Diced Carrots TV
In the eighties, glaziers rejoiced when breaking glass signified danger and excitement after Bruce Willis shot that building up in Die Hard and television followed suit. Kleenex was over the moon when Russell Crowe showed his emotional upheaval about his murdered kin in Gladiator by releasing an anguished cry and a trail of snot connecting his nostrils to the dirt, which started torrents of emotional TV snot. Recently, pea soup manufacturers have experienced a boom when Matty Newton blew chunks all over a headless body in a shallow bush grave in Underbelly, but he was just following the latest fad. It seems that since the CSI franchise popularised graphic violence by zooming into wounds, the gloves are off when it comes to visual extremes in television.
Vomit has been used for horror (The Exorcist), comedy (The Wedding Singer) and documentaries (Supersize Me), and now it is a visual signifier that the character is emotionally upset, has not just had one lager too many or sipped some off milk. Have we become so blasé about life, so deadened to the human face, that extreme emotions are signified by an oral torrent of reverse pea soup? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Are we emotionally anaesthetised to visions of disasters that assault us every night at six, or has the art of storytelling reached such infantile levels of incompetence that the only way a character can let the viewer know they are upset is to heave their last meal?
Why was it that one wrinkle in the craggy visage of Lee Marvin could convey so many complex emotions merely with a deadpan expression? Maybe it’s because the actors in TV now are smooth-faced foetuses with no life experience that they don’t have the emotional range, so the writers have to find a visual means to convey their feelings. Maybe it’s because all the actors’ features are so botoxed they look like someone drew a face on a balloon and no-one can tell what their emotional state is.
The presence of child actors in lead roles and bovine poisoned thespians means the writers will have to find even more emotional signposts to let us know what the character is feeling. In future, if the character is confused they will flap their arms and squawk like a chicken. Being deep in thought will be signified by them burying up to the knuckle their finger in their nostril. The pain of a break-up will be signified by someone cutting a finger off, Yakuza-style. If they are happy, they will pop three ecstasy tablets and dance non-stop for four days. Embarrassment will be conveyed by a deft removal of wedged undies from the butt cheeks. If someone loses a parent, they will decapitate themselves with grief. If someone is dumped, they will set off a nuclear warhead in order to wipe out their ex-girlfriend and her new beau, and the city in which they live. It seems that the biggest casualty of modern youth-obsessed television may be subtlety.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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