It's not me, it's you

- by Perry Lam 林沛理, Editorial Director
Editorial of MUSE Magazine, June 2009, Issue 29

Oscar Wilde famously said that he could resist anything but temptation. If there is one thing that Hong Kong viewers cannot resist, it’s bad television. So when recently a character in a typically bad TV drama, ridiculously nicknamed Laughing 哥 (“Brother Laughing”) died, it set off a wave of mourning among his passionate, mostly young and technologically savvy fans who burnt virtual joss sticks before a photo of their idol on a website dedicated to him.

I suspect that Hong Kong people’s addiction to television, and for that matter, cinema and radio, has everything to do with their fear of boredom. If Bertrand Russell was right and half the sins of mankind are indeed caused by fear of boredom, watching bad television must own a special place among these sins. People need the instant gratification, collective fantasies and narrative pleasure provided by mass entertainment to distract themselves from the unresolved loss and profound disappointments that life has in store for almost everybody.

Boredom is terrifying because, deprived of distraction, we are compelled to take a hard look at the way we live and confront the realities of our trivial existence. Those who are most afraid of boredom are usually those who don’t know what to do with themselves on their own. For those well-versed in the wise use of solitude, boredom is seldom a problem – Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, once said in smug satisfaction that he was never less alone that while by himself. So if you ask boredom why it is so boring, it’ll probably answer, “It’s not me, it’s you!”

Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our pathological dependence on mass entertainment and step up our capacity to appreciate the higher pleasures of the intellect, imagination and emotion. When we don’t have to spend nearly all our time and energy trying to keep ourselves busy and entertained in pursuit of the never-a-dull-moment way of life, we’ll be better able and more inclined to lead an examined life and know how to construct meaning from experience.

The young American writer David Foster Wallace, who killed himself in September last year, was one of the few contemporary serious writers of fiction who tackled the subject of boredom. Infinite Jest, his most popular novel, describes the Americans’ “pursuit of vitality at all costs” and how they end up killing their own souls in trying to kill boredom. His last and third novel, which he never finished, tells of a group of employees at an Internal Revenue Services center and how they deal with the tediousness of their work. Perhaps it’s time we learnt something from these characters who are portrayed more often as losers than as heroes in popular culture.