After a night of spending time with family, which ended up in watching brain-dead TV.
I’m going to try and talk about this as less as condescending as possible. It probably won’t happen, and I’ll offend half the people who decide to read this entry. But, I need to say it. After watching the ‘highlight’ of weekend viewing, which was Dancing on Ice, and being bored half way through the show, I felt like I had to say how stupid TV has become.
Maybe it’s because I am not an avid watcher of TV. I haven’t fallen into a habit of watching the television, just because I can think of nothing better to do. I couldn’t believe that a show about ‘celebrities’ learning to ice skate is the staple of ITV’s primetime, Sunday night itinerary. Why must the public be choked by people who are famous for having no real talent? It’s almost like by teaching them how to ice skate, they are giving them a skill, and publicising them all at once. Which is all it is ultimately, publicising people who can’t get a job elsewhere.
To me entertainment should be something enthralling, something that can take you off into another world. Watching a ‘WAG’ fall over on ice, is not enthralling, it is just sadistic, so that people can laugh at her. And to be told that this is primetime, weekend viewing, as if this is the best television that the UK can produce. If I were to watch anything on TV, I’d prefer it to be a documentary. But that’s just because I like watching a program where I can ‘take away’ something from it. But other than the seeing that Jane Torville has had ‘work done’, I don’t think many people would have taken anything from the Dancing On Ice ‘experience’.
Maybe, it is because I don’t watch a lot of television, as I find most of it stupid. It’s not just the ‘celebrity’ filled reality shows that annoy me. The soaps do as well. Things such as having a mother swap her dead baby for a live one, in Eastenders, made me change channel. Why is that considered entertainment? Do people really want to watch something so unbelievably depressing?
It is a proven fact, that if you get someone into the routine of watching television at a certain time everyday, they will still watch television at the set time, even if the TV show of choice has moved times. People say that they like the idea of ‘logging off’ from reality. Why? So that you don’t have to cope? They can submerge themselves in another world.
That sounds like an excuse drug addicts spout on Jeremy Kyle, or any other chat show. People are so unwilling, and lazy to actually deal with things, that they are always looking for something else to take them away from everything. Some have alcohol, some have drugs and some have television. Television is an obnoxious drug, a drug that effects every person in the developed world. People watch out of habit, more than actual interest of what is on.
People have become so dumbed down by television, that they can no longer parent. They plonk a young child in front of the TV, and blame it when the child breaks the law. If you are stupid enough to allow a child to watch programs which feature rape and drug addiction, then you lose your right to blame anyone but yourself. And rape and drug addiction, as well as child abduction and domestic abuse, are all features of UK based soap operas. Coronation Street, Eastenders, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks, does not have a balanced human being amongst them, and yet they are the most watched programmes in the UK.
I’m glad I don’t watch a lot of TV. Maybe I’ll hide in my bedroom, with my record collection and my library book.
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