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"Come on, let's tick a fucking box"

Started by Simon Price, March 02, 2004, 01:55:10 AM

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Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "Jemble Fred"When the production teams behind the above shows got to work, they did it in the spirit of the TV Cunts in The Armando Ianucci Shows.

Exactly.

alan strang

Quote from: "TJ"Well, to be honest this is more to do with the situation at the time the show was made. Granted things have changed now, but back then the views of former Big Brother contestants on serious issues *were* being taken seriously (or at least treated with faux seriousness) by certain sectors of the media. I can recall that Craig character being asked for his opinion on asylum seekers by a newspaper, for instance, and there were probably countless other examples.

Certainly, but the actual situation wasn't that the Big Brother contestants'  views were being taken seriously by anyone - they were just presented as a public mouthpiece to back up stories the media were already selling. For instance, Craig had a column in The Sun for a while. It was quite obviously a case of them bunging him a few grand in return for sticking his face at the top of an editorial already written by office subs. It was just a form of advertising - selling a viewpoint by using his popularity amongst a certain section of the readership.

The Mirror and Radio Times did the same by pretending that Jonathan Ross was writing their film columns for years. The whole thing is a sham - based on a cynical and horrible view that all you really need to do is fool some of the people some of the time (and it works too - it doesn't matter how bolshy and angry some of us get about it, the people who sell lies like this will always win because they know that a huge section of the public don't question it, and another, equally huge, section don't really give a shit.)

Maybe I'm just drawn towards giving the contestants the benefit of the doubt. They may be thick, or self-serving, or stupidly ambitious, or a general pain in the bumhole. But I'd rather endure an hour of Jade Goody talking about her boring tits than five seconds of Piers Morgan, Graham Norton or those other bullying media bastards sneering about her being an "ugly fat pig" for months and months - and then pretending it was all a joke when the whole thing gets out of hand.

The sort of people who only enjoy reality TV because it gives them an opportunity to look down on the contestants and feel aloof or superior - they're the genuine 'useless third' of this society.

QuoteAs for Sacha Baron-Cohen, I just think it would have been funny to hoax someone who was then being feted for childish and tiresomely uninventive hoax interviews. Showing them who's boss, if you like.

That would have been good. But then, I rather hoped Chris Morris would do something to blow the whole '11 O'Clock Show' debacle out of the water around the time of the second series. Didn't happen, unfortunately.

QuoteRegarding Alan Strang's point; this is true, but wasn't it also true of the celebrities in the original Brass Eye (witness the hordes of point-missing idiots droning on and on about how "facking Noel Edmonds deserved it because of all those cruel gotcha oscars imho imho" etc)?

True enough. But targeting Big Brother contestants would have rather invited that sort of audience.

Neil

Hmm, not much I can add.  I was going to say that getting SBC on there would have been crap because it would just have been Morris saying, "Who's the daddy?  I'm the daddy!"  He doesn't speak out on issues, he doesn't seem to appear on talk-shows or even do out-of-character interviews at all.

Simon Price

So. OK. Alright. Ali G is totally played out now. And Bruno was a non-starter. But do none of you think Borat is fucking brilliant? (*grabs crash helmet... again*)

Darrell

I sort-of liked the Borat bits on the C4 show, but the rest of the series was awful.

That's as positive as I can get, really.

Neil

Quote from: "Simon Price"So. OK. Alright. Ali G is totally played out now. And Bruno was a non-starter. But do none of you think Borat is fucking brilliant? (*grabs crash helmet... again*)

There's no general concensus on here, Simon.  I like both The Office and Ali G, and I'm not about to pretend otherwise just because those who hate the shows are particularly vociferous.  The Ali G HBO show is excellent, I rewatched 3 of them today just to check I still enjoyed them as much, and yes, still fab.  The Ali G charcter may well be childish, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.  There's a lot of childish stuff in The Young Ones but it's still bloody hilarious.

I did enjoy a lot of the hbo show... but Bruno really weighed it down, i just didn't get that at all, I recall one Bruno sketch where he genuinely did appear to simply be interviewing someone, no jokes, no undercurrent, nothing. Thats not to say there weren't a few funny bits here and there - I liked it when he kept getting fashion designers to contradict themselves every five minute - but the character was quite quite charmless and cold unlike borat and ali. I hope he ditches it for the second american series.

rupert pupkin

I thought the Ali G HBO show was very underrated – as if newspaper critics didn't know whether they should be enthusing about the character after the dodgy film. I liked Bruno too – I know making people involved in the fashion industry look stupid is like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's still bloody funny. And then there was that segment where Bruno was camping it up at some redneck American sports event. I really thought he was going to get his head kicked in when the inbreds started shouting at him!