Media Trained

Media Trained ©

By Michael Casey

I was reading a piece about Michael Parkinson the great and best Tv chat show interviewer, google him if you don’t believe me. What he said chimed with me, especially as my eldest daughter is doing her exams and will be choosing her A levels which will then lead to her career. In her case she has decided on being a Doctor, she is even thinking of being a pathologist. I did quip that at least she would not kill anybody.

What  Michael Parkinson was talking about was how  there are Mickey Mouse degrees and everybody wants to be in the Media. In other words  Andy Warhol was so so right, everybody wants to be famous, even if it’s only for one series on tv. If we look back we have Jade Goody, who was famous for being famous, as the BBC reporter said at the time of her tragic young death.

Now as a writer do I want to be famous, am I consumed with lust for fame? I may be consumed with lust for words, and for the wife, but do I want to be on tv and in magazines and have a column in a glossy magazine found on the floor of my local hairdressers. The answer is NO. Or should I qualify that, I want the world to read my words and make some money to give to my girls when I die, I could bore you about all my aches and pains, let’s say I’ll take the money but stay anonymous. I could be John Doe on the Radio, which reminds me about my daughter wanting to be a pathologist.

It’s said that Media studies is a waste of time, get a degree in English would be a far better idea. By the way my niece has a 1^st in English and has just done her Masters, so I’d say she’d be perfect as a trainee in a newspaper , though I would say give me the job instead, before I end up on the pathologist’s  table. 

So how do people get on with Media Studies? Well I studied horoscopes and how their place in society reveals so much about the ZZ9 strata of society. You  would not believe how the socio-ignorant believe such drivel, and Daily Mail readers especially, but let’s leave it  there before I upset too many white middle class women.

We had a whole module of the place of football in society, it was a compulsory add on to accountancy for beginners. There was an optional add on for 2 credits about Press Releases and Football. If you could use as many mixed metaphors in a paragraph you would get a citation from the course tutor, and he was very very coarse, he was a rugby player previously, he was always muttering about the Art of Course Rugby, which this writer read nearly 50 years ago.

A Media Course may ask you to write something in a variety of ways, objective or subjective, pro or anti, helpful or deceitful. Rather like the way politicians are, and they are the same the world over, trying to surf the waves and run with the tide.

Now once you have passed your Media training from the University of taking the mick, whose fees are so low that they are always full, almost like an American University where if you pay the fee they let you print off your certificate from the comfort of your own home, without having attended any classes. So what do you do next?

You send out your CV, which is shorthand for Completely Vacuous, or resume if you are an American. Resume should really mean you resume or restart your education after having wasted 4 years studying Kardashians and  watching E! tv for 80 hours a week. Miaow I hear you say, but you know I’m telling the Truth, and it Hurts.

You take a selfie in your kitchen cos that’s where the light is best, and you add it to your completely vacuous CV, then you send it away, only you didn’t notice that Totoro the cat was sat on the fridge with her tail dangling behind you. You look like Davey Crocket, E! laugh when they see your photo, but you are a good looking  20 something so they give you an interview, so you end up doing animal features for the next 20  years.

Though you have to pretend you are straight/gay/trans or whatever to keep in with the management. In the end you just end up confused, but confused is the new grey, and as the Monkees sang there are only shades of grey, or gray if you are American.  

Would I do a Media course if I were 40 years younger? No but I would read even more widely. I would read more newspapers, like I do today, 3 or 4 different ones every day and 2 or 3 news stations  on tv, and never never forget good old BBC Radio 4.  Read and Listen and Talk to everybody, rather like I did in my 3 years at a 4 star deluxe business hotel. This is I believe is one of the best ways to learn how to talk to people from all walks of life. 

Or you can be totally vacuous and marry the boss and get him or her to let you have your own podcast.