An example of pretentious tosh in the shape of a review of a TV or radio soap opera or any other piece of entertainment aimed at the mass media
To appreciate the paradoxically complex simplicity of this allegorical conceptualisation, one need only consider its title which embodies both direction and destination which, by definition, is terminal. The seeds of what must surely be a journey to oblivion are propagated through a diversity of characters whose sum represents what might be regarded as a single entity reflecting the multilayered personality facets integral to everyman. Janineic jealously and Philian ferocity augmented by the idiosyncratic attributes of the entire dramatis personae combine to form an existential unity symbolising an inseparably synthesised universality.
Turning to technical considerations, the association of title tune and script with the ‘estrangement effect’ or, in Brechtian parlance, Verfremdungseffekt’, encourages a critical view of what is clearly a representation of reality rather than reality itself.
Believable or not, the stentorian echoes of ‘Oi – Rickay’ will doubtless reverberate in the collective unconscious long after EastEnders eventually ‘goes west’ and ends.
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