Charlie Brooker's screen burn
Ubiquitous
Come on. Stop lying. You all do, you pampered, egocentric worms. And you're
wrong. In the grand scheme of things, none of us mean jack squat. No matter
what you think, say, or achieve during your lifetime, however you strive to
make some kind of impact, you'll have absolutely zero influence on the overall
course of the universe. You're a drop in a bathtub. A tile in a mosaic. A
solitary pixel on an immense and frightening LCD monitor.
If reading these words sent you temporarily crazy, and you ran outside and
stripped naked and pressed your bum cheeks against the nearest Starbucks
window - really pushed them apart so everyone inside got a gruesome view up
your rear aperture - and then started defecating against the glass to a
backdrop of tumbling lattes and horrified screams... if you did THAT, it might
irrevocably alter your life, what with the ensuing court case and all, but it
would make absolutely no difference to the trajectory of history. In summary:
you're pointless.
This is a terrifying thought, of course, which is why we in the west tend to
overcompensate by convincing ourselves that we're actually all massively
interesting and special and unique. At its simplest, you can see this trait
reflected in advertising slogans like Because You're Worth It - and at its
most insidiously offensive in shows like Tribal Wives (Wed, 9pm, BBC2).
Here's the premise: in each episode, a different British woman is flown across
the world to spend some time living among a charmingly authentic tribe of some
description in order to see what life-affirming message she can glean from
their humble hut-dwelling existence. This week, our volunteer is Sass Willis,
an unmarried 34-year-old from Oxford. Sass feels like she's missing out on
something but isn't quite sure what it is. Perhaps a week with the Kuna
Indians of Panama will help?
Guess what? It does. Within about 10 minutes they're painting her face with
henna and grinning at her with endearing, gappy mouths in which half the teeth
are missing. They have wooden bowls and hammocks and brightly coloured robes.
They carve statuettes and hold ceremonies and travel around in canoes.
They're, like, totally ethnic.
Naturally this means that a) We get a load of panpipe music farted down our
earholes for an hour while b) The narration implies the Kuna possess a simple
spiritual wisdom which Sass can both learn from and heal herself with. It
helps that they appear to speak in simply worded, easily translatable
platitudes, and spend much of their time telling her to settle down and get
married when she returns to the UK. Cue plenty of video diary entries in which
Sass tearfully discusses how the Kuna have changed her life forever and made
her see what's really important and how from now on she'll have a new
perspective on things and blah blah blah... because she's worth it.
Well pardon me. Not to single out Sass or the Kuna or anything, but why does
every other programme about exotic tribes have to spend the entire duration of
its running time making out that every single one of them is massively,
inherently wise? Statistically, half of them are going to be idiots, for
Christ's sake. Those simple chuckles and gap-toothed smiles you're so
enamoured with? That unvarnished, basically worded advice? What if they are
just signs of stupidity? What if you've travelled halfway round the world and
sought spiritual insight from a bunch of cretins? After all, a berk is still a
berk, whether they're eating chips in Rhyl or dancing round a fire in the
rainforest.
Once, just once, can't we have a travel show in which the presenter lives with
a remote tribe for a week and comes away shrugging and calling them a bunch of
boring, backward arseholes? Even if it isn't true.
In fact, especially if it isn't. Can't we? Please?
M Holmes
[...]
> Well pardon me. Not to single out Sass or the Kuna or anything, but
> why does every other programme about exotic tribes have to spend the
> entire duration of its running time making out that every single one
> of them is massively, inherently wise? Statistically, half of them are
> going to be idiots, for Christ's sake. Those simple chuckles and
> gap-toothed smiles you're so enamoured with? That unvarnished,
> basically worded advice? What if they are just signs of stupidity?
> What if you've travelled halfway round the world and sought spiritual
> insight from a bunch of cretins? After all, a berk is still a berk,
> whether they're eating chips in Rhyl or dancing round a fire in the
> rainforest.
Excellent rant! If alt.peeves were still in existence, we'd have put
down the red carpet for you to defecate upon.
FoFP
Ubiquitous
Hmm, I haven't been in that neighborhood in ages.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.