I wonder at it all the time I watch TV shows, especially sitcoms: people just don't talk, laugh, and gesture like that or put on such faces in real life. Try to behave like some characters for a day, and it will feel beyond ridiculous. Yet we take all this as normal when we see it on screen. What is it? A projection of a more interesting, intense, and fun life onto a simpler, more boring life of an average person who's tired after work and turns on the TV to get a glimpse of something brighter? Do we like to see bolder, freer and more charismatic versions of ourselves? Or are we just accustomed to the format that television has been feeding us for decades, and even the outrageous backstage laughter doesn't bother us?
Anything Goes : Life and TV Shows by Victoria Lugovskaya
Life and TV Shows
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My ex wife used to watch tv while I was at work.I would do 12 plus hours.I was driving a semi.When I would come home, she would ask me to sit with her and talk.Starting work at 4.30am, finishing some nights at 9pm, I was exhausted.But watching these fake characters on TV, she began to think, that we can be just like them.It never happened.
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Andrew, it's difficult to believe that some of those characters have jobs, because, apparently, what they do most of the time is sit on a couch in a café and chat with their friends :) Or they are usually at home, spending a lot of time talking to their relatives about trifles. They have plenty of free time, in general. And when we see them, we want their lives, we want that freedom, too. For so many people it's inaccessible (at the moment), because their jobs occupy most of their time. That's why those shows are so popular: they create an illusion of that freedom, a world where people are so relaxed that they can create jokes every twenty seconds.
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Silvia, what's curious is that I smile and laugh watching these shows, although I know that the dialogues are unreal. I wonder: would a TV show that really represents life be popular? One thing is true: our life routines MUST be more interesting and exciting, and it's our job to make them so. Maybe we should try to make each other laugh more, and everyone would be happier :)
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Just like in Seinfeld.They live close together, but who ever works.I guess showing a persons life in actual events would be boring.A truck driver, like myself, delivering to customers.Who would sit for an hour to watch traffic in front of me or my daily routine.Unless I was a bad driver, maybe it might become funny, but then it would upset a whole bunch of other good drivers.Life has to be fiction or it wouldn't work, unless true police dramas or fire rescue.
I agree and disagree. A lot of the sitcoms and dramas are so fake, it just wants to make you wish we had that life. However, there are some shows that show people working. For the sake of time the show has to cut it down to 1 min of work time. For example, Bewitched and the Brady Bunch showed the husbands going to work while the mothers stayed home to take care of the children. We knew what Daryl Stevens and Mike Brady did for a work. Today, Reality TV shows are popular because it is more real with the every day drama and then some. I watch some reality TV shows like Lizard Lick, Shipping Wars, and Restaurant Impossible.