Virtual Methodist

I've just finished reading the Hunger Games Trilogy of books, and, if you are interested you can read my views on them over at Goodreads, ( here , here and here ). There is a slight case of the law of diminishing returns with them... but I was so impressed with the first one that the second and third instalments had an extremely hard act to follow. Some reviewers have been a little condescending about the central premise of the first book, which has the children of conquered districts of a post-apocalyptic America (or Panem) taking part in what is effectively televised gladiatorial combat. This is not a novel idea... But it well textured and well told, especially given that it is essentially a piece of teen fiction, with appropriate parallels to contemporary TV "talent/reality" shows as well as to ancient Rome. It may be centred around the violence of the eponymous "Hunger Games" but nowhere does it buy into the myth of redemptive violence that is so all-perv...

Occassionally I go into Primary schools to do assemblies and my general principle has always been wind the kids up, walk away and leave the teachers to scrape them off the ceiling... Well, not quite, but almost... I try to make what I have to say as memorable as possible, so I try to do something a wee bit different each time... What is interesting is the response I get for a few weeks afterwards... some of the children who are in the youth and children's organisations associated with our church will greet me with a cheery/accusatory "Hey Mister! Weren't you at my school!?" Others who see me on the street quite often do the classic double-take, or 180 degree head-turn... which could potentially cause an accident... I rarely get the same response from adults... the closest would be when, as at present, I appear on Radio Ulster's "Thought for the Day" (I'm on again tomorrow for those who are interested). This happens about 4 mornings in the yea...

I wonder what Simon Cowell would make of this? Being a little under the weather over the weekend I ended up watching the nonsense that is "The X Factor" and remembered again why I loathe these programmes... What passes for talent in Britain's pop culture these days is so mass-manufactured and over-produced that it has no real depth or authentic poignancy. That is occasionally subverted in the auditions and more frequently in "Britain's Got Talent" but in both, the genuinely talented is more than swamped by those who are simply wanting to ape other artificially produced celebrities and those who are more to be pitied than scolded. The following entry from "Ukraine's Got Talent" would never make it within a million miles of its British equivalent because of form, subject matter and, most importantly, its length ("Sorry dear, it has to be less than 3 minutes...")... It's long even by the standards of most of the things I post...

You might have hoped that we had got back to reality by now. REAL reality not the virtual kind or the bizarre variety offered up on TV. Britain’s got Talent may be over for another year, but we’ve still got the denouement of the Apprentice this week, "Celebrity" Masterchef returns next week and on Friday Big Brother is crawling out from the stone it’s been hiding under. I loathe Big Brother, and most other "reality" shows, although I am a big Apprentice fan and got sucked into BGT this year, but with all of these attention hungry behemoths, there is a tendency to get things totally out of proportion. Last week, in the run up to the final of BGT, despite plenty of other news to report, we had headlines about Susan Boyle cracking under the pressure (which sadly seem to have come true), while the tears of one (undeserving) child finalist prompted much wasted airtime about the cruelty of putting children in for such competitions. We need to get a grip… It’s ONLY a TV ta...