Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy (left) and architect Dermot Bannon, presenter of RTÉ’s Room to Improve in 2017
Get a room.
Via Frank Armstrong in Cassandra Voices (full article at link below):
In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being Czech author Milan Kundera explains that kitsch is an aesthetic ideal ‘in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist’. This he argues, ‘is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements.’ The Montrose cultural bubble has long served a crucial political purpose: denying shit while everyone acts as though it does not exist.
…Through no fault of his own, the feel good factor of Dermot Bannon’s show obscures the suffering associated with an enduring and arguably preventable housing crisis, and also, more broadly, provides an insight into how the Irish overreaction to Covid-19 occurred; which has done incalculable damage to the lives of children especially.
It seems that our best, and perhaps only, response in Ireland to these traumas is comedy, but this has clear pitfalls.
…..Room To Improve is devoted to the improvement of private dwellings in the possession of a shrinking middle class still transfixed by the ups and downs of the Irish property market. It is instructive that according to Daft at the start of May, 2022 there are just over one thousand properties available to rent in all of Ireland at a point when the Irish government has just committed to welcoming tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine. Is it any wonder so many people are disinclined to have children.
…In essence Room to Improve translates into: how can someone increase the market value of their property. The lurking presence of the celebrity quantity surveyor ensures that any project is seen in terms of adding financial value to the holding.
It is particularly tone deaf as we reach another high-water mark in an ongoing housing crisis. Missing on RTÉ is serious engagement with the corruption of a planning process, which lies behind enduring inequalities and sprawl, or the financial structures that embed generational inequalities, and permit a creeping dominance of transnational capitalism.
It is not that housing dysfunction is denied on RTÉ – that we are lied to as such – it is that the issues are almost completely ignored amidst the day-to-day mixture of light entertainment and vox pop nonsense that are their mainstays. Room to Improve is a form of kitsch because it denies the shitstorm going on in the society around it.
…It also appears that RTÉ’s longstanding tendency to bury shitness – which is also evident in legacy print media – led to the catastrophic handling of Covid-19 in Ireland…
…It will be many years before we come to terms with what happened during Covid-19 around the world, and confront the traumas, especially to children, of living through lockdowns. It is instructive that despite having the youngest population in the EU, Irish children were subjected to the longest school closures. Simply blaming teaching unions ignores how teachers were subjected to relentless fear messaging that made them reluctant to do their jobs, despite international data from early on showing that their concerns were generally misguided.
Yet for RTÉ ‘The deadly virus’ of COVID-19 seemed to arrive as a godsend – and an advertising windfall, or so-called Covid bounce. A slavish devotion allowed the channel to almost completely ignore all other difficult news for the best part of a year-and-a-half. The daily totals of cases and deaths, uncritically conveyed, became the staple of every radio and television news bulletin and headline on their website.
Then, almost overnight, the issue vanished from sight, without any kind of meaningful post-mortem or reflection on the damage inflicted on the patchwork of communities that make up our society.
It gives way to relentless coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – thick on spectacle and almost devoid of critical analysis. Images of wasted buildings now bury discussion of other stories [more at link below]
RTE Kitsch: Room to Improve (Frank Armstrong, Cassandra Voices)
Kitsch; fair description, in fairness.
Two plonkers and one of them on the settee
“Then, almost overnight, the issue vanished from sight” –
HORRAY FOR VACCINES AND SCIENCE, YAAAAAY!!!!!
YAY SCIENCE!!! https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702
oh.
Except the vaccines don’t work and the science turned out to be a qasi religion where the high priests are now running for cover?
I stopped momentarily on the Late Late the other night, a mask-less Tubridy talking to 4 mask-less students in the front row of an audience where everyone else was wearing a black mask. No blue ones, no white ones, no patterned ones. He was talking to the students who had made outfits from garbage essentially. Tubridy spoke down to the students, as he does, for a few minutes then said “never throw anything out people, it could end up as a lovely dress”, or words to that effect. Then their was great mirth when he had his elderly guest sit in his chair and he sat on the couch! He must be Ireland’s most slapable person, and on half a million a year taxpayers. Is it that cringey on his radio show too? I couldn’t take more than 2/3 minutes of him so it begs belief he occupies prime-time on a Friday evening and has done so for 10? years. Brutal, as Dustin used to say.
Not only is he on half a mill, it gets paid to his “production company” which by the simple act of buying him a new Volvo one year, actually made a loss.
A cute hoor.
DEFUND RTE!
In my article on Kundera in Cassandra voices I pointed out quoting the legendary Austrian writer Herman broch how kitsch is intrinsic to fascism and turbidy awful d4 light shows how a comedian provides distraction to meltdown
Irelands meohistophelian lightness
That’s an interesting observation. When power itself can’t be challenged – as in our current soft fascism phase – a chintzy unreality is presented. Gone are the ‘adult conversations’ – where different sides of a debate can be aired, replaced with a stringent ideology that any deviation from is deemed ‘insane’. From my memories of Gay Byrne, I don’t imagine he’d have treated the current paradigm in the same way as Turbidy. He was a shrewd observer and had actual strength in his convictions
“the Irish overreaction to Covid-19 occurred; which has done incalculable damage to the lives of children especially.” – true that.
people don’t want the reality. it scares them. they want lighthearted entertainment after a hard days work. they are more concerned with page 3 of the sun and laughing with dermo to open their mind.
Those eejits in RTE have been resident in their bubble for so long, inhaling their own farts, that the only way they know their ass from their elbow is the rancid odour.
It’s one thing allowing them to run a TV service but their second channel, created to mop up ad revenue that might support an independent channel, is entirely unjustified, especially given the fact that RTE One is such lowbrow muck.
You’ll own nothing & be happy, or else, so home improvements are off our future menu, as Radio Jellyfish Éireann should be.
Clear them out.
They had too much Covid coverage and then not enough post-mortem or reflection on Covid, so you want more Covid coverage? Make up your mind!
We want what we always wanted- a balanced coverage of Covid- not the putrid propaganda they were and are pumping out. Covid is the begining of the end of RTE because so many people have now woken up to their game.