Have you ever seen an innocent old lady get squashed below the wheels of a speeding lorry, or been witness to a rapid dog mutilating daily shoppers in an afternoon in Asda?
No?
Me neither but both I imagine, however unpleasant they may seem, you would be fixated upon them for at least three or four minutes when your mind would then inform you of the disgusting sick nature of the topic and involuntary close your eyelids.
This is exactly what is happening to me, when by sheer accident and bad luck I come across Celebrity Love Island.
Two to three minutes of watching this piece of media filth makes me wish indeed I was witnessing the Cujo-esk killing spree in the supermarket or Mrs Brady being crushed by the fourteen wheeler.
"What the fuck is this shit?" I asked myself, temporarily unaware that thirty kids and six teachers are in the room with me.
The worrying thing about this psuedo -celebrity shag fest is the fact that immediately it makes me feel very, very old and very, very prudish.
For the last five or so years I've managed to completely ignore this phase of non actors being on my telly and making complete and utter titfucks of themselves. I regard Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, Celebrity Wrestling and the Farm with the same dismissive attitude as Busted splitting up or as the comeback single of The Pet Shop Boys.
Before you get on your high horse about Reality T.V simply being good viewing and accusing me of being a geeky nerd due to my (mild) Star Wars and A Team obsession, I want to point out the pitfalls and simply the wrongness of supporting this media whoring.
Firstly those who claim they do not enjoy these shows but, "just like it to laugh at the people" need a fucking life. As a teacher I spend many an hour "laughing at the idiots" but unlike you guys obsessed by Big Brother I get paid for being the bemused and casual observer. What your doctor should strongly recommend in to cancel your subscriptions of Heat, Now, Look, Hello and O.K and buy some descent shit that will engage your pea sized minds and explore your...
(Note: I have not corrected any spelling or grammatical errors in this piece, as I don't know if they are intended ((first person narrative and all that)). As stated in the title heading, I use these pieces as a spring-board for my own writing, not for editing practice.)
I love a good rant, both administering, listening and watching.
Whether my rant is about politics, film, television programmes, cartoons - whatever ... it's nice to get it all out and then enjoy a fruitful conversation about the topic, with some informed points of view, opposing or not.
The above rant is amusing and though I'm not as impassioned, I have similar opinions about a lot of reality TV. I understand why networks produce these shows; they are cheap and they rate highly. It's good business. The successful programmes gain more than a following, their watchers invest much of their emotions in the contestants and are frequently outraged with judges' decisions or the weekly exile, (X-Factor time in the UK comes to mind). That this genre lacks any intellectual merit has been discussed ad nauseam, it is the constructed nature of the presented 'reality' that many fans are apparently oblivious to, the narrative imposed to compel the viewer to watch and watch and watch. Charlie Brooker demonstrates:
With the declining television profit model, Big Brother and Survivor and those shows about the Kardashians, with their ease of production and potential wide profit margins, offer networks a life-line. This is why the existence of a public broadcaster is important. Not being subject to profit and ratings exigencies, they have a much greater opportunity to produce something clever, whose humour and drama isn't provided through a contestant's self-abasement (witting or unwitting), but through good writing and talented actors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has provided several shows like Rake, The Slap, Spicks and Specks, The Gruen Transfer/Gruen Planet, Adam Hills in Gordon St Tonight, The Hamster Wheel and many more. The BBC also produces several acclaimed programmes. Before anyone mentions 'left-wing agenda' or even intones 'Socialist' to enforce their vacuous point, I would challenge any to direct me to any study that establishes the Socialist policies of either the ABC, BBC or NPR. You'll find that they are all quite moderate and not a mouth piece for government or the extreme left. The main reason is that they have to be; as government funded entities, they are scrutinised in far greater detail than commercial networks, except maybe for Fox News, who are unabashedly conservative.
Producing content of acclaim is not the exclusive purview of public broadcasters though; The West Wing for example was brought to us by NBC.
All that said, one of my not-so-guilty pleasures is watching cartoons. If a person derives pleasure from watching fat folk sweat, stressed people cook, strangers share a house and the opulent young 'cope', then that's their choice, and they have it in abundance. If things are defined by their opposites, then quality programs like The West Wing need Celebrity Apprentice to exist. There are certainly worse trade offs.
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