Friday, February 24, 2012

Ice Road Fuckers: The Dangerous World of Television

      Having a job is way of life for most of the people on this planet. Sure, we'd love to while away the hours playing skee ball and sipping expensive champagne from the navel of a beautiful woman, but, alas, shit like that isn't free, especially the woman. Hence the need for a job or money making scheme...like dealing drugs. All of which are hard work to some degree suck fucking ass.


Pictured: Work sucking ass.

      So, why has t.v., with it's god like intuition, chosen to make work harder? Everyday there seems to be a new show about an everyday, regular, suck ass job, only it's difficulty has been ramped up to insane proportions. It's as though the initial job, that was the focus of the show, wasn't awful enough. No, they needed the element of life threatening insanity to make it palatable to the death lusting public. 


Tasty. I'm not sure whether to acknowledge 
my boner or go with my gag reflex. 

      There are shows about baking, logging and storage unit scavengers, all of which have been altered to increase their intensity.  The biggest offender, as of late, is the Ice Road Trucker series and it's ilk. What started out as an interesting look into the lives of truckers and their...trucking...on one of America's most difficult thoroughfares. It has since turned into "how to increasingly come close to killing truckers". At some point, the networks in their infinite wisdom decided that regular jobs, just aren't exciting enough for viewers anymore. Your job is fucking boring people! So, unless we toss in the element of pants shitting fear, no one will be interested. 


Fuck this is boring...pass me a pillow.

      While it's true that a majority of jobs are mother fucking boring (that summer I spent clubbing baby seals, poisoning their meat and feeding it to dolphins...BORING.), there are a lot that have dramatic elements all on their own. Why take a semi-dangerous job and throw more danger at it? It seems like a lot of overkill...big, stupid ass overkill. 

      I can understand the need to captivate viewer interest, but, cranking up the death factor only makes regular people, with those same jobs, seem inferior in comparison. Besides, upping the danger is just a cheap and easy fix. Eventually, people get bored with the current danger level you have to start all over...only danger...er. Soon, it's truckers knife fighting each other in a "terror dome" situation, using their trucks as shields and possible bomb fodder.


TERROR DOME!

      Along with the leveling up of fear comes a real world fall out. People that actually have those jobs are soon viewed as the lower end of the spectrum. As if, for some reason, their version of the job is the "special ed" version compared to the t.v.'s real deal. Which of course it isn't.

      Using the trucker example, an average trucker might hear, "Oh, you're a trucker? Awesome! I watched a show the other night on t.v., this guy drove a rig on the side of a cliff, while screaming and shitting himself in Honduras. Is it like that? Oh...it's not, well, you must have it easy.". I think that most truckers would try hard to hide an angry scowl. They might even refrain from placing a well deserved "fuck yourself" punch in the middle of your forehead...before drinking all of your alcohol and destroying your home on a speed binge.


Oh, shit. I guess you all have to die now.

      Slapping asinine and unneeded elements into a job that is already dangerous and suck ass just aggravates the problem. If the job that's featured isn't cutting it anymore, find another job to focus on. Everyone's job sucks ass and all of them generate material to warrant a show. Lord knows there aren't enough shows about busty, high paid escorts. Make a few of them! I'd watch them! Well, until the show degrades into high grade hookers fighting their way out of haunted, abandoned factories with only Swiss Army knives and condoms. Then, I'll be forced to abide myself with Death Truckers of The Terror Dome!

3 comments:

  1. To be fair though, a documentary about trucking needs spicing up somehow. 17 hours of overnight driving in which a driver obeys traffic laws and stops for a snooze halfway through, wouldn't make good viewing.

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  2. I believe you're forgetting about the drug addled speed freaks that populate the highways and bi-ways. There's the rampant prostitution and corruption too! It's like a reality television show and a porno had sex in an 18 wheeler...and the 18 wheeler landed a show. I'd watch that...in shame, but, I'd watch nonetheless.

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  3. Lisa does it for a bag of peanuts and an RC Cola!

    ReplyDelete

Comment. Lest your fear consume you, cry baby.