Jenny Diski, discussing documentaries in the London Review of Books, could just as easily be describing reality TV: "[W]hen documentaries return after every ad break, the narrator – voice-over or walking head – gives a full precis of the previous segments. You can't expect an audience to hold information, so it has to be reiterated, even though very little is being asked of the viewer in the first place. A simple point is made, and then it is enacted or pictured. Then it is said again. Don't get complicated. Documentaries are like mixed ability lesson plans. You teach to the least able who you never ask anything of. Audience numbers are all that counts, if they don't turn off, you've won."
Friday, July 31, 2009
11
Hate the recap!
I love the fact that Diski writes, "[W]hen documentaries return after every ad break, the narrator â€" voice-over or walking head â€" gives a full precis of the previous segments. You can’t expect an audience to hold information, so it has to be reiterated, even though very little is being asked of the viewer in the first place." And then, just in case we forget, recaps for us: "A simple point is made, and then it is enacted or pictured. Then it is said again. Don’t get complicated." And then offers a simile, to reiterate once more what she just said: "Documentaries are like mixed ability lesson plans. You teach to the least able who you never ask anything of." By the time I'm at the end of the paragraph, I can't even remember what she was talking about at the beginning.
Very funny observation. The LRB readership is like ... a mixed-ability classroom, then?
Is there any literary magazine that is worth reading? If Iain Sinclair stops writing for LRB, I will certainly stop reading it.
Oh, the LRB's worth buying (first publishers of Mears/Waltheimer &c). Just suffers a bit from being a fallout shelter for 'Sixties refugees: Tariq Ali, the great Sinclair, Diski herself. A few too many chateau Generals fighting the previous culture war, just as the NYRB can sometimes seem to have a bad case of Emerititis.
But literary magazines, you're not supposed to *buy into* them, are you? What the fuck's a Granta reader, for example? (Other than the short-story writers trying to break into the racket, I mean).
No, don't buy into them. You'll lose all your capital.
I was always under the impression that the recap was for viewers who have tuned in during the episode (this mainly applies to shitty reality TV of the HGTV, Style, Bravo, etc variety, and not to documentaries or TV docs). I worked for a reality TV company for a summer, and my understanding was always that they never assumed that a viewer is starting at the beginning and watching till the end, so they constantly had to be going over whatever has happened up to that point in the episode. It serves the purpose of making the show watchable from any starting point, and also of filling time, which is super important as in 99.99% of reality TV episodes absolutely NOTHING happens.
Yes, the recap, annoying, unless it's done in the style of the Adam West Batman....
What is it again I'm supposed to be bitching about?
My hate of the post-commercial break recap is matched by my joy regarding a well done "Previously on..."
I came in late, what's this about? Because I don't need another fucking head-scratcher.
Nevermind, I'm off.
That also explains why the Biography channel and others, pan out to the same fucking photo every time an interviewee mentions the person being Bio'd. I know that it's a technique to not bore the viewer with a monologue, but I don't need to be reminded every second that their talking about Kurt Cobain and how he looks like.