Sonya Gorman says she is “fed up to the back teeth” with David Blaine and reality TV in general. She takes everyone responsible to task and she isn’t particularly looking forward to the start of Big Brother 7.
David Blaine has just finished yet another stunt. “Drowned alive” lasted for more than a week. This stunt is just one in a series of crazy things the man has done. He has been “buried alive” for seven days, “frozen” for 61 hours, perched 90 feet up on a pole for 35 hours, and suspended in a glass box above the Thames for 44 days.
Still people queue up to see his antics. After this “above the below” stunt everyone wanted the chance to see what else Blaine could do. Some people might even think that he has just gone to far this time.
I personally think that at the start David Blaine was very interesting and fun but he has maybe taken his latest bid for media exposure a bit too far. Does he really think that people want to watch him in a giant fish bowl for seven days? Obviously the people who televise these things do believe that. Surely the only reality is that there is a minority of people who actually really do watch these things.
David Blaine clearly feels the need to be in the spotlight all of the time. In my opinion he should not be putting his health at risk for a bit of notoriety. We are, as a nation, beginning to get sick of him. Maybe we are even getting sick off reality TV and these types of stunts in general.
If you switch on your television you are more likely to see a “reality TV” programme than a quality documentary. It’s not just the actual programmes themselves. We also have to suffer hours off extra coverage of the events. Coverage which is mostly boring and repetitive. Do we really need to see people sleeping, washing and fighting?
There are too many of these shows. They are full off people who simply want to be famous for being famous or people who were famous and want to make more money by becoming famous all over again.
The people who make these programmes aren’t making them for the good of our health. They simply want to make money. They know that the general public is like sheep and gullible enough to swallow all the clap-trap fed to them by the television producer’s favorite bedfellows, the tabloid newspapers. They both thrive because they feed off and support each other.
This week will see the start off Big Brother 7. Yes! Big Brother was good at the start but by the time Big Brother 3 came along it was becoming really boring and predictable. Endemol, the production company in charge of Big Brother, knew that too and so they encouraged more and more outrageous behavior.
Contestants began fighting with each other, people were having sexual encounters and emotional breakdowns. Even this years Celebrity Big Brother saw the reputation of a career politician crumble before our very eyes. George Galloway will never live down play acting as a cat. Did he really think that this would do him any favors with the electorate? Did he really care ? Maybe he too has fallen victim to the cult of celebrity.
In a way you can’t help but watch. It is car crash television. I can’t help but wonder how they are going to top last years antics. Maybe they could get David Blaine to lock himself up in a glass Big Brother Bog for the duration of the series and then we could watch the other housemates watching him watching them watching him. Wouldn’t that be just riveting television? I think not! TV producers take the hint we don’t want to watch anymore.
About the team
This story was produced by Sonya Gorman and edited by John Monaghan. It was published by Reach for the Sky website.
