Monday 23 June 2008

Grim Pickings

The hermeneutic of television is a fascinating thing. If one were, for example, to do research on how representative Sunday night viewing is of the breadth and depth of our culture, it would be quite interesting.
The ABC at 7.30 had the exquisite Wild China. I hope this will go down in the annals as one of the great documentaries. But I watched "Battle of the Choirs" on 7. What a great show. For those of us who love community music, it gives you real up. With 4 billion per cent more heart than Idol, there was both a real sense of competition and a powerful message about what is happening in real Australia. BUT...it's tear jerking stuff, it's really hard to compare one man's music with another's...
Of course being a man I had to channel flick, because Wayne Carey was on 60 Minutes. Now this was interesting, as 9 so threatened by Battle and Wild China that it had to play the 'titillation card'. Maybe!
Any way I ended up recording it. I do not know whether I will be able to stomach watching it. It seemed pretty stage-managed. Even the black mongoose himself....Ray Martin...seemed so enamoured of Carey that he didn't really manage to shake his arrogant persona (this was a far cry from the Denton interview...here...and one wonders if it was a corrective by Carey's media machine) The most laughable end to that interview was Carey declaring that he wanted to use this experience to become a 'counsellor'. I mean the man, while being media savvy, is as thick as a plank!
It gets worse because then the first of the two part series about Schapelle Corby......and it went on and on and on ...and I am still none the wiser.
I wrote some years ago about the (please explain) 'xenophobia' which was promoted in this case.
I was deeply disturbed when in Indonesia to erad an article by an Australian expat, the thesis basically being that the Indonesian legal system is corrupt to the nth degree.
Now, I guess, a case can be made for that. Gee our own system is so spotless!
But we have not so much allowed ourselves to hear the facts as to be appealed to as racists.
I was left unsure wehether this was what was happening here.
I don't want to have to watch episode 2 on Tuesday.
Compass had a deeply depressing but, it seemed to me, very important program about Torture (here)
Apart from all this, Hamish and Andy on the Rove show drank milkshakes and rode a roller coaster to see who would vomit first and the most.
Such was Sunday night.
Ah well I need to go and watch Wheel of Fortune!

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