TV is hipper than the movies

For decades, it was mostly a one-way journey. Television was a steppingstone for directors,images writers, producers and executives who wanted to break into the film business, reports the LA times:

“In the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood mainstays including Mel Brooks, Garry Marshall and Carl Reiner all got their starts in television but segued to the film world — and are now best known for their big screen work.

“The film business proved a seductive force for many years, and for good reason. Movies had the glamour, perks, press coverage and accolades. Nothing could match the glitter of the Academy Awards.

“Now, entertainment professionals are migrating eagerly in the opposite direction. Many cite HBO’s “The Sopranos” as opening the door after it burst onto the scene in 1999, or A-list filmmakers like producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who got into the TV business in the late 1990s. Others look to film producer Mark Gordon (“Speed,” “The Patriot”), who transitioned into television with hits “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Criminal Minds” in the 2000s — or, more recently, “Fight Club” director David Fincher, who made this year’s “House of Cards” for Netflix, and “Traffic” director Steven Soderbergh, who was at the helm for HBO’s “Behind the Candelabra” TV movie and is directing Clive Owen in the forthcoming Cinemax series “The Knick.”The movement undoubtedly started with actors making the leap to television, but that it has spread to the executive, director and producer ranks is astounding to many old-school business operators, who never imagined they’d view TV as more attractive than the movies. Several producers and filmmakers said they dreamed of working in film but now find themselves in television — drawn to the money, opportunity, cultural heft or creative control. Continue reading “TV is hipper than the movies”

Most still get news from television

Television is the main place Americans say they turn to for news about current events (55%), leading the Internet, at 21%. Nine percent say newspapers or other print publications are their main news source, followed by radio, at 6%, reports Gallup.

“These results are based on a Gallup poll of 2,048 national adults conducted June 20-24, in which Americans were asked to say, unaided, what they consider to be their main source of news about U.S. and global events.

“More than half the references to television are general, with 26% simply saying they watch television or TV news, 4% saying they watch local TV news, and 2% saying they watch the “evening news.” The two leading 24-hour cable news channels — Fox News and CNN — are named by 8% and 7%, respectively. However, no other specific channel — including MSNBC, PBS, BBC, and all of the U.S. broadcast networks that once dominated the news landscape — is mentioned by more than 1% of Americans.imgres

“The vast majority of those citing the Internet — 18% of all Americans — either mention the Internet generally or say they get their news “online.” Two percent identify Facebook, Twitter, or social media as their source, while 1% mention a specific online news site. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are each named by 1% of Americans — the only specific print publications to earn as much as 1% in the poll. As a measure of U.S. adults’ perception of their primary news source, the question provides insights into the importance of various types of media and news outlets as information sources to the public. It is not meant to indicate the total reach each news outlet has in the population, nor do the results necessarily correspond with television ratings data. Continue reading “Most still get news from television”

On worrying about Don

It’s no secret, Don has a lot of people worried.

Always the good guy (sort of), the ad man really hit the skids this year. Leave it to Entertainment Weekly to ponder this matter fully, as excerpted below:

“Since the very beginning of Mad Men, Don Draper has seemed doomed. images-1From the show’s opening-credit sequence, with a silhouetted suit falling helplessly from the Madison Avenue skyline, to this year’s season premiere, which featured Don delving into a copy of Dante’sInferno, the future always seemed bleak for our dapper anti-hero.

“Oblivious to the fact that he’s always on the wrong side of history, Don began to wither. What seemed cool about him in the beginning — his afternoon drinks and serial womanizing — has devolved to pathetic.

“So where will it end? And more importantly, when? Will the year be 1969 when Mad Menreturns for its seventh and final season? Or 1970? 1973…? Or might Matthew Weiner throw a curve and leap into the future — say 1980 — before flashing-back to the beginning of the previous decade.

“Let’s discuss…

“When we first met Don Draper in season 1, it was March 1960, perhaps the high-water mark of the American Dream after World War II and nearly a decade of Eisenhower prosperity,  with the youthful optimism of Kennedy’s Camelot on the horizon. The center was holding. There was order. Life made sense (at least for upper middle-class white men). The story of Don Draper — and to a lesser extent Roger Sterling and the other men at the ad agency — has been the breakdown in society during one of the country’s most turbulent decades: racial strife, feminism, Vietnam, political assassinations, etc.

“Weiner has only once jumped more than a year between Mad Men seasons — season 2 began in February 1962, 15 months after season 1 left off — and the average time-jump is about nine months. So it’s a safe bet that the final season will pick up sometime in 1969 after season 6 left us in front of Don’s childhood abode around Thanksgiving 1968. That makes some logical and symmetrical sense, too, since it wraps up the story of the decade quite neatly.

“But up until last week’s season finale, I thought Weiner, Don, and Mad Men were steering towards a very different end. Don’s downward spiral accelerated every episode, and to me, it all pointed towards Watergate — the ultimate figurative and literal corruption of the country’s soul. There was even a recent episode where a drunken and depressed Don watched a bland Nixon-for-President commercial, and I wondered if the light would go on in Don’s head saying “Hey, I can carve a better winning message for my pal, Dick, than this amateurish crap!”

 

More at: http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/06/28/mad-men-will-it-really-end-in-1969/

Kim Jong Un vs “cultural infiltration”

North Korea is doing everything is can to crack down on cell phones, TVs, and anything else that can bring “subversion” into the country.images-1

It’s a Stalinist campaign reminiscent for the old Cold War, as Kim Jong Un has recently ranted: “We must extend the fight against the enemy’s ideological and cultural infiltration.”

As Worlding.org reported last week, campaigns to indoctrinate North Korean children are nothing short of remarkable. Salon.com writes that the new emphasis on media is just as extreme:  “Kim, who became North Korea’s supreme leader after the death of his father a year ago, called upon his vast security network to ‘ruthlessly crush those hostile elements.’

“Over the past year, Kim has intensified a border crackdown that has attempted to seal the once-porous 1,420-kilometer (880-mile) frontier with China, smugglers and analysts say, trying to hold back the onslaught. Continue reading “Kim Jong Un vs “cultural infiltration””

Addiction, television, and courage

Alcoholism and addiction are two the biggest categories by which people are “othered.”  To many a substance abuser is a celebrity, a skid-row drunk, or maybe your crazy Uncle Bob––but it’s always someone else, not you or the person sitting next to you. Hence, there is shame attached to this illness for the afflicted  and those close to them. The fact is the one in ten people have problems with drugs or alcohol, numbers that tend to be much higher within creative communities. And most of them battle heroically with this problem in the face of a society that views them as derelict, dishonest, or morally bankrupt.

Users don’t fit typical stereotypes, as over 75% are productively employed and many highly successful. Among people who get flashes of brilliance from occasional mania, the numbers go to 85%.  Science has recently shown that genuine addiction (as opposed to occasional binging) results from faulty brain wiring that those afflicted can contain, but never correct (See forthcoming DSM V).

This is why a TV show like Rehab with Dr. Drew should be a good idea––a program that treats addiction as the illness that it is. Continue reading “Addiction, television, and courage”

“Homeland’s” Muslim problem

Muslim and Arab stereotypes are nothing new in American media. From Ali Baba to Aladdin, negative images have persisted in children’s stories. Then came 9/11 and Hollywood’s need for an all-purpose post-Cold War villain––and the stage was set for the universalized charicature of the terrorist. Regrettably, this year’s most celebrated television drama series, Homeland, is fueled largely by such xenophobic ideology, which it serves up with troubling representations of sexuality and race. And yes, Homeland is our beloved President’s favorite show. A wonderfully thorough discussion of these issues appears in the article “Homeland, Obama’s Show” appearing this week in Aljazeera.com.

For readers unaware of the program’s premise, Homeland is an updated Manchurian Candidate narrative about a brainwashed former Marine who becomes a congressman. As discussed in the Aljazeera.com article by Joseph Massad, “The racist representation of Arabs is so exponential, even for American television (and this Continue reading ““Homeland’s” Muslim problem”

Assault on Reason, revisited

With the approaching elections in the US, the nation’s polarization is getting more and more attention. Similar divides persist in many countries, causing those on both sides to wonder why their opposition seems so entrenched in its opposition. How can they not understand? Why are people so wrong-headed? What causes people to vote against their own interests?  One infamous figure in American politics has given this matter a lot of thought––and for good reason. Let’s not forget that former Vice President Al Gore actually was elected by the popular vote when he ran for the nation’s highest office, Continue reading “Assault on Reason, revisited”