Reality TV
Sometimes in the morning I try to be inventive by planning activities to do with my free time that I can be proud of. I just always end up watching TV. One morning, after a nice hot bath, I happened upon an old episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians. Nothing says I am depressed more than watching that shit storm of a show. I am ostensibly crying out for help.
It was the Lamar Odom wedding episode. I have never witnessed a more physically transformative family. Some people take hard drugs, and me I subject myself to reality television. It never feels good afterwards, as it is such an elaborate well orchestrated mindless waste of time. They abuse ‘like’ in its adverbial form so much, it starts to become trippy. All the ‘oh my gods’ and vagina references, I know I have seen better acting from Xander Corvus. It’s like immersing oneself in a tornado of Californian excrement, it looks like chocolate but it is not chocolate. Why did they have to be Armenian? How did Armenia manage to give the world System of a Down and then the Kardashians? What have they done to Kanye West?
One of the consequences I have to face, being unemployed, besides moving back home, is picking up a gut wrenching television watching habit. I have since had to move on to other shows when DSTV realized they gave us access to their premium content, despite our compact subscription.
My mom likes watching little people big world, a reality show about little but super accomplished people. On one of the episodes we were watching, the Roloffs were doing some upgrades on their farm, for an upcoming wedding they were set to host. I think this was the first time I decided to watch the show. I was in awe. They had big cars that seemed custom made for their size, they repainted stuff, ran around completing errands, and I remember deliberating quietly to myself how admirable and better as humans they were, in terms of their overall contribution to the world.
It’s freaky that as I was browsing, a google ad about them popped up even though I don’t recall ever searching for them in the past. The article was reporting that Amy and Matt Roloff were divorced. As I read through it, the article proceeded to mention they had both moved on, and dating other people. The guilt I felt, for quickly googling how their new partners looked like, was intense. I wondered if they were dating ‘normal’ sized people and it turned out they were.
Amy posted herself with her new beau on instagram, and trolls asserted he was probably with her for the wrong reasons. I reckon this was a result of society’s habit of qualifying romantic love. The perception that it must be built from physical attraction, before anything else, or that physically alike people need to sleep with each other. Amy is not who one could refer to as a traditional beauty, most people aren’t, myself included. As a trailblazing, farm owning, wedding planning person, some of the comments posted insinuated it had to be her fame, and not her character or looks that landed her this new romance. For an average human, it is incomprehensible that someone like Amy is loved for just who she is, or that a ‘normal sized’ man would want to be with her without any ulterior motives.
However disconcerting all this is, a similar subject was compelling enough to make it to Larry David’s, Curb your enthusiasm. On the episode Larry felt he could trust his associate, because he ‘obviously’ had integrity, as he married a hideous looking woman. This is how I have felt about the union of Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Trogneux, before it came to light how old he was when they started seeing each other. Only true love can allow a man to look past his partner’s sagging skin and still want to be with them (humans are so superficial), or in the case of Larry’s associate marry an ugly woman. Amy in my opinion is quite an attractive lady, she just happens to not be of average height. I suspect these sort of sentiments stem from a very misogynous place, because this phenomena is acceptable with men.
Beauty is without a doubt subjective, and even what we perceive as normal, I think. If you watch the Roloffs for more than 10 minutes, even the brain stops registering them as little people. For a little while though, I will tend to start feeling horrible about how I don’t need a custom made car to get around, and yet and I am still single and financially incapacitated. It’s obviously all in the brain. This I have to then ask myself, what the actual fuck!? When will I get my shit together? Argh.
Anyways eventually after my reality shows binge, I will change the channel and ever so often, a movie like, a fault in our stars, will start airing. I get excited, because the movie consistently makes me cry like a baby. I will weep when I watch it, but less and less each time. Some scenes start to ruin the movie for me. The Hollywood formula. The inclusion of weird kissing settings that have characters clap when a couple make out. In what universe would human beings, at an Anne Frank museum clap when they see two strangers kiss, because one is holding an oxygen mask!? Is it so morose that any showing of love garners such jubilation? I am yet to see a couple that makes out so beautifully, I am left to teary or moved into a jovial applause frenzy.
I need to stop watching TV. It feels like I am ruining my life.
