Reality BItes the dust!

It is the end of an era! The last 'Big Brother' in the UK is in full flow and as the last batch of wannabes fight over the cornflakes it would seem we have had enough of reality television. As Davina prepares her CV for a new job as political editor of the Sunday Times I am sure that 'Britain's got Talent and 'X-Factor' will soon follow; the viewing figures will fall as the rubber necked voyeurs move away from the crash site to the firm words from the TV pundit stating clearly and with authority .'..move away now ladies and gentleman there is nothing to see here!' then we will all be forced switch off our television sets and go and do something less boring instead.

It was not until I did a bit of research on reality TV that I realised just how many of this abysmal excuses for entertainment there have really been:-

Big Brother, Survivors, Wife-Swap, Britain's got Talent, The X-factor, Celebrity Re-Hab are just the tip of the iceberg of the list of this socially destructive light entertainment shows gracing our screens during the past decade. They called it the 'Naughties' surely 'non-entities' would have been more appropriate!


Karl Marx said 'Die Religion...ist das Opium de Volkes' which translates as 'Religion is the Opiate of the people'

At the time of writing this Marks explained that'.. the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.' Given the decline in the popularity of the Church in the UK and much of the Western world it is pretty easy to say that Marxs desire for the people to be released from their religious induced false happiness has come to pass but instead of being cured of our addiction and being left to find joy in ourselves and each other we have found an equally inexplicable and gaudy replacement; that hideously addictive drug that is reality television.

Even the most learned and intelligent have to admit that at some point during the last decade that they spent an evening peeping through fingers of at least one of the smorgasbord of reality shows that have been on offer over the last 10 years I'm sure Prof. Steven Hawking has uttered 'Oh my God' in his computerised voice when watching the delusion ed and the victimised desperately trying to please the new false idol Simon Cowell.

You only have to be logged into twitter at the time of the screening of one of these shows to see the broad range of Celebs, Journos, Politicians and real people from all walks of life who give up there high brow political and socially stimulating tweets to comment on the hair/trousers/sexual exploits/or sheer ugliness of the latest scapegoat who we can vent all our negative shit at. Even Gordon Brown has been revealed to have drawn into making observations on reality shows that should be so far below his fly zone that his only respectable response should be 'What the Fuck are you on about?' - could you imagine Winston Churchill giving a dry witty observation on the talents or lack of of Jedward or Alexander Burke? But times have changed and even our politicians are expected to dumb down to suit our rapidly declining expectations of the world around us.

Reality TV is dying but its legacy is a rather sordid stain on sections of society that it could never dreamed of groping when it was in its balsy over enthusiastic adolescence!

So, what would Karl Marx say, if he was alive today, as Big Brother prepares announce its last ever winner and thrusts the last reality show hero into the spiteful arms of the baying mob?

I imagine something along the lines of....

"This is Karl Marx you are live on Channel 4 please do not swear!"