Glued
May 23, 2004 | 12:00am
TV has managed to get me back into its fuzzy electronic fold. The OC replaces Buffy in providing my teen-wit fix, this time as a dose of the distant but beautifully messed up lives of the young and rich, enough to keep me from feeling sodden and downtrodden for the rest of the week. But when you leave the thing on, and its something like a Sunday night, you end up falling, by dint of having naught else to do, into Reality TV hell. Its like watching an oncoming train wreck, but one thats headed right at you. So-called reality TV (theyre game shows, for heavens sake) make up the majority of network programming right now, at least in the States. Usually they are cheaper to make production values can be kept to a tacky minimum, and with tight time constraints and no million-bucks-per-episode demanding stars, turnover is quick.
Unfortunately, life is not always more interesting than fiction. In Australia, there was a time when Big Brother was such an event, every evening the whole nation tuned into 30 minutes of pure slumber party surveillance humdrum. Ive had more interesting conversations with my dog, and I dont even have a dog. Other shows like Amazing Race and Survivor make use of real competition, strategy, adventure and skill, and sometimes the audience might actually learn something about the world, like how to make fire with a rubber band, and about human nature, like how people are either snakes or rats. Most of the time, however, we are merely playing voyeurs to suffering,
The American Idol craze, for one, would not be such if it werent for Simon Cowells skin-crawling, accurately acerbic critiques. "Yes, youre a beautiful girl, but youre one ugly performer," he tells one Britney-alike on the verge of tears. She did happen to sing and dance with a crumpled face and gaping mouth. It is Cowells remarks that we repeat to our friends over phone breaks and coffee, with the evil giddiness of gossipy adolescents, and not whether any of the actual performances were worthy of our idolatry. The contestants, regardless of talent, win out of popularity, and how much they have of it is an indignantly inverse correlation to Cowells disapprovals (e.g. the Jasmine-LaToya controversy which resulted in the entire state of Hawaii texting up for Jasmine).
Cries of racism, though unwarranted, have been hurled against the fact that the more vocally powerful black singers have been dismissed. Remember, audience voters have the last say. This can either mean that perhaps American audiences dont want to see yet another R&B star pop the charts, or that theyd rather see continued humiliation live on TV.
Which brings it inevitably to William Hung, who didnt even make it past the auditions he didnt even make it to the end of the never-more-painful She Bangs. But whos got the last laugh? William Hung himself, with a chart topping karaoke record and music videos with half-naked chicks? A guy who cant sing to save himself from getting fobbed off the boat, whose teeth are as crooked as bamboo stilts, and who has the sexual appeal of string cheese? No, not poor Will, God bless him though for "trying his best" and "being sincere." Yes, its the audience whos laughing at this appalling display, look at that poor Asian guy embarrassing himself so naively, for our amusement! Hes heartbreakingly unthreatening and touchingly unvirile lets make him a star.
Cries of racism this time echo truer, if only because it brings back specters of the blackface and minstrelsy and big Mammy and that horrible Chinese guy in Breakfast at Tiffanys. The feminized, infantilized Asian male in the history of Hollywood cinema is a history of repression Jackie Chan and Jet Li, already contemporary examples, have yet to attract, what more get nookie from a white leading lady in their American films.
William Hungs success is one of those weird pop cultural anomalies that is not just weird but possibly a sign of something disturbing. More scandalous than Hung shaking his bonbon are the images of the Iraqi prisoners, being tortured by a smiling American girl giving the universal sign of "bring it on." Lynndie England, the unfortunate poster girl of Torturegate, has become a media symbol for innocents to project their anger and righteousness. But also one that forces us to ask the dark and secret question, how far would we have gone, were we in the same situation?
If war was a reality TV show (and it already is, to some degree) where contestant-prisoners were made to endure bizarre and cruel experiments in exchange for their life, freedom or $1 million, surely the audience would demand for something worth their viewing time, they would demand blood, they would demand be entertained. How did England go so wrong, breaking her own humanity down as she broke down the detainees, depersonalized and blind in their hooded anonymity. Was this an extreme symptom of pleasure at the Others pain, a wrong-turn thrill at their degradation, just like TV viewers "harmless" schadenfreude as they watch another snarky, full-of-it bimbo get denied by the hunky rich bachelor on national prime time?
People are macabre, and will never shake off the voyeuristic desire that has haunted us from times even before gladiator games and public executions, the tug that makes us slow down and crane our necks at an accident, the gray curiosity that makes us peek through our fingers. Sometimes the desire oversteps the boundaries of mere viewing, it transgresses the screen, and becomes part of the action. Sometimes passivity itself is already party to the crime.
There are a few more reality shows lurking on the horizon, one more inane and terrifying than the other, based on more and more graphic, invasive things like winning a baby for adoption, or plastic surgery. Extreme Makeover has people wanting so bad to be radically transformed that they are willing to put their bodies all of it under the knife. Not sated with live police busts and televised trials, people are clamoring for the return of the open execution, death penal-TV. The line toeing bad taste, and the exploitation of it, is being dangerously tested by whoever comes up with these programs, and will persist as long as there are people out there enjoying themselves, flashing their desensitized thumbs up approval at these theaters of horror. TV is a mirroring eye that not only reflects, but creates our reality. When it goes bad, you can always shut it off, but it just might be better to shut it down.
Unfortunately, life is not always more interesting than fiction. In Australia, there was a time when Big Brother was such an event, every evening the whole nation tuned into 30 minutes of pure slumber party surveillance humdrum. Ive had more interesting conversations with my dog, and I dont even have a dog. Other shows like Amazing Race and Survivor make use of real competition, strategy, adventure and skill, and sometimes the audience might actually learn something about the world, like how to make fire with a rubber band, and about human nature, like how people are either snakes or rats. Most of the time, however, we are merely playing voyeurs to suffering,
The American Idol craze, for one, would not be such if it werent for Simon Cowells skin-crawling, accurately acerbic critiques. "Yes, youre a beautiful girl, but youre one ugly performer," he tells one Britney-alike on the verge of tears. She did happen to sing and dance with a crumpled face and gaping mouth. It is Cowells remarks that we repeat to our friends over phone breaks and coffee, with the evil giddiness of gossipy adolescents, and not whether any of the actual performances were worthy of our idolatry. The contestants, regardless of talent, win out of popularity, and how much they have of it is an indignantly inverse correlation to Cowells disapprovals (e.g. the Jasmine-LaToya controversy which resulted in the entire state of Hawaii texting up for Jasmine).
Cries of racism, though unwarranted, have been hurled against the fact that the more vocally powerful black singers have been dismissed. Remember, audience voters have the last say. This can either mean that perhaps American audiences dont want to see yet another R&B star pop the charts, or that theyd rather see continued humiliation live on TV.
Which brings it inevitably to William Hung, who didnt even make it past the auditions he didnt even make it to the end of the never-more-painful She Bangs. But whos got the last laugh? William Hung himself, with a chart topping karaoke record and music videos with half-naked chicks? A guy who cant sing to save himself from getting fobbed off the boat, whose teeth are as crooked as bamboo stilts, and who has the sexual appeal of string cheese? No, not poor Will, God bless him though for "trying his best" and "being sincere." Yes, its the audience whos laughing at this appalling display, look at that poor Asian guy embarrassing himself so naively, for our amusement! Hes heartbreakingly unthreatening and touchingly unvirile lets make him a star.
Cries of racism this time echo truer, if only because it brings back specters of the blackface and minstrelsy and big Mammy and that horrible Chinese guy in Breakfast at Tiffanys. The feminized, infantilized Asian male in the history of Hollywood cinema is a history of repression Jackie Chan and Jet Li, already contemporary examples, have yet to attract, what more get nookie from a white leading lady in their American films.
William Hungs success is one of those weird pop cultural anomalies that is not just weird but possibly a sign of something disturbing. More scandalous than Hung shaking his bonbon are the images of the Iraqi prisoners, being tortured by a smiling American girl giving the universal sign of "bring it on." Lynndie England, the unfortunate poster girl of Torturegate, has become a media symbol for innocents to project their anger and righteousness. But also one that forces us to ask the dark and secret question, how far would we have gone, were we in the same situation?
If war was a reality TV show (and it already is, to some degree) where contestant-prisoners were made to endure bizarre and cruel experiments in exchange for their life, freedom or $1 million, surely the audience would demand for something worth their viewing time, they would demand blood, they would demand be entertained. How did England go so wrong, breaking her own humanity down as she broke down the detainees, depersonalized and blind in their hooded anonymity. Was this an extreme symptom of pleasure at the Others pain, a wrong-turn thrill at their degradation, just like TV viewers "harmless" schadenfreude as they watch another snarky, full-of-it bimbo get denied by the hunky rich bachelor on national prime time?
People are macabre, and will never shake off the voyeuristic desire that has haunted us from times even before gladiator games and public executions, the tug that makes us slow down and crane our necks at an accident, the gray curiosity that makes us peek through our fingers. Sometimes the desire oversteps the boundaries of mere viewing, it transgresses the screen, and becomes part of the action. Sometimes passivity itself is already party to the crime.
There are a few more reality shows lurking on the horizon, one more inane and terrifying than the other, based on more and more graphic, invasive things like winning a baby for adoption, or plastic surgery. Extreme Makeover has people wanting so bad to be radically transformed that they are willing to put their bodies all of it under the knife. Not sated with live police busts and televised trials, people are clamoring for the return of the open execution, death penal-TV. The line toeing bad taste, and the exploitation of it, is being dangerously tested by whoever comes up with these programs, and will persist as long as there are people out there enjoying themselves, flashing their desensitized thumbs up approval at these theaters of horror. TV is a mirroring eye that not only reflects, but creates our reality. When it goes bad, you can always shut it off, but it just might be better to shut it down.
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