Reality Check

I have a lot of free time on my hands right now. So what better to do than watch television?
Anything is.

Just surfing through all the channels on the television I could see the poor quality of programmes that are available on the idiot box. Most eyeballs are captured by the K-soaps or "Reality" shows both having over-dramatic music and parallax-creating camera shots. With the end of the Indian Premiere League a month back, and not many late-night football fans existence in India, the focus has shifted back to soaps and reality shows.

These reality shows perform as many tricks out of the book as possible.(The book may have been written by Simon Cowell). From the rudest judges to over-exhibition of emotions and much dramatic music, we are forced to ask the question : "How real are these shows?"

It is however clear that the participants of such shows are under immense pressure to perform. This applies especially to children's competitions. Children are pressurized by both the programme and their parents to perform. It is not enough that these children are under pressure to get good grades at school that they have put in an extra effort for such competitions which are nothing but voyeuristic programmes for the emotional perverts.

That is why some of the participants have succumbed to such pressure by entering depression and having other mental diseases. Such an incident occurred recently during a Kolkata-based dance-related reality show. Shinjini Sengupta, a 16 year old participant was paralyzed and lost her speech when she was criticized by a judge on the show.
You may read the article here : Reality TV show paralyses participant Shinjini Sengupta

We need better programmes, better television with better, original content. This reminds me of a film that I saw recently. It was a German film titled "Free Rainer". It is about a TV producer who produces reality shows. After a turn of events he himself realizes the bad effects of such content and starts a kind-of renaissance to clean the contents of TRP-driven television. The film stars Moritz Bleibtreu and is directed by Hans Weingartner.
Read about the film here: Free Rainer

I hope that we soon realize the downward spiral that such programmes of bad taste bring about and work towards better programmes. Thats all for now. See you later.