![]() The flimsy premise-that this is the only way the new sheriff could understand what’s happening in his jail-is ludicrous. Since the producers’ cover story is that they’re making a documentary about first-time inmates, why not just make a documentary about first-time inmates? You know, actual people? Like Lockup has been doing for 15 years on MSNBC? Why the charade? But is that news? I know very little about our corrections system and absolutely nothing surprised me. All it does for me is spark conversation about why this ever became a show. Sure, it does a swell job of illustrating how terrible and awful jail is. (The major clue is the difference between surveillance footage, used when there is clearly no camera crew in the pod, and footage from hand-held cameras.)Īlso: It may be legal, but how ethical is it to turn other inmates into reality show characters without their consent? What they think of as surveillance cameras are instead Big Brother-ish cameras, recording their every move and turning it into entertainment.Ħ0 Days In is a kind of reality TV Orange is the New Black-which, yes, is fictional entertainment, though based on a memoir-but the A&E version offers nothing new to the conversation. There’s a lot of intercut footage that ramps up the tension, like scary looks, though it’s clear those are coming from different moments. The show repeatedly uses the exact same footage of violence to reinforce the terror, and while I have no doubt that’s real and certainly the reality of prison life, repeating the same moments over and over again is manipulative at best. It’s well-produced, insofar as it’s tightly edited, creating atmosphere well.īut like the premise, it falls apart upon examination. Shocking revelations: jail is terrible!Ħ0 Days In is the kind of gritty, reality-of-life, ethically challenged reality television that A&E has made its thing. ![]() Naked and Afraid has an absurd premise, but its contestants are trained survivalists who want to challenge themselves in extreme conditions. They are not novices. The same is even true for other extreme reality shows. The people who do go into harm’s way intentionally-firefighters, police officers, military personnel-are well-trained and prepared. Do firefighters need to set their own homes ablaze to empathize with those they help? Does a baker need to sit in an oven for an hour to understand what cakes go through? Just like A&E’s pointless Fit to Fat to Fit, on which trainers gained weight to then lose it again, it’s an exercise in obviousness. Tami wants to understand what it’s like for the people she’s locked up.Įxcept this is an argument that falls apart upon any kind of examination. Many of them have reasons that make some sense: they’re military or law enforcement who want to know what it’s like inside. The first of those hours introduces the innocent people-including Muhammad Ali’s daughter Maryum-and makes the case for why they wanted to voluntarily go to jail. I don’t like it.”Īs absurd as this idea sounded on paper, I watched the first two hours with as much of an open mind as possible, wanting it to surprise me. Tami’s wife, Joelle, says, “I’m afraid that she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.” Sophia, their child, tells the camera, “I know my mom is going away for a lot of weeks. Her only crime is agreeing to be on a reality series: A&E’s 60 Days In. A police officer, Tami, is leaving her wife and a daughter for two months to be locked in jail, even though she’s done nothing wrong.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |