Reality television

I was around at a friend's house the other day. We thought we'd watch the news - see what was happening in the world. That sort of thing. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any news on television. Merely reality tv. Something called "Celebrity Love Island" in fact. According to the cognoscenti (to whose membership I constantly aspire - unfortunately that bastard Paxman keeps blackballing me...) this is generally recognised as the nadir of the genre. Although with their track-record in the area, I'm sure the programme makers can surpass (subpass?) it soon enough. A group of "celebrities" (people you probably haven't heard of, unless you watch other programmes with "celebrities" in them - I think Private Eye had the best definition of them, as people who weren't famous but had slept with people slightly more famous) are plonked on an island and expected to sleep with each other for the entertainment of the viewing public. Deplorable, eh? Much better to watch Big Brother where a bunch of exhibitionists with serious personality problems are so desperate to be the next "celebrities" (see above) that they'll do pretty much whatever their "captors" tell them. Charlie Brooker's Guardian Screen Burn column has a fairly nice overview, at http://snipurl.com/fdqd for those unfamiliar. This is, of course, the respectable face of pornography. More blatant in the 'Love Island' show where people are only tuning in in the hope of seeing some sex, but also in Big Brother, where the voyeuristic obsession with watching someone else's life in minute detail is played out. And it doesn't seem remotely healthy. But more than that - as not merely are TV news programmes being dropped in favour of these, but we can't open even serious newspapers without learning about the latest moves of the island celebs/housemates/whatever. It's been written about before - entertainment replacing news. Who cares what happens in Iraq or Afghanistan when we can learn who's been evicted. Who cares whether our government wants to charge us 100pounds each for the privilege of storing our biometric details on cards, and being able to access them whenever they like, the woman who once masturbated a pig on television has just shagged a footballer's son.
As Chris Morris said on "The Day Today": Those are the headlines. God, I wish they weren't...