sound a little queasy when you, er, binge-use it. (Trust us.)
The thing about the phrase binge-watchingis it's the only one of those three kinds of consumption where the meaning has flipped. Try telling everyone in the office you binged on vodka every night this week; you'd get fearful looks and a meeting with your manager. Boasting about binges that involve family-sized bags of chips and whole cakes? Your doctor may want a word about life-threatening eating disorders.
So why is it socially acceptable to talk about binge-watchingthe latest hot Netflix series? Unlike those other contexts, it isn't really an addiction -- not unless you find yourself on an uncontrollable, self-hating downward spiral where you have to go back to Season 1, Episode 1 over and over again, forgoing your sleep, your health, your job.
Spoiler alert: Even the Battlestar Galactica-obsessed characters in this famous 2012 Portlandiasketch did not go that far.
Synonyms for bingeinclude spree andjamboree.Both of which would be more fun, if a little twee -- later, guys,I'm going on a TV spree!If you want to get a little more medieval about it, you could talk about a televisual feast.
At the same time, modern English already has a perfectly good, positive, aspirational word used to describe consuming many pieces of entertainment in a row -- it's a marathon. These days, it seems, the word is most commonly connected to movies -- but starting with Nick at Nite in 1985, TV channels used to call multi-episode blocks of the same show a marathon.
Why marathon hasn't been applied to the streaming realm isn't clear. Maybe comparing non-stop streaming to running 26.2 miles at a time when more of us than ever have actually done the latter, just sounds too much like a humblebrag. Binge-watching may have become popular because it is self-deprecating: Hey, I was just stuffing tons of crud into my eyeballs!
Yet we actually have more reason to use marathonin the Golden Age of TV, where plenty of shows that have better plots and production values than Oscar-winning movies. (Game of Thronesvs. Argo? No contest. Sorry, Ben Affleck).
Even if what you're marathoning is Gossip Girlrather than The Wire,there's no need to think of it as a low-nutrition, low-culture guilty pleasure that you're "binging." This scene from the 2000 movie Finding Forrester, in which famous reclusive writer Sean Connery boasts of having the New York Timesfor his main course of reading and the trashy National Enquirerfor dessert, has the unapologetic truth of it.
The problem is that our language isn't precise enough yet. There are at least two kinds of behavior that we mean when we talk about binge-watching. There's the kind where you watch an episode, get sucked in by the cliff-hanger, and fire up the next episode even though you had other things you wanted to do instead: wash, rinse, repeat.
Sure, let's call that version binging; there is at least a small element of out-of-control behavior involved. Stomach-churning, guilt-inducing procrastination is somewhat binge-worthy.
But then there are the times when your whole goal is to watch a lot of TV. You've had a long hard day, or it's a rainy weekend, or you're fighting off the flu. You just want to crash on the couch, snuggle up with blankets and a pet and maybe (just maybe) a significant other, and watch a show that isn't hard to follow and makes you feel good: Parks and Rec, say.
Good for you! Own it! Treat yourself!
Via GiphyWhat alternative name could we could call this type of positive viewing: Treat TV, perhaps? My classy colleague Alexis Nedd proposed an even classier name: a TV retreat. Yes, we're retreating from reality for a while, just as we do when we take a spa day or a hot springs weekend.
In both cases when we return, we feel relaxed, with an inscrutable grin on our faces from all the fun we've been through.
After all, given the word's origin as a synonym for soaking, we could accurately describe a nice bath as taking a binge. There's a reason why we don't: It sounds way too negative for what it is. The same rationale should apply to the gentle, uplifting soaking of our poor overworked brains in the light of the big screen.
Float on and enjoy your TV retreat, everyone.
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