Dumbing Down and Bigging Up

In our house, there is no other TV program that inspires the cry of 'FUCK OFF YOU CUNT!' more than Gardener's World. That includes international football. In the main I'm afraid it is a simple dumbing down, but to be honest it is probably the whole bundle, and how that whole bundle relates to other TV bundles of unspeakable shit that drives us crazy every now and then, usually after long lecturing days.

Plants are not simple, but they do not know that they are beautiful, we ascribe that to them, and the fact that Monty fucking Don and Co consistently refuse to ascribe meaning to plants beyond the most simplistically picturesque is of supreme agitation. We, as a civilization, have always known more than that, take a cursory look at Dutch still life painting for instance. We ascribe meanings even to plants, so why not tell us about them? Even for fun?

I am aware that the agencies that conspire to dumbing down do not include me. I don't think I can talk any differently to first year students than I do to fifth year students, market differentiation doesn't work in education, it's called being patronizing, but there should be a good chance the fifth years can develop the conversation a bit more, and that the first years will remain suitable puzzled (but hopefully none the less interested) and that it is not because I use some weird esoteric language, it's because in general I talk about how fucked off I can get with Gardeners World.

So if I am not dumbing down (and neither am I bigging up) who is? Once I have established that it is the superstructure above me that is obsessed with dumbing down, at least I have somebody to blame, since it is clear they do not want people to understand stuff, and further more, that other agencies must correspondingly be artificially bigging things up- such is the dialectic right? You know who you are.