Recently, I participated in a Xarabank edition discussing reality TV. Since the programme was broadcast three days after Norman Vella won his court case, I referred to it and congratulated Vella. If we were to discuss reality TV I felt I could not shy away from reality! But that’s another subject I commented on last Sunday.
Today, I take my cue from a short clip broadcast during that particular Xarabank edition. It showed a baby who was calm and quiet for some time but then started crying.
The soundtrack was that of a woman singing. No Maria Callas was she, though her voice could be described as callous, if the same adjectives we attribute to human actions can also be attributed to voices. In this case I believe it can, since the woman in question was totally insensitive to the effect of her voice on the poor baby.
We were told that the singer was the baby’s mother. The panel and the studio audience started laughing. It was clear for one and all that the poor baby could not take that horrible voice. No one blamed him. A touch of irony was added to the whole scene as the talented singer Ira Losco was part of the panel.
There were a couple of ‘funny’ comments on the ‘funny’ video and the discussion moved on to something else.
I kicked myself hard after the programme. How could I have been taken in? It is little consolation that others in the panel, experienced TV producers and presenters, believed without questioning that the filming of the baby crying and the mother singing (if she was really the baby’s mother) happened at the same time. It could have easily been an exercise in juxtaposing sounds and visuals that in reality had nothing to do one with the other. The collage would have had a totally different meaning had this been the case.
I believed the clip instead of doubting it.
This little incident shows that deep down, most accept television as the reflection of reality. This perception, which is deeply ingrained in our culture, is very dangerous, particularly because for many people, television is still the dominant medium for information, infotainment and entertainment (this is also true of Europe and North America, just to mention two examples), as the following statistics amply prove.
A Media Warehouse study showed that during 2012, 76 per cent of the Maltese watched TV either every day or five to six times a week. On average, viewers watch close to 26 full days of TV every year, according to a 2013 study by the Broadcasting Authority. NSO figures tell us that 99 per cent of households are equipped with a TV set, slightly higher than the number of houses with a washing machine or a bathroom!
The same Broadcasting Authority survey shows that radio is no competition. Sixty-one per cent listen to the radio every day or almost every day. On average, listeners spend 17 full days of radio listening each year. Newspapers are less competition than radio. Only 11 per cent read a newspaper every day, according to a 2013 survey by Media Warehouse.
The internet is challenging television for the command of our time. According to NSO research published this year, 69 per cent of the Maltese use the internet every day. Just over 150,000 are subscribed to the internet. This is higher than the number of subscribers to TV, which is 136,000. More and more, especially young people, are reading their news only online, as they increasingly do to watch films and TV programmes.
The above shows a media-dominated culture in which television still has an edge over the other media. The illusion that television is the harbinger of reality is shared with the other media. Therefore, my criticism of television also applies to the rest of the mediascape, particularly to the internet, where one can find examples galore similar to the baby and singing mother sequence.
The strength of the internet lies in its chaotic creativity, resulting from the fact that everyone is free to upload whatever strikes one’s fancy. There also lies its great weakness.
The acceptance of media-communicated material as a faithful portrayal of reality is a dangerous tenet unless it is counterbalanced with a harshly critical approach. Such an approach is a must when viewing not just reality television but also other genres, including discussion programmes and news bulletins.
Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps more than a trifle unfair with television when he writes that on television, one uses up precious time to say banal things, which in turn not only cover up precious things but end up being considered as very important things. The unfairness in his words (as is the case with all generalisations) bears some truth.
The culprit, in my opinion, is not television but its takeover by commercial interest
There are many positive things about TV but these are mixed with negative content. TV is the purveyor of the sublime as much as it glorifies the banal. It makes us empathise with the most tragic human dramas and mobilises support for such causes, but it sometimes changes us into pervert peeping toms. Television supplies us with the most useful information while at other times it changes this into a cheap spectacle or gives us only the sensationalised bits.
The culprit, in my opinion, is not television but its takeover by commercial interest. What else could make a television producer cut off the reportage of the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre for commercials? The line of defence that this is what the people want is fallacious to the extreme. The television industry does not just gratify the legitimate needs of people but it exploits people’s illegitimate wants for lucre.
It also manufactures popular attitudes and perceptions so that it keeps afloat the capitalist worldview. Hasn’t the media’s artificially manufactured concept of bodily beauty turned into the cash cow of the cosmetic surgery business at the expense of many gullible people?
I am not saying that people are blotting papers or helpless victims. But I am saying that it is hard to swim against a tsunami of media-generated flotsam, even when there is a strong counter-current of valued merchandise afloat. This is hard but possible, as amply shown in the film The Truman Show. The man who was born and bred in a reality show eventually revolted against it.
The attitude of the doubting Thomas can provide a veritable life jacket for all those keen on pressuring media organisations to sift the televisual wheat from the televisual darnel.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt