Week 12
Motion: THS TV series Gogglebox as a pastime if it was greatly altered
Role: Deputy Leader (gov.)
There is a TV show which is a kind of meta show. It depicts people who watch TV and how they react to the programmes they are viewing. The format is English, but the formatting has been sold abroad, among others to my country, where it enjoys a moderate-popular-to-big-critical success. There is a demand for TV on people who are watching TV, strange as it seems. Quid est vita vicaria? Common people who relate to common people is likely one of the biggest reasons for this, but I am not content with remaining there. I would want to develop this programme to the next level, should I be given a carte blanche to break down, renew and upholster it completely for an umpteenth season.
Those Apts Are Too Clean
In the show, people sit in their neat sofas in their neat homes, collected from local chain-store furniture sellers. Because they are seen watching TV, they do not want to give an impression of being sloppy sloths, so they have probably spent some time cleaning their apartment, giving it a vacuuming, mopping, weathering and scrubbing. The end result is beige, below bourgeois, boring. Real middle-class members would have more dark colours in their homes, as dark is not worse than light. Contrasts are the flavour of living at home.
How would I change this? In my version, the apartments would be a mess. If the people had pets, they could walk around. If a home pet cat had the “Zoomies”, it would be a viewers’ delight. Unwashed dishes could be present, as their smell could not translate beyond the screen. Plastic bags filled with trash could be in the corridor, waiting to be borne out. The camera would need to be able to wander in the apartment, so that we would see how people live for real, not in a Barbie fantasy world. Real people’s homes are a mess; that’s why they do not invite these days ever anyone over, and that would need to be shown.
Those People Are Not Mean Enough
In the programme, people comment anything in a few words, not saying much. Laughter, repeating verbatim, riffing on words are the stock responses. Maybe they fear that talking over the programme would interfere with the “viewing pleasure” for the crowd who is watching. People shy away from nasty commenting, for fear of offending someone, maybe fearing a lawsuit based on slander, but that fear is ungrounded. In the privacy of their home, they would be allowed to say anything. I am relatively certain a solicitor would concur with me.
How would I change this? It would be paramount to give nasty comments as if off an assembly line. Black humour, disparages, insults, roasting the footage that was on display. Not all would, nevertheless, have to be negative. Kitchen-level philosophy could also come into play: associating something they hear or see with phenomena IRL. Creating rich allusions. The point would be to say something that the viewers liked to hear, something that was “surface-breaking” by nature. Bland comments about bland programming are not good enough. There needs to be a contrast. Bland programming needs to be outbalanced by sharper commenting.
Those Programmes Are Not Worth Viewing
The unfunny thing is that people in the show seem to like the kind of programming that has already been given the lion’s share in programming to begin with. They watch reality TV. And Gogglebox is a reality-TV show too. I understand that they do not want to rack their brains, and it’s ok!, but there is a wide variety of footage to watch that does not rack the brain. While Reality TV is the format that “anyone” is supposed to understand, in all honesty a lot of reality TV is semi-challenging viewing, which requires a full briefing and following up on what happens – all the time. It’s not the easiest genre available.
How would I change this? My grand idea would be to utilise all kinds of short programmes that are on offer out there. Animations, black-and-white goofball clips, comedy, commercials, news, short films, sports summaries, stunts, teasers and trailers would be good footage to show to almost anyone. To that you can add anything that YouTube contains, as it has by now become the world’s “favourite TV channel” in spite of itself. The bigger the contrast to reality TV the better it would be.
In my version, watching TV would be the shambolic pastime it is for most people in the world’s population. We are doing it because we cannot be arsed to do an useful thing, and we should own up to that. It would be important to acknowledge that a big percentage of the world’s population who watch TV are expats, freeloaders, inmates, unemployed, unwell and so on; NOT goody-2-shoes schoolgoing pupils or working fathers and mothers. (Many do not even have kids.) It’s only if and when we faced those facts that Gogglebox would come to terms with itself, redeem itself and ultimately perhaps even become “Programme of the Year“.
Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Tässä tapauksessa kannatamme likaisempaa versiota Tosi-TV-ohjelmasta, vaikka yleensä ihmiset valittavat “likaisuudesta” ja haluaisivat siistimmän ohjelman katsottavakseen. Annan parilleni näkökulmaksi Beavisin ja Buttheadin ja ohjeeksi sen, että nämä kaksi olisivat maailman tähän astisen kuluneen tv-historian kaksi parasta “sohvaperunaa” ja myös oman näkökulmani tietynlaisia esikuvia. Näin saisimme toisistamme yhtenäisen komplementaarisen tiimin.
Polar Ice Standpoints Society 