chabuduo is not good enough

dreamy orchids promote the pondering of ponderable thoughts.

on a lazy sunday afternoon, we watched some crap t.v. shows (as one does) where four "known" (kendt) danes with nothing visibly in common each take turns making dinner at their house and entertaining the other three. then, they rate one another and one of them "wins" 10,000 kroner for their favorite charity. and it struck me, as they gave one another ratings of 8 and 9 for what appeared to be quite ordinary food that likely at most deserved a 5 or 6 and referred to one another as "icons" in their fields, when none of them are even remotely approaching icon status, that reality television is wrecking the language(s) (all of them). it's evident in the talent shows as well, where the judges tell everyone they're brilliant and the best they've seen or heard, when they most decidedly were not and that was evident for all to see and hear.

what is this culture of politeness that's driving this? are we really so afraid to call a spade a spade? and what does it do to words like "icon" that they are applied to only marginally famous, deeply insecure people who can't cook or set a proper table? it strips them of meaning is what it does.

yesterday, i learned about a chinese word - chabuduo - which means "almost there" or "good enough." since i had a long drive, i began to speculate as to whether the world is becoming a place where everything is "good enough," or chabuduo, whether it really is or not. i may be thinking of chabuduo in the wrong sense here, as what's underneath the chinese conception of it is a constant search for optimization - making things easier, cheaper and getting more money for them. but maybe i haven't misunderstood, because isn't reality t.v. chabuduo as well? it's definitely easier than making a proper television show, it surely costs less as you can get loads of fame-hungry suckers to participate and you don't have to pay them and thus the production company makes more money on it.

but what are the implications if everyone chooses the easy route, or hides their mistakes, slaps on a coat of paint to cover things up, or gives mediocre efforts top marks? a superficialization (i just made that word up) of culture and a poverty of language is what it seems to be giving us. we don't have any way to express things that are truly brilliant or iconic anymore now that everything is those things, even the things that are chabuduo.

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dear blogger, please finish your tweaking of the photo uploader, it's not working at the moment and i hate having to post using html from flickr. sigh.

secret 17 - reality t.v.

i remember the early days of reality t.v. i was a loyal follower of MTV's Real World, especially the one in SF, with puck (he was so awful) and rachel (bitch nose) and pedro, the sweet guy who was dying of AIDS. i watched Real World marathons when they had those on the weekend--staying in my PJs, ordering in pizza, asking people to bring over beverages--because i was glued to the t.v. and couldn't leave. i also loved MTV's Road Rules and think of MTV as the pioneer of reality t.v., tho' i know there are those who beg to differ. mostly because those shows were pretty scripted and probably not all that real.

but then, i drifted away from reality t.v., so aside from the odd episode of stylista or the aptly named biggest loser or the evil (and FAT!!) tyra banks' america's next top model when i'm alone in a hotel somewhere, (shh, twitterers, i wasn't going to mention that brain-numbing episode of paris hilton's new BFF that i accidentally watched) i don't really follow reality t.v. today. i'm rather old school about it.  so no temptation island, big brother or survivor here.

however, this has not stopped me from coming up with several sure-fire reality t.v. concepts:

1. Quack Docs - real people performing surgery on other real people. simple surgeries, not heart transplants and such. we're talking appendicitis or removing the odd lipoma. the kicker is that you would find people so desperate for their 15 seconds of fame that you would have willing "victims" on both sides. people who wanted to perform surgery and people willing to have it performed on them.
2. Near Miss  - ordinary people as air traffic controllers. harder to get permission for this one, i'll grant you. and it could be a one-off, where you reveal at the end that the whole thing actually took place in a simulator (the simulators are that good). but once people knew the kicker, it would lose its appeal. better to have it take place in an airport like, say, detroit, where people wouldn't mind the near misses quite as much. 
3. Gay Construction - this idea arose out of TV Danmark's Gay Army reality show, where gay scandinavians were paired with an american drill sergeant who tried (actually quite sincerely) to whip them into shape as army recruits). Gay Construction would involve giving a lot of asphalt, building materials and heavy machinery to a group of particularly effiminate gay men and having them build things - roads, houses. i have a picture in my head of the guys in evening gowns and high heels, trying to get the big rolling machine going.

for your viewing pleasure, a little clip from Gay Army:

do you have any reality t.v. show concepts lurking in the back of your mind?