Showbiz and why I couldn’t care less.

I’ve probably watched as much TV in 2 years as most people watch in a month and that is no exaggeration. That excludes Netflix series. I have no interest in watching TV bar the odd episode of Family Guy, The Simpsons, Match of the Day, or Gillette Soccer Saturday. The last person I could tell you won x-factor is Alexandre Burke, and even then I thought it was JLS for a minute. I have never watched more than a couple of hours of Big Brother. I did go through a guilty-pleasure phase of watching TOWIE. I don’t have a clue what the Kardashians are doing and I don’t even know what song is number 1 in the charts. The last time I watched Eastenders was when Bradley fell off a roof untill of late when I amused myself at Stacey going loopy round my mates house for a few weeks. All in all, I really don’t care about ‘what’s’ going on in the world’ because I am more interested in what is going on in the world.

I was discussing my up and coming University interviews with one of my college classmates and she asked me if I knew what was going on in the news. I have been aware for a few months that I do need to know what is going on in the world in preparation for my interview. I keep up to date with the news inconsistently but I have my own understanding of the current state of affairs. I asked her if she thought I should trawl through news websites as I have admittedly not kept up to date with the broadcast news lately as I have been focusing on myself. She said yes. She told me that I need to know and that she got asked about the news in her interview. This is something I knew was part of it. But then she turned round and said humorously ‘If you don’t know who’s in X-factor you’re screwed, they asked me to name who was voted out of x-factor this week.’ I laughed for a few seconds. Then I was hit with a realisation of irony within myself. Irony in the sense that I want to be an investigative journalist that writes to perhaps uncover truths or shed light on alternative angles, yet to get there I could be disadvantaged because I don’t know who’s in X-Factor. LOL. Also, I suppose it provides a realistic reminder that my ambitions will not be easy or quick to achieve and that I am entering a field whereby I will probably have to bite my tongue for long periods of time and write about things I couldn’t care less about. This is sad but it is realistic.

It is sad that the western society that exists today is engulfed in a whirlwind of consumerist trends and interests that have been created to provide such a convincing sense of realism and importance to what we consume. It is sad that people are so obsessed with Kim Kardashian — who is famous for ?— when Kim will never know or have any desire to know who they are. It is sad that our preferences and behaviours are influenced by people we idolize but don’t know, and people we follow but don’t see or speak to. It is sad that our moods are influenced by situations that have no relevance or significance to our lives. It is sad that we do not realise it is sad.

The TV and the newspapers and the magazines and the social media sites are such rich sources of so much diverse information. We can find out what’s going on in the world in a matter of ten minutes. From showbiz, to war, to sport, to politics, to local news, to travel news, to the weather, to science, to technology, to education. Some sources focus on formal matters, some are more casual. Some sources are in print, some broadcasted. Some are factual, some are opinionated. Some are open-minded, some are refined. However, no matter what topic is being discussed or reported or explained or broadcasted, and who is delivering it — everything is tailored in a way that suits those who tailor it, everything is real but not everything is reality, everything is touched on but not everything is shown.

I have mentioned the idea of ‘convenient smoke screens’ before. By smoke screen I mean an illusion and a misrepresentation of reality. Reality in terms of who the people above us are and in terms of their true motives. Reality in terms of us being sold dreams that seem relevant- dreams that paint a good picture of those who are selling them. Writing this now reminds me of a conversation I was having over a spliff with one of my friends the other week and something he said that had me in stitches over the way he narrated it but was so so true. He was imitating ‘those above us’ when referring to what is shown in the news: ‘yeah.. i’m afraid we have had to bomb 10,000 innocent civilians… BUT we have set up a lemonade stand up for the homeless.’ Of course, this is extremely exaggerated but I feel this is much more accurate representation of reality. This also makes me grateful to know that I have surrounded myself with people that also choose not to breathe in the suffocating smoke-screen that pollutes our eyes and ears and minds. The relevance of this is to understand that showbiz is one of the biggest contributors to the convenient smoke-screen that deflects our attention from what we should be questioning and raising awareness of. And if you can’t figure out what that is, stop breathing the smoke in.