The Price of Satisfaction

by Steve Lazarowitz

Just this week, I purchased and hooked up a new surround sound receiver to my existing dream system. It probably wouldn't be a dream system for anyone else, but given my budget, my location and my personal prejudices, it's as good as I can get at the moment.

This dream system swirls sound around the room in such a way that it places me inside the events of a movie. Instead of just being an observer, I'm drawn into the world, completely immersed until the end credits start to play.

My first real example of this was when I watched Star Wars on laser disc, in THX. Without debating merits of the film itself, the surround sound for this movie was incredible. When C3-PO was walking through the desert on the planet Tatooine, the wind whipping through my rear speakers was so real, I was forced to leave the room to get a sweatshirt.

During the famous Cantina scene, the alien orchestra was directly before me, until the scene switched to Han Solo's table, when they were suddenly behind me. Yes, I did turn momentarily to stare at the bare wall, as if expecting them to be there.

Of course, the movie has to be seen in letterbox format to really appreciate it. Otherwise, you're just getting some technician's view of what part of the movie he thinks you should see. Letterboxing, more than any other aspect of movie watching, is completely misunderstood by most of the uninitiated.

When you go to see a movie in a theater, the shape of the screen is a long rectangle. Certainly, longer and shorter than your television screen. In order for that movie to fit on your screen, it has to be modified. You can't just compress the sides and leave the height fixed. That would change the aspect ratio and even the heavier set actors would appear too thin, much like looking in a fun house mirror.

The only way to make a film fit your television, it to crop the sides. It's called Pan and Scan. Someone looks at a scene, decides how it should be centered and the action you see is what the person doing the conversion thinks you should see, as opposed to what the director might have wanted you to see.

By dealing with a band of black on the top and bottom on your screen, you can see the image the director intended to create. Admittedly, for some movies, it doesn't make a different. But try watching a space battle, or the chariot race in Ben Hur and the difference can be great indeed.

Of course, before I knew about letterboxing and had it explained to me, I was very satisfied with my Pan and Scan movies. Before I owned a surround sound receiver, I was happy with stereo and before that, I was quite satisfied with the crappy sound that came out of a single television speaker.

Perhaps being able to appreciate the finer things in life, leaves you unable to appreciate everything else in your in life. That is to say, no one is more appreciative than a person who has had nothing.

Advertising tells us how to look at everything. How we should look, what we should own, what car we should drive. Television itself portrays a disproportionate amount of "beautiful people". Most of them are white, and most are attractive. At very least, these two traits appear far more often on television than they do in New York City.

Very few people on television are ever shown working. They're always doing something interesting or exciting. They don't stand in front of a photocopy machine for half an hour at a clip. Instead they have all sorts of intrigues and situations that arise. Perhaps, over time, we might begin to look at our own jobs, our spouses, our children and think that things should be more the way it is on television.

Everyone should be rich, beautiful, drive a great car and own a mansion. Everyone should be able to work whenever they want to and take off whenever they want to and still be able to afford all the vacations they can tolerate.

I needed to get this surround sound processor for my system, because my laser discs sounded great on my old receiver, but my DVDs didn't. My old receiver came out before the digital age was really in swing and didn't support Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS. And like a good little lemming, I went out and spent money on a brand new receiver, when my old one was doing just fine.

Is there really a different that makes a movie that much better? A difference worth close to four hundred dollars? I doubt it. I'd simply bought into the hype. I allowed the knowledge that I wasn't getting the best sound I could to influence my purchasing decisions.

I see it with computers all the time. People buying far more than they need, to do nothing but answer e-mail and write a few letters. We've all been relegated to the role of consumer, buying more and more, because we've been taught to be dissatisfied with who we are and what we currently own.

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to be satisfied. To look at a piece of electronics and say "Hey, this is great. It doesn't matter what else is out there." For women, it might be something closer to how much you weigh, or how you look. It might be the type of jewelry you own, or something as simple as having to get your nails done on a continual basis.

How much of our energy is spent pursuing the ghosts of what we should have? How many men have looked at their significant others and thought she wasn't enough like a supermodel? How many woman have looked at themselves in the mirror and decided they needed to look more like someone younger and thinner? Perhaps the price of having is that we can never really be satisfied or appreciative. Maybe I should have been thrilled with my old sound, which was truly excellent. Maybe I should have saved my money.

I go through this particular phase, every time the Park Avenue advertising houses win a battle. I buy something extravagant that I don't need, after which I tell myself I'll never fall for it again. And it remains that way, until finally, they once again convince me to be less than happy with what I have.

Maybe this time, I'll have learned my lesson. Maybe it's time to set aside my need for more, and just be satisfied with what I have and who I am. In truth, wouldn't it be great to have everything you need? Don't most of us have more than we need? I know I do.

So I'm done. Finished. I'm not going to believe them anymore. I've done my last upgrade. Unless I really need something, I'm not wasting my money ever again.

Until I move from this apartment into a private house, when I'll have to buy a subwoofer to complete my system. Because after all this time, the one thing truly missing from my life is more bass.

Webpage & Graphics by Samandi Adams
Copyright (c) 2003-2004 ~ All Rights Reserved