Phelps vs. shark - July 24

Let us talk of Michael Phelps and his race with the great white shark.

Pause.

Yes, Shark Week is upon us, but I must confess that I was never its’ biggest fan, and this race just reminded me why.

Let us review its’ most important feature – Michael Phelps did race a great white shark, but it was a virtual one, not a real one. Moreover, yes, certainly, no one in their sane mind would race a great white shark in the wild if they can help it, and this is not something that can be arranged legally and on live TV, but-

However, what was the point of this program? AP had plenty of flaws, but what it did have, until recently, was RM with JW, and that was real life interaction of man and fish. Yes, it entertained people, but it also educated them, at least to a point, especially in the first few seasons. This – ‘Phelps vs. shark’ and beyond – is just entertainment; that, and a free ad, (but more on this later).

Now, if we are talking about a face-off with a virtual shark, we might as well bring forth AFO, and its’ episodes – ‘Saltwater Crocodile vs. Great White Shark’ and ‘Bull Shark vs. Hippopotamus’. I have discussed both of these episodes separately in the past, so here I’ll just point out again that for all of its’ flaws, AFO did its best to both educate and entertain; yes, at the end of the episode CGI’d animals (reptiles, fish) fought each other, but before that happened, AFO’s cast did its’ best to dissemble the two contestants (per episode), to depict (and to figure out) their fighting strategies; they did their best to depict their weapons in cast-iron replicas and etc. They genuinely tried to integrate computer graphics and real life, and that is quite tricky, you know?

For example, just few weeks ago I was at ROM – the Royal Ontario Museum - to look at their blue whale exhibit. It was wonderful, it rocked, and it tried to be ‘interactive’ – there were plenty of mini-videos, impromptu computer games, various thing that a person could touch…such as a Halloween-like costume of a krill. The krill are relatives of the prawns and shrimp that live in the open ocean and are eaten by the baleen whales (like the blue whale or the humpback, opposed to the dolphins, porpoises and sperm whales). That is fine, but how is dressing as an extra from SpongeBob franchise educates children about whales? And on the other hand, the actual exhibits – the actual blue whale skeleton, the replica skeletons of the prehistoric whales, the exhibits from the whaling eras – i.e. historical artefacts – aren’t interactive, actually, but are quite decidedly kept away from the public, you can look, but you can’t touch.

Ditto for other exhibits of ROM, such as the historical artefacts from India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. People could vote on which pieces they wanted to see, but they could not touch them. The interactions were limited, almost one-way, and it’s reasonable – the oils in human skin are damaging to bones and historical artefacts, ROM doesn’t want to lose its’ prized exhibits, so no touching, and what the public is left with is a bunch of second-best pieces, such as the depiction of whale dung on the floor. (Yeah, I am not kidding – there was a giant bright orange blob on the floor of the exhibit to simulate whale dung). Basically, like AFO, the Royal Ontario Museum tries to integrate reality with computer simulation (and more), and it still falls short; when I was returning home, I came across some house finches feeding on a tree. They were much more real than any of ROM’s exhibits, even if they were kind of small and hard to notice in the darkening summer evening…

Back to Shark Week? As such pieces as ‘Shark Vortex’ (aired earlier today) show, Discovery, (as opposed to AP), can air educational pieces – primarily educational pieces, for there was some entertainment as well, (but this is how it works), because-

Because there were real sharks in ‘Shark Vortex’, period. The footage of the mako, the great white, and the porbeagle sharks was real, and there was no to little CGI. The focus was on real life (and real life footage, yes). In ‘Phelps vs. great white’ the focus was on Phelps and how he raced virtual sharks; there was some footage of real life sharks – the great white, the hammerhead, the Caribbean reef sharks – but the main focus was on Phelps and his prowess. It is amazing, undoubtedly – Phelps is not famous for nothing – but he is not a shark, so…

So this idea of Discovery has actually backfired on them and Phelps, when they opened Shark Week with a promotional show of Phelps. So far, fans are unhappy with Phelps’ loss and with Phelps in general. If Phelps planned to make his alliance with Discovery to make himself famous, he did not succeed so well. Ah well, he is still one of the fastest swimming humans on the planet. Good luck to him!

This is it for this time; see you next time.

PS: And no, I haven’t forgotten about ‘Killjoys’ either; it’s just that so far there’s nothing to truly congratulate or criticize them on. So again – until next time.