(Madrid, Spain)
Last night the Spanish television channel laSexta 2.0 premiered its latest reality show, “Generación Ni-Ni”, with a huge fanfare. The title of the programme refers to the section of Spanish society that “ni trabaja ni estudia”, doesn’t work and doesn’t study; using the same technique of abbreviation in English it could be called “Generation dodo”.
The premise of the programme is that eight adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two (the press release specified the potential age range as “16-25”) live together in a spacious house surrounded by cameras. They are observed by their parents and two psychologists – and, one imagines, by a few million Spanish people – as they are obliged to go out and work for their keep. According to the specific information published on laSexta’s website:
“eight youths...are going to undergo a process of re-education. The Generation dodo psychologists will try to change the behaviour and values of these youths”
The first thing which stands out is the age group being targeted by the programme – middle-aged television producers seem determined to aim their disdain at “the youth of today”, even though there are plenty of middle-aged people who neither work for a living nor fill their time with useful study. Those people would tell you that the situation is bad in Spain at the moment – but it is no better for young people, in fact it tends to be much worse as they have yet to be given a chance at anything in life apart from following incomprehensible rules.
What many people seem unable to understand is that people leaving school look at their parents’ generation and see very little incentive to follow the only path which is laid in front of them by authorities with little imagination or empathy. Quite apart from the wholly natural desire to rebel against the previous generation, during a recession there is even less proof that conforming will provide school-leavers with any future security. The press release from laSexta describes the participants in the programme as “apathetic” – in the face of today’s reality, why should they be anything else?
In reality Generation dodo highlights the fact that the values of our parents become extinct as soon as their children form opinions and that the current system long ago lost the power of flight. What is also clear, however, is that when it comes to finding ways to brain-wash young people into conforming, middle-aged people and television form a dangerous cocktail indeed.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Net curtain television
(London, England)
Two rather strange new programmes are currently gracing English television screens. First the BBC announced it would hold a competition which looked for the country’s best butcher and then Sky said it would air a programme in which celebrities went bird-watching with another celebrity.
The BBC programme is typical of the national station in that it is bland and lacking in direction. While a competition which promotes winning by merit is evidently better than being famous for nothing, and in spite of the fact that butchery is an honourable and traditional trade which should be preserved and not plastic-wrapped and relegated to the supermarket shelves, making television from people cutting meat is bizarre. Watching it is even more absurd. The Sky programme is also appropriate to the station – banal and lacking in intelligence – but no less ridiculous for its predictability.
Yet these programmes are almost logical in the recent timeline of English television which reveals an unhealthy and voyeuristic obsession in unspectacular activities realised by uninteresting individuals with an emphasis on moralising and crushing criticism. The reality of reality television is that we are not being entertained, we are being controlled more than ever – the television tells us how to clean our dirty houses, how to re-educate our hooligan children, how to dress our unattractive bodies, how to cook, how to drive, what books we should be reading and even how we should have lived had we been around over a hundred years ago. The celebrities that are so cheaply created are happy to take this phenomenon to the next level in order to perpetuate the control.
English people love it but this should not be a surprise. This is simply an extension of every middle-class English person’s petty, mean-spirited desire to spy on other people with the sole intention of catching them out in some way and gaining the all-elusive moral superiority. It is also the logical past-time for a country which contains one security camera for every handful of people, some accompanied by a loudspeaker which tells people how to behave in the street.
English society is its own Big Brother – that’s a character from a novel called 1984, written by a writer called George Orwell – and it is presiding over its own demise. It deserves the governments it votes in, it deserves the television it pays for and above all it deserves to be told home truths. Perhaps they should do it in the form of a reality TV show. They could call it “I have a personality, get me out of here”.
Two rather strange new programmes are currently gracing English television screens. First the BBC announced it would hold a competition which looked for the country’s best butcher and then Sky said it would air a programme in which celebrities went bird-watching with another celebrity.
The BBC programme is typical of the national station in that it is bland and lacking in direction. While a competition which promotes winning by merit is evidently better than being famous for nothing, and in spite of the fact that butchery is an honourable and traditional trade which should be preserved and not plastic-wrapped and relegated to the supermarket shelves, making television from people cutting meat is bizarre. Watching it is even more absurd. The Sky programme is also appropriate to the station – banal and lacking in intelligence – but no less ridiculous for its predictability.
Yet these programmes are almost logical in the recent timeline of English television which reveals an unhealthy and voyeuristic obsession in unspectacular activities realised by uninteresting individuals with an emphasis on moralising and crushing criticism. The reality of reality television is that we are not being entertained, we are being controlled more than ever – the television tells us how to clean our dirty houses, how to re-educate our hooligan children, how to dress our unattractive bodies, how to cook, how to drive, what books we should be reading and even how we should have lived had we been around over a hundred years ago. The celebrities that are so cheaply created are happy to take this phenomenon to the next level in order to perpetuate the control.
English people love it but this should not be a surprise. This is simply an extension of every middle-class English person’s petty, mean-spirited desire to spy on other people with the sole intention of catching them out in some way and gaining the all-elusive moral superiority. It is also the logical past-time for a country which contains one security camera for every handful of people, some accompanied by a loudspeaker which tells people how to behave in the street.
English society is its own Big Brother – that’s a character from a novel called 1984, written by a writer called George Orwell – and it is presiding over its own demise. It deserves the governments it votes in, it deserves the television it pays for and above all it deserves to be told home truths. Perhaps they should do it in the form of a reality TV show. They could call it “I have a personality, get me out of here”.
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