Thoughts on
Modern TV shows
by Augusto Pereira
The explosion of the TV shows
world wide has brought us some serious
combination of art work and
plane entertainment, to expand our
conceptions, solve our boredom issues and
enrich the pockets of it´s distributors.
Our generation is witnessing the gold rush
of our age, [in the matters of TV ] and all because
TV realized they need to provide
quality or else Youtube would
completely sweep it out.
(Thou Youtube is all about the 'doing it yourself!' philosophy)
I´ve always been an acvitist against the role
TV plays in our society since my toddler years but we won´t get into
my reasons, at least not in depth.
Cinema and all it´s poetry had been the first
and at the time of it´s blossoming the only contact
with moving images or with that connection
with drama that theater could never offer, due to geographic and
other limitations.
So Cinema came as a new form of
art expression (Thou we know the camera inventors wheren´t
artists per say... but you got the point.) and not a replacement
of the existing ones, that´s the way art
has always been, always an addition,
never a replacement.
But when TV came to play we soon
found out that it´s intent were not of expression,
but of dominion,
not of addition,
but of replacement. well, perhaps
not in it´s first years, but as babies may grow up
to be Hitlers and Bin Laddens, time showed us
it´s real face, the 'Adult TV' became
a messed up tool, a little fascist,
a little evil'ist'.
Fact is the Industry has never invested as
hard on it. The impression I have is that no one wants as
much Van Dame movies and talk shows as before
so they had to try out some new options,
and that´s how the boom of TV SERIES came to be a big
chunk of the production.
We all start small, and the 90´s will always
be remembered by the funny sitcoms such as
Friends or That´s 70 show! We love it! right?
Cheap and easy, that´s the secret of Sitcoms,
the only ones sweating on such productions are
the screen play writer and the actors,
the rest of the crew are having the time
of their lives, but from the "I just got back from work
and I´d like some entertainment" kind of TV shows to
the art demanding ones, such as
ROME and BREAKING BAD, we had to wait a bit...
Art on TV has being done since it´s genesis
(I´m not contradicting myself! is just that it never represented
the intention of it´s designers nor it´s investors, nor it´s runners, so forth...) And
some really good concepts have in deed being
first released by it, such shows as A TV DANTE
and NOT MOZART both Britain productions,
and both clearly NON COMMERCIAL art works,
released on TV and for ever complemented
since their debut a couple decades ago...
Well it all comes down to this:
In spite of all the money it is making,
our generation is somehow 'blessed' by this
out-poring release of great plots,
each one raising the grounds,
the technical grounds of the ones following
them, evolving the whole.
The Big Picture:
Off course, over a half of what it´s produced is
done by charlatans and
desperate producers, but that´s the price
we pay for democracy.
'Cinema' suffers just the same,
The cute thing is never before would I
compare TV with it in a positive way!
I think I may add TV to my list of friends.
Art solves everything! :D
