I’ve just tried to watch a documentary on the History Channel. It was an American production about the aqueducts of Turkey. I think I must be getting old if I find the topic of ancient Turkish aqueducts exciting.
It started off well. There was a not unattractive, young American historian creeping though tunnels under the amphitheatre wearing a thin t-shirt (I’m not that old) and morning-after bristle, beckoning the camera – that’s us – as he ducked bats and whispered facts about city planning in those ol’ Ottoman times (and I thought it was a towel box). So far, so good, although I do like my facts proejcted clearly without any dramatics so I can say yes, yes, I knew that – not shared like a spot of gossip by someone pretending to be my best friend.
Anyhow, what made this pleasant enough journey through Turkey increasingly unbearable was the background music. Not Turkish background music, no. Piercing violins and deep cellos creeping down scales – straight from the Psycho score – and screeching back up them again to a wavering climax... ‘and WATER ran thought these tunnels’!
Gasp, no! Really? Water? Through an aqueduct? Thank goodness for the eerie harmonic. If it hadn’t gripped my attention I would have assumed it was a conduit for mayonnaise. Water? How exciting.
Turkish aqueducts are interesting, they’re not thrilling or sensational and nor do I want someone to make me think they are. And what was worse than the aural obuse was the occasional disorientating flash of light to signify a really humungous piece of information. Like “bla bla bla bla” (flash of light, then the presenter appears in a different place, eyes googling at the camera – that’s us) “...in THIS. VERY. TUNNEL”. I don’t remember the first part of the sentence. It was almost immediately erased by a preoccupation with temporary blindness.
Now these are television tricks to heighten emotion in bad dramas and reality tv shows, to create suspense and trigger heart palpitations. I don’t need that in my history documentaries. I don’t want Turkish aqueducts in Iron Chef form. I’m used to stiff bespectacled Brits, sincere nods, lots of pacing with the occasional clasping of hands, and the sense that the presenter was born and raised in the hushed academic bowels of the British Museum. I don’t want any soundtrack apart, perhaps, from a mock-up track of faint clinking armour as the camera sweeps across the once bloodied plains where the Battle of Gore once played out. It would then fade out to the real-time sound of the wind in the grass, preferably.
I didn’t stick around to see if cute bristly historian ever got to the bottom of something or other really BAD (meaning good). But the Bad (meaning bad) American Doco did, however, give me an idea. These production tricks are designed to get the hearts of young things racing, to prompt them into feeling scared, awed or sentimental... Ladies and gentlemen please allow me to present the PRAT (Parental Remote Audio Tool).
If I talk to my kids in a gentle coaxing voice, they ignore me. If I’m a little more forceful, they ignore me. If I scream at the top of my lungs? Ah, well, they’ll look at me. Then they’ll ignore me. It’s clear that I need to enforce the hammy production techniques of Ottoman Aqueduct: The Revenge on my kids if I’m ever going to get some action around here. Maybe a musical cue was all that was ever required.
The PRAT would be a discreet miniature boom box affix-able to the belt loop loaded up with, depending on your taste, Don Giovanni or Rage Against the Machine for those ‘do as I say’ times, and something lighter – say, Katrina and the Waves? – for motivational moments. Like come on kids, let’s turn off the tv and play a game! The volume of ScoobyDoobyDo usually tends to skyrocket, but the PRAT would see to that... I’m walking on sunshine, whoa-hoa, and don’t it feel good!. Wait for it... Yes, mummy, let’s play animal charades. Baggsy me first!
The deluxe model could also contain a flash bulb of such strength it would allow you to hasten to another part of the room to deliver the next line. “Go to bed” (shuffle shuffle) “Now!” Of course, the kids might be see lights dancing in front of their eyes and never sleep again and sue you in later life for burnt retinas.
But there has to be something in it: the power of music, and all that. If Mozart can exercise children’s lobes simultaneously, surely Pink could exercise some discipline, Enigma induce some sleep and the soundtrack of Oliver encourage them to eat their breakfast.
If it got into the wrong hands, it would be a problem, I can see that. I can’t concentrate to music or even talk to it; it seems my innate female multitasking gene was never that innate. So if I were to embark, say, on a serious discussion with my children about school work and they were to trigger anything remotely musical with beats in quick succession I’d freeze like a shorted robot. No, there’d have to be a user code. There are certainly some fine tuning issues. But I’ve heard Mum-ventions keep hitting the jackpots, so I think the PRAT would do well at market.
It would do well, if it weren’t for two words: iPod, torch.
Still, we parents are suckers, right? We’ll buy anything promising a quick fix. And if we could get the PRAT to play Fat Bottomed Girls every time we reached for between-meals cheese, this time next year we’d be millionaires.
Damn, I wonder what secrets that aqueduct did hold... Two words: mute, subtitles. Bingo.
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