From: Waldemar Ingdahl (wingdahl@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Oct 12 1999 - 09:38:45 MDT
> > Most people actually do believe that what the producers has chosen to
>show
> > is reality and that people where like that on the island. Naturally that
>is
> > bull. There are not 16 24-7 camera teams on the island, only 2-3 teams
>as
> > far as I can tell, and when they edit together the program (AFTER the
>winner
> > has been chosen) they naturally gives the contestants "roles" to play
>and
> > they edit the show so they wil fit those roles.
>
>The most interesting thing about it is the media manipulation. The
>symbiosis between the production company and the yellow press is
>extremely obvious, and the manipulation of public interest by
>scheduled "leaks" and "revelations" about the participants. At least
>here in Sweden the participants have achieved celebrity status, and
>being part of the show is enough to propel otherwise talentless people
>into the limelight for a while so that they can start embarrassing
>music careers, get into some celebrity quarrels or general flail about
>before vanishing into obscurity again.
YEAAAAH. I finally get to use my studies in media and journalism!!! Do you
know what the fun part is guys? Well "Robinson" is a remnant of an older
style of media environment were the audience was much more homogenous. The
alliance between TV and the evening (boulevard, "yellow" is the term for the
specific old Hearst papers, Anders) papers. The evening papers were in fact
significantly printed verisons of TV:s programming (especially in public
disservice Europe). You could see the same thing be done, ON A MUCH LARGER
SCALE, in the 50's and 60's (all you swedes, remember Snoddas the legendary
singer. He came into limelight through Hyland's Hörna). But this phenomenon
heavily counted on everybody seeing the same programs and everybody having
(nearly) the same taste and inclinations. The homogenity of the audience is
dissappearing, we should be talking about audiences instead. The only thing
that can keep up the interest is to gross it out, for a while, then the
audiences will be to diverse to be even grossed out by the same things.
>It would be fun with a transhumanist version of it, the exact
>opposite. Something along the lines of Jules Verne's _The Mysterious
>Island_: drop a number of people onto an island together with some
>good technical manuals, and have them score by reinventing
>civilization. Teamwork is rewarded (maybe they all get paid
>proportional to their technological level at the end or so), and the
>viewers get some ideas of how things work.
A very narrow interest group (even among transhumanists) would like to see
such a program. But they will probably be offered it in the future.
>But somehow I think we will see more of Robinson instead (and
>derivatives of all its descendants, Villa Medusa, Ökenguldet and so
>on...)
"Robinson" is dead. TransCalCol is ON!
Ingdahl
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