11 years ago
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
10 February 2010
20 November 2007
Sweet Caroline...Kennedy? Really?
I've already expressed my disgust for television and the culture that goes along with it. Sadly, I was reminded again today why I find myself shaking my head when I catch snippets of programs.
I was watching the local news, which is depressing in its own right, but directly following the newscast was Entertainment Tonight. This show represents a lot of what's wrong with the world today. Intimate details of largely inconsequential people are shared and followed and analyzed by "experts" and (this is what amazes me most) millions tune in. For instance, I learned that some male celebritie's twins are suffering from an overdose of some anticoagulant and that one of the Olsen girls has a kidney infection and finally that Neil Diamond wrote the song "Sweet Caroline" inspired by images of Caroline Kennedy. You know, I feel that this stuff is really important. That the lives of people who make millions of dollars for acting in poorly written movies are very important and should influence, if not inspire, my own actions. Then I snap back to reality and realize that these people are living a life of luxury for doing absolutely nothing and the only contribution they make to humanity is occasional misguided and over-publicized donations to this or that charity.
Perhaps my point can be better made in an examination of the writer's strike. This strike is gaining huge amounts of media coverage, indeed I've seen a segment about the strike every time I turn on CNN or read headlines. I've read about the great impact this will have on television and that soon our shows will cease to be written and re-run anarchy will ensue and the minds of so many will be left misguided and conversation-less with no new episodes of Grey's Anatomy or the Daily Show to discuss the next day. When was the last time a "regular" labor union strike go so much attention? When was the last time that the impact of labor union strikes were considered in terms of workers rights and the struggle of the working class instead of the impact on lives of luxury and petty entertainment? I ask these questions not to imply that TV and entertainment shouldn't exist, but rather to illustrate our lost our society is, how obsessed we've become with false worlds that are created in the minds of writers and controlled by reality show staffs. Actual realities are ignored and replaced with ratings-wielding realities.
I call my writing pessimistic and depressing. A friend, however, described it as "...being honest." I mean not to upset people, but being cynical towards daily life is the only perspective that makes sense to me. Clearly, the majority of people who may or may not be depressed or angered by my opinions are just choosing not to evaluate what's really going on. We've managed to put social problems to the backs of our minds and experience our world relative to the technological and media-centered world that is created on televisions. It upsets me to an extent that I cannot have conversations with people without being accused of being too serious or pessimistic. My view of life and world is largely optimistic, an optimism derived from critical evaluation of the world that is falling apart around us. I see a lot of problems, and I see the biggest influences on the lives of people choosing to ignore these problems because they don't sell and make people feel fuzzy inside. I know though, that these problems cannot be ignored, and I am finding that there are more people out there like me (not neccessarily of the same opinion but same philosophies and methodologies for looking at the world). I know that the future will be hard to swallow but that humans will triumph and learn to deal with social and cultural problems.
I have to remind myself of this quite often during the day as my pessimisms and cynicisms are often brought to the fore by the way society functions today. I'm really not as evil and all hating as I seem, I promise.
I was watching the local news, which is depressing in its own right, but directly following the newscast was Entertainment Tonight. This show represents a lot of what's wrong with the world today. Intimate details of largely inconsequential people are shared and followed and analyzed by "experts" and (this is what amazes me most) millions tune in. For instance, I learned that some male celebritie's twins are suffering from an overdose of some anticoagulant and that one of the Olsen girls has a kidney infection and finally that Neil Diamond wrote the song "Sweet Caroline" inspired by images of Caroline Kennedy. You know, I feel that this stuff is really important. That the lives of people who make millions of dollars for acting in poorly written movies are very important and should influence, if not inspire, my own actions. Then I snap back to reality and realize that these people are living a life of luxury for doing absolutely nothing and the only contribution they make to humanity is occasional misguided and over-publicized donations to this or that charity.
Perhaps my point can be better made in an examination of the writer's strike. This strike is gaining huge amounts of media coverage, indeed I've seen a segment about the strike every time I turn on CNN or read headlines. I've read about the great impact this will have on television and that soon our shows will cease to be written and re-run anarchy will ensue and the minds of so many will be left misguided and conversation-less with no new episodes of Grey's Anatomy or the Daily Show to discuss the next day. When was the last time a "regular" labor union strike go so much attention? When was the last time that the impact of labor union strikes were considered in terms of workers rights and the struggle of the working class instead of the impact on lives of luxury and petty entertainment? I ask these questions not to imply that TV and entertainment shouldn't exist, but rather to illustrate our lost our society is, how obsessed we've become with false worlds that are created in the minds of writers and controlled by reality show staffs. Actual realities are ignored and replaced with ratings-wielding realities.
I call my writing pessimistic and depressing. A friend, however, described it as "...being honest." I mean not to upset people, but being cynical towards daily life is the only perspective that makes sense to me. Clearly, the majority of people who may or may not be depressed or angered by my opinions are just choosing not to evaluate what's really going on. We've managed to put social problems to the backs of our minds and experience our world relative to the technological and media-centered world that is created on televisions. It upsets me to an extent that I cannot have conversations with people without being accused of being too serious or pessimistic. My view of life and world is largely optimistic, an optimism derived from critical evaluation of the world that is falling apart around us. I see a lot of problems, and I see the biggest influences on the lives of people choosing to ignore these problems because they don't sell and make people feel fuzzy inside. I know though, that these problems cannot be ignored, and I am finding that there are more people out there like me (not neccessarily of the same opinion but same philosophies and methodologies for looking at the world). I know that the future will be hard to swallow but that humans will triumph and learn to deal with social and cultural problems.
I have to remind myself of this quite often during the day as my pessimisms and cynicisms are often brought to the fore by the way society functions today. I'm really not as evil and all hating as I seem, I promise.
14 November 2007
Prime Time Trivialization
I don't watch too much TV, the occasional drama or documentary, but certainly not regularly. Today, though, I happened to walk into the room where the TV was on and saw a commercial for an upcoming episode of "Deal or No Deal." What can we expect from modern US television? Its either biased political news, mind-numbing perversions of the lives of idiots and fame-mongers or game shows. The news and reality TV are problematic in their own rights but are mere by-products of a sick, failing culture. This particular game show ad caught my attention because they were giving away, not 1 million, not 5 million, not even 10 million, the prize was 100 million dollars. All I could do was roll my eyes in shame.
How has it come to this point where we play games with ludicrous amounts of money. I can't even list the ways that 100 millions dollars could be used otherwise. 100 million in college scholarships, 100 million invested in libraries around the world, 100 million to bribe Bush to leave office early. When I see ads for programs like that I am amazed how we can live with ourselves when we trivialize monstrous amounts of money that could feed hundreds of people for years. No one person needs 100 million dollars to begin with. Oh sure, we'll have the story of the poor inner-city public school teacher winning a million. Even then a million is too much for one person. It doesn't matter what kind of poverty or misfortune you're living in, vast amounts of money are not going to help a bit. For the inner-city school teacher, how is a vast sum of 100 million going to help? Will it end the class system in the United States and make the students of your school equal with the students from the rich suburban school? Will it solve the fact that many children won't move on far in school because they need to work for sickeningly low wages to help support their family? Will it stop violence that stems from the dehumanizing condition of proletariat? Will it stop the fact that the government could care less about education and instead fight a colonial war? Here's the nail in the coffin: said teacher won't even get the entire sum of money, a fair chunk of it will go to the government which will then be used to further perpetuate capitalism, oppression of the working class and a war in the name of Christianity and capitalism.
I have other gripes, I'll try and make this one short. I've seen shows like Home Makeover, where ABC tries to find the most heart-wrenching story it can to viciously play on the emotions of viewers and then throws vast amounts of money at them and builds them enormous houses. I hate to sound emotionally dead but when people are so heartened and inspired by these stories I can't help but think of how naive they are. First and foremost there is not even the slightest humanitarian aspiration of these shows; they are simply taking advantage of our craving to see good in this world crumbling down around us. Second of all, there is absolutely no progress being made in these shows. Occasionally they manage to find someone living in "poverty" but building an over-sized, fancy, house-sized billboard does more harm than good. Change is a gradual thing, not something that can be fit into an hour slot on Sunday night. Fighting poverty and misfortune does not mean finding the worst situations and building impressive houses. Its like getting your arm cut off in a machine, then paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a mechanical arm and then building a new machine that doesn't require your labor to run it. Its counter productive and doesn't realize the array of conditions and moments that lead one's self to a horrible situation.
While I sit next to crying and heartened people watching these shows, seeing good being done, seeing a down and out person finally getting a break, I can't help but realize that these problems will not stop because of television give aways. We trivialize wealth and social problems for the sake of entertainment and eventually making disgustingly large sums of money that are paid to high level CEOs and management who drive home in their BMWs to their huge houses in California where their children arrive home from private school and everyone enjoys a nice family dinner cooked by Rosa. Rosa, in turn, goes home to her on bedroom apartment in the slum, uses her wages to feed her child, deletes all the calls from creditors and government agencies, talks to her mother back home in Mexico and waits for ABC to coming knocking at her door to help her out.
How has it come to this point where we play games with ludicrous amounts of money. I can't even list the ways that 100 millions dollars could be used otherwise. 100 million in college scholarships, 100 million invested in libraries around the world, 100 million to bribe Bush to leave office early. When I see ads for programs like that I am amazed how we can live with ourselves when we trivialize monstrous amounts of money that could feed hundreds of people for years. No one person needs 100 million dollars to begin with. Oh sure, we'll have the story of the poor inner-city public school teacher winning a million. Even then a million is too much for one person. It doesn't matter what kind of poverty or misfortune you're living in, vast amounts of money are not going to help a bit. For the inner-city school teacher, how is a vast sum of 100 million going to help? Will it end the class system in the United States and make the students of your school equal with the students from the rich suburban school? Will it solve the fact that many children won't move on far in school because they need to work for sickeningly low wages to help support their family? Will it stop violence that stems from the dehumanizing condition of proletariat? Will it stop the fact that the government could care less about education and instead fight a colonial war? Here's the nail in the coffin: said teacher won't even get the entire sum of money, a fair chunk of it will go to the government which will then be used to further perpetuate capitalism, oppression of the working class and a war in the name of Christianity and capitalism.
I have other gripes, I'll try and make this one short. I've seen shows like Home Makeover, where ABC tries to find the most heart-wrenching story it can to viciously play on the emotions of viewers and then throws vast amounts of money at them and builds them enormous houses. I hate to sound emotionally dead but when people are so heartened and inspired by these stories I can't help but think of how naive they are. First and foremost there is not even the slightest humanitarian aspiration of these shows; they are simply taking advantage of our craving to see good in this world crumbling down around us. Second of all, there is absolutely no progress being made in these shows. Occasionally they manage to find someone living in "poverty" but building an over-sized, fancy, house-sized billboard does more harm than good. Change is a gradual thing, not something that can be fit into an hour slot on Sunday night. Fighting poverty and misfortune does not mean finding the worst situations and building impressive houses. Its like getting your arm cut off in a machine, then paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a mechanical arm and then building a new machine that doesn't require your labor to run it. Its counter productive and doesn't realize the array of conditions and moments that lead one's self to a horrible situation.
While I sit next to crying and heartened people watching these shows, seeing good being done, seeing a down and out person finally getting a break, I can't help but realize that these problems will not stop because of television give aways. We trivialize wealth and social problems for the sake of entertainment and eventually making disgustingly large sums of money that are paid to high level CEOs and management who drive home in their BMWs to their huge houses in California where their children arrive home from private school and everyone enjoys a nice family dinner cooked by Rosa. Rosa, in turn, goes home to her on bedroom apartment in the slum, uses her wages to feed her child, deletes all the calls from creditors and government agencies, talks to her mother back home in Mexico and waits for ABC to coming knocking at her door to help her out.
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