On a bitter cold winter evening, long before the lockdown, I was watching my favourite news channel when my eight-year-old granddaughter quietly sneaked into the room and asked, "Dadu, what is meant by an idiot?"
Taken aback, I quickly glanced at her and casually mumbled out: "Well, it only means a fool. But why do you ask?"
Looking back straight into my eyes, she innocently replied, "Our teacher says that we should not watch too much TV as it is an idiot box." Though she did not say anything further, the expression on her face left me with uncomfortable questions.
Television is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding inventions of the last century. It is not only a source of continuous entertainment and news but also provides useful information on various subjects. Actually, in these days of physical distancing, isolation and quarantine, it has proven to be our most steadfast friend, guide and philosopher. It is, therefore, quite strange that almost universally, it is called the idiot box? Does it mean to convey that only idiots watch TV or does it imply that those who watch TV become idiots? There may be only a subtle difference between the two interpretations, but either way, why has TV become irrevocably associated with idiots?
To find a convincing answer, I decided to explore the matter. First, I looked up the Concise Oxford Dictionary which revealed that the word "idiot" is derived from the Latin word "idiota" or the Greek "idiotes", meaning a "private person, layman or ignorant person". It defines idiot as "a person so deficient in mind as to be permanently incapable of rational conduct; a stupid person, utter fool". Merriam Webster describes idiot as "a person affected with extreme intellectual disability".
This is surely a hard-hitting definition! Admittedly, all of us watch TV sometime or the other but none of us, however dumb or rustic, would accept that we have become "permanently incapable of rational conduct" or "affected with extreme intellectual disability". (Of course, what others may think of us is a different matter.)
At the time of invention of television, the dignified and respectable means of socialising and entertainment all over Europe and America was to attend theatre, ballets, music concerts or art exhibitions.
At the same time, however, the term idiot seems to have acquired some literary respectability when it was adopted by many famous writers. For example, William Wordsworth’s poem The Idiot Boy and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous novel The Idiot were recognised and admired for their literary merit. So one wonders why the "idiot box" was treated with ridicule and contempt?
Meanwhile, as I was still pondering over my discoveries, my granddaughter came up next with her own explanation a couple of days later. According to her logic, if a lunch box is a box containing lunch and a pencil box is a box containing pencils, then an idiot box must be a box containing idiots! Well, looking at most of the programmes being shown on TV, this would appear to be an apt definition. And if you combine all the above interpretations, you might call television as a medium "of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots".
However, in case you are still not impressed or amused by my scholarly research into the origins of this idiosyncrasy, you might borrow the words of Shakespeare and dismiss all this as, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’!