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The garage of earthly delights
Apr. 7th, 2015 11:18 pmI 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?
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?
