Reality TV

I find it ironic that people in Britain should complain about racist comments being thrown around in Big Brother. The reality is that there are many racist people in our society and BB (Big Brother), being a reality show, inherited the vice.

I am confused as to whether the complainers are denying the existence of racism in their country, or are they angry at BB revealing too much reality? The former claim is obviously false, as demonstrated by the participants in BB, whereas the latter is self-defeating: people watch BB because they like seeing reality on TV, but that "reality" better conform to their moral standard. Trouble is, the scenario where everyone does conform to the moral standard is not the reality. It appears those viewers are unsure of what they want to see: the whimsical actions that is reality, or the unlikely chain of events carefully crafted by storytellers.

Time is scarce; therefore I am picky

My time is filling up. Apart from eating, sleeping and other "housekeeping" activities, there are uni classes, homework, revision and work. Upon completing these tasks I can move onto more leisurely activities. The problem is, by that stage I am usually left with insufficient time to do all the fun things I planned to do.

Let's use TV as an example. There are many TV shows I like watching. Altogether they roughly add up to 10 hours per week. I simply do not have 10 hours a week for TV, unless I give up all my web surfing, newspaper/book reading and even some optional studying. Therefore I began to reduce the number of shows I would watch, which means being picky about my TV consumption. As my workload increases, so does my pickiness.

So I stop watching every TV show or movie that comes my way, unless they are worthy of my time. I go through the newspaper much quicker than before because I skip the uninteresting columns, the biggest offender being reports about a little boy recovering from cancer in the Royal Children's Hospital: I care about the boy but I do not need to know all the details. The same applies to all web sites.

It turns out that consuming less isn't such a big loss, because I have retained those that mattered most to me. The ones I have dropped can be considered bloat of varying degrees. The result is that I have become more efficient at spending my leisure time.

Who would have thought quality leisure time requires careful planning (opposite of leisure), and that being picky is a good virtue?

Give Me My Credit!

While on the subject of TV, I cannot object more to the way TV stations deface the credit screen. Usually it is done by squashing the original picture to free up half the screen to show previews for upcoming programmes. This makes it impossible to read any of the credit text, and the voice over covers up the ending music. While viewers usually don't bother reading the credit roll, it is sometimes a good source of information, such as finding out the actor for a particular character and the year it was produced. Occasionally, the credit roll is creatively transformed into an entertaining segment. For example, in one episode of The Simpsons, Homer "fired" every name that appeared on the credit. In the cinema version of Toy Story II, pretended bloopers were shown alongside the credit. One might argue that distorting the credit roll audibly or visually lowers the value of the show to viewers.

Just because the credit screen is not part of the story and is generally boring does not mean it can be mutilated to make way for promotion. In their pursuit of maximizing advertisement air time, TV stations will soon find themselves stepping over the line. When entertainment value for TV shows is all but eroded, the audience will surely turn to the Internet and DVDs for their viewing needs, legal or otherwise.

24

Frankly the story behind the new 24 is pretty weak. If I really want to (I don't, but I can't resist it), I can probably find at least one flaw every 3 minutes. But the biggest problem lies in its depiction of the main characters, namely the good guys are all unbelievably stupid while the baddies are incredibly smart. For example, the president in the story makes George W. Bush look like Einstein. Maybe this is the only way to keep the villains from getting caught before the 24 hour is up. One can be sure that the same terrorists in the real world will not last even an hour.

By now, readers should be curious as to why I would want to watch such an unrealistic show. There isn't a very logical reason, but I keep telling myself I am only here to see Jack Bauer do his job and is willing to ignore all the far-fetch and impossible situations waiting for Jack to resolve. Who knows, maybe I am intrigued by what Jack does best: torturing a suspect for information.