Here's a secret that is not told to you in "The Secret Life of 5-Year-Olds": The real secrets in the lives of 5-year-olds today are hidden on tablets and YouTube channels.
So when I watched the new season of this docu-reality series of yes, which follows 12 children in a web-networked kindergarten, my son Tom lay down next to me on the couch and tried not to take his eyes off the iPad.
But reality has power and strengths, and if done properly it can subdue any human being.
Even a stubborn 5 and a half year old.
As the season progressed (tonight the fourth and final episode will air), Tom was increasingly drawn to the TV kindergarten.
Because of the connection to issues that bother him, such as the fear of moving to first grade, the relationships between the characters, the challenges and tasks he is convinced he will succeed in if he participates in the program, and personal stories that sound out of place in his routine world.
Say, a girl who never met her father, an Arab from Jaffa who is looking for his identity, a leukemia patient who underwent chemotherapy, and especially a girl who said that her best friend in kindergarten in Sderot was killed by missile fragments that penetrated the window of the police station. Existential and political questions, but most of all he made clear to him the difference between a remade series and a docu-reality with human characters telling a story through real reality.
Once Tom realized that his peer's death story had really happened, he also realized the power of reality and turned off the iPad, remained captivated to the end and then expressed interest in the previous two seasons.
When it's real it's a much more interesting TV show, my 5 year old son explained to me.
While it is more educational, embracing and authentic than most genre series, "Secret Life" is still a reality, and as a result also produces reality stars in miniature versions.
In the new season, the heroine of the first season, Yahav, who has now finished first grade, was invited to kindergarten to tell the children about the school.
She was received with admiring looks just like a little reality star.
On the other hand, due to their age they are still stars who are unaware of their stars, do not play for the cameras, and often expose the manipulations that the production does on them.
This is how the culture of reality is passed down from generation to generation, this is how the stars of tomorrow are invented, this is how you build in a 5-year-old boy aspirations to conquer television.
The secret life of 5-year-olds - Israel, yes docu, 21:00 Wrong?
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