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Something written here today about why Ross Kemp is employed made me think about why I hate television.
Now before the froth brigade whip themselves into a fury of non-reading, I’ll repeat:
Why *I* hate television. Not why nobody else should watch it or why you are an idiot for watching, but my own personal feelings as to that vile little window into utter, utter banality and mediocrity.
I rarely watched it when I was a kid, it just didn’t figure in my life. I was either drawing/painting/bashing cardboard boxes with chopsticks along with Adam & The Ants or I was out playing with my mates. Be it with our vast, now priceless, Star Wars toys or simply with plastic rifles over the stream, re-enacting various battles and future wars against evil aliens (conveniently disguised as passers-by that we couldn’t let see us otherwise they’d suck our brains out and make us walk around like zombies, and we knew what they were because we’d all just watched a pirate copy of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson)
TV wasn’t a part of our world. Sure, we watched the occasional programme like Magic Roundabout, Mr Ben, Bod or Rhubarb & Custard but that was usually whilst we wolfed our tea down before going round to somebody’s house to continue playing.
We used our minds.
We created worlds, races of creatures, invented languages…nothing was beyond our tiny little minds.
We didn’t have video-games to provide ready made entertainment that simply required us to mash buttons and jump over obstacles (don’t worry, this isn’t a “videogames are bad for you” rant, because god knows I play enough of them now – my point is that as kids we utilised our imaginations, and I’m sure loads do today).
A mate of mine that’s a teacher pointed out to me that so many parents these days don’t interact with their kids. They drop them off at school at 9am, expect teacher to instil them with values, social awareness and basically raise them, then the mums & dads appear at 3pm in 4x4 monster trucks to collect little Timmy, take him home and stick him in front of the tv with a burger and try to unwind from their day.
Which is where television comes into it.
The destroyer of conversation, the thief of imagination, the pacifier of children. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy called it “The cathode ray nipple”.
I loathe it, if I had 3 wishes, one would be that television didn’t exist. We have no need for it. The internet can provide any educational stimuli you require, and you can digest it at your own pace.
Television exists simply to keep you stupid and indoors, engrossed in hours of nothing rather than interact with your family, friends and neighbours.
It’s easy to come home after a hard day (doing a job that you never, ever thought you would do as a kid. Hands up who ever said “I want to be a database analyst mummy!!!” when asked aged 5?) and just switch off, stare at the screen and let the stress of the day wash away.
But it’s just as easy to do that with music, or reading a book. It requires a level of input from yourself. If you have music on whilst doing something else, you’ll invariably singalong, or nod along to the beat.
Yet you watch any of those “surprise camera!!” things that Noel Edmonds used to have, and it’s a room full of people slumped on the sofa, sitting silently absorbed in tossy programmes about nothing.
It’s an exercise in social control, the ability to render an entire nation vacant and docile, malleable to being manipulated to whichever agenda you wish to push.
Soap Operas.
Petty, pointless, badly-written, unbelievable 30 minute blasts of McEntertainment. They teach the masses how to respond to situations, provides examples of how to live and how to react. Pregnant and unwed? Chances are you’ll suffer some form of mental torture before disappearing somewhere off screen.
Drug user? You’ll end up a leather-jacket wearing criminal.
Single? You’ll be unhappy and willing to indulge in soul-less encounters with the show’s lothario because, hey, you cant be happy by yourself.
Do me a favour, indulge me – if you watch any of these things, next time you watch I want you to try and see how many life-lessons are being subtlely and silently presented and what the resolutions are.
People that don’t know their own neighbours will watch, 5 nights a week, fictional accounts of the lives of strangers.
It doesn’t make sense to me to do that.
Pop Super-Idol Stars.
In which thousands upon thousands of people want to be famous. It’s not about music, it’s about being famous. If it was about the music, then these people would be doing it anyway. I am, I’m not famous. I don’t have a massive record contract but it’s in my soul and blood, I have to play music and I’m doing that without the nation watching me humiliate myself on television for your entertainment.
You hate Gareth Gates? Too bad, you voted for him. You watched that crap, you paid your hard earned money to swell the coffers of ITV and helped bang another nail into the coffin of original music and musicians that play because it’s as important as breathing.
And these production-line karaoke singers all come out the same – a cover version for their 1st song, original (written by a team of professional writers) material, another cover and Xmas single. That’s the shelf life of these automatons.
It’s not music, it’s business. It’s producing another flash-in-the-pan, corporate shill faceless dancing monkey. And it’s your fault for watching.
Reality TV Shows
I puke blood when I hear about these things. I vomit up chunks of my soul when another one barges onto the screen and soaks up attention from the mindless throng.
You have them all and they are all massive hits.
Cheap, easy to produce, require no hefty salaries to actors, no sets, nothing.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s “UK’s worst drivers!” “I’m a Celebrity, Shoot Me in The Face” or any of the others.
There’s one word for all of these programmes: Schadenfreude.
Big Brother? A bunch of people in a house doing nothing, being watched by a bigger bunch of people sitting in their house doing nothing. Hello??? Irony??? And you know, once a year, it will create another pointless micro “celebrity” that will be the media’s new plaything for 1 month before disappearing. And that programme, and the morons that watched it, are the only people to blame for the fact that Jade “East Anglia? I fought that was abroad innit?” Goody is known by anyone other than the illiterate criminal that would have pumped her full of his heroin-riddled seed if she remained anonymous.
And then, even for Reality TV, the 2 most offensive, loathsome, hateful culprits.
Those “Stop! Cops with Cameras!” programmes presented by the convicted drink-driver Alistair Stewart.
Those programmes that exist to show you what will happen if you do not obey the law at all times, the one that hammers home just how omnipresent the police are. They’ll see you from the sky, they’ll chase you forever, they’ll release dogs that can find you.
But they’ll never have the reality tv show “Whoops, your conviction was unsafe and we’ve released you after 12 years in prison, tough luck HAHAHAHA!!!!”.
No, we’re presented with the all-powerful, never wrong police (backed up with it’s very own soap opera in case you can’t get enough law and order rammed down your eager gullet in between the other soaps).
And the one type, the latest most popular reality show:
The “Life Changes/Lifestyle Changes” ones where you follow a family as they sell up their home here and go somewhere else to follow their dreams of owning a bar/whatever somewhere abroad.
They always fail, they always come slinking home after the most terrible hardships, family arguments, deaths.
Why not call these shows “DON’T EVER ATTEMPT TO BE HAPPY” or “BE CONTENT WITH YOUR MISERABLE, UNFULFILLED LIVES CITIZEN”?
Because that’s all they are. Reinforcing that should you decide that being in debt, struggling to survive in today’s society is not for you, you’d better not attempt to change that because, hey, it’ll all end in misery and tears. It’s far better to stay indoors and watch other people’s lives instead of trying to better your own.
This is a massive bloody post, but I’m unable to stop. I feel so strongly about television, the utter contempt I feel for 99% of the shows on there.
I could go on for another christknows how many minutes, but I won’t, for the sake of brevity.
I’ll conclude by saying just because it’s on television, doesn’t mean it’s worth watching. Doesn’t mean you have to afford it any more time or thought than the boring bloke at a party that wants to talk to you about why Lord of The Rings should never have been adapted etc.
There’s no *need* for you to watch 95% of the crap that’s on there, it serves no purpose other than to keep you frightened, indoors and fearing your neighbour. It’s far better to lock that door and just don’t think about stuff, just lean back and let those images bounce over your retinas and into your brain.
Sssshhhh, it’s ok, bedtime soon. You can get up tomorrow and go through another hard day doing something that doesn’t inspire you in any capacity because, like, you’ll find out what the resolution to the latest contrived drama crisis needs resolving within 25 minute tomorrow night in the soap of your choice.
Shut up, be happy.
Now before the froth brigade whip themselves into a fury of non-reading, I’ll repeat:
Why *I* hate television. Not why nobody else should watch it or why you are an idiot for watching, but my own personal feelings as to that vile little window into utter, utter banality and mediocrity.
I rarely watched it when I was a kid, it just didn’t figure in my life. I was either drawing/painting/bashing cardboard boxes with chopsticks along with Adam & The Ants or I was out playing with my mates. Be it with our vast, now priceless, Star Wars toys or simply with plastic rifles over the stream, re-enacting various battles and future wars against evil aliens (conveniently disguised as passers-by that we couldn’t let see us otherwise they’d suck our brains out and make us walk around like zombies, and we knew what they were because we’d all just watched a pirate copy of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson)
TV wasn’t a part of our world. Sure, we watched the occasional programme like Magic Roundabout, Mr Ben, Bod or Rhubarb & Custard but that was usually whilst we wolfed our tea down before going round to somebody’s house to continue playing.
We used our minds.
We created worlds, races of creatures, invented languages…nothing was beyond our tiny little minds.
We didn’t have video-games to provide ready made entertainment that simply required us to mash buttons and jump over obstacles (don’t worry, this isn’t a “videogames are bad for you” rant, because god knows I play enough of them now – my point is that as kids we utilised our imaginations, and I’m sure loads do today).
A mate of mine that’s a teacher pointed out to me that so many parents these days don’t interact with their kids. They drop them off at school at 9am, expect teacher to instil them with values, social awareness and basically raise them, then the mums & dads appear at 3pm in 4x4 monster trucks to collect little Timmy, take him home and stick him in front of the tv with a burger and try to unwind from their day.
Which is where television comes into it.
The destroyer of conversation, the thief of imagination, the pacifier of children. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy called it “The cathode ray nipple”.
I loathe it, if I had 3 wishes, one would be that television didn’t exist. We have no need for it. The internet can provide any educational stimuli you require, and you can digest it at your own pace.
Television exists simply to keep you stupid and indoors, engrossed in hours of nothing rather than interact with your family, friends and neighbours.
It’s easy to come home after a hard day (doing a job that you never, ever thought you would do as a kid. Hands up who ever said “I want to be a database analyst mummy!!!” when asked aged 5?) and just switch off, stare at the screen and let the stress of the day wash away.
But it’s just as easy to do that with music, or reading a book. It requires a level of input from yourself. If you have music on whilst doing something else, you’ll invariably singalong, or nod along to the beat.
Yet you watch any of those “surprise camera!!” things that Noel Edmonds used to have, and it’s a room full of people slumped on the sofa, sitting silently absorbed in tossy programmes about nothing.
It’s an exercise in social control, the ability to render an entire nation vacant and docile, malleable to being manipulated to whichever agenda you wish to push.
Soap Operas.
Petty, pointless, badly-written, unbelievable 30 minute blasts of McEntertainment. They teach the masses how to respond to situations, provides examples of how to live and how to react. Pregnant and unwed? Chances are you’ll suffer some form of mental torture before disappearing somewhere off screen.
Drug user? You’ll end up a leather-jacket wearing criminal.
Single? You’ll be unhappy and willing to indulge in soul-less encounters with the show’s lothario because, hey, you cant be happy by yourself.
Do me a favour, indulge me – if you watch any of these things, next time you watch I want you to try and see how many life-lessons are being subtlely and silently presented and what the resolutions are.
People that don’t know their own neighbours will watch, 5 nights a week, fictional accounts of the lives of strangers.
It doesn’t make sense to me to do that.
Pop Super-Idol Stars.
In which thousands upon thousands of people want to be famous. It’s not about music, it’s about being famous. If it was about the music, then these people would be doing it anyway. I am, I’m not famous. I don’t have a massive record contract but it’s in my soul and blood, I have to play music and I’m doing that without the nation watching me humiliate myself on television for your entertainment.
You hate Gareth Gates? Too bad, you voted for him. You watched that crap, you paid your hard earned money to swell the coffers of ITV and helped bang another nail into the coffin of original music and musicians that play because it’s as important as breathing.
And these production-line karaoke singers all come out the same – a cover version for their 1st song, original (written by a team of professional writers) material, another cover and Xmas single. That’s the shelf life of these automatons.
It’s not music, it’s business. It’s producing another flash-in-the-pan, corporate shill faceless dancing monkey. And it’s your fault for watching.
Reality TV Shows
I puke blood when I hear about these things. I vomit up chunks of my soul when another one barges onto the screen and soaks up attention from the mindless throng.
You have them all and they are all massive hits.
Cheap, easy to produce, require no hefty salaries to actors, no sets, nothing.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s “UK’s worst drivers!” “I’m a Celebrity, Shoot Me in The Face” or any of the others.
There’s one word for all of these programmes: Schadenfreude.
Big Brother? A bunch of people in a house doing nothing, being watched by a bigger bunch of people sitting in their house doing nothing. Hello??? Irony??? And you know, once a year, it will create another pointless micro “celebrity” that will be the media’s new plaything for 1 month before disappearing. And that programme, and the morons that watched it, are the only people to blame for the fact that Jade “East Anglia? I fought that was abroad innit?” Goody is known by anyone other than the illiterate criminal that would have pumped her full of his heroin-riddled seed if she remained anonymous.
And then, even for Reality TV, the 2 most offensive, loathsome, hateful culprits.
Those “Stop! Cops with Cameras!” programmes presented by the convicted drink-driver Alistair Stewart.
Those programmes that exist to show you what will happen if you do not obey the law at all times, the one that hammers home just how omnipresent the police are. They’ll see you from the sky, they’ll chase you forever, they’ll release dogs that can find you.
But they’ll never have the reality tv show “Whoops, your conviction was unsafe and we’ve released you after 12 years in prison, tough luck HAHAHAHA!!!!”.
No, we’re presented with the all-powerful, never wrong police (backed up with it’s very own soap opera in case you can’t get enough law and order rammed down your eager gullet in between the other soaps).
And the one type, the latest most popular reality show:
The “Life Changes/Lifestyle Changes” ones where you follow a family as they sell up their home here and go somewhere else to follow their dreams of owning a bar/whatever somewhere abroad.
They always fail, they always come slinking home after the most terrible hardships, family arguments, deaths.
Why not call these shows “DON’T EVER ATTEMPT TO BE HAPPY” or “BE CONTENT WITH YOUR MISERABLE, UNFULFILLED LIVES CITIZEN”?
Because that’s all they are. Reinforcing that should you decide that being in debt, struggling to survive in today’s society is not for you, you’d better not attempt to change that because, hey, it’ll all end in misery and tears. It’s far better to stay indoors and watch other people’s lives instead of trying to better your own.
This is a massive bloody post, but I’m unable to stop. I feel so strongly about television, the utter contempt I feel for 99% of the shows on there.
I could go on for another christknows how many minutes, but I won’t, for the sake of brevity.
I’ll conclude by saying just because it’s on television, doesn’t mean it’s worth watching. Doesn’t mean you have to afford it any more time or thought than the boring bloke at a party that wants to talk to you about why Lord of The Rings should never have been adapted etc.
There’s no *need* for you to watch 95% of the crap that’s on there, it serves no purpose other than to keep you frightened, indoors and fearing your neighbour. It’s far better to lock that door and just don’t think about stuff, just lean back and let those images bounce over your retinas and into your brain.
Sssshhhh, it’s ok, bedtime soon. You can get up tomorrow and go through another hard day doing something that doesn’t inspire you in any capacity because, like, you’ll find out what the resolution to the latest contrived drama crisis needs resolving within 25 minute tomorrow night in the soap of your choice.
Shut up, be happy.
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You're forgetting the award shows.
Did anyone else watch Jordan make a painfully unfunny appearance on the comedy awards? Oh. My. God.
Rick Gervais never fails to crack me up though.
Did anyone else watch Jordan make a painfully unfunny appearance on the comedy awards? Oh. My. God.
Rick Gervais never fails to crack me up though.
I watch TV for football and movies, almost everything else is toss.
Heh, good post. I'm definitely with you on this one - TVland has become a talentless void of wanabees and money-spinners. What you said about soaps rings true the most though. I can't say how many times I've heard people use lines from shows that they seem to think go with certain situations - it's subtle conditioning of the human brain. I remain optimistic that it will one day get better though. After the reality-TV bubble bursts, maybe C4 will show some old episodes of Adam & Joe, or the BBC will play Ren & Stimpy again, instead of Victorian House and Lame Academy? Maybe someone who is fed up with all the bullsh_t that is radiated at us through our front rooms, bedrooms & dorm rooms will start a good channel devoted to a healthy mix of quality TV, rather than the crap we have to put up with now. I changed my room around a couple of months ago, and the aerial didn't reach where my TV now is. I honestly haven't missed it.
That's a bit of a typical paranoid conspiracy theorist rant...
TV may have the effect of dumbing down the nation, but that's not the intention. There's no master plan to keep us all subdued.
Also I think you're jumping to conclusions about the effect TV has on children. My wee cousin grew up watching TV and nowadays he's a very well adjusted, sociable teenager with lots of interests.
It's the adults with no 'get up and go' who will turn into couch potatoes, but that's just the type of people they are.
I don't really watch anything on telly, except when I'm having my dinner, there's a movie or something else of particular interest on.
Without telly, we wouldn't have seen the mutant twin birth thing!
TV may have the effect of dumbing down the nation, but that's not the intention. There's no master plan to keep us all subdued.
Also I think you're jumping to conclusions about the effect TV has on children. My wee cousin grew up watching TV and nowadays he's a very well adjusted, sociable teenager with lots of interests.
It's the adults with no 'get up and go' who will turn into couch potatoes, but that's just the type of people they are.
I don't really watch anything on telly, except when I'm having my dinner, there's a movie or something else of particular interest on.
Without telly, we wouldn't have seen the mutant twin birth thing!
My TV is for playing my Nintendo Crayola Cube, watching bust up old copies of Star Wars (the ones before Lucas ruined them) and occasionally for using as a projectile.
True rock stars don't get pre-gig jitters.
They are the gig.
ROCK!
----
It reminds me of a line in 'Testify'
'Yes, the car is our wheelchair'
And I guess the TV is the same kind of thing, just for 'education' purposes. However. There useful programmes on TV that do teach you things, or at least open up a possibility to you, to study something more.
Albeit now every programme seems to need a young woman to sell it.
And the rest of TV sucks. Films and Sport are good, but much better at the ground/courts (etc) or the cinema. 95% of TV is drivel.
They are the gig.
ROCK!
----
It reminds me of a line in 'Testify'
'Yes, the car is our wheelchair'
And I guess the TV is the same kind of thing, just for 'education' purposes. However. There useful programmes on TV that do teach you things, or at least open up a possibility to you, to study something more.
Albeit now every programme seems to need a young woman to sell it.
And the rest of TV sucks. Films and Sport are good, but much better at the ground/courts (etc) or the cinema. 95% of TV is drivel.
Tradition? More like a drunken expression of angst and pre-gig jitters.
The rut of getting home from work and flopping in front of the TV is like a modern disease ~zombie-consciousness attained~ I used to do it but now I refuse, now I know better. In fact, the older I get the more that once magical box in the corner reminds me of a yapping dog. I'm beginning to realize why it's a rockstar tradition to fling them out of windows.
The only thing I watch semi-regularly on TV is "The Simpsons" and the evening news.
Oh, and "Absolute Power" and "Little Britain" are class too, but these have only happened in the past two weeks.
Absolutely NOTHING else. I'd rather code or read than watch soaps, reality tv, changing rooms style programs, ready steady bloody cook, gardening programmes or the latest pop idol style offering.
I'm not getting sky, I'll get freeview when I *have* too, and I'm going to rule my kids (If I ever end up being a father) with an iron fist and stop then rotting their brains.
Oh, and "Absolute Power" and "Little Britain" are class too, but these have only happened in the past two weeks.
Absolutely NOTHING else. I'd rather code or read than watch soaps, reality tv, changing rooms style programs, ready steady bloody cook, gardening programmes or the latest pop idol style offering.
I'm not getting sky, I'll get freeview when I *have* too, and I'm going to rule my kids (If I ever end up being a father) with an iron fist and stop then rotting their brains.
I agree, too much crap on these days and to an extent I think its just a case of people watch it because its on and then keep watching it as they have seen it before but don't really know if they like it or not.
To me people are just lazy, instead of thinking of other things they take the easy option of putting on the tele.
But where it reaches the limit is those who pop the kids in front of the tv, sure it may make them quiet and keep them busy and out your way.
But does it really surprise people when the stats come out saying kids can't read/write and do basic maths or have the social skills of animals.
I'm all for parents to limit how much their kids get to watch, rest of the time they should be educated in life by actually doing things.
To me people are just lazy, instead of thinking of other things they take the easy option of putting on the tele.
But where it reaches the limit is those who pop the kids in front of the tv, sure it may make them quiet and keep them busy and out your way.
But does it really surprise people when the stats come out saying kids can't read/write and do basic maths or have the social skills of animals.
I'm all for parents to limit how much their kids get to watch, rest of the time they should be educated in life by actually doing things.
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