The television as The Truman Show - Joop.nl

The television must be a reflection of our society, with all d’r and r to d?

This is a piece for and about a charity. Not too often do now as well. I have worked on a calendar for a charity. I told something about that in a lecture that you can read below. Foundation Essentials is such a good cause and the calendar is ge-/verkocht!

A while ago I was asked to work on a calendar for charity. The charity was craniologie encephalopathy. Skull Deformities causing vision abnormalities occur. There is need for research money to prevent this disorder. For the calendar was asked several celebrities to pose. You can not refuse such a request, of course.

It was said that the photographer was very good and there was professional make-up. So we would come good. Visit in the calendar Upon entering layers dozens of photos of children and adults with distorted faces. Intellectually there was not necessarily anything wrong with them, visually or a thing. Some looked like in a funhouse mirror. I caught myself with difficulty that I looked at the pictures, especially to those of the children.

After the make-up and photography, I was also interviewed. The interviewer asked include why we never see these people on television (except at most very occasionally the subject). These people are discriminated against and that’s including the debt of the television, she said. They should be, regardless of their appearance, just on the television to see with their own qualities otherwise they remain victims of a taboo. And the television must be a reflection of our society, with all d’r and r to d?

Ah yes, of course, discrimination, taboos, blame the media. If it is not education, it is social media.

But you know what it is: the television is not a literal reflection of our society. The television is a dream factory, a polished world. In the real world, we are all professionally made up and dressed when we go out the door. Then we trudge through the Albert Heijn, higgledy-piggledy and krummelig and old and fat and spastic. Or then we tramp or Muslim, we wear headscarves, we are black and yellow and bright green violet.

But why is the TV than a kind of Truman Show, directed an imaginary world, a great decor of cardboard with mere actors and extras and hidden cameras everywhere. A big show (which in the movie Truman not only know that he lives in a huge television show world, but never mind).
And why the TV does not seem actually to the world outside?

I felt – as a program maker involved – a bit immediately accused by the question of the interviewer. Because, I, we all want to actually be permanently amused said pampered, reassured, pleasantly surprised, comforted, we want to be touched but not too hard, and certainly we are not alarmed.

Since we do not pay money to watch. We have enough trouble, there we have the television is not required. We want to see any Scottish and crooked and everyday people who read journals, presenting talent shows, take us by the hand to show off, eccentricities talk shows populate. And if we get dished woes, we want always around the silver lining of schadenfreude.

Look, I told the interviewer over the pictures of the victims of skull deformities, therefore we do not see these people hardly on television.

But good luck with the calendar!

This article appeared on the blog of Hanneke Groenteman