Ranthropologist

Tag: television

  • Daily Read: Bankrupt Reality

    Daily Read: Bankrupt Reality

    I’ve been feeling off my blogging game lately, which is why I haven’t been posting, but how could I not share this story about the worst excuse for a “reality” show I’ve seen yet? I’ve seen a few headlines about this over the past few days so I finally clicked on this story from Alternet, and read about the horror-show called The Briefcase. In short, the show pits two needy families against each other in a televised version of the prisoner’s dilemma in which they are asked to make decisions about how to use a briefcase full of money ($101,000, to be precise). They could keep it, donate some of it, or donate it all – and each family is mislead into thinking that the other family is the one in need of help when in reality they are both playing the same game (that is, EACH family has the same amount of money, but they believe that the other family has nothing). The decisions they make determine how much cash they walk away with in the end. Essentially, if one of the families decides to give all the cash to the other family, but that family chooses to keep all the cash, one family ends up with $200,000 while the other family has nothing. Vox has another take on the show that explains these details (and incidentally, from a viewer’s standpoint, pans the show as boring).

    I don’t know what to say about this other than that it fills me with disgust and rage. The rank exploitation of two families who are struggling to keep their heads above water and yet still bravely refer to themselves as middle class is horrifying. To call this entertainment is an insult to every performer who wished to please an audience. To call the executives at CBS who greenlit this monstrosity human strains credulity.

    New Reality Show Exploits Poor Families, Makes Them Grovel Over the Thing They Need Most

    ETA: Here’s another article that really does a good job of expressing how horrible this show is, from Vulture: On The Briefcase, Poor Americans Have to Prove Themselves

  • Mini Rant: Television Sucks

    Mini Rant: Television Sucks

    I went to the gym at lunch and had a choice of three TVs to tune into. I chose the one showing reruns of Law & Order: SVU over the two showing sports talk shows. I have never watched an episode of Law & Order of any kind. I am now very grateful for that. I know I can be a terrible snob, but seriously? This is what passes for quality television programming on the networks? It is unfathomable to me that such mindless, derivative, predictable dreck has ruled the airwaves for all these years. I have never been a fan of crime procedurals because they are predictable by definition; after all, they are about following procedure, right? But I was honestly shocked at how lame the dialogue was, how stereotypical the characters are, and how little nuance there was to the plot. Now that Breaking Bad has retired to the meth lab in the sky, I have been seriously contemplating canceling my cable altogether because other than sports, I don’t watch any shows (I do like The Walking Dead, which starts again soon, but I can live without it). I know there is good television out there but I don’t want to make the commitment. My stack of unread books just keeps getting higher, there are papers to grade, lectures to write, research articles to outline, crafts to make, friends to hang out with… I just don’t have time for television, and I think today’s shock just nudges me closer to cutting the cord.

  • It’s Never Sunny on Nancy Grace

    It’s Never Sunny on Nancy Grace

    I canceled my cable TV in July 2009. Since then, my only access to television has been at the gym or at other people’s houses. Now that I am getting close to finishing my dissertation, I am thinking about getting TV again. In some ways I have missed it; there are shows I like that I miss, such as Mythbusters, that I look forward to watching again. But at the same time, I have enjoyed the sense of freedom I have at not being a slave to the television schedule. Granted, I realize that plenty of people use TV the way it is intended; that is, as entertainment and not as a lifestyle. But thinking about reintroducing TV to my life has made me ponder the many things I do not like about modern media programming. So let the rant commence!

    When I am at the gym, there are three TVs overhead that can be viewed from the treadmills. One is usually showing a sports channel, one is cable news, and the other is often tuned to the Food Network (aside: who the hell thinks it is a good idea to have cooking shows playing while people are working out? I really don’t want to see frigging Paula Deen making pies while I am trying to burn calories!) My beef is with the cable news channel, usually HLN (Headline News – CNN). What they show is not news. Okay, okay, yes, each half-hour starts with a run down of actual news, but I need to define my terms here. Let me distinguish in this way: News, with a capital N, is information that is important for people to know. This includes weather events, political issues, international affairs… the serious stuff. The other news, with a little n, is junk food. Entertainment stories, human interest, even stuff like crime news… these are informational Twinkies.

    I concede that my definitions of News and news are very broad, but I don’t want to get bogged down in the details. The point is, it seems that producers don’t think viewers want to hear the News. The News tells people what is going on in the world so they can be informed about what their leaders are doing, what their country’s relationship is with other parts of the world, what critical events (e.g. a hurricane, a demonstration, an election, food recalls, illness outbreaks) may be affecting their portion of the country. The news, on the other hand, gets people fired up about things that are, in the big scheme of things, much less important than the News. This is obvious when it comes to entertainment and sports, but less so when it comes to things like crime. But herein lies the real crux of my beef: WHY is it considered newsworthy when a child is abducted? Or when a husband murders his wife? Or even when there is a big car wreck? I’m not saying these things aren’t important to the communities where they occur, and obviously they are important to the people directly involved. But what does it say about us as News/news consumers that cable news shows spend an inordinate amount of time on a child abduction? I’m talking to you, Nancy Grace. I mean, really, WTF? The sensationalization of crime is out of control on these shows. But the sad thing is that it’s much easier to find a talking helmet head like Nancy Grace blathering about a child murder or what have you than it is to find rational, substantive, and objective commentary about the ongoing war in Afghanistan, or the significance of the recent election, or the impact of joblessness on America’s cities. Why are there no one hour talking head shows about that? Yes, yes, there are political shows, but I’m talking about News, not a Roman theater of arguments and insults that do nothing to reveal the true nature of the debate.

    So I guess if I do get TV again, I’ll just stick to watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

  • Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson

    Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson

    My knee has been bothering me a little bit, so instead of going for a run outside today, I went to the gym to do 45 minutes on the elliptical. This was at about 11 am. I never watch television on Saturdays, especially during the day, so I was intrigued to see that several channels on the overhead monitors were showing the TV equivalent of spam, i.e., infomercials. One starred Heidi Klum. She was hawking a line of face products designed to cover wrinkles, complete with “unretouched” (but not unblurred or unlighted) before and after photos. Another one was making the preposterous claim that YOU can buy YOUR OWN PROPERTY for ONLY PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!! Yes, that’s right, YOU could own A HOUSE LIKE THIS for only A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! On yet another screen, 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON was selling financial kits that will allow YOU to MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN JUST A FEW HOURS doing online stock trades. These “programs” brought many questions to my mind, not the least of which was why the hell I should trust 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON to give me financial advice.

    Are there that many gullible, ignorant, naive, and/or just plain stupid people out there who fall for this stuff? I guess there must be, because the infomercials persist. It’s a sad indictment of our culture that we are caught between two conflicting mythologies: the cultural value that those who work the hardest will have the most success, and the tantalizing idea that anybody can get rich quick. Both of these propositions are absurd, but there are enough people out there who fit the myths that people believe them. This is a perfect example of confirmation bias – only acknowledging or remembering the evidence that supports your view, and ignoring the evidence that doesn’t. My personal name for this is the “plane crash theory.” You remember the planes that crash, because nobody talks about the ones that land safely. Can you imagine how boring (and not to mention long) the nightly news would be if the safe landings were reported? “We now turn to Bob Bobson for tonight’s safe landing report.” “Thanks Brian. Today, planes landed safely in Topeka, San Jose…” (Three hours later…) “Now back to you, Brian!” Obviously this can work the same way for our cultural beliefs about success and making money. The recent immigrant who works two jobs for minimum wage just to pay for a ghetto apartment that he shares with five other people might not agree that the hardest workers have the most success. But for every ten thousand hard-working, yet low income people, we have a “boot strap” story about somebody who “overcame tough beginnings” and became a millionaire. This is what we remember. And, for all the thousands of people who sign up to sell Amway or Acai berry juice or whatever and fail to get rich, there are one or two people who do succeed, and again, this is what we remember. It is all magical thinking, complicated by those correlated, but not causative, success stories. So, what’s the moral of the story? For me, I guess it’s “don’t go to the gym on Saturday mornings!”