Reality tv ushers out last shreads of actual reality.

 
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Luther Blissett
Free the weed!


Joined: 27 May 2007

PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reality tv ushers out last shreads of actual reality. Reply with quote

During my degree course (in philosophy), I read the book in which Neo keeps the contraband disks near the start of The Matrix.

It's Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory Histories of Cultural Materialism) - Jean Baudrillard.

Baudrillard talks about a land where a map is commissioned which is to be so accurate that it covers the land itself.

After a time the map is taken for reality, and the land underneath disappears (don't ask how - it just does - he's French, and thus allowed to use shit metaphors), whence the map itself starts to wear thin. This he calls the "desert of the real" (a line borrowed in the film).

I think that the maximum number of layers of falseness has been reached with the coming of Reality TV.

Imagine someone taking part in such a program ...talking about reality tv programs. Well,he or she would probably lie, and say what he or she thought would make him or her popular, rather than say what was necessarily true.

Also, imagine that he/she grew up at school never doing anything "different" and always trying to fit in with the current trend/fashion (ans lets face it, Big Brother attracts those types), then he/she will probably have quite a false personality to start with.

We might see the extremes of personalities which would be allowed on TV, but they tend to be people who wear some strange jewelry, or have sex a lot, or show a whole range of other "shocking" but essentially mindless hooks. Truly different people, who might have challenging social or political opinions (or even an IQ which might make this possible) seem pretty much absent from the reality tv circuit.

Now add in the inherent falseness that society accidentally encourages from even good people in the name of justifying palpably unjustifiable things such as world poverty etc, and you have at least four layers of falseness there.

Now add on particular forms of popularity, such as not simply drinking a fashionable type of drink, but drinking a specific brand that you're sponsored to drink, since you got famous for being famous.

That's five layers.

It often feels as though the only people who have time to try and "get real" are deemed either to have their heads in the clouds, or simply lazy.

I have to get a job, but I have a nasty feeling that LOTS of jobs are almost entirely there to propagate falseness of one kind or another, and so I'm going to be VERY careful what I end up letting take up (and over) most of my waking day.

I've mentioned http://www.anxietyculture.com before, I know, but damn it's a good site...

Baudrillard's theory, that reality has come to be defined as that of which a copy can be made, may or may not directly relate to the question of how such crap ever got on air in the first place, but still, it's a perspective.

Luther Blissett, writing for couchtripper.com
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's quite some read.

I used to see reality shows in a similar light, but I've come to accept them as bubblegum for the mind and that a wee chew now and then doesn't really do any harm. Though, at the end of Celebrity Big Brother there was a noticable 'cold-turkey' period when the constant information overload came to a crashing end and I quite surprised myself at how much of a sucker I'd become for it.

I like to be entertained and I like to keep myself informed of real affairs at the same time. I'm sure there are many people who completely immerse themselves in such pap though.
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Luther Blissett
Free the weed!


Joined: 27 May 2007

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Right now the nation seems to be subsisting on a TV diet of largely bubblegum.

You personally eat a balanced TV diet by the sounds of things, but then again you supplement it with internet vitamins and other extra-tv minerals.

I just think that there's an intellectual crisis in the UK / world, and that TV is missing a great opportunity to help people out of their prisons of ignorance.

I mean fine if they want to show people acting like brainless cocks, but at least they could be shown in a scornful and lampooned light, rather than celebrated as stars.

Maybe there needs to be some sort of emergency TV law so that if the nation's IQ dips below a certain average, then for every minute of airtime given over to a thick chav on Big Brother, there has to be a "counterbalance" minute of Dr Jonathan Miller talking about the relationship between art and science or something.
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luke



Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Luther Blissett wrote:
I just think that there's an intellectual crisis in the UK / world, and that TV is missing a great opportunity to help people out of their prisons of ignorance.


why would the corporations beind the television networks want to help people out of their prisons of ignorance? thats their plan - they want us all as ignorant stupefied consumers, clued up people isn't something thats on their agenda ... wink

its like in 1984 orwell called it prolefeed, in roman times they called it bread and circuses

prolefeed wrote:
Prolefeed is a Newspeak term in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It was used to describe the heaps of useless literature, movies and music which were produced by Prolesec, a section of the Ministry of Truth, to keep the "proles" (i.e., proletariat) content and to prevent them becoming too knowledgeable and rebelling against the ruling Party. A quote from the novel illustrates it:

“ And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section — Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak — engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at. ”

The term prolefeed has been used in recent years by some critics[citation needed] to describe news about famous celebrities (or the tabloids and magazines which publish them) or excessive sports coverage.


bread and circuses wrote:
"Bread and circuses" has come to be a derogatory phrase that can criticize either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that the speaker considers more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself. The phrase is commonly used to refer to short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems.


reminds me of a teeshirt i saw recently



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PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Luther, you play BF2142 a lot - is that a better kind of escapism?
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Luther Blissett
Free the weed!


Joined: 27 May 2007

PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 2:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

luke wrote:
Luther Blissett wrote:
I just think that there's an intellectual crisis in the UK / world, and that TV is missing a great opportunity to help people out of their prisons of ignorance.


why would the corporations beind the television networks want to help people out of their prisons of ignorance? thats their plan - they want us all as ignorant stupefied consumers, clued up people isn't something thats on their agenda ... wink


"Their agenda" ...lets be clear about whose agenda we are discussing here: The people (/governments /businesses) who own TV networks will undoubtedly promote people who agree with them above people who don't, and so consciously or otherwise, the network acquires an agenda. However, in a society where public service broadcasting were properly and legally held apart from bosses' and advertisers' interests, there would be no good reason why TV could not become a tool for good.

It's only because almost everyone in the whole fucking world is politically gutless that we have governments who are so clearly in the pockets of big business. If people generally wanted a revolution they could have it tomorrow. Unfortunately most people are happy with a hatchback, a mortgage, and 2.4 kids, and to hell with it if large parts of the country are churning out babies who will grow up to be educationally subnormal crack addicts.
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faceless wrote:
Luther, you play BF2142 a lot - is that a better kind of escapism?

I don't think it is a better kind of escapism, because I do not think it is particularly meaningful to class it as escapism in the first place.

I play Battlefield 2142 because I am drawn to the many fine points about the game. While I may often feel repulsed by the world at large, I think it is the attraction to BF2142 which is the principal operator here.

Battlefield 2142 sharpens the reflexes and requires high levels of alertness.

Stupid TV on the other hand is a mesmeric invitation to have paraded before you endless hoards of stupid people, until after some time you no longer even SEE the problem.

If you are, say, in the Big Brother house, then you are among real (sic) people, and so you would have thought there'd be a bit of scope for intelligent conversation, or at least real heartfelt communication, rather than the banal posturing and cliched slagging matches that pass for wit in such situations.

Oh, here's a picture which my friend used to have glued to the top of his TV:

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"They Live" (the movie from which the picture is taken) is one of my favourites - even if it did rip 'V' off on a lot of levels, the idea of 'awakening' was a good one. The big fight scene is a cracker also - loads of THWACKS and KAPOW MUTHERFUCKERs. Gawd bless John Carpenter.

As far as the point about your choice of escapism being interactive and therefore better is concerned, can that really be a valid reason for dismissing one form of 'fun' for another? Would, for example, playing paintball make you any better than someone who dresses as a wizard and casts spells on people in the park on a Saturday afternoon, or, for that matter, someone who takes coke on a Saturday night and thinks they're great while doing so?

Considering your degree in philosophy I'm sure you must be able to see that the simple psychological desire for escapism is a more important consideration than the method chosen to do so?
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Luther Blissett
Free the weed!


Joined: 27 May 2007

PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

faceless wrote:
As far as the point about your choice of escapism being interactive and therefore better is concerned, can that really be a valid reason for dismissing one form of 'fun' for another?


But that was never "my point".

If you re-read what I wrote, you'll see that I didn't even accept that my playing BF2142 was escapism at all.

I pointed out that rather than escaping from something (that I wanted to "get away" from), I was actually drawn to something else (something to which I was attracted - not simply something at which I arrived while trying to "escape" from from reality).

I don't even need my degree in philosophy to let me see that. ;)

Now, as far as the relative merits of watching crap as compared to playing BF2142, I stand by what I said; which is that crap tv is a dull numbing mesmeric experience, whereas playing BF2142 is a reflex-sharpening experience of alertness.

In any case, I'm pleased you liked "They Live". Funny you should mention the fight scene. My friend Paul used to get a lot of laughs out the sheer length of time for which the exchange of blows continues without either guy seeming to really get hurt at all. Very Happy

(and for the record, I have played BF2142 for less than 10 mins in the past week, as my stats will show)
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Luther Blissett
Free the weed!


Joined: 27 May 2007

PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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alan1254
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Joined: 01 May 2007
Location: Thailand

PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

but I dont see any problem with all this
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