Category: Media & Social

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Embarrassed by The Apprentice

If capitalism were a brand, what kind of brand message is THE APPRENTICE sending? I didn’t sit down and watch last nights episode. It was already on when I got in, and stayed on in the background while I busied myself with other things. In that half aware, peripheral vision, wallpaper kind of state, I was struck by how juvenile it all is.

I realise these people are there as much for entertainment as anything else, but if these are the brightest and the best, Lord Sugar’s business is in trouble. They go about their task like a blind man in a patch of brambles, staggering here, tripping there. As far as I can tell, they’re so busy trying to elbow their way to the front of the line, they don’t see the others in their team as anything but competition.

The worst of it comes when they get to the boardroom. The team with slightly better result is rewarded with a trip to a peep show circus, and the others, the ones who did that bit worse, get to play the greasy spoon blame game.

The post task autopsy is like watching a child caught pinching a sibling. They shift the blame, and obfuscate, while holding their knees together, hoping Sugar will believe them. If they are, it’s off to slime another day. If not, they’re on their bike, doomed to poverty, and the arbitrary nature of the labour market.

If I were the brand manager of capitalism, I’d be embarrassed by The Apprentice, and what it says about my product.

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Hypnotised by television

The argument about the harm television does to children is back on the agenda.

When people start on about this, I get very uncomfortable, it’s often the precursor to a demand for censorship. Censorship won’t solve the problems they harp on about, because none of the research that tells them content caused this or that behaviour, ever takes into account the act of watching as part of the causal relationship.

I think the act of watching television causes more damage than its content. I am not denying there is some relationship between behaviour and content. We wouldn’t have adverts if television didn’t affect behaviour, but for me it’s the act of watching that has the most significant effect.

If children stare at the screen to the detriment of all other social interactions, it’s no wonder certain damaging behaviours start to manifest themselves. It could be argued that the rampant self-interest of the last thirty years is caused by watching ever more television.

Generations of us have been brought up on an increasingly mailable television services. Multi-platform, interactive, streaming, on demand, have allowed us to bend television to our individual wants. As a result, we relate to the world, the way we relate to television, in very self-centred terms.

We pick and choose what we care about, the way we pick and choose what we watch. If our primary relationship is with the screen, it’s inevitable that we treat our lives thusly. If we don’t like what we’re watching, we change the channel.

The real danger of television is not the content, but the way we interact with it, the way it hypnotises us, keeps us watching.

Think of it in these terms. It is less the sex and violence on television, and more the sex and violence of television that causes harm.