Buscasting

I've been listening to this podcast from Birmingham (summary: two people take a bus, and talk. yes, that's it, and its really quite compelling) and the latest episode has a really weird moment (at 8m49s) when the BBC film crew with them tells them to pretend to be recording their podcast, which in fact (as they explain) they actually are/have been all this while ... whereupon they're told to continue doing it, but as if the film crew wasn't there. Which is hilarious, because once you've heard the podcast, you can imagine watching the BBC's version of it, knowing that it wasn't quite as real as its made out to be.

TV has the odd ability to make everything fake - even when its real. We'd rather watch the artificial version than the real version (which is what reality TV is - quite unreal), and rather than stick our heads out the window, as it were, and experience the real we'd rather have it mediated, processed, and broadcast to us. Which is what I do every morning when I plug into the iPod and ignore the taxi driver. It's a good thing really - after all sticking your head out the window runs the attendant risk of having something very real drop on your head, whereas watching reality TV is perfectly safe and not to mention infinitely more sanitary. And not talking to taxi drivers can only do good things for my blood pressure anyway.

tags:
podcasts