Video killed a lot more than the Radio Star...

Got thirty six odd channels on TV, of those BBC (always) and MTV (sometimes) are in English. Didn’t opt for ‘Kabel’ as they say in Deutsch.

By the time I get back from the Plant, its generally past seven. This far west, the sun sets late and in the evenings its nice to walk around the streets, sit at café tables and drink beer, or sit on the bench under the lime tree and look at the flaky clouds in the sky.

Sometimes when it’s late and there are still a few patrons dining at the restaurant, they leave the stone fountain running.
In the still of the night the water falling on the stones - sounds like syllables from a lost language.
Okay now getting back to what this whole post was about,

The first thing which struck me about European Television is the surfeit of Reality Shows. There are all sorts, gags pulled on celebrities and regular people. Blind dates of all sorts - the plain vanilla ones, girl going out with two guys and then choosing one at the end of the hour, girl and guy out for the evening - making moves on each other based on text instructions from friends, who by the way are watching the whole evening unfold on hidden camera. 

Then there are those ones where a bunch of people are made to co-habit. On one particular currently running series, a dozen people are housed in this cottage up in the Alps. There are hidden cameras all over the place, and the whole show is an exercise in group dynamics really. The viewers are supposed to vote out one person a week, and the last man or woman standing end up getting an obscene amount of money or something. And then there is of course the German version of Big Brother, where an eye in the sky (more like a camera in every corner of the house) just takes over the lives of people.

It is said; the movies introduce or destroy social trends, while television actually mirrors society itself. The whole popular flavor of European Television is all about intrusion into the private lives of people, does that then suggest that the current European generation is one of degenerate compulsive peeping toms?

I think that is just the symptom, the malaise runs deeper. The Western world in general, has seen the whole sense of society, the whole sense of ‘the collective’ really going downhill over the last hundred odd years. Instruments of social cohesion - the extended family, the church, the local council have all woefully disintegrated, producing a generation of very lonely and isolated individuals. People who because they are not in touch with lives apart from their own, have this primal propensity to reach out to people, to see what happens in others lives, to get the inside dig about the fears, loves, weaknesses and passion of others.

Frankly , Reality Television is a reflection of this phenomenon, and the continuous camera totting interest in people’s lives is just a way to feed this overriding desire to reach out.

Look at it this way, in India for example, we still have the family structure fairly intact. We have big weddings - with the motley assortment of cousins, aunts, family friends and all of that. We still meet infrequently at least - for childbirths, engagements, anniversaries and deaths. Our festivals, the pujos or dusshera for example, is still about reaching out. It is still about pandal hopping, having people over in our homes, its still about visiting friends and family. Yes we do light our lamps in our houses at diwali, but then we either go out and meet with people or alternately open our doors to them.

Contrast this with the western world - Christmas is usually spent in the company of the Christmas tree. The mechanisms for social interaction and cohesion is eroding rapidly, society is just a word.

Maybe this entire social critique thing is just me bored and lonely at a beer garden on a weekday evening. Or maybe there indeed is some truth in all of these musings.
I don’t know, but I intend to find out...somehow!

Labels: Travel