Puzzled viewing

SONIA KELLY

WATCHING television programmes sometimes raises questions that demand answers – for me, but apparently not for anyone else.

Let’s start with documentaries, particularly wild life ones. Why do they always have to have a background of music? This often detracts from the dialogue and smothers the presentation, and is frequently unsuitable and unnecessary anyway. It’s like the usually elaborate photography is not good enough to stand alone – that it is not enough to see, without our ears being occupied, as well.

Speaking of ears, another questionable ploy is the sound of a phone ringing. Numerous times I’ve leaped to my feet to answer my own, only to discover there’s no one there. This is infuriating, as it makes you look like a half-wit, even if there’s no one there to see.

Subtitles provide another source of extreme irritation. It goes with foreign language films when the translation is shown at the bottom of the screen. This is bad enough when you can actually see it and read it before it disappears, but the script is often shown against a background of the same colour, so that even with the eyesight of a hawk, reading it could not be achieved. Is this not possible to rectify?

Then there’s what I call gobbledegook – people who speak so quickly that what they say is totally incomprehensible. Comedians almost always come into this category, but Derek Mooney is someone else who does. This applies to songs, as well. There are very few singers whose words are understandable and this certainly includes the Dervish vocalist, who is performing John Waters’ Eurovision song. Should there not be a school of diction for those who exploit the airwaves? When I went to school at Kylemore we were taught elocution, but that seems a subject unknown today. Maybe that’s why, thanks to the Benedictine nuns, that foreigners love me. “We can understand what you say,” they tell me wistfully, when I encounter them, well – at every turn. Luckily news readers seem to be pretty lucid on the whole, although it’s fair to say that mostly we’d be better off not knowing the news they impart.

Which is normally a litany of death. Why is it that bloodshed and tragedy always dominate the news? It implies that the listeners are so bloodthirsty that they’re smacking their lips and cheering on the assassins, instead of – as in my case – switching off the latest report from the killing fields.

And all this death raises another question: where are all the corpses buried? Even away from the battlefields there are a lot to be disposed of, and graveyards are relatively small. How come there is room in them for generations of dead? Wouldn’t you think their graves would occupy vast parklands?

One thing with another, though, the broadcast media seem to encourage death, because we have all those advertisements for cars, which spell death to the planet, let alone to some of their potential owners. This seems to completely nullify the fact that oil is running out and thus it would be more practicable to be promoting rickshaws.

This prompts another spatial question, so to speak – what fills the space created when the oil is removed? Does it remain one vast hollow, or does water, perhaps, seep in? If the former, then surely the earth’s crust (and us with it) is in danger of collapsing into it. If the latter, then there must be immense reservoirs of water, which will come in handy as the planet warms.

Finally, just two more questions: why do people clap their own performances and why (I’ve asked this before) do news readers say ‘Goodnight from X and me’, and then X also says ‘Goodnight’?

I don’t suppose I’ll get any answers.