THS TV series Gogglebox as a pastime if it was greatly altered

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Week 12

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Motion: THS TV series Gogglebox as a pastime if it was greatly altered
Role: Deputy Leader (gov.)

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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“.

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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.   

THR resuscitating the old TV show Juke Box Jury

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Week 4

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A Juke Box Jury in an informal setting over a table.

Motion: THS resuscitating the old TV show Juke Box Jury
Role: Member (opp.)

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An old TV show of a mixed reputation, Juke Box Jury, began broadcasting again after a hiatus of ten or fifteen years. (Edit: in truth, 19 yrs.) The show became obsolete when people landed in a position to indiscriminately download all the pop and rock music they wished for. According to a general critic born in 1964, whose judgment I trust because he was suitably mature to hear the Old School Version with receptive ears, the show “backfired in the sense that somebody always spoke too long; and the music was not understood in the way it was meant to be understood.” Hence, the points for the music were usually too low, or, in some instances, too high. And there was too much Trash Talk.

Artists’ Mutual Ratio Needs to Be “Scientifically Determined”
If the show took itself seriously, it would need to address right the question of What Will We Then Show? Namely, it is challenging, when on repeat, to say anything of substance about artists that are absolute beginners. On the one hand, you’d need back-catalogue erudition to say something of relevance by way of comparison; on the other hand, you do not want to slam too hard someone who is only starting out. The right ratio of artists to be (re)presented on the show would be 3:2:1: 3 internationally renowned artists x 2 domestically known artists x one 🃏/wildcard artist. It’s unlikely that there would be time to showcase more performances than that.

Alas, IRL the ratio is the opposite: they show 3 wildcards, 2 domestically known and 1 foreign performance. It seems the reason is that showing those performances costs. Even though it would be a cost-free ad, star artists do not give permissions to show their IP-protected material for free, like they did in the eighties–nineties, because their record sales have dropped so dramatically. Whatever IP-material profits they can make, they try to. This leads to the craven end result that showrunners show us wildcard artists ad nauseam and en masse, as their stuff is still likely free of charge to the producers, as the latter need that advertising (space).

“Erotification Mania” Ruins Everything
This was not a challenge before, but it is now. It seems the surface erotica that has crept up on us invades Juke Box Jury as well. One of the jurors showed up in a shirt that revealed his chest hair, mostly grey, not anywhere near that of an average Eighties hard-rocker. It caused your usual commenting frenzy. The female juror said that one of the artists presented was a “fu**boy”. She does not know what one is. She should be called in return a “rockw*o*e”, inasmuch as dirty talk is what she calls for.

We do not need the erotification of things that are entirely extramusical by nature. How many times have we been shown gratuitously too scantily clothed women who bare more than they should? The amount is staggering, a veritable Mount Fuji 🗻. So, stop right now moaning about chest hair. It goes with the territory that innuendo and invitations are flying in the air, but – surprise – that is not real sex. If you do not know how real sex differs from “sexualised surface”, you are having too little of the former variety. Juke Box Jury‘s development is in line with the rest of society. OnlyFans accounts have mushroomed, but they, too, sell “sexualised surface” instead of sex, on the strength of there being enough stupid customers out there.

Middle-Level Knowledge of the Vocabulary of Music Is a Prerequisite
It is also important, apart from one’s general feelings and gut reaction, to be able to say something about the specific arrangement and structure of heard music. You do not have to be on a Rick Beato or Steve Vai level to discuss it, but if the music, for instance, has a chord progression that does not vary but stays the same throughout the song, one should be able to point it out and say, say: “This song has a constant Em / D / A / Bm7 sequence behind it.” One should be able to distinguish a gated-reverb drum sound from playing with brushes. If one is so popmusically uneducated and tonedeaf to be unable to correctly point out such details, one’s place is not on Juke Box Jury duty. There is a real danger of overdoing it, so an ideal member would say such things as emphatic asides. The show is still meant as entertainment, not as a case study.

I don’t see any of my criticism happening to correct the flow of the show, so its renaissance is a dead end, a trivial pursuit. We do not want Juke Box Jury to become a music-fair showcase of barely emerging talent; that can be left to events like Lost in Music or SXSW in Austin, Texas, USA. Therefore, your best bet is to skip the show and press rewind, fast forward, pause or stop 📟 anytime it appears on the screen. Deus nobis haec otia fecit. You would spend your time much better cratedigging for vinyl in the crannies and nooks of your city than listening to hopeless people discussing hopeless music in a hopeless way.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Annan täystyrmäyksen paluun tehneelle tv-sarjalle, mielestäni oikeutetusti. Teoriassa voisin olla väärässä mutta käytännössä tuskin. Voisin toki kuvitella olevani vastakkaisellakin puolella, jolloin minun pitäisi kehua ohjelmaa, mikä voisi olla hauskaa. Kritiikkini voi esittää missä tahansa välissä; siksi esitän sen kolmantena.

THB fiction begins to be stranger than real life

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Week 51

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Ethnics in Midsomer Murders.

Motion: THB fiction begins to be stranger than real life
Role: Deputy Leader (gov.)

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Sometime in the Nillies, when John Nettles was still doing Midsomer Murders as DSI Barnaby, aided by his aide who is no longer around in the show, it was one of the most Caucasian ones around. Steadfastly, it refused to change along with the times. It was meant to portray a quintessential British count(r)yside Life. Accordingly, it had scantily room for foreigners, no matter whether they would have been immigrants, refugees or tourists. Nettles’s earlier show, Bergerac, set on Jersey, had been even more like that. MM was a show for those Brits who romanticised their past and for those Anglophiles who longed to have lived in the British past for any valid reason.

A Big Change
Then, the show changed due to outside, outsize pressure. It began to incorporate ethnic faces in its cavalcade of personnel. Little by little, ethnicities were included among bystanders, victims, village people and witnesses; but ultimately also among criminals, accomplices and perpetrators. Today, you can find just about any ethnicity in any role of agency, apart from that of Barnaby or his family. In this respect, Midsomer Murders resembles other British TV shows. Ethnic faces probably emerged first in hospital dramas, a socially conscious exclave, and from there they proliferated to all available fictive TV series.

If Midsomer County existed in Finland, it would be somewhere inland, probably in Northern Savonia or Central Finland, which is a province in its own right. These inland communities typically have few foreigners, because foreigners would prefer the bustle and hustle of Helsinki and other metropolitan, urban areas. The types of livelihoods foreigners have thrive better where the density of people is big and the networks are strong. Indian people, a small demographic in Finland compared with the UK, for instance, typically work in the hospitality business in the big cities.

Diversity Is Not Always Good
If we think about a place where you would not see any kind of ethnic diversity in Finland, that would be an upscale bar or pub. There, the clientele is exclusively Caucasian. Sometimes one can see African black men hanging around at low-price bodegas, with portions of beer priced at €3 or €4. I can guess at the reasons. Things that are prohibitive to foreigners (or white women) when it comes to drinking out are: a threat of violence, religion or the cost. Conversely, white men do not have compunctions with a threat of violence, price per stein or religious views, so they tend to be the only customer base around.

Introducing ethnic diversity in this mix would not be a good thing. It would mean that there would be more and more people with a grave alcohol problem among the overseas-linked population. It might also mean that these foreigners neglected their economy, families or religion. Caucasian men have paid a price to be able to constitute the bar population. That they do not have a blended, extended or nuclear family may be a price they have paid for being able to drink as free citizens. Now they enjoy that position, but it has not come for free.

There Is Reality, There Is Fiction and There Is a Reality Behind the Scenes
I would say that the most probable reason why ethnicities have invaded all possible platforms in fiction is not that they would be everywhere IRL. The farther you distance yourself from the capital city, the fewer their numbers are. The farther you distance yourself from the service sector, the fewer their numbers are. Nevertheless, they are likely very well represented in the machinery that creates fiction. They are on the payrolls of different agencies that broker actors, athletes, influencers, face models, Instagram posers, models and voiceover actors to different kinds of productions, typically in the capital city. On the wings of post-colonial guilt, when production companies hire them in great numbers, an impression gets created that foreigners are “everywhere”. A liberal’s consciousness/political correctness is on its own part creating illusions that are part of the Post Truth landscape.

I’m fine with the fact that we have reached a high point in hiring ethnic faces for our commercials, fictive TV series and motion pictures. But, there should be a measure of correction applied from now on and into the future. The amounts of foreigners in different roles they play in fiction should correspond to their percentages in those same roles IRL. It would mean both that there would still be roles for them to play in fiction – as different kinds of different foreigners have been a part of societies since the Middle Ages – but that that exposure and visibility would still be smaller than it appears to be today. We do not want our fiction to be so much stranger than our reality.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Keneltäkään mediaa seuraavalta ei liene jäänyt huomaamatta, että etnisyys on “räjähtänyt naamalle” mediassa, vaikka tyypillinen edullisten, paljon mainostettujen teollisuustuotteiden kuluttaja on edelleen valkoinen alemman keskiluokan jäsen. Siitä ei puhuta paljon rasismisyytösten pelossa, joten mikä sitä parempi kuin ottaa se puheenaiheeksi väittelyssä.