Michael Portillo Quotes

This celebrity culture that hypnotizes people into thinking a person is literally not real because you see them on television is a spell the watcher him- or herself must break.

Television and movies have short-circuited reality. I don't think a lot of people are entirely clear on what is real and what is on the screen.

I know that if I had a television in my flat I would convince myself that everything on it was really interesting. I would say, 'I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!' is so sociologically fascinating that I think I'd better watch.

I like to watch MTV for escapist pleasure, but when I saw Snooki, I saw my twin. I couldn't lose myself in the show anymore because there I was.

Let's be real: It's just TV; it's just entertainment.

You can watch a little bit of war from your nice living room - 30 seconds of what's going on in Syria - and when you've had enough, switch over to some celebrity programme. We live our life through screens and images in this way, and we don't know what is real or fake anymore. It doesn't matter.

Reality TV rots people's brains.

That's the scary part about TV, how you'll feel about it in six years.

The fact that the public are mesmerised by Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and all these miserable people makes me laugh because those celebrities are more miserable than the people reading about them for escapism.

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

Just look at the messages today's media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it's getting really bad.

Nothing is really real unless it “happens” on television…Television has brought an inversion of our consciousness. When we take our eyes off the tube, we see things that are not quite authentic – or rather, which gain authenticity only by their resemblance to how things happen on television

So many of our enormous emotional crises are lived through the media. They're lived through movies; they're lived through what we watch on television - they're not actual events in our life.

I get this weird, existential crisis when I'm looking through Instagram - and then I'll realize we work in entertainment. We know all the smoke and mirrors.

Anyone who magnifies the power of a television talk show is very unrealistic.

I think there's enough TV that makes people feel dumb out there.

I think reality television has made the fashion industry and the beauty industry, any industry - frankly, just life - it has made life seem much different than it really is.

For all reality TV, and all the viewers of reality TV, just be entertained. Don't invest your feelings, your heart, your soul into reality TV. It is entertainment. And that's all that it should be.

People living their lives for you on TV; They say they're better than you, and you agree.

I hate to say this about television, since I have a television show, but it's just mind-numbing to me.

You often forget, because you're so inside it, that television has power.

TV makes you look taller and fatter.

NBC has created a monster and it is called Donald Trump.

You see, the power of television cannot be underestimated.

Much of reality TV has been like the worst nightmares of Theodor Adorno and Jean Baudrillard come true, its seductive allure turning us into gossips in the global village.