I Hate Soaps, by which I mean the nightly televisual feast upon which the nation gorges, not the bodily cleansing stuff, with which I am more personally aquainted than some of you might imagine.
Why is it that normal, pleasant, friendly, yea intelligent people, allow their brains to be mauled by the third-rate ratings-chasing fodder that is 'Enders, Corrie and the like? Poor stories, weak acting, drawn-out repetative endings, stereotypes and cliches abounding, contrived cliff-hangers, and sensationalist claptrap they undeniably rejoice in, but far worse than this is their sheer banality and mind-numbing futility.
Yet, normally clear-thinking, sensible people are drawn in and their craniums deprived of adequate profusion by the tedium of soap. The 'need for escapism after a hard day' argument is a poor excuse, because the soaps seem to poison the minds of the unsuspecting even on holiday!
My theory is that soap addiction can only be explained because the stories are immediately accessible and full of human drama, and require absolutely no mental engagement. However they lure the uncritical in by steadily eroding the critical faculties of the viewer until they are unable to separate the wheat from the chaff. The moderately addicted actually start to become emotionally engaged with the story-lines, while hard-core users have even been known to be unable to separate fact from fiction, actor from character.
Soap-watchers beware, your short life is dripping, second-by-second down the drain of eternity! Your mind is being numbed, minute-by-minute. Press the off-switch on the telly, before it presses the off button of your mind.
14 comments:
Given your wife's love of the soap genre are you not in serious danger of being beaten of she reads your blog?
My wife read my blog???! It'll never happen!
Well, given you label yourself as 'that hideous man' i.e. your wife's pet name for you, I would have thought it very likely that in some idle moment she'll google the name of her beloved & then it shall all end in sorry tears & sadness when she finds out that for all these years you have merely fained a love of Emerdale
Watch this space....
Exactly how long are you expecting me to watch for? The waiting is getting a little tedious.
It all depends on how keen you are to hear me report on the severity of the spously beating, that you believe I am due.
Oh I'm very keen
In order to put you out of your (evident) misery, I actually invited said wife to come and view the offending item.
Sadly, she declined the opportunity - so I've had to cancel my taxi to Accident and Emergency.
'That Hideous Man' apologises for any dissapointment that this may have caused.
Well, apathy is seen by some as boon I suppose. Though it seems to me that having a wife who cannot even be bothered to read what her husband is publishing on the web for all to see is a sad state of affairs. Perhaps her mind has been so numbed by watching Eastenders that she doesn't realise what you are doing?
You're just trying to lure me into saying something which I may not live to regret, aren't you?!
No no no.
I merely meant that it is important for your relationship with your wife that you work out why she doesn't appear to care about you, and yet is so infatuated with the fictional world of the soap.
Sadly neither of us subscribe to the "love me - love my blog" ethos, and, happily separating the two manage to avoid the crisis you suggest.
However, perhaps I should start "soaping-up" 'That Hideous Man'. "Leeve it aaat", "shut-it!", "you're doin my 'eddin'" and some cliff-hanging posts in which the tension builds until......
.......Carries on next time
(etc etc)
I hate soaps also, but I like the fact that Their Lives Fall Apart More Than Mine!
:o
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