Day 05 - A show you hate
8 Jun 2010 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoDay 05 - A show you hate
Not entirely sure about the point of this one. Surely a show you hate is one you're not watching? But there have certainly been ones I tried to get into and failed miserably. I have tried several times to get into SGA and BSG, for instance, without much success. Then there are the ones I fell out of love with, such as LOST, where the early promise I saw was lost (no pun intended) along the way. Maybe I'll give the above another go at a later date; tastes change, after all.
I suppose there isn't really a specific show that I hate, but rather a type of show: reality tv. By this I mean things like Big Brother, The Apprentice, Dragons' Den, et cetera. Despite my guilty weakness for shows like American Idol, I just can't get behind reality tv, the pinnacle of which is Wife Swap. Why do we subject our airwaves to such abuse? More to the point, why is fame being held up as the ultimate goal in our society? At least with talent shows there is an expectation that you should have some sort of talent - and, yes, there are plenty of delusional people out there who think that their off-key singing is going to make them a star - but the vast bulk of reality tv doesn't require even a semblance of talent at all. The sole criteria is that you are dysfunctional enough to be amusing to people. I think it smacks of the old freakshow format. More worryingly, it is also being used to fetishise and disempower those outside of the extant social paradigm by exposing select individuals to ridicule. Do we really think that all ambitious women are the caricatures on The Apprentice? Or that all sex workers are like the contestants on Big Brother? Those non-compliant with stereotypical perceptions are held up as ridiculous and worthy of mockery, while at the same time the idea of fame-lust is reinforced: these are supposed to be 'real' people, after all, and by extension their interest in exposing themselves in this way is viewed as normal. How worrying, then, to see young girls wanting to grow up to 'be famous': they might as well be wanting to see themselves on display at a meat-market.
Their shelf-life will be about the same.
Not entirely sure about the point of this one. Surely a show you hate is one you're not watching? But there have certainly been ones I tried to get into and failed miserably. I have tried several times to get into SGA and BSG, for instance, without much success. Then there are the ones I fell out of love with, such as LOST, where the early promise I saw was lost (no pun intended) along the way. Maybe I'll give the above another go at a later date; tastes change, after all.
I suppose there isn't really a specific show that I hate, but rather a type of show: reality tv. By this I mean things like Big Brother, The Apprentice, Dragons' Den, et cetera. Despite my guilty weakness for shows like American Idol, I just can't get behind reality tv, the pinnacle of which is Wife Swap. Why do we subject our airwaves to such abuse? More to the point, why is fame being held up as the ultimate goal in our society? At least with talent shows there is an expectation that you should have some sort of talent - and, yes, there are plenty of delusional people out there who think that their off-key singing is going to make them a star - but the vast bulk of reality tv doesn't require even a semblance of talent at all. The sole criteria is that you are dysfunctional enough to be amusing to people. I think it smacks of the old freakshow format. More worryingly, it is also being used to fetishise and disempower those outside of the extant social paradigm by exposing select individuals to ridicule. Do we really think that all ambitious women are the caricatures on The Apprentice? Or that all sex workers are like the contestants on Big Brother? Those non-compliant with stereotypical perceptions are held up as ridiculous and worthy of mockery, while at the same time the idea of fame-lust is reinforced: these are supposed to be 'real' people, after all, and by extension their interest in exposing themselves in this way is viewed as normal. How worrying, then, to see young girls wanting to grow up to 'be famous': they might as well be wanting to see themselves on display at a meat-market.
Their shelf-life will be about the same.