The Hall (Of Mirrors) Effect

A friend introduced me to the Joslin Rhodes Adviser Blog. He had some dealings with them when they did the conveyancing on a property he sold, and, he says, although they could have done better in the service they provided, he finds their monthly email newsletter quirkily amusing; enough that he usually forwards it to me.

The email usually contains an excerpt from a blog post. The latest one contained the following excerpt:

"Good evening and welcome to the Nine O’clock News.

The world is going to end and it’s all Kevin McCloud’s fault…….reportedly.

You may be surprised by that headline as we normally like to start the program by reporting on a grisly murder or such like. Ideally, a good hammer attack in some pretty middle class village, although anything that makes you feel like ‘you could be next’ is good for us. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, nobody was murdered today, which caused us a bit of a problem.

We tried very hard to find one, and in desperation the Producer even considered bringing one about however we talked him out of it.

We’re sure that lots of nice people did some good things today but as the media, we are unable to bring ourselves to report these to you for fear that you may go to bed in any state other than terrified for your life. Click to read more."

Bearing in mind that Joslin Rhodes describe themselves as Independent Financial Advisers who give advice on pensions, mortgages, savings, investments and insurance, not to mention the conveyancing services I alluded to earlier, I wonder if they have among their employees a staff member who not only likes to indulge his or her penchant for illegal substances, but also manages to slip blog posts onto the company blog, written under their influence, which have nothing whatever to do with the company business. I don't think it's a spoiler if I tell you the last sentence of that post reads: "Remember that you may still be hammered to death by a maniac at any time though, so don’t drop your guard."

If you click that link to read the rest of it, you'll find that the whole of the post carries on in a similar style, and doesn't 'drop out of character' at any point. The author strives to illustrate, through the use of humour, how TV 'news' programs seek to manipulate their viewers' emotions via the spin they put on their 'reports'. In one of those coincidences which spawns knowing looks from those who see hidden meaning in every coincidence, it arrived in my inbox just as I was thinking I'd do a post about TV soap operas, and the effect they have on their viewers. [Cue dramatic music]

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I have heard it said, although I can't point you to where, that soap operas just hold up a mirror to life. Hmmm. Leaving aside the bad acting (have you ever watched a soap opera with the sound turned off?), it strikes me that if there are any mirrors involved then they are far from perfect. They may not be as distorting as those found in the fairground hall of mirrors, but they most certainly reflect the bias of the soap's makers, and their backers.

Try watching a soap from a non-English speaking country, and observe what the themes are. You don't have to understand the language to recognise which behaviours are considered bad, and which are considered good, and if you spend a little time, you'll see behaviours which are presented as normal, even though they are not normal to you, probably because you don't live in the country of production. Then watch an English soap with the sound turned off.