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.   

THP an empty, new apt. to a familiar, furnished one

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Week 18

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NB. P stands for Prefers

In one’s digs, there is less space than one’d imagine.

Date: 3^rd May 2022
Motion: THP an empty, new apt. to a familiar, furnished one
Role: Member (gov.)

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We have, so far, heard how a new apartment symbolises a new beginning and is a sign of mobility. What I want to contribute to this discussion is how easy it is, as a matter of fact, to fill up an apartment with new furniture. On the one hand, a new tenant is supposed to bring with him or her all necessary personal belongings, such as books, folders, photos and x-rays, but on the other hand the space in itself can be filled with new acquired furniture quite easily and fast. In the following I go through the process in terms of each social class. What unites the three classes in the middle is that they get their income from work, with a rising salary or wages, all the way up to the top of what can be earned in general. The lowest and highest class conversely do not get their money from work.

Underclass: Charity, Donations and Flea Markets
The poorest of the poor cannot afford to buy their furniture at a cost. They rely on the cheap or free stuff. The postmodern version of a flea market has been around ever since economic recessions have hit us, since circa 1987 (the time of the first Wall Street movie). Underclass, who may be defined as people whose only source of income is allowances, benefits and gambling wins, buy their furniture recycled or get it otherwise without a high cost.

Working Class: Plywood and Synthetic (Leather, Plastic, Rubber) Materials
These days the working class is a class that is endangered or at least vulnerable in terms of its conservation status. The poorest of the working class are close to the underclass measured in money, while the wealthiest of working class border on the upper middle class. Nevertheless, working-class people have a tendency to favour artificial furniture that is made industrially. They would find their cabinets, chairs and tables in national chain stores of furniture, varying from country to country.

Lower Middle Class: IKEA
Members of lower middle class are the biggest target group of advertising agencies for furniture makers. One big player is IKEA, which is a big advertiser and has spread globally to countries that would have been forbidden and unthinkable as late as the 1980′s. IKEA furniture could be bought by working classes; however, it is a bit more international in flair and its Scandinavian reductive style, complete with whole kitchen ranges and everything else that is needed in a postmodern home.

Upper Middle Class: All of the Above and Design
The big change that began since the 1990’s was that the upper middle class became eclectic in its interior design tastes. The result is that one such home today is a hodge-podge of new and old, cheap and dear. What separates the upper middle class from the lower classes is that upper middle class is capable and willing to invest in design specimens, even classics of design. Often the ceramics, cutlery, glassware, kitchenware and linen of the upper middle class is design, with complete sets of the items in cabinets and cupboards. That is the little extra that comes for being a member of upper middle class in terms of money and taste.

Upper Class: Antiques, Heirlooms and Design
The wealthiest do not care too much about the cost of furniture as they are so “loaded”. They tend to buy what others can’t and whose existence others do not even know about. Besides, they invest in sculptures and paintings. So, they naturally gear towards old furniture that has stood the test of time. Because the sq. metres and sq. feet of real estate are just as expensive to the upper class as to everyone else, they can fill up their apts. fast even with antiques. Upper class may be defined as people whose income is based on capital gains. This includes beneficiaries of dividends, futures, obligations, royalties, warrants and other speculative instruments of the financial markets.

Apartments in their own right are just as expensive to all classes and buyers tend to get very little livable area in a given apartment. The real marker of class is not how big apartments are but in what neighbourhoods they lie. For all that, what unites people from the underclass to the upper class is that no matter what the apartment looks like, its owners today tend to spend a lot of time outside of it and when inside, live in a digital bubble powered by broadband smart devices. In other words, they have become digital and nomads respectively, digital nomads, to whom home no longer has to be a special place the way it used to be in the analog world. Thus, our side would say that an empty apartment is a form of luxury to all the classes, as it may be filled up so fast with furniture, according to one’s class, either because furniture is so affordable or because the space is so small or because empty space in itself is a form of luxury.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Keskustelu liittyy minimalismiin ja vallalla olevaan, joka toisen yhteiskunnan jäsenen pyrkimykseen raivata rojut pois häiritsemästä. I tiimille kuuluu tuulettaa keskustelua omilla näkemyksillään asumisen arvoista, siinä missä minä vien keskustelua uusille urille puhumalla luokista, sillä usein niistä on hankala puhua, eikä siihen useinkaan uskaltauduta.

THR the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of the labourer

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Week 18

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A century back, the labourer had nothing but the blisters on his hands and literally zero job security without a safety net. Now he has it All.

Date: 7th May 2021
Motion: THR the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of the labourer
Role: Deputy PM (gov.)

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NB. This post reflects the situation in Smalltown Finland and is not to be taken as the truth about construction workers Abroad in Big Cities.

What has happened recently is that joblife has become polarised. Cushy middle-class jobs are vanishing at an alarming rate, meaning often that their current holders are allowed to keep them until they retire between 60 and 70, but they are not leaving any vacancies; those vacancies implode and cease to exist. New jobs are created at the two ends: specialised high-tech white-collar jobs and specialised low-tech blue-collar jobs, but no industrial jobs; jobs that require a degree of craftsmanship and independence, as opposed to the assembly lines of old. Economists, doctors and lawyers have vacancies as usual, and the IT industry has a food chain of its own.

I am concentrating on those manual and menial jobs at the low end. What is different from the days of the past is that this time around the jobs are well paid, possibly because the amount of money in society has exploded in general and because there is more to go around because of the hollowing out of the middle class. The grunts’ rise has not done good to them. They are not entirely at home in this new reality, where the middle class, their greatest enemy, is under the blade but they do not mix with the upper crust at all. I go through the xymptoms of malaise that the grunt displays right now.

Smugness in Terms of Attire
In the past, you could not tell who was a construction worker or a manual labourer, because those whom it concerned hid it so well. At work, they wore their work outfits but they exited through the locker room, where they changed into their civilian gear. They took pride in wearing ordinary clothing when they were not working. They were like anyone else. They drank and read and enjoyed their wages. A more sure way to spot a working man was to look at his car. Cars manufactured in the Eastern bloc (Dacia, Lada, Moskvitsh, Skoda, Trabant, Wartburg) was often the choice of someone who steadfastly voted for Socialist parties and had a background of a labourer. In the parking lot, you could tell who was a leftist but when that person was in the store, it was not clear. If the person had a sport as a hobby, (s)he practised it among the members of working people’s sports clubs, societies and teams. Today no such pride is shown. Working people go to the store 9 PM in the evening, still wearing their dirty work clothes. Locker rooms are not used. They are unkempt, shop fast and hop into their cars. They exchange no pleasantries. If they smell, they do not care.

Smugness in Terms of Hours
Construction sites spring up here and there but you seldom see anyone working there. For some reason, job opportunities are apparently so plentiful for the construction worker, that he does not have to work at all. Delays, lags and logjams can always be blamed on someone else not doing their job. Being absent or waiting seems to be a legitimate way to spend a working day. Especially frustrating this is when the construction work involves ripping up a city street, exposing some pipes or wiring and – leaving it at that. In the past, the infrastructure job would have been carried out as fast as possible, and workers took pride in not interfering too much with a city life.

Turmoil in Terms of the Lifestyle
All the money that grunts earn they can keep after paying taxes. They do not invest and they do not do conspicuous consumption. They do not travel. Typical of them is that their lifestyles is a “mess” of contradicting social class styles. They usually drive a used car that used to be an executive’s car five owners back in time, a Mercedes, Volvo or SUV. They live with their spouses and offspring in a detached house of their own, mortgage for which has not been paid back yet. Inside of their houses, a reminder of their working-class roots is that they drink alcoholic soda-pop drinks or cheapest beers, often b(r)ought in off ferries that sell the stuff duty-free. They watch sports on TV but do not do sports for real nor are interested in culture. Their lifestyle is a true mixture of upper middle class, lower middle class and working class.

Working-class people do not feel joy at this recent, surprising turn of their fortunes. Instead of being genuinely happy, they seem to be filled with gloating, schadenfreude and smugness. They take the money and run with it, but it does not make them happy, apparently. They are more at odds with their neighbours, the teachers of their children and anyone who crosses paths with them while they are walking their dog. They resent foreign labourers who do the same job as they do but on the cheap, thanks to standard-of-life differences in respective countries. At elections, they vote for parties that would drive foreigners out of the country.

Quite simply put, construction workers and labourers are faced with a situation that is alien to them and disorienting at best: they are nouveau riche. They have the typical maladies of people who have earned a little too early a little too much and don’t quite know how to cope with it – gracefully. Piss goes to the head and it is hard to keep it screwed in its place. Our side regrets the hollowing out of the middle class and the Rise of the Construction Worker slash Labourer. It feels as if several columns of a contour of a demographic graph had been erased, and the resulting figure was disfigured – like the Lowdown Lifestyle of the Labourer.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Voisin yhtä hyvin esittää puheen puoleni ensimmäisenä puhujana. Olen täynnä sappea ja tarkkanäköistä, terävää analyysia eräästä yhteiskuntaluokasta, ilman että olen seurannut sen elämää kovinkaan läheltä tai tuntien oikeasti sen edustajia. Kaikki havainnot on tehty julkisilla paikoilla pintapuolisista observaatioista yhden vuosikymmenen aikana. Siitä huolimatta tämä puhe sopii puolelleen kuin nyrkki silmään, sillä kun hyökätään, on hyökättävä eikä “pyydettävä anteeksi”.

THB that rock n’ roll is not meant for lazybones, loiterers and romantics

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Week 14

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Date: Apr 3rd, 2019
Motion: THB that rock n’ roll is meant for lazybones, loiterers and romantics
Role: MP (opp.)

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Arttu Wiskari
A new artist has hit the radio “meanstream” in Finland in recent years. His name is Arttu Wiskari. He is currently the star of a reality-tv series about the record industry called ‘Dreams and Studiojobs’. The series is a surprise hit, winning one over with the candid talk to the camera and the cameos ordinary or famous music makers make at the low-key facilities that the crew use as their HQ. Also, the show dispels all the delusions one might have about an artist like Arttu Wiskari, when one sees the real work and real banter that lies behind the hits one can hear on the radio.

My first impression of Arttu Wiskari was the same as that of many of my countrymen. We irritated ourselves over the kitchen-sink lyrics about ordinary lives sung in a slightly flippant way to a slightly cheesy synthesised background. But, as the tunes were melodic in quality, the songs soon became staple fare on mainstream radio stations. Wiskari and his crew began to make money. Today, they consist of 5 men at the studio and 5 in the live band, so it’s not an operation of Michael Jacksonesque proportions. Yet, the end results hit like “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” did in their time.

I have decided that I won’t belittle anymore anybody who crosses over as a slightly irritating new act who sings kitchen-sink stories against any kind of bleepy musical background. In the end, (s)he will win out most likely. I learnt my lesson by way of observation fifteen years ago, when a similar kind of thing played out in the Finnish music press. At the time, the vocalist and bassist of CMX, the biggest band then among fans and critics, AW Yrjänä, lamented that a new talent called Anssi Kela was making himself heard in rock music and watering it down. A little bit like Noel Gallagher was lamenting that Chris Martin was a bedwetter, initially. Or Morrissey saying in 1993 that Brett Anderson was “a boring young man”.

Anssi Kela
Kela (b. 1972) sang kitchen-sink lyrics about ordinary lives, while AW Yrjänä (b. 1967) was known for his abstruse lyrics about history, mythology, religion and technology that never had any rhymes to help make them more memorable. He could memorise them by heart by the verse, whereas Kela was a minimalist, who wrote sparsely, economically and in a language that anybody could understand. These two were clear opposing poles: one was a fickle realist and the other a dyed-in-the-wool symbolist. Ultimately, Kela’s music waxed in popularity and that of CMX waned, and soon it became clear that the former had come to the business to stay and the latter would have to settle with being the elder statesman of alternative rock in the country. The two get along famously by now, so the initial acrimony has evaporated a long time ago.

Anssi Kela, left & Arttu Wiskari, right

The thing is that we have to remember what rock music was originally. It was working-class music at the outset. Misfits like Bill Haley and Chuck Berry sang songs of taking breaks from work, rebelling slightly and having fun. Occasionally, white people with non-working class backgrounds have taken over the development of rock ‘n roll and turned it into psychedelia, prog rock, art rock and alternative rock, but every now and then it gets backhijacked by representatives of the original working-class ethosholders, who simplify it lyrically and musically and turn it comprehensible again. This has happened  numerous times with e.g. punk rock, funk rock, folk rock and blues rock movements. In light of this, Anssi Kela was just revisiting a time-honoured tidal phenomenon of rock n’ roll.

The Ponzi Aspect of the Business
Apart from being working-class culture, rock music seems also to be a Ponzi scheme, somewhat counterintuitively. But if you think about it, it has many kindred traits with Ponzis. In a Ponzi, there’s a first-come-first-profit principle. It has always puzzled me why older musicians are doing just fine, when they sometimes do not record or tour at all. Could it be that the profits from younger artists go to the maintenance of older ones? Also, old musicians just do get much more royalties annually in the legal way as their music is played at regulated FM radio stations the world over, while music fresher than that is not — or even newer records by mature musicians.

It is still possible to make it in music business, but the amount of equipment, time, money and nerves a new artist has to burn to get heard has grown to new heights in comparison with what it was in the 60’s when all of this was pretty much in its infancy. At any rate, it may help if one keeps the old tenets of rock n’ roll in mind while aiming for the stars. Remember, it used to be working-class music. If rock n’ roll has changed, it may have to do with with how the working class has changed within the same time frame.

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Arvio: Tarkoitus on antaa I tiimin jutella oma antinsa. He ehkä keskittyvät Bruce Springsteeniin, James Browniin, roudareiden panokseen, festareiden järjestelemiseen tai johonkin muuhun aiheeseen, jonka annilla voi olla opposition edustaja. Uskon, että oma panokseni erottuu erilleen ja edukseen noista aiemmista, jolloin whipille jää tehtäväksi solmia langat yhteen ja vakuuttaa yleisö motionin vastakohdasta.