This time ... It is Miscarriage

Novinite Insider » EDITORIAL | March 10, 2006, Friday // 00:00

By Milena Hristova

Last year it seemed like no one was sleeping. It made perfect sense if people stayed late to watch the uncensored version of Big Brother, only to lash at its "heroes" the next morning.

Now it seems that no one will be having dinner.

With the launch of the latest reality show "That's life" on national private bTV channel, hardly would anyone enjoy an outstanding appetite Monday evening with swollen women, vast bellies and babies being delivered "real-time" on the TV screen.

The loudly proclaimed goal of the show is to track down how the birth of a baby changes the life of thirteen Bulgarian couples, their joys and (literally) birth pangs of parenthood.

So far, so good.

But if having dinner while peeping unnoticed into the life of people locked at a house could give you the pleasure of the voyeur, the baby birth show - for more than obvious reasons - could not produce the same pleasurable results.

It is a jarring sense of humor because it puts into sharp focus a society, whose developing media culture turns values and, in this case, the miracle of life, into a low-quality, cheap consumption product.

The people in charge at bTV claim people are hungry for this new kind of staff that I find hard to classify - educating or, God forbid, entertaining?

"The new reality show responds to the audience's needs to watch unedited television materials," the show creators said before the launch.

They could be right in that but have certainly got it wrong in two key factors - quality of production and timing.

Boring and graphic describe best what I watched March 6, when the first issue of the show was aired. None of the tenderness and elegance that we could expect from the composer and cameraman of such a show. Stripped of these, the show makes for no more than an educational film. And this is something that no one would like to watch at 9 p.m.

The show creators' anaemic argument also struck me as a bitter reminder of how Bulgarians seem to be living the lives of reality show actors, which proves to be much more interesting and valuable than their own.

First came the unprecedented success of the first Big Brother edition, which turned fashionable things that were formerly seen as vulgar. Then came the lot from "Star Academy" - if these kids had to sing for a living, there would be a lot of empty plates...

Weeks ago, the long-awaited VIP Brother was heralded by a shocking TV advertisement that triggered angry reactions from the audience. In it actors, masked like terrorists, force a group of "hostages" into a primitive studio, their faces swathed in hoods. The script below reads: "You can still see them alive before we lock them up. On March 13, Monday, go to Boyana movie studio. You will hear the screams. Follow the spotlights!"

A gruesome resemblance with the video that showed the Bulgarian hostages in Iraq, later beheaded.

Where is the line between the sensational impact, am indispensable feature of the competitive media market and the brazen vulgarity? Are these stories spun just to win the headlines editors are known to want? How far can those who create reality shows go? How long will the audience tolerate such approaches?

With the VIP Brother due to hit TV screens across the country in just a week, the talents and tenacity of Bulgarian reality shows creators will certainly be put to the test.

What about the tenacity of the audience?

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