‘Astrid & Natalia: back to reality’, VTM 2
“Four out of ten Belgians find it difficult to make ends meet. These are often single mothers,” the voice-over reports at the beginning. This is the cramped attempt to put a compelling theme on the agenda. Even before the best man can take a new breath, all social context has to make way for outdated reality TV. How does that sound, around the production table? “As long as we consistently convince each other that it makes sense, perhaps no one will realize that it doesn’t.”
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The setup is simple: Astrid Coppens and Natalia Druyts have to live on a budget for a month. Without their partner and with a minimum wage in a terraced house in Turnhout, while they are usually used to a lot of comfort. “It’s going to be okay,” they cheer each other on, as if they’re about to pull knives in the townships of Johannesburg, licking dusty sofas that taste like previous owners. Although that optimism fails thoroughly: “Thirty days, do you know how long that is?” Astrid has calculated it: “Half a summer holiday.”
‘Astrid & Natalia: back to reality’. — © DPG
There they are, in Turnhout, where you only go if a contract forces you. Between “dirty walls”, on top of “an ugly floor”, behind a facade that is “a bit plain”. And then they hadn’t seen the bedroom yet: “It’s a good thing you have to close your eyes at night.” The Thrift Store is mainly the place where Natalia recently “dropped a truck of stuff” and the purchase price of a car leads to disbelief. Although they will eventually find something with four wheels for their money: “After all, it should only last a month.”
No purification
The program is not a brutal offensive from an ivory tower against everything that is popular. But the sum of all the subtle barbs reveals its true nature: making two lifestyles chafe is merely the end in itself, as entertainment. There is no purification whatsoever in the confrontation between those extremes, and that is exactly the kind of perversity that does not benefit anyone. Certainly not those four in ten Belgians, who desperately hope that their hard-earned car will last longer than a month. Preferably about six or seven years old.
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Astrid & Natalia: back to reality has no relevance. Television can certainly offer relaxation and uncompromising entertainment, without more. But if, as here, you do that under the guise of a social debate, it has no right to exist. By the way, that is not a judgment on the lives that both ladies lead: every person is entitled to his or her own.
Bram, Astrid’s partner, perhaps summarizes the format most honestly: “It is a lifetime experience.” That is indeed what it seems like: having a gratuitous experience in the Johannesburg of the Kempen, playing an average Flemish game, and then really going home again. Away from the streets where the experience effectively lasts a lifetime. In the meantime, the Kringwinkel looks pityingly at VTM 2 and thinks: “So passé, you can’t put that in the shop window in 2024, can you?”
2024-02-19 21:26:43
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