Background viewing is the ultimate taco break.  The primary event is the consumption of the taco, but while you’re eating, hey, might as well put something on that you can half-pay attention to while trying not to accidentally spill taco on yourself.  Or maybe it’s something you put on while you dust or pay bills or return rote emails.

I always view this as something qualitatively different from simply using TV as background noise.  I’ve known people who come home and turn the TV on immediately with little regard for what program is on–it’s my position that that’s a separate thing, a reach for white noise rather than a reach for a kind of company.  With background viewing, what you’re watching–or half-watching–does matter and is often deliberately chosen.  It’s undemanding, requiring neither tremendous emotional investment nor active attention; it’s superficially engaging; it’s familiar, either through actual acquaintance or just through design, through being another episode of another Law & Order or CSI.

I can’t imagine that “makes great background viewing” is something anyone likes to hear about their work, and I’ll admit that I’m almost superstitious about subjecting art I really love and admire to this kind of slipshod treatment.  Good movies and TV reward, and deserve, close attention, and I’d always rather provide that.  But nonetheless, I sometimes reach for this way of making a frustrating task more tolerable.  I revisit episodes of The Great British Bake-Off–pleasant people, low drama, delicious food–or various movies that are sleek but ultimately insubstantial.

What are your habits of background viewing–when do you use it and what do you seek out and why?  Or are you appalled by all this?  Do you look for background “company” but go with music or podcasts instead of anything even partly visual?  And what masterpiece, relegated to the background, would be most incomprehensible?