The history of photography has taken many turns over the years. From the old Flintstone’s dinosaur bird chipping away at a stone to today’s high tech video camera’s small enough to be hidden in a button, we have seen a progression not only in clarity of the images, the size of cameras and what the human psyche feels the need to document. For me, the age of video photography started years ago with the old reel-to-reel cameras. This was after slide shows of every trip to Yellowstone began to die out. I’m too young to have ever owned a reel-to-reel, but recall being made to watch old movies of vacations to the beach or mountains in a speed-handicapped style of movie. Either the people were in fast forward or maybe back then everyone just ran everywhere they went. Either way, the quality was terrible and it took an act of God to get the projector and film set up without a few choice curse words.

In the 1980′s the invention of the VHS gave us a completely new way to document life. When the video camera price dropped low enough for most families to run out a buy one, the home video frenzy began. You couldn’t attend any event, be it a wedding, children’s sports game or any family function without the obligatory wave, smile and hello to the camera. Some people fell right into the love of filming and never went anywhere without their cameras. Others felt that always being forced on tape was an invasion of privacy.

The show that changed it all was America’s Funniest Home Videos. They started to offer not only a worldwide audience to your videos, but also awarded ten grand to the funniest one submitted and at the end of the season, a $100,000 award. For those that had already caught the filming bug, this was just another excuse to keep their cameras rolling.

Back in the day when the show first started, the types of videos that were sent in were hysterical. I recall a story a friend once told me. It was a family event and of course that meant a camera was rolling. A number of the family members waved and smiled at the camera as they passed by, but one member of the family had just enough alcohol in his system to enjoy his time in the spotlight a little too much. This person felt that he was a superstar and decided that he would create his own commercial for the brand of beer he was freely imbibing.

He grabbed a bottle off the bar next to him and began his 60-second advertisement. At the end of his speech, he smiled, looked directly into the camera and took a big ole swig of the beer. Unfortunately, that particular bottle that he grabbed off the bar was the community ashtray and he was left with a mouthful of ashes and butts. Of course loud laughter was all that could be heard on that videotape for at least the next fifteen minutes and he was left coughing and spitting. Now, any normal family would have immediately grabbed that tape and sent it into the show in hopes of winning some cash, but this was overruled and this bit of humor never made it to mainstream. I believe this could have been the $100,000 winner, but that’s me.

Nowadays the videos that are sent into AFV have changed dramatically. All you end up seeing is about fifty different ways a boy or man could have a testicular catastrophe or how many it takes to cause a porch fall as the people on it plunge to ground in a bone breaking crash.

Is this the new humor of today? What happened to the flower girl and ring bearer sharing a preschool kiss behind the bride and groom or a toddler sitting in a highchair giggling and laughing to the sound of a dog barking? Why does watching someone else in pain elicit such laughter and attention? If you ever saw the movie The Running Man, maybe this next point will ring true to you. I truly believe that we are all becoming so numb to what we watch on TV that the entertainment industry feels they have to kick it up a notch and at this rate, executions will end up prime time. It’s all a very scary thought.

I’ve had to change my television habits and unfortunately, AFV is no longer at the top of my list. I don’t own a video camera anymore and don’t even consider the purchase as viable. At this point in my life, I’d be happy to watch my teenaged uncles’ running from the tide faster than sand crabs or just sit back and enjoy another episode of the Flintstones I have on my DVR.

The Captain

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