When I was a kid I thought I'd grow up to be a seeker of
mysteries. I'd go off with a camera to find what I could find about the Loch
Ness monster, about Bigfoot, UFOs, all kinds of excellence. If I found
something I would share it, and if I didn't I'd share that too without any
attempt to mislead. Fast forward to now and the plethora of bastardized
"explorer" shows and I realize, wow, what a fool I was. Misleading is
the way to go. Money and ratings hand over fist. Recently there was a program on
purporting to be about mermaids, featuring "actual" footage. Well,
just like those people in commercials who are said to be "real
people"--because, technically, they are real people whether they're actors
or not--actual footage is anything shot. It's footage. It's fake but it's still
footage. Never mind that there wasn't even the courtesy of "dramatic
re-enactment" flashed across the screen. The makers of this
"documentary" on Animal Planet, a network purporting to be dedicated
to the natural world (at the third purporting I will lose it), went out of
their way to create footage as supposedly real as real gets. Video from a cell
phone of a dying mermaid creature beached alongside several small whales; video
of a mermaid swim-by from a deep water oil rig camera; video of a mermaid
skittering off a rock in broad daylight, all of it very cinema verite. Kudos to
the effects crews. But all of it as fake as the actors hired to play scientists
and the stiff guy supposedly interviewing them. I didn't watch the entire
program 'cause I call bullshit when I sniff it, but I've read online that at
the very end of the show in teeny weeny sublim-O-vision there's a disclaimer
that the entire preceding show was a dramatic representation of what might
kinda sorta coulda happened if such footage was ever actually truly found. I
wouldn't have had a problem with this program at all had they not gone to pains
to portray huge bits of it as authentic footage by actually having the words "actual
footage" on screen several times...but they went there. And that's when
Wayne Brady has to choke a bitch. Reality has been so co-opted, particularly
for the younger generation who think that tiny, invisible cameras hover around
everyone at all times capturing wicked cool footage of choice moments, that it's
irresponsible and despicable they'd put a show like this on without so much as
a nudge nudge wink wink. You KNOW folks flocked to Twitter with the OMGs and
OMFGs saying the mermaid apocalypse is upon us.
Why are they trying to kill our sense of wonder and replace
it with sideshow fear?
File this under "Bullshit floats, doesn't smell,"
'cause that's how it's packaged and sold.
