But, here's the thing, I am not an effing demographic. And I, frankly, cannot deal with anymore mindless MTV drivel being paraded around like content. Nor do we need anymore Speidis or Hiltons, people with no real talents who are famous for nothing. We're not talking about the competition shows, either, like American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance? or Top Chef or whatever else where the contestants actually have to do something (not that those are all good shows, but at least they have to do something other than shop and party). We're talking about The Hills or Real Housewives or any other show that follows random people around with cameras and attempts to sell it as "reality" after editing it down to 22 episodes that resemble poorly scripted melodramas. And it isn't a documentary even if it has the production values of one; very little of it, if any, nowadays is at all enlightening or insightful. Newsflash: this kind of programming is no more "reality" than scripted television, this just means they don't have to pay writers. Which is why it continues to exist: "Reality" television is cheaper to produce. Plain and simple. Rebel, I say!
And, meanwhile, it is contributing to the dumbing down of my generation. Plus, it takes away jobs from our creative classes--writers. directors, actors, etc. Is mindlessness really what we need in the world right now? Or couldn't we argue that this is the kind of thing that helped get us to where we are now (big, messy, undeclared war, global recession, tanking economy, bickering politicians, etc)? We need some intelligence on our screens and some responsibility from those giant corporate networks. Or we need to turn the TVs off, which is still not the right route to go because there is some interesting work being done there. Maybe we all need to take a step back and reassess our values.
And this is my rant for today.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment