Results tagged “tv” from Uncivil Society
Tonight's the premier of NBC's The Philanthropist. Longtime readers of this site know how I react to do-gooder shots such as the one above--my mind whirls back through the 1960s into the late nineteenth century like some an imperialist version of Time Tunnel, swarming with images of white people bringing civilization and Pampers to the uncivilized primitives who desperately look to us to raise them from the depths of their corruption and incompetence.
Sure, as the New York Times reports the show reportedly includes the obligatory scene where The Philanthropist is chided for
playing the role of the charming rich businessman who travels the world, getting his hands just dirty enough to go back home and tell his American friends how meaningful his life is compared to theirs.
But that's an old rhetorical ruse, at once allowing viewers to assure themselves that they are not That Guy while reinforcing the more systemic problem. See, the show tells us, you're not just a dilettante. You really are leading them out of darkness, you really are their savior--in short, you are the master on whom they depend.
It's empire. It's racial supremacy. And it's something we should not indulge.
I know the show hasn't aired yet, but you could write enough to get tenure at Duke based on just the scenes described in the reviews and the obligatory white-guy-gives-hope-to-black-children photos released to promote the show.
Unless, of course, the scene depicted in the above PR photo ends with The Philanthropist blown up by an old British landmine.
Throughout the ages the finger-painter, the play-do sculptor, the Lincoln-logger stood alone against the day care teacher of her time.
She did not live to earn approval stickers, she lived for herself that she might achieve things that are the glory of all humanity.
These are my terms, I do not care to play by any others. And if the court will allow me, it's nap time.
As has long been the case with comics, a charity benefit plays a central role in the Adam West & Burt Ward bio-pic Return to the Batcave. In the set-up, Adam West receives a last minute invite to a charity event and offers an apt reflection that, apropos of his Batman tv series, works on multiple levels.
Still using the break to gain some perspective. In the meantime, here are a few news items that stick out:
- This article has been making the rounds in design circles, and it really is a must-read for do-gooders of all stripes. I've been writing about the link between design and social benefit for a while, and it's a theme whose importance will only grow.
- Bruce Nussbaum on the shift from innovation to transformation. I have much more to say on that--in fact, I've already said a fair bit about it, if you read my articles carefully. What social enterprise folks should note: it's not just the talk about earned income & learning from hedge funds that face obsolescence.
- FilmLA has been in the news due to the decline of filming in Los Angeles. What I hadn't known: that a nonprofit coordinates movie, tv & ad shoots in the area.
- When can museums sell their works?
- Shaolin monks inspire controversy with their temple management franchise initiative.
- BBC announces the next Doctor today!
It's about time.
Betty Boop may be going to live action on Broadway, but rotoscoping--Fleisher Studio's greatest legacy--has proven so successful for Charles Schwab that it may be the wave of the future in video advertising. Ad Age has a new podcast on the successful Schwab campaign. Note how abstracted form makes the ads more personal than more representative filmed images:
Charles Schwab CMO Becky Saeger said the company's long series of rotoscoped ads have drawn some of the strongest reactions she has ever seen. Speaking at the recent Association of National Advertisers conference, she recounted how many viewers would later repeat the scripts verbatim to her.
Baby-sitting to get into Yale.
A night at a charity benefit reveals a shocking secret.
A guerilla fashion show impresses everyone at the otherwise-routine charity event.
The latest episode of Gossip Girl--it's not just a TV show; it's, like, you know, my life!
Well, except for the baby-sitting, shocking secrets and impromptu pomo fashion shows at tightly-scripted benefits.
Other than that, though, it's like looking in a mirror.
As if Sex and the City tours weren't enough, the Washington Post provides this tour guide to New York sites featured in Mad Men.
It's only a matter of time before the cupcake wrappers in Bleecker Park give way to vodka bottles and picnic debris up at Paley.
New York is doomed.
Above: A Beautiful Mine, by RJD2, the source of the Mad Men opening credits theme.
Art Clokey's brilliant USC student film. As related in the Emmy-winning documentary Gumby Dharma, a Warner Brothers producer saw it and asked Art if he could create a clay-based character that would improve the quality of children's television.
It's Friday, so here are an artist's thoughts on a classic experiment in personal transformation:
This new venture distills specialized education into its very essence: learning how to fake being real.
"Reality TV is the decay of civilization," he told me in a tone of academic authority.
"But you're a part of it now, right?" I asked.
He jumped down on one knee and made rock-star symbols with his hands. "Yeah!" he cried.
A Slate review of Planet Green blasts the insufferable self-satisfaction at the heart of eco-tainment and the sustainability movement:
The most inane program in Planet Green's initial lineup is, by a nose, Alter Eco, which, depressingly, finds Adrien Grenier behaving very much as he does in the role of Vincent Chase on Entourage. Verily, the show is promoted as a virtual hangout with Grenier's "entourage of green activists, expert, and friends," and it feels designed to provide you with lines to pick up chicks at the farmers market.
In one episode, Grenier chills with a dude—obviously a douche bag, just a biodegradable one—who is constructing an eco-friendly pleasure dome in the hills of Los Angeles, a Playboy Mansion with organic bunny feed. We're told that the water from the showers will be treated and reused to water the garden, and also that the shower in the master bath will be spacious enough to accommodate 19 honeys. Elsewhere, some of the crew goes to an organic wine tasting, where they swill in a most obnoxious fashion. There are "great little tips" for exercising greenly, such as doing pull-ups on the limb of a tree. People seeking material gain are exhorted to "make that cheddar." It's impossible to say whether the show's smug superiority is more grating than its anorexic thinness of content, but seeing them in combination may fill you with a kind of retributive rage. I for one want to go out and kill a dolphin.
Last Thursday night I posted a picture of the comic that appeared on the evening's episode of Lost. I enjoy the show for any number of reasons, but perhaps the most compelling is its grounding in the island metaphor.
From Plato's Atlantis to Gilligan, think back through the last couple millennia and you'll see island metaphors recurring in times of dramatic technological change. The immediate popularity of Lost echoes the emergence of yet another island metaphor that I think is not unrelated: the image of computing as an array of virtual islands connected by virtual rafts.
Extend the metaphor to the planet or universe as an information processing array and you can see how the metaphor would appeal in an era defined by hyper-connectivity. Space and time collapse as we each find ourselves acting as a localized agent in a complex array where all is accessible if you know how to chart the course.
And even if you have the know-how to get from one place to another, that doesn't mean you understand what's going on.
Archie Comics version of Lost via Three Men in a Tub
Jezebel asks what is clearly the most pressing question raised by Sex and the City:
[W]hy didn't any of the women ever date . . . someone who worked for a non-profit? The reason is pretty obvious. Even though Sarah Jessica Parker thinks that Carrie didn't care about her boyfriends' money, the glittering aura of wealth is part of the Sex world, and very much defines its social rules.
Another reason to promote social enterprise, I guess. Or not.
When audience shots are a necessary part of the show but the show isn't hot enough to fill all the seats, people are paid to be part of the audience. Via this Animal account of an American Gladiator taping:
And yeah, being an audience member is as phony as the rest of the show; its a paying gig! A steady thing gangbangers, failed actors, those to dull witted to hold down a security guard gig. And the American Gladiator producers never let these marginal types forget they are the lowest of the low. They're kept for hours on end with no water, rousted out of toilets and not compensated for a lunch hour. One sad sack who relies on "audience work" for a living said he considered complaining to the NBC over his treatment that day, didn't have the cajones. "I don't want to be black balled from this work."
A century ago the U.S. civilized the heathen with the Bible and the bayonet. Then we exported democracy through aerial assaults and foreign aid. But now, in the era of social enterprise, America's white urbanites will save the world's people of color by buying pants for our children to crap in.
Gosh, I can't wait for the next time I'm abroad, when all the colorfully dressed natives will smile in gratitude for what my shopping does for them!
Above: the cover from Mystery Tales #40, featured in the young John Locke's school interview in tonight's Lost.
Indexed as reprinted in this Marvel Masterworks volume which, alas, I don't have--because the Masterworks volume doesn't exist!
NY Times fashion writer Cathy Horyn reports live from the gala for the new Met Costume Institute Superheroes and Fashion exhibit:
OMG, have suddenly seen just about everybody. Tom Ford, Richard Buckley, Valentino, Daphnee Guinness (in a twilight sequined L’Wren Scott), Ed Burns talking with Jerry Seinfeld, lots of models. A pretty glamorous, not sci-fi, night.
Sigh. I guess that's just the way we roll:
