The garage of earthly delights

[hirez]

I think I've jabbered before about the media's unconscious response to people pointing out that it is structurally sexist, which is to portray middle class white males as essentially useless.

If I haven't, then I guess a small and uncharacteristic amount of unpacking might be required.

So. People on the tellybox are generally ciphers. It would probably make things more interesting if I was talking about crypto, but there we are. Mind, given that there's a smart-card in the PVR downstairs, all the people and things on the telly are indeed ciphers. Or ciphered. Arf!

You've things like 'driven cop', 'strong woman', 'distracted scientist', 'scruffy hacker' - details available on TVTropes, if you don't mind losing several days to that blasted site. Sometimes the people in charge of telly like to 'mash it up' in order to play with our preconceptions. Sometimes the 'driven cop' is a 'strong woman'. Or the 'scruffy hacker' is a 'strong woman'. Or oh just fuck off do you actually know any real people at all? Even I wouldn't generate characters that two-dimensional and I write SF.

One of the weird things that happens is that any middle class white men who aren't one of the main plot-hinges (hero/villain/boss/person with the DA's office on their back) are generally portrayed as completely useless.

This may well be an accurate reflection of reality. Or it could be the people in charge of the media trying to hide from the people calling out their sexism.

'Who? Us?' they appear to be saying. 'No, we're not sexist. We're useless. Look! And, I mean, if we were being sexist, which we're not, it's because we're useless and can't help ourselves its not our fault, would you be an angel and fetch a steak sarnie from the kitchen?'

You'll mostly see it in adverts, because that's where the Id of the tellypeople lives. If you keep playing with other people's superstimuli, you will fall into the Id Vortex.

The place where careful portrayal of middle-class male uselessness and super-saturation of superstimuli crash in a very Ballardian sense is, as you might guess, Top Gear.

The message seems to be 'Stand around in a hangar. Be useless. Tell jokes about foreign people. Be more useless. He's not a real hamster. You can aspire to nothing but rugger shirts, middle-management and uselessness. And even that will not get you one of these cars.'

Bugger that.

The other week, I was pointed in the direction of 'Roadkill' and by extension 'Hot Rod garage'.

You know those shit car programmes up at the nosebleed end of the channel numbers? The ones with manufactured twattery and manufactured conflict and manufactured jeopardy, where anything even remotely technical is ignored so they may concentrate on arguments about money, so really they might as well be about any fucking thing that the capitalist system has managed to claim has value. Kind of like 'Look twenty years younger' only with more Isopon and less psychological damage.

Hot Rod garage is the functional antithesis of those things and TG. They have an in-house punk band, which is a guarantee of quality.

The same people make 'Roadkill'. The thing I have taken to heart from that programme is 'You can probably fix it with hand-tools and things you already have in your shed.' also 'Mechanical systems are fundamentally knowable', '68 Chargers are still cool' and 'A hemi being given a right shoeing sounds like nothing on earth'.

All of their cars are old and/or horrible. They break all the time. Usually because they've been thrown together from parts that were lying about at the back of the shed. And yet. The underlying message is that they'll make the thing work and then thrash it 'til something else falls off. There is no uselessness.

... It's just me, isn't it?

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

I have a theory that the uselessness is there as a deliberate placeholder for presumed audience members to identify with. It's a consequence of deliberate focus-grouping and marketeering and other unsavoury verbs.

Roadkill, OTOH, has not been subjected to any of those practices, and so is just about people and stuff.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Hm. So that would fit in with Furbish Louswort and the tyranny of lowered expectations, and some applied Dunning-Kreuger.

In that the tiresome become angry when shown pictures of competent people, so we can't possibly have that sort of thing because the tiresome and rugby-shirted are an important marketing demographic.

Maybe they could be distracted by a balloon on a stick that's had a face painted on it, with a voiceover telling jokes found in the bar at the last UKIP conference and someone making 'brmm! brmm!' noises.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

You should totally start your own YouTube channel based on that premise. 'Hot Gear'. Or maybe 'Top Gaaah'.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

nope, not just you. Roadkill is flipping awesome.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That and HRG should be used as therapy.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on the uselessness. If I think about it too much, it's about a lot more than just what you've described.

I know I'm coming over all redneck survivalist, but uselessness is never, ever OK. In men or women. I mean, by any metric I care about I consider myself pretty damn bad at this being an adult business, physically and intellectually (and probably morally) lazy. And then I look at other people and - being useless and bad at happens, OK. Don't make it a badge of honour, though.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I believe there is a lot more to it, but I am a middle-class white male and I have been swimming in this shit so have only recently noticed.

Right. There's structural inequality and a whole slew of ableism-based malarkey, but the set of people not subject to those things are still crap? Jayzus...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

By uselessness, I mean "look at me, I can't do this, I'm not even going to try, and that makes me superior and special" not genuine inability to do things. And part of it is a class/status thing, in the sense of "look at me, I can afford to be useless because someone else will come along and clean up my mess". Usually somebody more female, less white, definitely someone with less choice.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

'Oh, we have a little man come in and do that...'

Yes. Class. Or at least affectation thereof.

The interesting thing (to me, anyway) about the gamergate types is that they're all hopeless. I was rather surprised by that, because in the old days when computers were more rubbish, the gamey-gamey types were the ones with hand-built kit. GG can't even understand github, and yet they think they should have a say in how games are developed?

[inulro.livejournal.com]

If course they're useless. If they were actually doing something constructive they wouldn't have the time or energy to spare on being whiny and angry.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Am lolling at 'nosebleed end of the channel numbers' :-)

[camies.livejournal.com]

+1. And I wonder who actually watches those channels. Does anyone? They seem to consist of mostly adverts but to whom?

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Insomniacs who are looking for something to stun them into sleep.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I suggest that a new party game called 'Who can watch CBS Reality the longest before throwing the telly out of the window' might be quite good drunken fun.

You'd need a supply of spare tellies and a tame glazier on speed-dial, mind.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I think I'd also need prescription strength co-codamol....

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I fear so.

I have no idea what else is up there, mind. I start to lose the will to care after ITV4. There might be Network-23 up there, but I'll never know.

(If you get to see the original Max Headroom film, some of the electronic set decor is fascinating. There are brief shots of channels like 'BBC-7' and 'BBC-DIY' which must have seemed incomprehensible from the viewpoint of the early 80s. And then there is 'Doctor Duncan's Video Symptom Show' which will never.. Oh. Nevermind.)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I watch Eurosport moderately regularly since that's where the cycling lives. Their pan-European adverts are charmingly earnest things: SIDI. CYCLING SHOOES.

[drpete.livejournal.com]

Some of their inter-programme bits are quite fun too. I have time for the GT car doing an Allan McNish.

LOLd too about the nosebleed end of the channels. My Sky box will never be the same again...

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Just as long as they're not on the receiving end of a naked greased-up Filippo Pozzato. (Click here to lose your lunch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7w_xj73U5Q)

My uninformed rambling makes think that the useless man meme is a knee-jerk anti-feminist thing that's the equivalent of throwing one's hands in the air and saying "Fine! If you're so bloody smart, you fix it then."

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'm part of the target audience for "proper" car shows. Roadkill sounds good though. Like the good ole days of daisychaining Escorts together with gaffa tape and that squirty gasket stuff.

Not that I know anything about cars *blinks*

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Agreed with comments above that it's a class and money thing - if you can afford to buy a swanky new car every time yours goes a bit wonky, why bother learning anything about it? While that might not be the case for those watching it, it's something they can aspire to, which handily leaves them with a cosy excuse not to make any effort.

[gothypants.livejournal.com]

I think you may have hit upon a fundamental truth, which is that TV news is the lowest form of entertainment (excepting the New York Post, but that's also owned by Rupert Murdoch).

[reddragdiva]

Sounds like the punk rock approach to mechanics. I've been doing much the same with music. LMMS, which is cheap, cheerful and crashes all the time, but is open-source, sincere and earnest. Very punk rock disco production.