Writer John Updike once stated that "Celebrity is a mask that eats away at the face. Once a person gets to watch and listen just because he is famous, he becomes blind and deaf to the loss of his personality."
Updike probably directed his remarks first and foremost to himself, but it seems that the process from which he warned is now at its peak.
On every high media hill, and under every fresh channel, one can today watch individuals willing to mortgage their private lives for the benefit of public advertising. Under the guise of documentary pretension, cameras invade territories that were hitherto considered intimate and protected, turning them into a passing television currency for the merchant. It started with "Connected", intensified with "Wedding at First Sight" and reached a new peak with "Couples Therapy", which recently came up here 11. Just before we run to peek at another couple ready to mentally undress in front of our amazed eyes, we should stop and think about the damage the series does. Not only for the participants, but also for us, who smoke them passively.
The Latin meaning of the word "intimate" is "hidden, covert."
Seeing intimacy as the highest expression that a relationship can reach, is based on the understanding that lovers can gain a rare closeness of hearts, mutual vision and a protected personal relationship.
Intimate moments are always private.
In intimate moments the world remains outside.
The marital closeness produces a closed universe whose language and laws are devoted to only two.
In this universe its occupants can safely reveal their personal stumps, and be exposed to the emotional scars of others.
When a relationship is undermined, a good couple therapist may help rebuild it, and serve as an effective emotional coach who contributes from the outside to good results on the field.
What moment of private understanding can a couple reach when they consciously choose to invite countless foreign spectators into the protected space?
How can intimacy be produced in a place that is no more public than it is?
We already know that the romantic pretension of "wedding" has no real cover, and yet, season after season, we courtesy enter into the mental bedroom of a couple with whom we have nothing. It is not the desire to understand couplehood that makes the series rating monsters, but their willingness to provide us with a guided tour of the districts that until now were reserved for couples only. From pornographic movies, which showcase all moments of physical intimacy, most of us know how to keep our distance, while movies that feature mental intimacy are becoming a popular topic of conversation in any office kitchenette. These and these blur the necessary boundary between the authority of the individual and the authority of the many. Both of these convert the loving look of the couple into an alienated and artificial camera lens, which turns every moment of closeness into another means of marketing advertisements.
In ancient times, the inhabitants of Rome marched to the Colosseum to see prisoners physically harming each other.
Nowadays, we walk into the living room to see a couple injuring the souls of those who stood, not long ago, next to them in the canopy.
As we point with the sign, the ironic cry of Maximus, the protagonist of the movie "Gladiator" hovers over us: "Are you having fun ?!", which was addressed to an audience that came to see him bleed.
The answer seems to be yes.
You can already make next season's gladiators.
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