reality tv - I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Friday night I was watching A LIFE AQUATIC from Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson. During the love scene of Cate Blanchett and Owen Wilson (I just cannot keep movie characters' names in my mind. I guess it must be the same thing for variety reviewers as they always use the actors' instead of the characters' name) I was suddenly extraordinarily bored and switched over to the normal tv programming. I found myself in one of the friday night talkshows i usually enjoy pretty much. Now it is a given fact that the characters in Wes Anderson flicks tend to belong to the most cranky, weird, mentally confused, eccentric and maybe unrealistic folks that have ever been seen on theater screens. When I saw the talkshow guests sitting on their chairs in front of me though I could hardly notice any difference between Wes Anderson's take on reality and the televised reality that I faced that minute. In the end this obviously the reason why we love these cranky characters populating the stories of the Coens, Andersons, of Ozon, Mendes and Kelly? They actually exist. Those are the people we meet in the supermarket, who live next door and whom we unfortunately see on local tv. Our world is
populated by these guys and maybe there's enough incidence to assess that even I, myself could be one of them. Our life just seems to work by the logic of the the absurd and television is the best place to witness absurdity and Uneigentlichkeit. Or is it only television that conveys the impression of an absurd world?


The biggest televised revelation is when you get to see people on tv that you actually know personally. On one of our local stations I recently saw a woman of our neighborhood prepare some kind of special "summer drink" in front of the camera. The show itself is regularly hosted by two guys from my town. It is incredibly funny to witness the transition from provincial quasi-celebrities to tv personalities. The fun comes from the fact that many of these people who suddenly gain this (sometimes regional, sometimes domestic limited) celebrity status just aren't worth it. These men and women try to be funny but are not. They try to do intelligent moderation but fail.
The saddest and most absurd part, though, is that there are actually people who enjoy this shit.