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Reality TV
The TV dance show thing is interesting, to say the least. In the first place, what's with the 'Strictly'? Obviously a reference to a crap 90's film called 'Strictly Ballroom' - but who cares? And now the whole silly TV phenomenon is known by practically everyone as "Strictly". It's silly because it manages to turn a very skilled and challenging activity - dancing - into a freak show cum peep show cum comedy show cum camp bitchfest.
Who watches? Every single age group, it seems. My 96 year old aunt thinks it's 'lovely'. For her it represents continuity and a link to the past. She has fond memories of years spent tuning in to the BBC to watch "Come Dancing" - a staple of my own family's viewing back in the monochrome years - when we had only one TV in the house, which we all huddled round in the winter, next to the coal fire. Impossible to escape to the bedroom in those days - too damned cold.
Aunt also has fond memories of our national treasure, the sainted Brucie, hosting popular 'family' shows such as 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium', with his stupid catch phrases and his dancing and his comedic schtick. How wonderful that Brucie is still with us, still doing his stuff. Not.
At the other end of the age spectrum there are teens and sub-teens who get off on the gorgeousness of the professional women dancers, the chance to check out the legs of popular celebs, and the attractiveness of certain of the male dancers. A family show indeed. There are saddoes all down the age range who love to letch at the participants, laugh at the bitchiness or nastiness of the judges, revel in the 'competition' aspect, and groan at Brucie.
And then there are the freaks. Thank you John Sergeant, Anne Widdicombe and others for providing such great entertainment. At least it's not the X Factor. At least they're not serious - they don't really believe they're amazingly talented and possess star quality. They aren't there to demonstrate their prowess as dancers. They do it simply to show that they can. Media whores will appear on anything - just as long as they're on the telly. Being famous and being a celebrity are serious occupations, it seems.
Thank goodness there are a few worthwhile 'reality' shows on TV. Gok Wan, Jamie Oliver and Gareth Malone have done some very interesting and worthwhile things. Jonathan Freedland wrote about them this week:
The success of The Choir's military wives suggests we're losing our taste for malice TV
No pantomime villain judges. And no losers. In the age of austerity we want shows that lift us up, not put us down
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/20/the-choir-military-wives-reality-tv
We've been told endlessly how shallow and materialistic, trivial and celebrity-obsessed, our society has become. It's another source of gloom, along with everything else life has thrown at us this year: earthquakes, war and scandal – all under a darkening sky of economic crisis. But this is the season when we try to focus on . . . causes for optimism, among them some small signs that our culture does not only elevate consumerism, cheap fame and a lust for riches, but other values too. And those signs can be found in the unlikeliest places, including the heart of crassness itself – reality television.
The military wives whose record is selling so fast are themselves a product of reality TV, the BBC series The Choir. The programme could not be more different from The X Factor. It is slow and gentle in style, but that's not the key difference to be celebrated.
Choirmaster Gareth Malone transforms a few dozen women on a Devon military base into a group able to sing together in beautiful harmony.
The months of rehearsal together turned them into something else. They started meeting at each other's houses, having informal rehearsals. They became bound together by the shared pressure to perform, whether at the local town or, eventually, at the homecoming ceremony for their returning men. "We feel like sisters now, helping each other out," reported one.
Unlike The X Factor or its imitators, The Choir is not a competition: the only prize is a sense of camaraderie and communal connectedness, a prize everybody wins.
The choirmaster never tells anyone they cannot sing. The result is not just a sense of solidarity that was previously missing but a boost to individual self-esteem. One woman after another tells their young instructor that they have found a confidence through singing that they had lacked before – that at last they had done something in which they could take pride.
In an earlier programme, Malone . . . took a gaggle of young men, who previously thought they could do nothing with aplomb except drink, and turned them into a tenor section. There, as on the military base, he took what were fractured groups and turned them into a community – and gave them a voice.
Malone's earnest belief in music and its power to transform, his patience with volunteers who have never sung a note, and their clear, expressed gratitude to him for changing their lives, is impossible to fake.
In among the rough of reality TV and the like, it's good to know there are diamonds like Malone – but he's not the only one. Gok Wan with his how-to-dress shows is in a similar business, taking women who have lost all self-belief and pushing them to see themselves in a new, more generous light. There are no withering one-liners, no pantomime villain judges, no losers – and no prize but an injection of confidence.
The pioneer of this sub-genre of reality TV, aimed at lifting up rather than putting down, may well have been Jamie Oliver. The Jamie's Kitchen series in 2002 followed the chef as he trained 15 disadvantaged young people, with the lure of a job in his new restaurant. He followed it with similar ventures, persuading both school drop-outs and school dinner ladies that they could raise their sights.
It would be cheery to see a trend here, with Malone's chart victory over Cowell presaging an era in which nice prevails over nasty, when the joy of collective solidarity edges out the cult of the narcissistic individual. Such a trend might even be a function of the age of austerity: after all, when there's so much real pain all around, who wants to see fake malice on TV?
But even if it reveals no such wider phenomenon, the military wives – freed at last to express through music the pain and yearning they had long held within – and their success, along with the man who made it possible, are something to celebrate. And in these straitened times, we need all the causes for celebration we can find.
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Real Lives
The problem with all of this is that it's putting sticking plaster on people who are already injured and damaged. How did they get that way in the first place? Why do so many people in our society have such low self esteem? Why have they never before taken part in activities that promote solidarity and collaboration? Why do they have such low expectations, low skill levels, low self-confidence? Why have they never sung, danced, played an instrument in a band, cooked well, dressed with confidence, etc? How did they become so inhibited, so overweight, so withdrawn, so apathetic, so unhappy? Why is our society so bad at raising people who are self-actualised, who fulfil their potential?
The people who take part in Malone's programmes invariably thank him for 'changing their lives'. The point is - why do their lives need changing? Why does our society produce so many people whose lives are unfulfilled, unproductive and uncreative? What's wrong with our ways of bringing up children that produces such people? What's wrong with our system of education?
Check out the previous blog, and Mehdi Hasan's column. Start thinking about how we might educate our young people so that they grow up with a personal voice, the habit of creativity, and the habit of reading for pleasure and learning for its own sake. Start thinking about our need to have a national conversation about personal intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, physical intelligence, instinctual intelligence and spiritual intelligence. Start thinking about our worship of test and exam results and 'the intellect' - and the impact of such worship on underachievement in every other aspect of our lives and our learning.
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Showing posts with label Strictly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strictly. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Friday, November 5, 2010
Layer 372 . . . Legacy Thoughts, Philosophy, Widdecombe, Strictly, Politics, Obama and Congress
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A Legacy of Thought
Having been a fairly avid listener to the 'legacy tracks' feature on Radio 4 for some time, I started thinking about the legacy of 'ideas' that our parents bequeath us - whether or not we know it.
One thing I've come to understand is that we often misunderstand things our parents say when we're young, especially when we don't have the critical capacity to think about them adequately, let alone challenge them.
We also need to realise that everyone's ideas, including those of our parents, tend to evolve and change over time. I would hope that my parents gained in wisdom over the course of their lives, and I assume they thought differently about certain things when they were, say, 50 or 60, as compared with when they were 30 or 40.
For the sake of clarity it might be an idea to write down the key ideas we'd like to pass on to our children as part of our legacy. Here are my current top 20. Tomorrow I'll list the following 20.
1. Pursue enlightenment rather than material wellbeing. The enrichment of the soul is far more valuable than worldly goods.
2. Accept the help, advice and support of others, but don't be dependent on them for survival and wellbeing. Take responsibility for yourself.
3. Learn the difference between falling in love and enduring love. Don't imagine that the endorphines-induced bliss of being 'in love' is sustainable. Don't overlook the dark side of other people, any more than you should overlook your own.
4. Don't imagine that the 'pursuit of happiness' will provide you with happiness, which tends to occur when you make the wellbeing of others your priority, and possibly make it your life's work. Don't be a martyr, however. Pursue work that's meaningful and fulfilling. Happiness is an indirect consequence rather than a direct goal.
5. Don't sacrifice your own wellbeing for the wellbeing of others. Take care of your own physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual health in order that you can help others with theirs. Become a three-dimensional and self-actualised human being.
6. Understand that the only highs worth having are natural highs. Avoid artificial stimulants and substance abuse. Eat and drink in moderation. Avoid strong doses of religion, and only use it as a temporary crutch if all else fails.
7. Realise that sexual pleasure is not necessarily the same thing as emotional intimacy and intensity. Making love is good, but isn't necessarily the same thing as loving.
8. There's nothing wrong with recreational sex, as long as its participants recognise it for what it is.
9. Learn to meditate, and take time to meditate, as a means of growing in spiritual intelligence, experiencing satori, and controlling destructive emotions. Learn about Zen. Zen is meditation, and a pathway to satori, reality, and oneness.
10. Discover your true self, and become your true self.
11. Learn about philosophy and religion, in order to understand other people - their beliefs and motivations.
12. Familiarise yourself with the works of great thinkers and writers.
13. Familiarise yourself with the uses and abuses of politics, economics and political thought.
14. Develop your capacity for creativity and creative self-expression.
15. Discover your true voice in speech and writing. Also in music and other forms of artistic expression, wherever possible.
16. Enrich your soul and spirit by experiencing and enjoying a wide range of music. Whenever possible learn how to play musical instruments, learn how to sing, and join with others in creating music - for pleasure rather then reward.
17. Pledge yourself to non-violence and the avoidance of harm to others.
18. Learn the arts of self-defence, such as aikido.
19. Learn the value of true friendship and links with others.
20. Learn the value of time on your own.
To be continued . . .
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Widdecombe and 'Strictly'
I've been meaning to write something about Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which I'm currently reading - but that's going to have to wait. Instead I just need to mention Ann Widdecombe and Strictly Come Dancing, which seems to have the nation in its thrall.
Widdy made the cover of G2 this week, under large headlines - "This sort of prolonged frivolity I haven't had in years."
It turns out that she's never, ever, enjoyed frivolity, and is only now turning to it in her retirement. And why not? I hear people say. Maybe because there's a problem with "having fun" when it's done through being or becoming an egocentric attention-seeking media whore with no dignity, no shame, and no sense of embarrassment at having no talent whatsover for the thing that she's meant to be doing and is causing people to laugh out loud.
Decca Aitkenhead published a highly sympathetic interview, however, in which she said,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/02/ann-widdecombe-strictly-come-dancing-fun
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Obama and Congress
I was going to write something about the defeat of the Democrats in the mid-term elections, but the whole thing is just too awful. I can't even raise the energy to think about Obama's problems and his triumphs. The whole American political system is appalling, and even the Democrats are well to the right of European conservatives such as Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron and Clegg. As for the Tea Party . . .
.
A Legacy of Thought
Having been a fairly avid listener to the 'legacy tracks' feature on Radio 4 for some time, I started thinking about the legacy of 'ideas' that our parents bequeath us - whether or not we know it.
One thing I've come to understand is that we often misunderstand things our parents say when we're young, especially when we don't have the critical capacity to think about them adequately, let alone challenge them.
We also need to realise that everyone's ideas, including those of our parents, tend to evolve and change over time. I would hope that my parents gained in wisdom over the course of their lives, and I assume they thought differently about certain things when they were, say, 50 or 60, as compared with when they were 30 or 40.
For the sake of clarity it might be an idea to write down the key ideas we'd like to pass on to our children as part of our legacy. Here are my current top 20. Tomorrow I'll list the following 20.
1. Pursue enlightenment rather than material wellbeing. The enrichment of the soul is far more valuable than worldly goods.
2. Accept the help, advice and support of others, but don't be dependent on them for survival and wellbeing. Take responsibility for yourself.
3. Learn the difference between falling in love and enduring love. Don't imagine that the endorphines-induced bliss of being 'in love' is sustainable. Don't overlook the dark side of other people, any more than you should overlook your own.
4. Don't imagine that the 'pursuit of happiness' will provide you with happiness, which tends to occur when you make the wellbeing of others your priority, and possibly make it your life's work. Don't be a martyr, however. Pursue work that's meaningful and fulfilling. Happiness is an indirect consequence rather than a direct goal.
5. Don't sacrifice your own wellbeing for the wellbeing of others. Take care of your own physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual health in order that you can help others with theirs. Become a three-dimensional and self-actualised human being.
6. Understand that the only highs worth having are natural highs. Avoid artificial stimulants and substance abuse. Eat and drink in moderation. Avoid strong doses of religion, and only use it as a temporary crutch if all else fails.
7. Realise that sexual pleasure is not necessarily the same thing as emotional intimacy and intensity. Making love is good, but isn't necessarily the same thing as loving.
8. There's nothing wrong with recreational sex, as long as its participants recognise it for what it is.
9. Learn to meditate, and take time to meditate, as a means of growing in spiritual intelligence, experiencing satori, and controlling destructive emotions. Learn about Zen. Zen is meditation, and a pathway to satori, reality, and oneness.
10. Discover your true self, and become your true self.
11. Learn about philosophy and religion, in order to understand other people - their beliefs and motivations.
12. Familiarise yourself with the works of great thinkers and writers.
13. Familiarise yourself with the uses and abuses of politics, economics and political thought.
14. Develop your capacity for creativity and creative self-expression.
15. Discover your true voice in speech and writing. Also in music and other forms of artistic expression, wherever possible.
16. Enrich your soul and spirit by experiencing and enjoying a wide range of music. Whenever possible learn how to play musical instruments, learn how to sing, and join with others in creating music - for pleasure rather then reward.
17. Pledge yourself to non-violence and the avoidance of harm to others.
18. Learn the arts of self-defence, such as aikido.
19. Learn the value of true friendship and links with others.
20. Learn the value of time on your own.
To be continued . . .
.............................................
Widdecombe and 'Strictly'
I've been meaning to write something about Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which I'm currently reading - but that's going to have to wait. Instead I just need to mention Ann Widdecombe and Strictly Come Dancing, which seems to have the nation in its thrall.
Widdy made the cover of G2 this week, under large headlines - "This sort of prolonged frivolity I haven't had in years."
It turns out that she's never, ever, enjoyed frivolity, and is only now turning to it in her retirement. And why not? I hear people say. Maybe because there's a problem with "having fun" when it's done through being or becoming an egocentric attention-seeking media whore with no dignity, no shame, and no sense of embarrassment at having no talent whatsover for the thing that she's meant to be doing and is causing people to laugh out loud.
Decca Aitkenhead published a highly sympathetic interview, however, in which she said,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/02/ann-widdecombe-strictly-come-dancing-fun
I last met Ann Widdecombe when I interviewed her 13 years ago. Although already out of government, she was still in her Doris Karloff phase – practically boasting about being "short and fat and ugly", and stridently anti-image, anti-celebrity, anti-vanity. But my suspicions were aroused when she got her office to call three times in the following week, to enquire about when the piece would appear. Hmm, I remember thinking. Not quite without vanity after all, then.
The more she talks, the more one can see quite how far she has had to shut down, to protect herself . . .
She will concede a certain sadness at how the career she chose, and for which she sacrificed so much, has lost much of its grandeur and dignity in her eyes. "Parliament was an institution of enormous standing when I was aspiring to go in. It isn't now. When I first went in we had very significant people there. I mean, in our intake there was a brain surgeon on the Labour side, a consultant gynaecologist on our side, we were taking in quite a high level, not a whole load of career politicians. And you look at parliament now and you cannot see the top lawyers, the top medical men, the top businessmen. They are not there."
. . . her basic approach to political life . . . essentially consists of telling people what they should be doing.
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Obama and Congress
I was going to write something about the defeat of the Democrats in the mid-term elections, but the whole thing is just too awful. I can't even raise the energy to think about Obama's problems and his triumphs. The whole American political system is appalling, and even the Democrats are well to the right of European conservatives such as Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron and Clegg. As for the Tea Party . . .
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