The Magic of TelevisionPosted on LiveJournal 27th August 2007 I remember finally securing audience tickets for a popular talk show in Los Angeles (the Sharon Osbourne show). We were queuing for about an hour in total, but it was warm and dry, and we didn't really mind. Various security personnel made a big show of herding us into the studio in an orderly, chaotic fashion. The studio was small and overtly artificial. The set seemed, up close, to be badly painted. Everywhere was covered with wires from lights and cameras and sound equipment. There was no really clear view to any part of the stage. There were current pop hits playing in the background. After about twenty minutes, a man came out. He was was stocky and homosexual, and I immediately thought that he had the most sad existence of any man in the world. His job was, I thought initially, to warm up the crowd. Granted, it was part of his job, but the rest would come later. He told us that we were not called an audience, but "helpers". Already I could feel shreds of his dignity slipping away from him. For his own benefit, I began to hope that he had some sort of drug habit. We, as the audience, "helped" to create the correct atmosphere for the host to be able to do his job. The stocky homosexual made many sexual innuendoes, to the uncomfortable delight of the crowd. Then things became forced. He told us that when he made a certain signal, we were to clap wildly. Then he told us when he made a certain other signal, we were to laugh uproariously. He suggested that we practise this counterfeited glee. As we sat there, chuckling at nothing, I made an educated guess that this man cried himself to sleep each night at what he has become. What did this man's parents want for him as a child? Is it this? What does he tell them when he goes back to Wyoming? That he has a "career in television"? The television and film industry is, of course, built on the assumption that everything is an illusion, and the struggle to maintain disbelief is the struggle for good programming. However, this struggle breaks down in certain places, and one of those places is the space between an invited studio audience and the uninvited television audience who are, ostensibly, watching the same show. At home, the verisimilitude is accepted, because it is a passive phenomenon, and I can turn off the television at any stage. I happily realise that everything is fake, and enjoy the show. However, when you're part of a studio audience, you are an accessory after the fact. You are aiding the commission of fakery - we were "helpers". It's like the difference between buying a shirt that says "Made in Indonesia", and actually being in the factory, seeing the army being called in to quosh the first signs of worker organisation, while one of them asks if you can hold his gun for a moment as he pummels a union member. I felt dirty and used, and all the while I was supposed to think that I was part of the magic. Well, fuck the magic, and fuck you, stocky homosexual. Get a real job. My father can't find someone to fix his kitchen sink. Try plumbing. |