One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

I pride myself on having excellent taste when it comes to cultural offerings. The more East Asian indie films from the late nineties I watch, the more superior I feel to the world out there. Although I often have no idea what exactly I’ve just gotten myself into, I like to compare it to jazz: the more I think of tortured cats when I listen to it, the more profound, creative and adult it must be. As long as I’m consuming something that at least gives me the feeling that I’m witnessing something higher, I’m happy. Maybe if I’m able to fully understand Hideaki Anno’s psychological drama film Ritual someday, I’ll become some kind of holy cinephile god - who knows.

However, there are also evenings when I suddenly find myself in front of one or two reality TV shows on Netflix because my friends wanted me to watch with them how the singer from the band Tokio Hotel, you may still know them from songs like Monsoon, Don’t Jump, and... surely another one, getting fucked up at the Oktoberfest, eats curd balls at his mom’s, and drives through the desert with his twin brother in a camper van. The fun went on for eight episodes. At the end I wasn’t much wiser than before, quite the opposite in fact, but at least there was delicious Hwachae with watermelon, mango, and some undefinable goo to eat in the meantime.

I more or less secretly hope that there will be a second season of the series, after all, I’ve invested time in it now, which should have paid off. Will Bill and Marc ever become a couple? How much alcohol can the average Kaulitz brother take in a day without collapsing? And do I have to listen to a certain podcast to keep up to date and because I may have promised someone without really thinking about the consequences? I’ll probably never know. Trash television is a welcome change for my constantly stressed brain. Because sometimes it’s quite a good idea to dive into completely irrelevant parallel worlds with even more irrelevant protagonists in them.