Wednesday 25 September 2013

Through the Looking Glass

I meant to write about this last year when it was first on, but... well...

We have to talk.

I mean I've left TV to it's own devices recently. The break-up was fairly amicable. I've been spending more time with the Xbox anyway, and every time I tried to catch up with TV, it started screaming at me about people I'd never heard of, playing terrible music at all hours and asking if I wanted to borrow any money. And to be honest, the sex was better elsewhere (*ahem*). It hadn't been the same since I was a teenager, and on the few occasions I could bring myself to turn it on, there was nothing there. The magic had gone.

Wanking metaphors aside, there is something genuinely disconcerting about Gogglebox. It's like someone sat a TV executive in front of news reports about privacy concerns surrounding the new Kinect and unease in the public mind towards the rise of so-called reality TV, and then followed it up with a viewing of Orwell's 1984; then lobotomised them and gave them a piece of paper and a crayon.

The resulting scrawl would doubtlessly have spelled out the show's central premise: Watching people while they're watching TV. That's it Britain, that's your cultural lot. You've gone from Elgar and Richard Curtis to staring slack jawed at someone staring slack jawed back at you. It's like chatroulette without the random stranger nudity, although I'm sure Channel 5 are already working out how to (A) get around that and (B) involve Keith Chegwin.

I mean it's just... It's fucking stupid, alright? TV is an inherently non-interactive medium, and nothing brings it home like this. Staring at people staring at a TV. Does it fulfil some voyeuristic longing to see into the lives of other, so called 'normal' people? Is it because most people sort of suspect that they're not normal, and want a yardstick to measure themselves and their opinions against? Are we just nosey sods?

Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to tune in to this week's episode, but I suspect I've been able to replicate the experience by sticking a mirror in the corner of the room, facing me. Oh look, he's typing on his laptop. Now he's picking his nose. Now he's wailing in abject despair at man's desperate, clawing need to consume inane drivel to fill the void modern life has torn from them. Hilarious!

1 comment:

  1. I share you confusion. I really cannot believe that as a society we want to watch that, and actively buy into the premise. I mean, each to their own, but sometimes their own is ridiculous, and should be stopped... *Ahem*

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