Television: The Audio-Visual Lobotomy.
Many years ago, a man working as a tamper had a nasty accident. The tamper’s job was to use a long rod to push dynamite into a hole in a rock face, and as one can imagine, back in the 1800s this was a fairly risky job. One day as he was ramming the explosive into place, it detonated, and drove the tamping rod through his skull; mashing the front part of his brain. He survived, but went through some quite serious changes in his character. He became very subdued for one thing. The psychologists of the time heard about all this and made a study of him. Within a very short time, they were operating on people with psychiatric issues; cutting out bits of brain, driving metal staples into patient’s frontal lobes, and generally fiddling about and turning people into vacant drooling vegetables. Along with this, they were passing massive electrical currents through their patient’s heads, frying their brains, and achieving much the same thing. This went on for decades; until some more sympathetic professionals decided that this was actually a bit cruel, and did not really cure anything. The whole idea was shelved, no more Lobotomy procedures. Then, a few short years later, ITV came up with a TV series called Coronation Street; followed a few years later by a BBC idea called Eastenders. Hot on their tails came The Jeremy Kyle Show, Loose Women, Big Brother, Hopefully I Will Be Famous When I get Out Of Here, The Only Way Is Essex, and a raft of other brain-squelchingly inane and trivial excrement to entertain the masses. It would seem the Lobotomy is back, it is here to stay, and a huge majority of the British public are saying “Bring it on!” and “press the record button; we can’t miss this episode!”.
Hang your heads in shame people. The British have, throughout the centuries, provided this planet with some of the finest adventurers, explorers, inventors, philanthropists and designers. And all for what? So we can sit and dribble with vacant grins on our faces as we watch a bunch of socially inept and spoilt upstarts tell us how wonderful they are? What on Earth has our society come to? And that’s just the “reality TV” shows. Then of course there are the soaps. We have a bunch of drug addicted immoral rapists and murderers who spend their lives either in the local pub, or trying to stab someone in the back. These characters will have no problem shooting up on heroine, or shooting someone in the face…..but God forbid they swear before 9pm! It seems sexual violence, drug addiction and trampling down our fellow man is good telly…..fine for the kiddies to watch….but the “F” word is plainly unacceptable….unless of course is on a cookery programme. Is it only me that finds all this a bit peculiar?
Let’s face it; the Soaps were aired to be a surrogate life for viewers who don’t have one. Sadly I hear people come up with excuses like “ooooh but they deal with real issues; and they can help.” And what a load of nonsense that is. I know a few people who have had to deal with serious issues in their lives, and they tell me that watching a soap with similar issues actually makes them feel worse, or brings up disturbing emotions or memories. So what is the real reason for watching them? Perhaps it is far easier and much less effort to sit on the sofa with a cup of tea and a Bargain Bucket and watch fictional people have a life, than it is to “get one” of your own.
Then of course there is the famous freak show presented by an offensive and overly aggressive bully. This is the programme where 17 year-old Britney Jordan Hilton from an underprivileged area of Bristol is paraded in tears before a live audience, as she moans about her boyfriend smoking pot and not contributing to the upkeep of their three kids….and it turns out he isn’t the father of any of them anyway and she has no clue who actually is. Why are we making these people subjects of entertainment? This is no different to parading people with birth defects around in a 19th century circus. It is taking advantage of the fallable and the vulnerable; playing on their lack of dignity, and at the same time stripping us of ours. And whilst we are feeding our precious minds with this utter drivel, the circus owners are raking in the cash and laughing all the way to the bank.
I am not saying I do not watch the TV, I like a good drama, comedy, documentary, and even the odd bit of sport. But television should enrich your life, not replace it. Mostly TV is dull. It is tedious. And it is an insult to our intelligence. Just because these people in these inane shows have as much brain power and charisma as a loaf of mouldy bread, it doesn’t mean we have to bring ourselves down to their level because it’s fashionable or has a catchy theme tune.
It must be time to realise what is happening to us; to see the effect these programmes have on us a society, and to see how this mindless drivel even effects our day to day conversations. There is an alternative. Get a life.
November 2013