“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.”
This episode is all about Reality TV programming. But it isn’t just an hour and a half of two guys talking about how “reality” isn’t real. We try to get at the thing under the thing and discuss the reality of why we are given so-called “reality” as entertainment. It attempts, in some part, to talk about the underpinnings and underlying Platonic demiurge that crafts our desires to see archetypal stories of human drama and suffering as a catharsis and release and relief.
There’s also a lot of stuff about Dudley and Arnold getting touched in their bad-spots by Gordon Jump on DIFF’RENT STROKES.
Cooking shows, American Idol, the Loud Family from the 70s, the pervasive evil of Maury Povitch through history as force of societal decay, and how everything is really a big game show. All this and more in this week’s podcast.
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