Got in today and received an email from a mate. He was sending an email out to all his friends. Instead of the usual "hey, wassup?" he wrote a 3-page essay. He obviously was smoking dope on the night he wrote it. But I like what he wrote, so here's an excerpt. A view on reality TV from my mate:

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Sociologists say that one cannot underestimate the power of television. Everyone watches television, the rich and poor alike. Ignoring the fact that the rich get 100 channels of bullshit and the poor only 5 or 6, I actually rarely watch television. And I prefer to get my news from the papers. However, most of you watch tv, and yesterday I was over at a mate’s house watching TV on his 117 cm television. There’s one change from university, as most of you are mates from my university years. The toys get bigger. At least for boys. Besides that, no, not much change.

Reality TV. Which is the new big thing, isn’t it? Or was the new big thing, the numbers of the major reality tv are going down, the modern audience is notoriously impatient, what’s new today is passé tomorrow. Post modernist culture and all that. However reality tv is still economically viable and so more shows are produced. And as will be described later, this can have interesting repercussions.

For me reality tv has two flaws. The first is what makes the strength of the genre. That its ordinary people, like you and me, that we could have crossed a hundred times on the street. Etc. Well, here’s the crux. I don’t like most people I meet. I especially don’t like people who want to go on tv to be filmed 24 hours a day. Bottom line: most people are boring, most people are not very intelligent. I do love meeting people who are very knowledgeable about things I love, especially Music, or films, although in general I love people who are intelligent and passionate. I have not met many of them recently. However, such people include you, and the people on this list. So go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. There.

The other thing I dislike is a much more specific example. One night I was watching TV at another mate’s house. Now I don’t go to people’s houses specifically to watch tv, except if it’s a sports match, but they always have the damn thing on in their living room and its hard to ignore. So there I was and Big Brother was on. Not the normal prime time tv show, but the satellite edition, where you can actually spy in on the house. It was night. About 11pm, and on the TV were a couple of boys in the house in their bedroom talking. Real time television, spying in on people. Well, perhaps its just me, but I’ve read Orwell’s 1984, I’ve seen Brazil. I spent six years studying the Soviet Union. I did not feel very comfortable about watching them.

I do love MTV though, which of course is the opposite of reality TV. Irreality TV. The irony is I was watching dismissed, a reality show which one of my mates really likes. As it was his flat, who are we to argue. I did not understand why the girl or the guy chose the person they did in that episode, but I’m not American, and I know they think differently. For example, the guy had to chose between a sensual Brazilian and a cute country bumpkin from Wisconsin. He chose the All-American high school girl. « Weirdo », as my almost-sixteen year old sister says . But anyhow, there was more than just the that show, its MTV after all; there was the 5 minute video clips - images and sounds force-fed on you. Ads that include full-length move trailers, and more images, and more sound, the deconstructed reality of modern culture. That’s the great thing about MTV, while it has programs you don’t switch on to watch them, you switch on to watch MTV. The medium is the message and all that, and I love it. I have this serious, almost academic, fascination with pop culture. More please.

Mind you, MTV also has jackass. And because of that it’s going to hell. But I’ll spare you on that one. I’ll also spare you on the Popstars / Star Academy phenomenon, because I sometimes start frothing at the mouth.

Instead, as mentioned previously, reality tv has had interesting ramifications. We then switched on to BBC world, and there was this show we only found out at the end called « the experiment ». I was hooked from the first few minutes, especially trying to figure out exactly what it was. All I knew was that it was no TV drama. Absolutely amazing. Reality TV as it should be, to introduce people to the complexity of the human psyche, to show the reality of all those that do not conform to the promised reality of « the middle classes ». The BBC in its kindness showed the URL below. I went on it today. I need to buy that series. While it got some bad press, how else can you sponsor science nowadays without the help of tv? Plus there was none of that dreadful « vote for your favourite guard », etc. I can’t fault the British for their public service broadcasting model. All countries should follow it.

We then switched to some French art house move, set in the banlieu of Paris, the poor, the immigrants, the dispossessed. A 1997 film called « Ma M-6 va Crack-er » . What was interesting about it is that for the first half hour we were not sure if we were watching a documentary. It was filmed in the same way, one camera, minimal cuts, to the extent that when the film was edited with the traditional angles, it became much less interesting. The dialogue was all in the street French that has the sweetest fuck-all to do with what you learned in school and the film was a violent thing about life in the ghetto and the people who live there. It made an important political commentary; for example, how angry do you have to be with life to be 15 and decide with your friends to smash up a car and set in on fire? Have you ever seriously felt the desire to do that on a Friday night? No, neither have I. It ended on a scene with a riot in the ghettoes. Something that was a serious fear in France in the mid and late 1990s. Then it cut to article 35 of the declaration of man and the citizen. I can’t remember it exactly but it essentially said that the citizen has an inalienable right, and duty, to revolt when he lives in despair and downtrodden by the government in power.

Which of, course, was what the brave Azerbaijanis were doing on CNN, clashing against the police to contest the fraudulent vole that would have given the president’s son daddy presidency. This the day after the New York times wrote « a son will inherit his father’s presidency in a strong-arm election that illustrates the failure of democracy and political freedom to take root throughout more of the old soviet union. » I felt cheered, in a sick kind of way, by the images.
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In a weird way, I agree with his opinion. And, no I haven't smoked weed dope today.

"un menu big mac, s'il vous plait. avec coca."