Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
ANNOYING THINGS IN T.V. AND “SOCIAL MEDIA”
Yes I worry about these things. I’m sure there are some things worth watching and/or listening to on T.V. and “social media”, but most of the time we are confronted with sheer dross. Of course the answer is to turn off the switch, sit down and read a good book. But there are far too many things that seem to be worth watching. So in we plunge.
Consider first one part of “social media” known as Facebook, originally intended to be a place where people could express their views and discuss things in a reasonable way. In no time it became a place where people would verbally shout or swear at each other with insults rather than with anything like a genuine debate. There are still occasionally some items in Facebook that are worth watching, including old interviews or clips from the works of some comedians. More likely, though, there is gossip about movie stars, statements about which film actor has the most money, long “biographies” about actors, and inane nonsense about which actor is “the greatest of all time”. “Greatest of all time” is one of those phrases that Facebook loves to use. Facebook is also notorious for using the wrong photo when writing about a well known person e.g. an article about the American actor Graham Green is presented with a photo of the English novelist Graham Green, a completely different person. It happens all the time. At the same time, let us remember that much of Facebook is put together by A.I. , so I suggest that we are really watching what robots have put together.
In fairness there are much better T.V. channels than Facebook, in which one can find intelligent debates, documentaries, matters of history, news, and worthwhile music. And remember there is always Al Jazeera to give you a far better balanced view of current international news than we get in New Zealand.
Speaking about T.V., tired of predictable British detective sagas we decided to look out for foreign T.V. shows on Netflix – requiring sub-titles, and therefore probably turning away people who don’t like reading sub-titles. We hit on two very interesting Spanish serials.
The first was “based on a true story”. That phrase is often misused; but this one seemed to stick with facts. It was El Caso Asunta [The Asunta Case], a case that was widely followed in Spain. A Spanish couple had adopted a young Asian girl; but the girl went missing. Her body was later found. She had obviously been murdered. Who was the culprit? The skill of the series was the way it examined not only the people who could have been the culprits, but it looked carefully into the psychology of the couple who had adopted the girl. The pace was slow but very believable. Given that Spanish law is in some ways different from English or American law, it was interesting to see how carefully in the final court-room both defence and prosecution made good and careful cases. Almost documentary in part, but not stilted. Good watching.
The other Spanish T.V. series was a different kettle of fish. Respira [Breathless] is set in a hospital in Valencia. It is crowded. It is lacking in space. It is a public hospital, not a wealthy private hospital. Patients all swarm in. The hospital has not been properly funded and there is growing anger among interns and some of the doctors. One outspoken surgeon is in favour of calling a strike… but there is the old dilemma. Do doctors have the right to leave patients untreated when the hospital is partly shut down? So far, so persuasive, and much of the hustle and worry of the hospital is believable. Some side issues are real issues. The gay doctor who foolishly has had sex with a younger man who might have had a contagious disease. The fact that the spokeswoman for the hospital is sceptic about the way the hospital is run; but as she has cancer she feels she should be treated in the public hospital rather than in a private hospital because she does not want to be seen as a hypocrite. The way surgeons and other doctors are often extremely bossy when it comes to interns etc. etc. etc. So far so believable. Unfortunately the series very quickly falls into sheer soap-opera with love stories and very, very explicit sex scenes. And to make us even happier there are many, many close-up images of patients being sliced open during surgery so there is blood, blood, blood all over the place. Maybe this could be called realism, but I do wonder how many viewers will be able to stand the course.
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