To give an example within the United Kingdom, note the changes in the categories used on Mastermind (traditionally regarded as the most intellectual quiz on British television) between the 1970s and the current era
No. Are you really arguing that dumbing something down for “market conditions and consumer preference” is not dumbing anything down?
An Gadaí writes:
> IIRC when The Commitments was released in the United States cinema-goers
> were given a glossary to help decipher the Dublin vernacular used. I imagine
> this might have been as much for promotional purposes as to address an actual
> need. I notice that shows on VH1 in the US often subtitle native English
> speakers such as the Gallagher brothers from Oasis.
Perhaps the film critics attending the premiere of The Commitments were given a hand-out that included a glossary, but the regular viewers of the movie weren’t given any such thing. Perhaps in a particular segment on VH1 the Gallagher brothers were subtitled, but this isn’t regularly done for non-American English speakers. Occasionally Americans are subtitled if the recording was done in some odd way. For instance, on the program Cops, where they show videotapes of actual police operations, they will sometimes subtitle the people being arrested, since they aren’t, in general, trying hard to be understood on tape.
This is completely wrong. I’m in Turkey at the moment and the Turks offer up some good competition with the Americans and Canadians when it comes to flag flying. Plus, there are pictures of Kemal Ataturk EVERYWHERE (including the flag; lots of the flags have his image superimposed on them). He’s on every single bill. His picture is on the wall of almost every place of business I’ve been in in the last couple weeks. I even saw a guy wearing an Ataturk lapel pin, a la Kim Jong Il, the other day. Defamation of the flag or Ataturk is considered a serious crime, too, none of that namby-pamby wrangling over constitutionality.
It seems to me that people often talk about “in Europe people do this” or “in the rest of the world people do this” when what they really mean is “in the four countries that I consider worthwhile, people do this.”
I don’t think this is relevent to the debate on dumbing down. It is more a comment of the standard of contestent Mastermind attracts these days. The contenders pick their own subjects - not the BBC or the production company - and I seem to remember there were a fair number of people doing sport and popular culture back in the 70s (just as there are people doing historical subjects now) - it’s just they were beaten by the people doing history and classics.
If you want an example of Mastermind being dumbed down I would point to the pointless little mini-interviews John Humphrys has with the contenders between the first and second rounds. The assumption is the audience can’t concentrate on an actual quiz for half an hour and need the “human interest” - in fact all it does is hold up the actual point of the show, the climax where we find out who has won.