I've got a bud from LA staying with me and he has noticed several differences between American and English TV media so far.

 

1. European TV is a lot more liberal. He doubts an ad for car insurance would depict a transvestite Australian simply because the idea of showing one in such a throwaway fashion would get interest groups on both sides fuming.

 

2. A lot of British comedy is a lot more subtle or dependent on the set up rather than just punchline after punchline. In particular Harry Hill who we watched the other night who is the anti-thesis of a lot of American comedy.

 

3. Our adverts try to justify why you should by them using scientific evidence and market research and less on celebrity endorsements. Even the ones with celebrity endorsements generally include well reasoned arguments for the products plus points. It's not just our L'Oreal ads. Also we have fewer and shorter advert breaks and our charity and PSA adverts aren't as heavy handed.

 

4. A lot more artistic and surreal forms of advertising rather than advertising to somehow make the consumer view themselves in a better light if they buy the product. Our car adverts sell the car, they don't try and imply that buying one will make you more masculine or cool to women.

 

5. UK TV is better because you can show full on sex, just no erect dicks or bare pussies, in action on TV whereas outside of buying a hardcore DVD, you aren't going to see much action on US TV.

 

So, we have an outsider looking in perspective here... I can't really disagree. I mean 5 adverts per show? What is that shit? Is it possible that a capitalist consumer driven culture is being short changed on entertainment because there is a greater emphasis on marketing products than quality productions? There's definitely a lot more product placement in US shows... a lot of UK shows have to be shifty and try cover brand labels on camera since they don't want to have to pay out or get sued for featuring them. At most a product may have a "sponsor of" snippet that shows before the show comes back from commercials. However American shows make deals directly with brands to feature them.

 

Is business killing entertainment?

 

Also, what the cunting fuck is LCD? I'm stoned, British and don't like math much so help a dude out here. I am doubting it is liquid crystal display so what's the deal? Lowest Common Denominator? Like I said, baked here, help.

Why do people hate thinking? Is it because as a society, we teach people that learning and paying attention is a chore? Is it because we're spoiled? Both? Some other reason? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

Oh goodness. We're getting to a point where we're discussing things I happen to be very passionate about. The last year of my schooling prior to my graduation, a good portion of my classes dealt with this very same issue.

 

I am of the opinion that these days, we've become so inundated with mass media and its messages that people no longer like to "live" life, they want to "watch" it. Life is a spectacle. This is why so many people love reality shows, because it's supposed to be "real". But the truth of the matter is, your Average Joe LCD is going to want to watch things he can TALK about, (ohmigosh Desperate Housewives!) rather than THINK about, much like a congregation of some sort of dim witted bird - chickens and pigeons. The LCD these days wants their life to be more than the mundane, tedious wretched form of life that they live now.

 

Learning and paying attention? Forget about it. The overabundance of ADD in children these days is absolutely astounding. As much as I like to watch my two television shows, I have to admit that it's an oversaturation of television and movies today that creates ADD. Kids expect life to move as quickly as it does on TV or in the movies they watch, because that's all they know and are surrounded with all the time. Parents plunk their kids in front of the television to shut them up, and it does...for the rest of their lives, probably. And you know what else? ADD in children, for the most part, is NORMAL in children. When I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, I took a lot of Early Childhood Education classes, and I learned that for most young children, (oh, say between the ages of 4-10) their attention span for the most part is about 15 minutes. So, when I taught martial arts in my father's studio, I taught the children's classes and changed activities every 15 minutes, and it worked. No kids running around and screaming because they were bored. But kids these days are so overexposed to multimedia that they don't have to think, all they have to do is absorb.

 

And speaking of thinking, people are NOT encouraged to think these days. Shows like "Friends" or "American Idol" are so popular because they don't require much thought or attention. The sheep out there can just sit in front of their televisions after their 9-5 job that they hate, with their mouths open and just absorb everything. Do people read these days? No way. Most people constantly make fun of me for reading as voraciously as I do. For some reason, people that read books are almost snubbed in our society.

 

I think all of these things are awful. How fucking pathetic is it, that more people voted in the American Idol polls than ever made it to the fucking voter booths when it was time to pick our Fearless Leader?? People are numb and apathetic to almost everything these days, which is why a movie like V for Vendetta is so a propos at this time. After all, who is it that controls all the media conglomerates? Pretty much the ultra conservative right. Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner (up until late '05 when he was replaced by a known liberal) and AOL Time Warner's current president has affiliations with Bush's administration.

 

People need to really LIVE life, actually take a willing and active part in their own life. But will it happen? I doubt it. Most people could care less about what's going on in today's world. There have been genocides of millions of people in recent history, in the last 10-15 years that people could care less about, in Rwanda, of the Bosnians, and in Sudan right now. But do we care? Of course not. It's not happening to US, right?

I think this is really fascinating, that we have a culture where more people are concerned with watching something so they can have conversations about it at work and with friends than they are to be genuinely entertained. This is a psychiatric field day, I'd imagine. I guess the key to a successful TV show or CD or anything else really is making people feel like they're somehow out of a really big loop if they're not paying attention.

Personally, I would rather call this a fucking tragedy than fascinating, but it is definitely something worth understanding.

 

The average person cannot function without a guiding hand or a crowd to follow, so when a product (pretty much anything that people claim is "art" nowadays) is put out and it's easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to cheer along with, it's the perfect tool for the crowd to continue being accepted among their peers. Besides that, who really wants to keep their brain turned on after a 10 hour work day and twice dealing with rush hour traffic for an hour there and back? Not to mention fighting with the husband/wife over finances over a take out dinner serenaded by ill behaved kids screaming for the attention they crave. It was mentioned that it works as escapism, but I disagree. Escapism is an activity that allows you to mentally and spiritually move to another place, TV has you sit on a couch and stare. After you've seen the hit drama, comedy, reality (cough), sports, you've pretty much seen them all and it becomes a blur of inactivity. It seems so empty and lonely.

 

How about..Because the general human population isn't all that intelligent. Not to say they're idiots, but they're certainly not great thinkers.

"Monkeys with car keys" - Kam Lee

 

Most people are stupid, either by bad breeding or by being ground down into another drone.

 

Why do people hate thinking? Is it because as a society, we teach people that learning and paying attention is a chore? Is it because we're spoiled? Both? Some other reason? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

I don't see the need to ask whether the above quote is a bad thing, because it should be obvious. I could go on and on with tangent after tangent about the ills of modern life as I see it, but basically, it can never be healthy for a society to shut down so much of life for a quick laughalong or plastic product that lasts 3 months before becoming landfill. I see that it's been covered decently already anyhow.

I can't possibly add a long, thought out response. I'll just suggest that in entertainment, images sell more than content. Frequently, especially in music, we're not being sold music as much as we're being sold an artist. Ditto with movies. We're not being sold a good plot or acting. We're being sold a title or an actor/actress.

There was a time when it wasn't that way, at least not as much. Has MTV hurt the music industry?

In a word, YES. As I stated earlier (or perhaps my post was too long for anyone to struggle through it) we're so absorbed with the "spectacle" and MTV has made the music industry more visually based than audio. It's created more of a need for a "good image" for artists.

 

It's also hurt the entertainment industry at large, but that's another story.

MTV was a HUGE boost to the music industry when they were showing videos of popular music, getting people's names and faces out to the public who wouldn't have had that otherwise.

 

MTV then became the worst thing that could ever happen to the music industry when they became basically a network showing "reality" shows targeted to 13-25 year olds and music videos became an annoyance that had to be only shown in 30 second clips on TRL. Now instead of MTV trying to be what the music biz wanted, the music biz tries to be what MTV wants and we end up with endless clones of anything that becomes popular.

 

 

I think all of these things are awful. How fucking pathetic is it, that more people voted in the American Idol polls than ever made it to the fucking voter booths when it was time to pick our Fearless Leader?? People are numb and apathetic to almost everything these days, which is why a movie like V for Vendetta is so a propos at this time. After all, who is it that controls all the media conglomerates? Pretty much the ultra conservative right. Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner (up until late '05 when he was replaced by a known liberal) and AOL Time Warner's current president has affiliations with Bush's administration.

 

 

This is all 100% correct. Not to sound too tinfoil hat-ish, but the one thing that probably scares the companies that run the media/entertainment industry shitless is the thought of the general public actually thinking on their own.

 

It's easier to sit there and be entertained by the magic box than to put even the smallest effort into educating themselves about anything.

There was a time when it wasn't that way, at least not as much. Has MTV hurt the music industry?

Yes. If you don't see an artist on MTV 9/10 times that artist will not sell more than a quarter mill unit max. They are the reason Ashley Simpson even has a career and why Jessica Simpson now owns Britney Spears. MTV has killed quality music being widely available and now for the most part promotes garbage or people under contract to them for reality shows.