Wednesday 12 March 2008

The worst yet

When you ponder eternal questions like

     Does God exist?
     Who created the universe?
     What is the meaning of life?

and so on, I bet no one ever thought there was a 21st century addition to the corpus. And it is, I suggest, Will 'reality' television never end in its grossness?

In what I thought was the most predictable and excruciating quiz show yet..a handsome young 'jock' (as the Americans call sporting types) sat in a chair and was asked a range of questions, each one totting up the dollars. Of course the questions got worse and worse...including "did you look at another man's private parts in the shower after the game?"
An even worse episode (one among many) is on YouTube below...but it is sickening.
The 'hook' of the series is, of course, how much humiliation will people subject themselves to for money?
There are other questions like: why is this stuff rating? why don't people get that there is a reason why we keep some stuff private? what responsibility do networks have for ruining people's lives, marriages and if people end up chronically depressed, or if they suicide (as is reported to have happened as a result of the  Jerry Springer show)?
While this show is called The Moment of Truth. It is anything but truthful and begs all osrts of questions about the sort of world we live in.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't PP ask "And what is truth?" and isn't the ? meant to be there?
Why waste time looking at rubbish?

Stephan Clark said...

I agree about wasting time looking at rubbish...but you see such things because the TV is on.
BUT I also have a bigger question about whether just ignoring this stuff is actually responsible...it is not only garbage it is demoralising and socially destructive. We shouldn't just ignore that should we?