And here we are, thre first real post and I start with a rant. A rant on how badly some aspects of reality are depicted in TV shows and Cinema.
That feeling…
Have you ever felt that frustrating and discouraging sensation watching a movie or a tv show that makes you think How the hell could this ever happen in the real life?! and you suddenly realise how lame the show is and how much you’d have rather spent that time watching something else?
Well that’s exactly that feeling that I want to write about, because I have been feeling it alarmingly more and more frequently lately…
Type type type
It often happens that films and TV fictions main plots are surrounded by references to real life aspects, references though, that are not well thought, maybe because of lack of funds to hire consultants, or maybe because of lack of time, or maybe to not distract from the main story line. Whatever the reason, some of those reality references are a bit lame and more fiction and cliché than reality, or in complete clash with the main plot, making everything sometimes funny and sometimes unwatchable.
And the more you are familiar with that aspect of reality, the more you perceive the lameness of its reenactment, so when it comes to IT I often have that kind of feeling 💩
I am thinking of the typical situation in which the one hacker around types random stuff on the keyboard, and even more random stuff scrolls on the screen, at a pace that not even gcc compiling gcc can achieve!
Think about the great Abby Sciuto how much she helps any investigation typing random stuff on the keyboard!
Really funny depictions of reality that usually make me think of a few questions. Such as:
- Dosn’t any of these people use an IDE?
- If a process is spitting out stuff at stdout (and maybe stderr) what the hell do they type? CTRL-C? CTRL-Z / fg?
- And with a DE that is contiuously beeping how can they preserve their sanity?
- Why when they zoom an image at any possible resolution they can alwasys have an arbitrary clean image? Even when they uses CC images?
But mostly it makes me wonder: If I realised of the lameness of IT in cinema because that’s the environment I know, how many other proper bulls**t do I watch?
A new hope
You got me, right?
I don’t want just to rant out, but I also want to mention a few cases in which the reality reenactment or the lack of it has been much better in cinema and TV in my opinion:
- Mr Robot
- Numb3rs
- The Big Bang Theory - Not sure if it was inspired by nerds or nerds mimicing it, but I think it’s pretty realistic and physics dialogues are well done.
- The IT Crowd - yeah sure pretty surreal, but many sitcom gags spark form actual and very real situations
- Star Wars - And all the sequels, I know not real at all, but I will explain in a moment
- Twin Peaks - Same as above
I am very sure there are many other accurate movies and TV shows out there, so please suggest any you know 😄
Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely don’t think that a film or a TV show must really be real as a whole, quite the contrary actually, I consider Twin Peaks perhaps the best TV show ever, along with X-Files. In fact, both of them wouldn’t even exist if teh production was only seeking to reproduce reality on the screen, they are awesome in their fantastic plane far away from reality and work very well in their unreal universe.
What’s my point, then? I think the points that make watching a screen play a pleasure to watch a screen play, are actually 2:
- The consistency to a certain degree of realism
- The harmony in which real and unreal elements are integrated and fades into each other.
Take Star Wars for instance, which I am a big fan of, btw - since the beginning you can read A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away That’s cool, as you already know that is setting the scenes away in time and space in an undefined different reality, and you can expect nothing from the reality you are living it. Does it mean that the film is clumsy, unbelievable and awkward as an episode of NCIS? Not at all! Tthe rest of the film, indeed, keeps consistency with it, the plot evolves in those elements of un-reality. Other non practical elements - such as feelings - are very real in that fantastic plot, and seeking freedom, persistence, growing, self-seeking, betrayal, are all elements that who’s watching can connect with, even from a galaxy far far away. And back to my point both the elements work harmoniously together, the surreal laser guns are well integrated with the very real sentiments involved in the plot.
Or take Twin Peaks, now. I’ve always found astonishing how much graciously the real elements fade into the surreal and vice-versa. The oneiric elements of a dream or the whole einvronment itself fade really well into the real elements of the daily life of a small town. If you haven’t wathc it yet, well, you’re a bad person, so chop chop, watch it, I won’t spoil anything more.
So, it’s not surely Luke that will come and save us, but the new hope I have is that luckily not all the cinema and tv productions are using lame reconstructions of real life, and not in every movie or tv show there’s the Abby Sciuto workstation. 😉