Boo hoo, I've won
I've loved this series of Masterchef on BBC2. OK, so the quarter finals seemed to go on forever, and judges John Torrode and Greg Wallace took shouting on television to a new level, but the sheer joy of watching great food being cooked, in often ludicrous conditions, has been a joy. And the three finalists, "single dad Johnny", "18-year-old Emily" and "ex-barrister James" (to use the narrator's handy shorthand - I can't work out whether it's worse to be thumbnailed by a job you used to do, your age or your marital status) were all astonishingly good. James won, and by a whisker, and good on him.
However, my problem with it is not unique to Masterchef. It's an epidemic in the western world and TV simply amplifies the trend: we can't stop crying. Never mind the conceptual overload of "chasing dreams", "changing your life" and "going on a journey" which infects every reality-based TV format, it seems that we, as a species, are now unable to do any of this chasing, changing or journeying without bursting into tears. These tears are often tears of joy, or of frustration, or the simple overflow of emotion that comes with even the most minor up- or down-swing in life. In Masterchef's case, a compliment about your food could do it. Poor James let the tears flow down his chiselled features when seven Michelin-starred chefs said they liked his turbot. (Or was it when he was told off for overtrimming the scallops? It's difficult to tell in the edit.)
I expect a psychologist will trace it back to Diana's death. (By the way, it's nice that we let her rest in peace, isn't it, and don't constantly rake over her dead bones? It's what she would have wanted.) Maybe that was when the national stopcock was turned. I generally like to trace any development, good or bad, in the British psyche, back to America, as most cultural and social trends start there, and if so, I wonder if it might be the rise of the daytime freak show, in which people on low incomes are poked with a stick long enough to make them cry for the cameras. Certainly this millennium the waterworks have come a lot easier for us. It's hard to imagine that we, as a nation, were once considered uptight and buttoned-up. Look at us now, weeping and wailing at the drop of a hat. Or the "journey" of that hat from hand to floor.
I'm all for letting emotion out. Who wants to bottle it up and develop a tumour in later life? And women have had the patent on tears for long enough - it's time we men were permitted to well up. It's a sign that something's going on beneath the male surface other than football and engines and rape. (Sorry, men.) But it's amazing how quickly crying loses its value if you do it all day long and for no good reason. What are the contestants on From Ladette To Lady (whose final I also caught the other day) going to do when a family member dies, as one is bound to do at some stage? Will there be any tears left after the ones bucketing out of them during the bit where they had to make a speech on the lawn of a stately home in front of their parents?
The answer, of course, is that we're not crying over the spilt milk of the outcome of a reality-based TV show. We're crying for everything else that's troubling us. When you say, "It's all coming out," that precisely what's happening, isn't it? Diana's mourners weren't crying for a lost princess, they were subconsciously mourning some death of spirit, or death of ambition, or death of hope in their own lives, or simply the realisation of mortality and fragility Diana's sudden and violent demise triggered. Which is why the overdue and seemingly peaceful passing of the Queen Mother failed to elicit queues round the block to sign her death book. (Ooh, I'm a qualified psychologist.) Some of the Diana cortege, a couple of elderly American tourists, probably were crying for a woman they'd never met but found quite pretty, but they were surely in the minority. And they might have been crying about their own mortality too.
What bothers me most about all this crying on telly, especially from men, is that it makes me blub. Pretty much every time.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:01 AM
14 Comments
Contact
Andrew at
14 Comments:
It's such an odd thing. Are we just imagining that male-over-emoting is allowed now, or is a genuinely new thing? Or has it alwasy been around, we just have more reality/documentary style telly to showcase it?
John Peel quite famously cried at the drop of a hat (or the drop of 'Ferry Across The Mersey' anyway), Gazza obviously: men have been wailing at football for years. I remember tears when Kurt Cobain copped it, although I was only 13 so maybe that was understandable.
I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this...
http://thatjokeisntfunny.blogspot.com/
Maybe I'm emotionally stunted but the Diana thing affected me not a jot. I worked near Kensington Palace at the time and found the public outpourings of grief for someone they'd never met really quite strange. Then again, show me the death scene from Watership Down and I'm in floods - I only have to hear Bright Eyes to start me blubbing.
I too enjoyed the Masterchef series despite rather than because of Torode and Wallace. The bits where they were pretending to ponder their decisions were particularly excruciating - from the looks on their faces Torode seemed to be contemplating the meaning of life itself, while Wallace appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of constipation. Presumably all that rich food they'd been eating.
It is becoming a real problem isn't it?
In the course of the last 2 weeks I've found my bottom lip going during the Marseillaise before the England v France rugby (and I'm not even French - although it is a fine tune and puts our feeble effort into the shade).
And also at the end of 'The Choir' - a programme I only caught by mistake having missed all the previous episodes.
I had put it down to age and recent fatherhood but maybe the malaise goes deeper.
Hey, when that boy in The Choir revealed that he had Hodgkins disease but was battling through with an indomitable spirit, I welled up, just as choirmaster Gareth did. That's understandable.
Had a good weep when Peelie passed away. And for some strange reason the "I'm Spartacus, no I'm Spartacus" scene in said film always brings a tear to the eye. Oh yes, and the end of "Gladiator". There's a theme emerging.
I agree that it's been a fantastic series, although it did seem to go on quite a long time.
And more power to people like James shedding a tear. The pressure seemed immense and serving his turbot up must have been akin to the likes of you or I, Clair, turning in a draft novel to a panel of Pullitzer Prize winners.
As for where it comes from? Well, we have been become progressively less 'macho' as a sex over the past 15-20 years and you're not automatically referred to as a 'puff' any more, if you don't like football or drinking pints - thank god.
I've been known to cry at an episode of Neighbours, so I am probably the wrong person to Comment here.
However my cynical self was proved utterly wrong in Masterchef last night. I was convinced that "18 year old Emily" was being groomed to win so she could have her own telly show.
Speaking as a girl, I used to cry at pretty much everything, but only things worth crying at (ET, death etc). Age and experience has hardened me. I also find a stiff upper lip in a man deeply attractive.
John Torode cried in this episode too because he was carried away with Emily's Fruit Coulis. Silly bugger.
Oh bugger.
I recorded last night's Masterchef and now I find out the result in this blog of all places! Damn you Andrew ;-)
As for blubbing (and carrying on the food link - clever, eh?), did anyone notice how tearful the chefs in the American version of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares were? They burst into tears at the slightest excuse.
Sorry, Shendy. The final is still brilliant viewing. And yes, the chefs on Kitchen Nightmares USA are thus far almost identical: male, arrogant, fat and tearful. These people even cry when Gordon's team change their tablecloths.
I believe Diana would love the continuing grief. I think she wanted people to think of her every day, for ever, and cry over her life, her death, the shock of it all and all the rest of it, for all time. Just like a lot of people would in fact, which is why so many are in that band and so far, are doing her proud.
This week, I cried at the news of those lonely children on Jersey, abused and then murdered in a dark damp cellar by a cabal of people from an island whose people have complained for the same 60 years about being occupied by the Nazis, with their oppressive, secretive, cruel regime.
Perhaps some men have always cried in situations of extreme stress, but the cameramen weren't previously asked to follow them around everywhere until they did?
It sometimes seems to me that the AIM of reality TV is to push people until they break, in order to show them crying, shouting, swearing whatever, in public. This is generally why I don't watch such programmes.
I enjoyed Masterchef though, didn't notice him crying. I find I'm easier to move to tears since I had children. I think the world appears a scarier place when you have people to protect from it.
It's a bit wussy (hope that doesn't count as abuse). I don't mind if a man cries as long as it doesn't happen often. Crying over a moving moment in a film is ok (as long as it isn't a highly manipulative film)but crying because you've been confronted or insulted isn't. Having said that, I did cry once in the presence of a man but I turned my head away so he couldn't see and then I snotted on my sleeve. I got away with it.
Sandretta.
x
Post a Comment
<< Home