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Jul. 15th, 2008 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThat 'How TV changed Britain' series had six episodes and only 3 recorded in their entirety on my box. Luckily having looked on the website they're the three I'd be interested in. Cops, Women and Property. The others were about Fame, Teens and IQ, which is actually quiz shows. I can live without those.
I was thinking some about the little speeches most actors are making now about reality TV and how it is the source of all evil. And as a writer who wants to make scripted television... er, when I actually get good... then I do feel that speech quite keenly. It's no good doing writing if there's no chance to show it. And all the shows I really care about intensely are scripted dramas.
But I do watch a lot of TV that is about property, or food or gardening. I don't watch it on purpose... with the exception of Grand Designs which kind of owned me for a little while there. But if it's on and I happen to flick past I might watch it. And, honestly, thinking about it, it seems a lot more relevant to daily life than, for instance, Dalek invasion. I mean really, are we more likely to need to know how to stop a cyberman or how to decorate the front room? Seems like a no brainer. And watching property right after women brought to mind that some topics are gendered, and devalued in a gender connected way. Maybe we don't care about food or fashion or how to tidy your house up, but if so why not, when that's the core of so many lives? So while I feel like I'd like to agree... I'd also have to object a little. People obviously find this stuff useful and valuable. Why dismiss that in favour of drama?
And where do art series come into it? I will deliberately watch one of those Art History strands where someone wanders around and looks at pictures a lot. I haven't heard anyone complaining about them yet. Why?
At the same time, the show about Women had some good points about the current crop of makeover and home shows, and how it makes it look like TVs attitude to women has come full circle. Started with trying to send them back to the home after the war, then there were shows where women kicked arse, and now? Homes and fashion again. Only I don't agree with their schematic view, because they're clearly leaving out the way that the kick arse shows are still on (Buffy, Sarah Connor, Sarah Jane and Martha and Donna and I'm sure there's some outside genre TV). I'm not old enough to know if they're leaving out home or makeover shows from in between the two ends of their examples because I only really remember the 90s ones, but I can't believe that it was a neglected genre in between times. So... there's an interesting tension involving the role of women and all these shows that seem to shame and browbeat women into dressing different, doing different, being different. But it's not all one way. Buffy's tension between kick arse heroics and fashion / home making is all over the TV. Yesno? Including the really annoying way she defined the fashion side as a normal life.
So being down on some of these categories because they're not scripted drama and someone doesn't care about them... no. Quite a lot of people do care. But being down on them because of the solutions they propose to certain ideological tensions... oh yeah. I want to see the makeover show where they take a whole audience of critics and bullies and bastards and teach them to get the hell over it and get on with doing interesting things in the look you happen to have. The other thing is sooooo defining a binary and a problem side before trying to hand out solutions, and it seems more of a problem thinking those things are problems.
Getting rid of scripted drama for reasons of pure cheapness is a terrible waste of a powerful area. But the relation between scripted drama, documentary, so-called reality TV, competitions and all the weird crossovers in between gets right complicated, and it seems to me they're all tools for different tasks. There are things you can say in drama, fiction, behind metaphor, that you can't bring into the light elsewhere. There are things that you can make strange and therefore interesting all over again. But there are also things that you need to look at straight on, to call fact, and to see the value in without the extra trappings.
I think I object more to the unbalancing effect, the use of shifting popularities to put pressure on workers, and the ideological biases in several specific examples of the genres than I can object to just the idea of the things themselves. There's an opportunity to focus on and value the everyday, to see a diversity in people. The use of it to make bizarre and focus disapproval though... usually more of a problem, cause I don't agree with the usefulness of the pressures it creates.
I ramble and I should have sleeped hours ago.
I likes my subject though.
Next I shall attempt to likes it while working it into stuff people will actually read ie stories.
I was thinking some about the little speeches most actors are making now about reality TV and how it is the source of all evil. And as a writer who wants to make scripted television... er, when I actually get good... then I do feel that speech quite keenly. It's no good doing writing if there's no chance to show it. And all the shows I really care about intensely are scripted dramas.
But I do watch a lot of TV that is about property, or food or gardening. I don't watch it on purpose... with the exception of Grand Designs which kind of owned me for a little while there. But if it's on and I happen to flick past I might watch it. And, honestly, thinking about it, it seems a lot more relevant to daily life than, for instance, Dalek invasion. I mean really, are we more likely to need to know how to stop a cyberman or how to decorate the front room? Seems like a no brainer. And watching property right after women brought to mind that some topics are gendered, and devalued in a gender connected way. Maybe we don't care about food or fashion or how to tidy your house up, but if so why not, when that's the core of so many lives? So while I feel like I'd like to agree... I'd also have to object a little. People obviously find this stuff useful and valuable. Why dismiss that in favour of drama?
And where do art series come into it? I will deliberately watch one of those Art History strands where someone wanders around and looks at pictures a lot. I haven't heard anyone complaining about them yet. Why?
At the same time, the show about Women had some good points about the current crop of makeover and home shows, and how it makes it look like TVs attitude to women has come full circle. Started with trying to send them back to the home after the war, then there were shows where women kicked arse, and now? Homes and fashion again. Only I don't agree with their schematic view, because they're clearly leaving out the way that the kick arse shows are still on (Buffy, Sarah Connor, Sarah Jane and Martha and Donna and I'm sure there's some outside genre TV). I'm not old enough to know if they're leaving out home or makeover shows from in between the two ends of their examples because I only really remember the 90s ones, but I can't believe that it was a neglected genre in between times. So... there's an interesting tension involving the role of women and all these shows that seem to shame and browbeat women into dressing different, doing different, being different. But it's not all one way. Buffy's tension between kick arse heroics and fashion / home making is all over the TV. Yesno? Including the really annoying way she defined the fashion side as a normal life.
So being down on some of these categories because they're not scripted drama and someone doesn't care about them... no. Quite a lot of people do care. But being down on them because of the solutions they propose to certain ideological tensions... oh yeah. I want to see the makeover show where they take a whole audience of critics and bullies and bastards and teach them to get the hell over it and get on with doing interesting things in the look you happen to have. The other thing is sooooo defining a binary and a problem side before trying to hand out solutions, and it seems more of a problem thinking those things are problems.
Getting rid of scripted drama for reasons of pure cheapness is a terrible waste of a powerful area. But the relation between scripted drama, documentary, so-called reality TV, competitions and all the weird crossovers in between gets right complicated, and it seems to me they're all tools for different tasks. There are things you can say in drama, fiction, behind metaphor, that you can't bring into the light elsewhere. There are things that you can make strange and therefore interesting all over again. But there are also things that you need to look at straight on, to call fact, and to see the value in without the extra trappings.
I think I object more to the unbalancing effect, the use of shifting popularities to put pressure on workers, and the ideological biases in several specific examples of the genres than I can object to just the idea of the things themselves. There's an opportunity to focus on and value the everyday, to see a diversity in people. The use of it to make bizarre and focus disapproval though... usually more of a problem, cause I don't agree with the usefulness of the pressures it creates.
I ramble and I should have sleeped hours ago.
I likes my subject though.
Next I shall attempt to likes it while working it into stuff people will actually read ie stories.