Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22, 2010
There's Nothing Ironic About Show Choir!: The Sentimentality of Glee
Since before its actual airing, I had been hearing buzz about Fox’s Glee becoming the new television sensation. After attempting to watch the pilot, I found myself unimpressed by the show half-way through and gave up, deciding that the show did not live up to its hype. Still, the buzz didn’t die down as the season went on, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the show actually got better after the 25 minutes I had actually watched. So I gave the show another shot and watched the first dozen or so episodes in one sitting. What I found was that the show was much more enjoyable than I had originally assumed. Yet, there was something about the show that still struck me as strange. There seems to be a certain sentimentality to the show that hipster cynics tend to reject unless it is being treated ironically. Yet those same cynics have embraced the show whole heartedly. This raised the question for me: What is the appeal of Glee?
The fact that a musical television show has, to the best of my knowledge, never been attempted before certainly adds a sense of originality to the show. Yet, the show is more than a musical. Glee is a hyper-postmodern collage of musical, sitcom, teen drama and soap opera genres. In traditional postmodern style, the show is brimming with irony, which I would argue is a large part of the show’s appeal. The irony of the show comes in the wholesomeness of the show’s premise being contrasted against clearly unwholesome elements, such as Sue’s abusive treatment of her cheerleading squad, or Terri’s stint as a school nurse where she fed all of the students pseudoephedrine in a misguided attempt to keep them “happy and healthy.” Yet, as Rachel so acutely points out in the pilot episode “There’s nothing ironic about show choir!”
The ironic elements of the series create the illusion that the show is parodying conventions of the genres it incorporates into its pop-culture blender. However, the irony and the sentimentality of the show, while simultaneously present, are kept distinctly separate. Take, for example, the episode “The Power of Madonna.” That the show’s plot was an razor thin premise designed as an excuse to do an episode centered around Madonna was treated with a postmodern self-reflexivity; the show was fully aware of how flimsy this premise was and reveled in the absurdity of it. Yet, the show still fell back on a stock plotline that it did not treat ironically. One plotline of the show involves the male characters collectively treating their female counterparts poorly and putting together a performance for the women as a way of apology. If this plot sounds familiar, it’s possibly because Saved by the Bell did it in 1990 with “Breaking Up is Hard to Undo” and Boy Meets World had the same plotline in 1997 with “Last Tango in Philly.” All of these episodes ended with the men putting on a performance of some sort, and Saved by the Bell’s incarnation of the plot was the only one of these three examples without a musical number.
The following episode, “Home,” features another stock plotline straight out of the sitcom archives. After the events of “The Power of Madonna” land Kurt and Mercedes in the Cheerios, Sue forces Mercedes to lose weight, forcing her to develop an eating disorder. The story of a female character developing an eating disorder for exactly one episode, only to find herself miraculously cured of her affliction by the next episode (which is almost unheard of in the real world of eating disorders) has been so prevalent in sitcoms over the years that examples of it hardly need citing. The episode concludes with Mercedes realizing that she does not need to lose weight, singing the song “Beautiful” at a pep rally to demonstrate her renewed confidence, much to the surprise of her new coach, Sue. If there is irony to be found in this plot, it’s in the fact that Sue, rather than being punished for her abuse of her cheerleaders, is actually rewarded for her behavior when a local reporter mistakenly believes that Mercedes performance was planned by Sue and, thus, gives Sue a glowing write-up in the local newspaper. Still, the lesson that Mercedes learns is a trite one that has been taught to female sitcom characters for several decades and it becomes doubtful that Mercedes will ever show signs of her eating disorder again, which would place her more in line with real life anorexics and bulimics than with the anorexic-for-a-day women of the classic family sitcom.
What I think disarms the otherwise cynical and jaded television viewer is the irony in these episodes—or, to be more accurate, the perceived irony. Because the show goes to such extremes with Sue’s hateful and ignorant remarks, Brittany’s bizarre non sequiturs, and Emma’s comical naiveté and germ phobia, it creates the illusion that these stock plotlines are being parodied. Yet, these extreme elements of the show are kept in separate boxes from the stock plots described above, and the sitcom sentimentality is carried out unironically. My point here is not to suggest that Glee is not a wildly entertaining show. Rather, I’d like to point out that the show is pulling from the very hokey family sitcoms that its otherwise jaded audience would normally reject. Feel free to continue enjoying it, but understand that, in pulling from the clichéd plots of family based sitcoms, the show is not performing satire. The sentimentality is meant to be nothing more than pure sentimentality.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The Late Shift 2: How NBC Dug Their Own Late Night Grave
Hello, all! I’ve come back out of the darkness. Now, in light of recent events in Haiti, it seems trivial for me to talk about matters of little importance like media and television but, this is a media studies blog, and I have nothing in particular to say about the media’s coverage of the earthquake in Haiti. All I can say about the situation is that I encourage you to donate and help out as much as you can. I donated at http://www.yele.org, you can also, naturally, go to http://www.redcross.org. Do all you can, please. Now, while I cannot help the current crisis situation, I can lighten the mood by talking about something funny today: the amazing mismanagement of a major broadcast network.
Now, since I intend for this blog to be an academic blog, I always try to keep somewhat of an academic distance in my writing. Whether I succeed or fail in that regard is up to debate. However, in this entry, I find myself struggling to maintain my impartiality. What I am talking about, of course, is NBC’s astounding mismanagement of both The Jay Leno Show and the subsequent Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien controversy.
As NBC planned to move the failing Jay Leno Show to Leno’s old 11:30 PM timeslot, Internet fan support for Conan O’Brien, who has said he will not do a Tonight Show at 12:05 AM, became so strong it prompted a New York Times article.1 The article estimates fan support of Conan on Twitter beating out fan support for Leno by more than a 50-to-1 ratio. With support of Conan getting so much media attention, NBC obviously has to be aware that fans are favoring O’Brien. Yet, in a stunningly odd PR move yesterday, Dick Ebersol chose to ignore fan support for Conan and publicly blame Conan O’Brien for the entire fiasco.2 According to him, O’Brien failed to take Ebersol’s advice on how to broaden the appeal of the show. How, exactly, this accounts for the low ratings of The Jay Leno Show, or how, exactly, advice from Dick Ebersol, who caused ratings for Saturday Night Live to drop when he took over that late night comedy show in 19813, was never explained in the article.
As I have been writing this article, I have now found sources online reporting that Jay Leno will officially be taking back The Tonight Show, with Conan exiting NBC with a 30 million dollar severance package. Obviously, as witnessed by the Ebersol interview, NBC and Conan are not parting ways on good terms. If one were to place blame for the entire debacle, I would say that the blame rests on the shoulders of the network themselves, as the situation comes about as a result of several strikingly poor decisions on the part of the network. While the network tried to pride themselves on being able to take risks, the series of that led to the creation and ultimate failure of The Jay Leno Show can be better described as reckless.
The network first announced in September 2004 that they would be replacing Jay Leno with Conan O’Brien starting in 2009. The network’s decision seemed strange since Leno had been winning his time slot. The best explanation for the decision, as posed by Leno himself, is that, perhaps, NBC predicted a decline in the ratings within five years. At the time, Leno agreed to the change without any fuss, and the plan to transition to the new host in 2009 was put in place. The problem is that five years is a long time to think over a decision, and during that time, Leno started to regret his agreement to step down from the show and started entertaining offers from competing networks. Worried that Jay Leno, who had been consistently beating his late night competitor David Letterman for many years, would become Conan’s new competition in the 11:30 timeslot, NBC offered him a show in the 10 PM weekday timeslot five nights a week.4
No network had aired the same show in prime time five nights of the week since the Dumont network aired Captain Video and His Video Rangers from 1949 to 1955. While it seems like a risky move to do something as radical as putting the same show on in prime time five nights a week, the economic logic behind the show was pretty sound. While cable and premium cable are becoming more and more popular, broadcast networks consistently beat out cable networks in prime time ratings. While we now live in a five network era, the two younger networks, Fox and The CW, do not have any programming on in the 10-11 PM time slot. Therefore, NBC is pretty much guaranteed to finish at least third in the ratings every day in that time slot. Thus, they can easily aim for a modest ratings success in the 10-11 timeslot rather than trying to win their timeslot and simply make a less expensive show, like a talk show, to increase their profit margin.
While this is a sound strategy on a national level, NBC failed to take into account the effect this would have on a local level. The majority of the revenue for a local affiliate station comes from that ever important timeslot between the end of prime time and the beginning of late night at 11:00 to 11:30 (or earlier for a Fox or CW station) where stations air the local news. While a third place finish of a cheap show may be acceptable to NBC on a national level, it just was not okay as a lead in for local affiliates who saw their local news numbers tank due to a low-rated lead in.5 The affiliates even had a name for this problem: “The Leno Effect.”
It would be unfair to claim that NBC had no way of predicting that this would happen as they did get an early indicator from my own local NBC affiliate, WHDH 7 in Boston. The Boston affiliate originally claimed that they would not show The Jay Leno Show when it aired because they were afraid that it would kill the ratings for their local news. They planned to, instead, push their local news to the 10:00 timeslot. The affiliate only backed down when NBC threatened to pull all programming from WHDH.6 Still, this was not where NBC made their biggest mistake. Their biggest mistake was in the fact that, while trying to change the face of prime time television, they failed to give themselves an out if anything went wrong.
Whether it was because they thought their plan for the show was so economically sound or because they wanted to appease Leno, NBC made a strange move when they gave Leno his own primetime show, promising to keep the show on for at least one year regardless of ratings.7 Despite NBC’s claim that the Jay Leno Show was like launching 5 new shows in prime time, this contract hardly seems like the contract for a new show. A new show would almost never be guaranteed a full season run regardless of ratings, and most new shows in prime time are not running through the summer either. Leno was guaranteed a full year of episodes, five nights a week, which further shows that the network was thinking nationally and not locally. While the network could always afford to take the hit of finishing in third every night as long as the budget for the show itself was pretty cheap, local affiliates certainly could not handle that kind of ratings bust for a year straight.
Thus, Conan’s fate was sealed. Despite the support for O’Brien, NBC had no choice but to move Leno somewhere else in their schedule, or else force their affiliates into bankruptcy. The 30 million dollar severance package to Conan O’Brien was, in essence, the cheapest option that NBC had available to them under the circumstances. What becomes the biggest shame of all this, though, is that O’Brien, who worked for years behind Leno with the promise of being given the prestigious title of Tonight Show host, and uprooted his entire family and moved them to Los Angeles, is being forced to let go of one of his life’s dreams because NBC backed themselves into a corner. As O’Brien said on what will now be one of his last few episodes of The Tonight Show: “I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.”
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Die Hard, James Bond, Captain Kirk and The Doctor: Versions of the Masculine "Action Star"
I'm back, after a long absence! I started writing this blog at the beginning of the summer, and left it unfinished for months as I focused on things like my thesis and Poetry Slam Nationals. But, I'm back with a nice long blog. Enjoy!
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When I saw the recent Star Trek movie, it got me thinking about concepts of masculinity in media. It’s a subject that, as a man, naturally comes up in my mind a lot. When we think of a “guy movie” we think of explosions, fist fights, big, muscular men and lots of guns and other phallic weaponry. Yet, I’d like to propose an alternate theory to what the concept of a “guy movie,” or, alternately in television, a “guy show,” really is. I would suggest that there’s something else that appeals to male viewers in these types of movies and television shows besides sheer action.
We tend to think of these images of masculinity being projected onto men by the media, creating a stereotype of the typical “male.” I cannot, with a straight face, deny that there is some truth to that notion. What I want to suggest, though, is that there’s also an element of wish fulfillment in these shows and movies. Males in our society are often pressured into the roles of providers, leaders, father figures, etc. The concept of masculinity is often tied to a concept of leadership. Naturally, the feminist movement and other shifts in gender politics are altering these ideas, but much of that concept remains in the minds of males. With a concept of leadership comes the responsibility to be a decision maker. Therefore, I would suggest that these films and shows are a chance for males to live vicariously through characters who exemplify what men are often pressured to be: good leaders and excellent decision makers. Additionally, the main characters of these stories must not only be good leaders and decision makers, but must have the ability to adapt these skills to a number of diverse situations.
This thought first came to me when I was watching the fourth movie in the Die Hard series, the poorly titled Live Free or Die Hard:
This trailer is certainly laden with explosions, but notice Bruce Willis’s dialogue in the trailer. Much of it is about how sure he is of his actions. He acts with the utmost confidence in all of his decisions, including driving a car into a helicopter, which he speaks of with surprising nonchalance. What this trailer fails to show is one of the other main pleasures of the film, which is the adaptability of the John McClane character to an unfamiliar situation. McClane has little knowledge about the Internet or any other new technologies, hence the need for Justin Long’s character, Matt Farrell. Farrell stands in stark contrast to McClane’s confidence as he is often frightened and unconfident in his actions. His main purpose is to provide McClane with the technological information needed to defeat their enemy, Thomas Gabriel. McClane quickly assimilates this information and uses it to adapt his game plan.
Therefore, the primary element of Live Free or Die Hard that makes it a “guy movie” is not so much the action element as the ability for McClane to adapt to new situations. The film is the ultimate fish-out-of-water situation for McClane: he is quickly thrust into a crisis that he did not anticipate in a field which he is not familiar with (technology) and can just as quickly adapt to the threat. It is his superior decision making skills that give him the ability to thwart Thomas Gabriel’s plan with little time to prepare while Gabriel has, potentially, had years to plan. McClane’s masculinity is demonstrated, not merely in his muscle, but in the speed and accuracy with which he moves through the mental processes of assessment, analysis and execution of a plan when he encounters a new and unfamiliar situation.
It brings to my mind the comments made by my good friend’s cousin, who is in his early teens, regarding Martin Campbell’s 2006 James Bond reboot film, Casino Royale: “He’s not James Bond. He makes mistakes.” Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Casino Royale is a young Bond who is still learning and making reckless mistakes. While he can perform the assessment, analysis, execution process with a great deal of speed, his accuracy leaves something to be desired.
This is the chase scene from very early in Casino Royale. If you don’t wish to watch the entire thing, then at least direct your attention to the moment at approximately 4:45 in this clip. While Bond shows great confidence and quick, accurate decision making skills through most of this clip, at this point in the chase scene he hesitates. He shows a lack of confidence in the jump he is about to make, and then fails to make the jump with the same accuracy as the man he’s chasing. This is not the only time in the chase scene when he fails to land on his feet, literally or figuratively. He crashes and falls several times in the chase and, in the end, he diffuses a standoff by setting off an explosion which later creates an international uproar and negative publicity for MI6. Throughout the rest of the movie, we see Bond showing some other poor decisions, failing to read people both at the poker table and in real life, being double crossed more than once and being easily fooled by another poker player who set him up to lose approximately 10 million dollars.
Look at this in contrast to the new Star Trek movie. The movie tells the story of Kirk’s meteoric yet completely impossible rise from the rank of cadet to captain. Kirk, like Daniel Craig’s Bond, is a young and reckless version of a classic, iconic character. Kirk makes rash and bold decisions but, unlike Bond, he shows an inhuman ability to make the right decisions at all times. This is especially odd when he manages to see the connection between a special anomaly encountered by the Enterprise and a similar anomaly that was present in the battle that killed his father, a connection that no sane or logical person would have made.
Kirk bucks authority at almost every turn, especially the authority of the young Spock who becomes the temporary captain of the Enterprise, outranking Kirk. Kirk’s disregard for authority is rewarded instead of punished because he is usually proven to be correct in the end. Even his decision to cheat at the unwinnable test at the academy by reprogramming it is ultimately rewarded as he is rescued from possible expulsion by an impromptu mission, which Kirk becomes the hero of, earning him a commendation instead of an expulsion.
Yet, the examples I’m giving here are all of war-headed tough guys who fit into the archetype of a male action hero. Yet, I’d like to present an example of a less traditional figure of masculinity taken from British television, a pacifist action star of sorts: David Tennant’s portrayal of the Tenth Doctor on the long running series Doctor Who.
For those of you unacquainted with the series, you might benefit from a very quick rundown of the show’s plot. The “Doctor,” the titular character of the series, is an alien of a species known as the Time Lords from a planet called Gallifrey, who travels around time and space in a time machine/space ship known as a TARDIS which is disguised as a police call box (which becomes more and more conspicuous with each passing year since call boxes have disappeared from England) with a constantly rotating series of companions who are usually human. The show started out in the 1960’s and, when the original actor to play The Doctor, William Hartnell, decided to leave the series, the show’s producers didn’t want to end the series, so they wrote in a plot device in which the Doctor is capable of avoiding death by a process of “regeneration” moments before his death. This regeneration, while keeping The Doctor alive, results in a complete change in his appearance, voice and even his personality, allowing for the lead actor to be replaced whenever it is necessary to do so. Because of this, the show has lasted over three decades, albeit non-consecutively, with ten different actors playing The Doctor, and an eleventh already cast for a new season beginning in 2010.
David Tennant, the current actor to play the role, portrays what might be the most pacifist version of the character to date (although, I could be incorrect on this, as I have only ever seen the first, fourth, fifth, eighth, ninth and tenth doctors.) The character’s progression towards a pacifist has been gradual, moving from the violent war veteran Ninth Doctor who inaugurated the revamped series in 2005 to a much more non-violent version of the character by the fourth and most recent season of the new series. The Doctor is often forced to commit violent acts, falling into the classic Star Trek plot device where the hero wishes to be peaceful but a universe full of violent monsters won't let him. This includes acts such as destroying the Sontaran battleship in the two part episode “The Sontaran Stratagem”/”The Poison Sky,” or killing the last of an arachnid-like alien race in the 2007 Christmas special, “The Runaway Bride.” However, in both of these situations, he only kills his enemies to keep them from taking other lives, and, even then, he offers them an opportunity to live if they surrender first.
Yet, despite being such a staunch pacifist, David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor holds many of the same masculine qualities as Captain Kirk, James Bond or even John McClane. The Doctor’s ability to adapt to new situations is unrivaled. Due to his extremely advanced age, there is almost no alien race he is unfamiliar with, no scientific principle that baffles him, and no point in Earth history that he does not have an intimate knowledge of, often having been present or even responsible for these momentous event. He still finds himself surprised from time to time—you could make a drinking game out of the number of times he uses the phrase “It can’t be”—but he quickly and enthusiastically adapts to the surprising situation and finds a solution almost instantaneously, often with an oddly childlike sense of glee.
Take this famous clip from the show’s 2008 Christmas Special “Voyage of the Damned.” In this clip, he just accidentally crashed on a luxury cruise spaceship aptly called The Titanic, and figured out quite quickly that the ship had been sabotaged and was about to be struck by a series of comets while its shields were down. The only reason he failed to stop the collision was due to a series of security guards and robots physically restraining him from warning the passengers and resetting the shields. Yet, even in the wake of this disaster, he spends little time panicking. He quickly asseses the situation, formulates a plan, and takes a leadership role amongst the survivors:
Despite being a man who detests violence and refuses to carry a weapon—instead only carrying a tool called a "sonic screwdriver" that allows him to open doors and fiddle with electronic machinery—his decision making skills and confident swagger make him a classic action star. Thus, we see how big muscles, guns and explosions aren’t the most important ingredient in creating masculine oriented media (although, admittedly, these things are not completely absent from any of the media we’ve looked at).
Whether this is a positive or negative trait of these movies would be the subject of another blog. My purpose here is mainly analysis, not judgement. I could also write a whole separate blog about how this same formula is used to empower women by creating similar female action stars like Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Bride in Kill Bill. However, where these female characters often show their strength by combining their leadership and decision making skills in battle with other important responsibilities in their lives, their male action counterparts allow male fans to fulfill one main role vicariously through them: the role of an unfaltering leader.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
"Who died and made you..." by Victor Infante
Normally I post my own writing on this blog. However, after the announcement of a possible Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot movie, I found that I couldn't really think of anything to say that my friend Victor Infante didn't say in a recent entry in his own personal blog. So, with permission from the original author, I bring you the following from the editor-in-chief of the online literary magazine The November 3rd Club, copy editor for the Worcester Telegram, author of City of Insomnia, which is available from Write Bloody Press, and a man of many other accolades, Victor Infante:
I'm pretty sure I've never seen word of a movie get such a sudden and sharp denunciation from its potential audience as the proposed reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer1. Really. It's been staggering2. The news was originally broken by The Hollywood Reporter, who also reported that:
The new "Buffy" film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by [Joss] Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching "Star Trek."3
Which, really, it's not the same situation at all. Buffy has been off the air for less than a decade, and still does a brisk business in DVDs and has an ostensibly canonical continuation in comics. Star Trek was a dying franchise of which the principle image in most young viewers minds was either an aging, overweight William Shatner at his hammiest, or worse, the barely interesting TV show Enterprise. It was time to start again. And that time will come for Buffy, too, but this probably isn't it. Or at least, this is probably not the way to do it.
There's two hard realities butting heads here -- one legal and financial, and the other cultural. On the legal side, the movie rights to Buffy are owned by original director Fran Rabel Kuzui along with her husband Ka. According to Newsarama, "Kuzui and Kuzui Enterprises has held on to the rights since Kuzui, 'discovered the "Buffy” script from then-unknown Whedon. She developed the script while her husband put together the financing to make the 1992 movie, which was released by Fox.'"4
Characters such as as Willow, Giles, Angel and Spike are all owned by Fox, and it's unlikely Fox would release them. And while Whedon still retains some ownership over the franchise, it likely only extends to royalties, not to actual control. Once the movie rights were sold, that's all she wrote. So if they want to make the movie in the face of an outraged and noisy fandom, that's their prerogative.
However, one thing's become clear to me in this process, though: Buffy's an iconic character, and as such, eventually will pass out of Joss' hands. Probably even while he's still alive, although doubtfully while he's still interested. The character has embedded itself in the cultural matrix, and her story will get retold umpteen million different ways. That's how it goes for the icons. But the key to the success of Buffy's next iteration will be the identification of the fundamental elements of the story.
So what are the fundamental elements of the Buffy story? Well, Buffy Summers, obviously. "One girl in all the world with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, blah, blah, blah." But while the movie was first, it's clear that the TV show is the ruling canon, and the characters introduced there have become part of the meta story. At this point, a Buffy without Willow and Giles is a bit like Superman without Lois Lane or Jimmy Olson, and even Smallville made use of Lex Luthor when it started up, along with Superman characters Lana Lang and Pete Ross. The fan reaction is one thing, but stories -- big stories, anyway, and Buffy's earned its place as a big story -- they work a certain way. And oddly, that way has little to do with faithful retelling, and secondary characters ... they have their place in a mythos.
It's like this: there's a certain power in stories that get retold and reinterpreted. Take Batman for example. The Batman in the comics now (err ... before he died) is not the Batman Bob Kane created, nor the one Frank Miller reinvigorated, nor is he the one in the cartoons or the one Christian Bale plays in the movies. But they're all faithful renditions of the story, even if the details are different: You have the boy who watches his wealthy parents get murdered in Gotham City who returns to fight criminals. You have the Batmobile, you have Jim Gordon and his faithful butler Alfred. In most, you have Robin. Some of these details were added along the way, but once they're locked into the mythos, they're there to stay. I'd argue that Giles, Willow & Xander, Angel and Sunnydale itself have locked themselves into that mythos.
So what happens if the new movie goes a completely different direction, and jettisons the existing mythos? Well, then you have a situation like, say, the Halle Barre Catwoman movie, which had nothing to do with the spirit of the mythos save its name. The reaction to the misstep becomes visceral, because some stories have a weight of their own, and not honoring that shows. For what it's worth, I think J.J. Abrams outdid himself with the new Star Trek, and that you could completely see how Christopher Pine and Zachary Quinto could grow into the more familiar older Kirk and Spock. The spirit was there. Is it too much to suspect already that Buffy's spirit is lacking in the proposed movie? It's way too soon to say that, but there's a bad feeling in my gut about it.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Video of the Week - Jon Stewart vs. Poetry
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at White House Poetry Jams | ||||
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This week’s video of the week comes a little late, but with a longer commentary than usual.
The point of this blog is to talk about my thoughts about the media, not to talk about my life as a slam poet. I have many other forums to discuss that aspect of my life. However, when these two interests intersect, I find it necessary to discuss it here.
This video from The Daily Show with John Stewart created quite a stir within the slam community. While ours is not the first community to be lampooned by Stewart, nor will it be the last, I thought this would be a good chance to discuss the role of a comedian and what can and cannot be deemed an attack from someone like Jon Stewart.
The reactions from poets to this segment ranged from moral outrage to George Watsky’s limerick entitled “Jon Stewart could light my cat on fire, and he would still be My Hero”:
A New York comedian’s mercy
goes only as far as his slurs– he
takes poetry down
but that’s easy to clown
(like the fact that he grew up in Jersey)1
Part of the outrage, undoubtedly, came from the fact that the slam community tends to fall into The Daily Show’s target demographic. Slam poets generally run the gambit from moderate democrats to die-hard socialists with almost no conservative voices in the community. Many poets are, therefore, fans of The Daily Show’s left-leaning political satire. Thus, when Jon Stewart decided to spoof the slam community, many saw it as a sort of betrayal.
Yet, where in the video is Stewart actually attacking the slam community? One moment could be where he claims that “not every first is something to necessarily celebrate,” referring to this being the first White House Poetry “Jam.” Another would be immediately after his montage of the poets’ actual performances where he mocks an admittedly silly sounding line from a poem regarding Alexander Hamilton.
Poetry Slam Incorporated’s president, Scott Woods, argued in a recent column of his that Jon Stewart’s supposed attack on our community would be justified if these poets were representative of the community as a whole:
Jon Stewart makes a comment suggesting that, now that we have black president, poets can stop doing that “jam” thing we do. It is a statement borne out of ignorance of what modern poetry has to offer, but it is a common ignorance…an ignorance poetry does not counter often enough in the public eye, even when given every opportunity to do so.2
Woods is arguing that, if our community is being mocked, we only have ourselves to blame by not putting our best foot forward when given public exposure.
What this comes down to is simply this: the line in the poem was unintentionally funny. Had I been sitting in the back of a poetry reading with one of my friends, I probably would have made some of the same comments that Jon Stewart did.
So, putting those moments aside, what is Stewart really making fun of in this segment? He mocks the media’s discussions about the difference between a “Poetry Slam” and a “Poetry Jam” (the latter being a phrase that is virtually unused in the slam community). He makes jokes about Obama trying too hard to be hip with the cultural events he puts on in the White House. None of these things are really direct attacks on the slam community as a whole.
Furthermore, he mocks himself by naming the segment “Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at White House Poetry Jams.” This suggests that this is less than a serious attack, and more of a gentle mockery. Some poets, however, disagree with this. In an online discussion on the Facebook profile of Chicago poet Robbie Q. Telfer, Telfer responded to my argument about Stewart’s own self-deprecation in the piece by saying:
well, i say it's racist and elitist knowing the history of what slam has brought to disenfranchised voices, but also knowing that the daily show writers either don't have access to that history or they don't care. mocking the voice of hip-hop poetry replicates and can encourage the same gate-keeping of language slam poets have been fighting since the beginning of the movement.
i think comedians can get away with racism and elitism for the reasons you give, trevor, but it's still there. and when i talk about "jon stewart" i mean the character, not the actual dude.3
I find this especially interesting that this is coming from a poet who is known for his comedic work. I hope that Robbie Q. will forgive me for saying this, I don’t mean to pigeon-hole him and ignore any of his non-comedic work, but some of his most well known works are comedic. Yet, he brushes off the self-deprecating element of this segment, which is the part that undercuts everything else Stewart is saying. Poetry, in this context, is being presented as something that is “hip,” while Stewart is mocking himself for being “unhip” in doing so. Stewart is, in a way, complimenting the community. As for the “gate-keeping of language that slam poets have been fighting,” I think Scott Woods’s previous comment speaks to that very well.
Stewart’s job as a comedian is to find humor in the news and point it out. Often times, in doing so, he points out the faults of our government and our society. However, as Jon Stewart has made very clear on several occasions, for all his political commentary, his first role on the show is as a comedian. Sometimes, the best comedy comes from finding small, niche groups doing unusual things and poking fun at them. While the “Poetry Jam” that was held at the White House was a big step forward for our community, there were also elements that were particularly funny, such as the clips that Stewart played. Must the slam community take itself so seriously that it can’t take a joke when one is thrown at it? Do you think that, when Conan O’Brien filmed the famous segment for his show where he mocked an old-timey baseball league in Long Island that the league boycotted his show afterwards, or did they understand that what they do probably looks funny to outsiders?
Remember, funny is funny, and a comedian has to find material somewhere. If he doesn’t find it in one community, he’ll find it in another, and we can’t all take it personally when it’s leveled at our community and then laugh when its aimed at someone else’s. The lesson here is simply to not take yourself too seriously, a lesson that Jon Stewart tries to remember with his own career, as evidenced by his famous quote on Crossfire: “The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."4
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Bill Lawrence, ABC, and The Fans: Who Really "Owns" Scrubs?
This week, we saw the possible series finale for one of my favorite sitcoms, Scrubs. Scrubs has always been one of the more unique shows in the television landscape, both in terms of content and production. Scrubs was one of the only shows on television that, for the majority of its run, aired on a different network than the one that produced it, being produced by ABC’s Touchstone Television but airing on NBC.1 This, of course, changed in the last season, when the show was dropped by NBC and was picked up by ABC. After the WGA Strike foiled their plans to wrap up the narrative in Season 7, ABC gave them a chance to end the series on their own terms in an 8th season. The show was also unique in that it was in constant danger of being cancelled for much of its run2, yet still managed to pull off 168 episodes over the course of 8 years on the air.
The show was narratively unique as well. It played with the traditional formula of the will-they/won’t-they love story between two lead characters, J.D. and Elliot, in a way that bucked television convention. Instead of making it the central focus of the show to the point where it grates on the audience, the two were brought together for a few episodes at a time in the early seasons, and the romantic plot was then ignored for entire seasons until they were finally brought back together, not in the final episode, but early in the final season. The two male lead characters had a strong relationship that, in a running joke on the show, bordered on the romantic in a way that few series before it had the courage to attempt. It lacked the typical “television amnesia” that is especially prevalent in sitcoms, where characters ignore the events of past episodes. Instead, Scrubs built off past events, often turning one-liner jokes into running gags or even recurring characters like Hooch or Leonard, the hook-handed security guard. Small plot points came back around seasons later, such as the conspiracy between Carla and the Janitor to secretly replace J.D. and Turk’s dead stuffed dog that Carla had accidentally misplaced. Frequent viewership was rewarded with in-jokes from past episodes, especially in the Season 5 episode “My Déjà Vu, My Déjà Vu,” which consisted almost entirely of jokes from past episodes, and even recycled a b-story from a past episode almost verbatim. Yet, the true strength of the show was in its ability to mix the off-the-wall comedy with serious, dramatic moments. At times this formula faltered, particularly when the comedy stretched the show beyond the limits of reality and then attempted to come back down to earth for a serious emotional moment. Still, there were several moments in the show where the elements of comedy and drama came together in a powerful way.
The show’s biggest flaw, however, was the tendency for the voice-over narration to wrap up the episodes’ disparate plotlines in loose metaphors or themes that awkwardly tied them together, leading to a forced and overly sentimental ending of each episode. This formula was parodied several times, particularly in a moment of post-modern reflexivity in the 7th season episode, “My Waste of Time”:
J.D.: Oh I’m just doing this thing where I use a slice of wisdom from someone else’s life to solve a problem in my own life.
Jordan: It seems coincidental.
J.D. And yet I do it almost every week.3
Despite this flaw, the little-show-that-could developed a cult following that is coming out in full force as ABC decides the fate of the show for the 2009-2010 television season, despite the fact that the show’s creator Bill Lawrence, and stars Zach Braff and Judy Reyes have announced they will not return for a 9th season if there is one.4 Without Lawrence, the creative force behind the show, Reyes, whose character on the show is married to another prominent character on the show, or Braff, the star and narrator of the show, many fans feel that a 9th season of the show would, inevitably, “jump the shark,” and are arguing, often vehemently, that the show should not return for a 9th season without its full cast. Both ABC and Bill Lawrence remain indifferent to fan complaints and still talk about a “50/50” chance of the show returning with new characters for next season.5 Since ABC owns the rights to the show, and Lawrence created the show, it would seem that they have the full authority to make such decisions about the show’s continuation. Yet, do the fans have the right to voice complaints? Do they, in a sense, have a certain sense of ownership of the show and the characters that allow them to have a say in the decision?
A certain logic in television states that since the shows, especially those aired on broadcast networks, are provided free of charge, the creators owe nothing to the audience. They have provided a free service and it is ungrateful to criticize the quality or content of that free service. In a recent interview, Bill Lawrence laughed off a suggestion made by a fan that, if the show were to continue without the original characters, it should no longer be called Scrubs:
I think one of the weirdest comments I got, Will, was somebody on the message board who, when I said, “It’s gonna be like anew [sic] show,” said, “Well, then don’t call it ‘Scrubs’!” I’m, like, “What does it matter to you?” (Laughs) “So, like, you’re okay with it if it’s not called ‘Scrubs’ but, like, ‘Doctors’?” “Yeah!” Well, that’s just idiotic.6
His comment that such a suggestion is “idiotic” seems odd considering that he made the same suggestion at a speech at his alma mater, William and Mary, suggesting that, if the show were to go on without Zach Braff, it would be a completely different show, and possibly need a different title.7 However, the comment I find most interesting in this quote from Lawrence is the part where he says: “What does it matter to you?” In his condescending tone he seems to forget the power that the viewer has over the fate of a television show, a power that the creators and even the networks lack: if the audience doesn’t watch the show, then the show will die.
Television audiences have always taken fierce possession over the characters in the shows they watch. Many scholars have discussed (almost to death) the phenomenon of housewives in the late-60’s writing homoerotic fan-fiction stories about Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in an attempt to feminize two otherwise staunchly masculine characters. The phenomenon of fan-fiction has been examined in-depth by many media theorists, mainly because it is one of the primary ways in which fans of a show become active rather than passive recipients of media. One of the best resources on this subject, which I highly recommend, is Henry Jenkins’s book Convergence Culture, which deals not only with fan fiction, but also with other ways in which fans take control over the media they consume, such as the Survivor spoilers who go to great lengths to uncover the secrets of the show before it airs, or the amateur film makers who make Star Wars tribute films on shoe-string budgets.8 Media companies have gone to great lengths to try to shut down these active consumers, yet, ironically, it is the dedication to these movies and television shows that the media makers have intentionally tried to cultivate which has led to these legally ambiguous acts of fan tribute. The creators of these shows and movies have created their own monsters.
It is much the same in the case with Scrubs. While Scrubs is not the source of a great deal of fan-fiction (although, virtually every TV show or movie generates some fan-fiction these days), it has developed a strong and dedicated cult following. The fact that they make references back to past episodes that offer a pay-off for long-time viewers is a sign that the creators and producers not only expect but encourage fans to become an active audience, seeking out all the episodes of the show to understand how all 8 seasons fit together as a cohesive narrative. They expect and want the audience to become attached to the characters, otherwise the tear-jerker ending of the show’s 8th season finale (which, I admit, got me a little teared up myself) would have had no purpose.
Viewers have an investment in these characters that the creators have intentionally tried to create. Viewers also have a certain ownership over the characters because, as we have already seen, it is only through the audience’s continued viewership that the characters are allowed to survive. All the combined dedication of Bill Lawrence, ABC and NBC would have had no effect in keeping the show on the air if the viewers did not continue to tune in. Thus, it could be said that the fans are not being “idiotic” when they claim their right to weigh in on the future of the show and its characters; they helped to create both in the first place.
Thus, Lawrence’s question of “What does it matter to you?” seems rather silly. It matters to the dedicated fan base because Lawrence and the rest of the creative team behind Scrubs wanted it to matter to them. Therefore, if the audience declares that they don’t want to see the show continue on without its main characters for fear that it will tarnish the legacy of their show, moving it into the territory of AfterM*A*S*H or the post-Ron Howard seasons of Happy Days, then they certainly deserve to be heard. After all, if the show does return for a 9th season, the fans’ opinions will be heard loud and clear once the ratings come back on a revamped, J.D.-less version of Scrubs. This is not to suggest that the fans have more of an ownership over the show and its characters than either ABC or Bill Lawrence. It is just to suggest that the fans have more of an ownership over the show than either of its legal owners have given them credit for.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
No Fantarding Allowed: Anti-Fanning and American Idol
I’m not a regular American Idol watcher by any means. I watched the third season all the way through, and have pretty much ignored every season before and after that one. This season, I turned on the Top 13 week because I had a night off from my Tuesday night class and, I admit, I started to remember why I liked the show. I thought I’d watch the rest of the season, but then remembered that I have a class on Tuesday nights and a poetry reading on Wednesdays, so I wouldn’t be watching much of the show this season. However, tonight, I skipped my Tuesday night class to sort out my taxes at the last minute and, when I finished my taxes a little earlier than I expected, I tuned in to watch the final 7 battle it out on Songs from the Movies week. The show was interesting, but not as interesting as playing along with the infamous anti-fan site VoteForTheWorst.com.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, VoteForTheWorst.com, also known as VFTW, is a website specifically designed for “haters” of American Idol. The site is filled with message boards that allow people to post about their hatred of American Idol, which, somehow, they have an encyclopedic knowledge of. There is a thread for people to make insulting photoshopped pictures of the contestants and judges, entire threads dedicated to the hatred of individual contestants, and then there’s the play-by play thread. The play-by-play thread allows users to comment on the show as it’s airing, thus giving users a chance to insult the action as it happens. At the end of the episode, the site’s managers choose the person they consider to be the worst singer of the night, and encourage all of their users to vote for that person, thus “sabotaging” the show by keeping the less talented singers in the competition. The website’s hatred is not limited to American Idol, as the site has also put shows like Canadian Idol and Dancing With the Stars in its crosshairs, but the main focus is always American Idol.
Like many internet message boards, cruelty is not only common, but encouraged. Most notable is the community’s response to Season 8 contestant Danny Gokey, whose wife died shortly before he tried out for the show. The community has developed two nicknames for Gokey: “Deadwife” and “DWD” (Dead Wife Danny). The attacks on contestants and judges are vicious and board members rarely admit to liking a contestant, a judge, or even a specific performance. Perhaps, this is because it’s forbidden by the message board rules:
Yet, the website is so active that, during a normal episode of the show, the server often overloads from the flow of activity on the message boards. The play-by-play thread updates on an almost minute-by-minute basis during each episode, as VFTW users want to get in all their negative opinions of a show that they are watching so intently, they can quote it. This raises the question: why create a massive community around a show that you hate, when you could, instead, simply not watch the show?
VoteForTheWorst.com is not the first site of its kind. The site grew out of the site SurvivorSucks.com which, as the name would suggest, was a site originally designed for users to talk trash about Survivor. SurvivorSucks.com has since expanded, with sections for shows such as Lost and The Apprentice. This sort of “anti-fanning,” if you will, is an interesting phenomenon, and it’s made me wonder why these communities form.
Clearly, the members of these communities do not truly hate the shows the claim to hate. There’s no reason to create an Internet water cooler to discuss a show that you despise. There’s no reason to turn a show that you don’t enjoy into appointment television. What these communities are a result of is the increasingly cynical attitude of early 21st century youth culture and the natural desire of the youth to fit in.
The cynic-chic attitude that began to permeate youth culture in the 90’s is best summed up in an old Simpsons episode from that decade, “Homerpalooza”:
In modern culture, it’s square to be hip. Showing a lack of enthusiasm for something that’s popular is, at least in certain circles, a way to win “cool points.” It has become fashionable to be the hater of everything and to hold high standards that no form of entertainment can live up to. This is especially true of indie and punk cultures, which formed around musical styles in which a band’s obscurity is seen as a badge of honor. As a fan in these communities, the badge of honor is having an in-depth knowledge of obscure and underground artists. Thus, to indulge in the pleasures of something as popular as American Idol is considered, in these circles, to be distinctly uncool.
Thus, in these circles of the youth culture, the only way to enjoy a guilty pleasure like American Idol or Survivor is to claim to be enjoying it ironically. Entire communities develop for people to continually ridicule these shows so that they might live in denial about the pleasures that they get from watching them. Communities like VoteForTheWorst.com give people excuses to be fans of something popular without admitting that they enjoy something mainstream. This is the ultimate paradox of our modern age: to retain one’s coolness, one must pretend to dislike that which is popular.
Is anyone else confused?
1 Forrester, Brent. "Homerpalooza." The Simpsons. Fox. 19 May 1996.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, VoteForTheWorst.com, also known as VFTW, is a website specifically designed for “haters” of American Idol. The site is filled with message boards that allow people to post about their hatred of American Idol, which, somehow, they have an encyclopedic knowledge of. There is a thread for people to make insulting photoshopped pictures of the contestants and judges, entire threads dedicated to the hatred of individual contestants, and then there’s the play-by play thread. The play-by-play thread allows users to comment on the show as it’s airing, thus giving users a chance to insult the action as it happens. At the end of the episode, the site’s managers choose the person they consider to be the worst singer of the night, and encourage all of their users to vote for that person, thus “sabotaging” the show by keeping the less talented singers in the competition. The website’s hatred is not limited to American Idol, as the site has also put shows like Canadian Idol and Dancing With the Stars in its crosshairs, but the main focus is always American Idol.
Like many internet message boards, cruelty is not only common, but encouraged. Most notable is the community’s response to Season 8 contestant Danny Gokey, whose wife died shortly before he tried out for the show. The community has developed two nicknames for Gokey: “Deadwife” and “DWD” (Dead Wife Danny). The attacks on contestants and judges are vicious and board members rarely admit to liking a contestant, a judge, or even a specific performance. Perhaps, this is because it’s forbidden by the message board rules:
No motherfucking fantarding.
No one here cares if you find David Cook attractive. No one cares if you're going to buy 300 of an Idol's new CD. VFTW is a board where we make fun of Idol and its contestants, not where we squeal over what they look like naked. If you want to do that, go here [link] or here [link]. Posting one SHORT comment about how you like someone is not fantarding. Any more than that, and no one wants to read it. Yes, we can ban you for saying you find someone attractive. Don't like it? Get out.
Yet, the website is so active that, during a normal episode of the show, the server often overloads from the flow of activity on the message boards. The play-by-play thread updates on an almost minute-by-minute basis during each episode, as VFTW users want to get in all their negative opinions of a show that they are watching so intently, they can quote it. This raises the question: why create a massive community around a show that you hate, when you could, instead, simply not watch the show?
VoteForTheWorst.com is not the first site of its kind. The site grew out of the site SurvivorSucks.com which, as the name would suggest, was a site originally designed for users to talk trash about Survivor. SurvivorSucks.com has since expanded, with sections for shows such as Lost and The Apprentice. This sort of “anti-fanning,” if you will, is an interesting phenomenon, and it’s made me wonder why these communities form.
Clearly, the members of these communities do not truly hate the shows the claim to hate. There’s no reason to create an Internet water cooler to discuss a show that you despise. There’s no reason to turn a show that you don’t enjoy into appointment television. What these communities are a result of is the increasingly cynical attitude of early 21st century youth culture and the natural desire of the youth to fit in.
The cynic-chic attitude that began to permeate youth culture in the 90’s is best summed up in an old Simpsons episode from that decade, “Homerpalooza”:
Teenager 1: Oh look, here comes that cannonball guy, he's cool.
Teenager 2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teenager 1: I don't even know anymore.1
In modern culture, it’s square to be hip. Showing a lack of enthusiasm for something that’s popular is, at least in certain circles, a way to win “cool points.” It has become fashionable to be the hater of everything and to hold high standards that no form of entertainment can live up to. This is especially true of indie and punk cultures, which formed around musical styles in which a band’s obscurity is seen as a badge of honor. As a fan in these communities, the badge of honor is having an in-depth knowledge of obscure and underground artists. Thus, to indulge in the pleasures of something as popular as American Idol is considered, in these circles, to be distinctly uncool.
Thus, in these circles of the youth culture, the only way to enjoy a guilty pleasure like American Idol or Survivor is to claim to be enjoying it ironically. Entire communities develop for people to continually ridicule these shows so that they might live in denial about the pleasures that they get from watching them. Communities like VoteForTheWorst.com give people excuses to be fans of something popular without admitting that they enjoy something mainstream. This is the ultimate paradox of our modern age: to retain one’s coolness, one must pretend to dislike that which is popular.
Is anyone else confused?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Branding That Which is Not Yours to Brand: Russell Simmons and Brave New Voices
The following is a blog I posted a few weeks back for one of my classes and I thought I'd reprint it here now that I have the blog up. The series has started airing since I wrote it. I have not watched an episode yet, but I intend to. It's only fair:
Around 2001 I found myself falling, entirely by accident, into the bizarre and wonderful world of Poetry Slam. To describe what Slam is, exactly, is always difficult, and is something that all slam poets are forced to do on a regular basis. The thriving community, which spans most of the United States and several different countries, still remains a relatively unknown phenomenon. At its core is a poetry competition with varying rules, but the constants of each competition are usually as such: 1) Poems must be 3 minutes in length, with a ten second grace period. Any poem that goes over 3 minutes and 10 seconds incurs a time penalty of .5 points for every ten seconds the poem goes over. 2) Judges are chosen at random from the slam audience and must judge on a scale of 0 to 10 with one decimal point. Five judges are usually chosen, the high and low scores are dropped, and the remaining three scores are added up for the poet’s score. 3) Poets are not allowed to use props, costumes, or musical accompaniment, only their words and their performance. Yet, to boil it down to simply a competition with scores fails to describe the thriving community that has grown out of it, a community that has a love/hate relationship with fame and public exposure.
Many of us involved in Poetry Slam are well aware that the idea of a poetry competition looks as silly to some outside observers as the concept of National Air Guitar Championships or the National Rock, Paper, Scissor Championship. Still, for most of us, it’s more than just a hobby, it’s a lifestyle. Slam scenes around the country have built up dedicated social circles, and many poets build their social lives around poetry. In the last apartment I lived in I had three roommates, two of which were from the local poetry scene. My last relationship was with a girl in the Worcester Poetry Slam scene, and she lived in a house where every person living there was a slam poet with the exception of the 11 year old boy living upstairs who was the son of two slam poets. Beyond the local scenes, there is also a national scene that breeds social relationships through the several festivals held every year.
These festivals allow poets from different scenes to come together and compete against each other. There are three festivals held by the “official” slam organization, Poetry Slam Incorporated. These include the National Poetry Slam, in which as many as 80 venues around the country send teams of around 4 or 5 poets to compete with each other, the Individual World Poetry Slam, which is essentially the National Poetry Slam with individuals representing each venue instead of teams, and the Women of the World Poetry Slam, which is essentially the Individual World Poetry Slam but for women only. In addition to these festivals, there are also two festivals held by separate organizations: the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational or CUPSI, a national slam for teams representing different colleges across the country, and Brave New Voices, a version of the National Poetry Slam that is specifically for teenagers.
The slam community has always had two minds about national exposure. Some wish to get the word about slam out to as many people as possible, while some are weary of the compromises with corporate interests that would be required for such exposure. The slam community is generally made up of artists who lean far to the left and would like to see as little corporate involvement as possible in their community. The problem becomes that large festivals require corporate sponsors and, when the organizers pick the wrong sponsor, tensions flare up. The organizers of the 2009 National Poetry Slam recently learned this the hard way when the entire festival was nearly shut down over an argument about a sponsorship from Hustler magazine.
One of the first times that the media took an interest in our community was in 1996, when documentary filmmaker Paul Devlin filmed the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon and created the documentary SlamNation. The documentary has garnered mixed reviews from the community. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, reknowned New York slam poet, said of the film:
Others have complained that the representation of the slam community is largely inaccurate. Whether or not it was accurate for the time, in the 13 years since the films release, the National Poetry Slam has more than doubled in size, and the style of poetry has greatly changed from that featured in the film.
Then came Def Poetry Jam. The HBO television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam, a spin off of Simmons’s Def Comedy Jam, was a series which put spoken word poetry on television for, as far as I know, the first time. The show featured a combination of prominent slam poets and non-slam related celebrities reciting poems. Some of the most reknowned poets in the scene have appeared on the show, including Big Poppa E, Taylor Mali, and even some of my own friends in the scene such as Eamon Mahoney, Paul Graham, and the late Shannon Leigh. Russell Simmons also took the Def Poetry brand one step further and created a version of the show for Broadway in 2002. Some in the slam community have been happy to see their art form showcased on HBO, while some complained that the show cheapened the entire art form, and told stories of the show handpicking poets with the most attractive, mainstream look and poetic style.
The series is, at this point, said to be done, but that hasn’t stopped Russell Simmons from taking one more step in commercializing the slam culture. Starting this April, HBO will be airing a new miniseries: Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices. The series, narrated by Queen Latifah, follows seven teams from different cities on their way to the Brave New Voices festival in 2008. Rather than just showcasing poems, this series intends to tell the stories of the performers as well.2
I think that this newest show is the most problematic representation of the slam culture that we’ve seen so far. The documentary, SlamNation, for all of its faults, only sought to document an existing festival and culture for an audience. Def Poetry Jam, while it did feature many slam poets, also featured celebrities such as Lou Reed or Cedric the Entertainer reciting poetry. Thus, Russell Simmons branding the show with his own name wasn’t exactly a way of co-opting the culture. Nobody holds a copyright on spoken word and what he did, while it did pull heavily from slam, was a separate entity from Slam Poetry.
What becomes problematic about Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices is that Russell Simmons is taking a pre-existing festival and culture and putting his own name on it to brand it as his own. As someone who was a competitor in The Brave New Voices festival back in 2003, I can tell you that it did not just spring up in 2008 because Russell Simmons decided to put a camera in front of it.
I am not opposed to the slam scene getting more national exposure. I worry about how the exposure will cause the scene to grow larger than it already has, making it even more difficult to manage in the coming years, but I do believe that people in the community should try to bring more people into the fold in any way possible. My problem is not even with HBO or Russell Simmons choosing to broadcast the festival on national television. My problem is specifically with the words “Russell Simmons Presents” being in the title. Russell Simmons, an outsider to slam, has no right to claim ownership over a community that has been growing since long before he decided to capitalize on it. If the festival is going to be broadcast on HBO, credit should be given to those who worked so hard to build it into what it is now. Branding does not give one the right to take credit for someone else’s hard work.
Furthermore, he is also branding a community that has become a part of so many of our lives. While Def Poetry Jam was, as I said, a different beast than slam itself, this new series crosses the line and is actually depicting our slam culture. To give a rather extreme example, if Rupert Murdoch presented a series of specials for Black History Month and branded them as Rupert Murdoch Presents Black History Month or even Fox Presents Black History Month, there would be an instant uproar. Rupert Murdoch, not being black, does not have the right to brand Black History Month as his own. This is not to say that the Slam Poetry community is tantamount to an actual race, but it is a community that is special to a great many people.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more Slam Poets expressing outrage over this co-opting of our culture. Perhaps they’ve grown so used to Russell Simmons using our art form for his own commercial gain that they’ve simply decided to give up the fight. However, what Russell Simmons is doing here is much more of an affront to the community than anything he did with Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam. He isn’t simply using our artists for his show, he’s claiming our entire culture as his own. I worry that, when we someday look back on the history of Slam Poetry, Russell Simmons’s name will be covering up the names of those who actually did work to put the scene together.
1 O'Keefe Aptowicz, Cristin. Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. New York City: Soft Skull P, 2008.
2 "Russell Simmons Introduces Brave New Voices on HBO." Associated Content. 8 Mar. 2009. Associated Content Inc. 24 Mar. 2009 http://www.associatedcontent.com.
Around 2001 I found myself falling, entirely by accident, into the bizarre and wonderful world of Poetry Slam. To describe what Slam is, exactly, is always difficult, and is something that all slam poets are forced to do on a regular basis. The thriving community, which spans most of the United States and several different countries, still remains a relatively unknown phenomenon. At its core is a poetry competition with varying rules, but the constants of each competition are usually as such: 1) Poems must be 3 minutes in length, with a ten second grace period. Any poem that goes over 3 minutes and 10 seconds incurs a time penalty of .5 points for every ten seconds the poem goes over. 2) Judges are chosen at random from the slam audience and must judge on a scale of 0 to 10 with one decimal point. Five judges are usually chosen, the high and low scores are dropped, and the remaining three scores are added up for the poet’s score. 3) Poets are not allowed to use props, costumes, or musical accompaniment, only their words and their performance. Yet, to boil it down to simply a competition with scores fails to describe the thriving community that has grown out of it, a community that has a love/hate relationship with fame and public exposure.
Many of us involved in Poetry Slam are well aware that the idea of a poetry competition looks as silly to some outside observers as the concept of National Air Guitar Championships or the National Rock, Paper, Scissor Championship. Still, for most of us, it’s more than just a hobby, it’s a lifestyle. Slam scenes around the country have built up dedicated social circles, and many poets build their social lives around poetry. In the last apartment I lived in I had three roommates, two of which were from the local poetry scene. My last relationship was with a girl in the Worcester Poetry Slam scene, and she lived in a house where every person living there was a slam poet with the exception of the 11 year old boy living upstairs who was the son of two slam poets. Beyond the local scenes, there is also a national scene that breeds social relationships through the several festivals held every year.
These festivals allow poets from different scenes to come together and compete against each other. There are three festivals held by the “official” slam organization, Poetry Slam Incorporated. These include the National Poetry Slam, in which as many as 80 venues around the country send teams of around 4 or 5 poets to compete with each other, the Individual World Poetry Slam, which is essentially the National Poetry Slam with individuals representing each venue instead of teams, and the Women of the World Poetry Slam, which is essentially the Individual World Poetry Slam but for women only. In addition to these festivals, there are also two festivals held by separate organizations: the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational or CUPSI, a national slam for teams representing different colleges across the country, and Brave New Voices, a version of the National Poetry Slam that is specifically for teenagers.
The slam community has always had two minds about national exposure. Some wish to get the word about slam out to as many people as possible, while some are weary of the compromises with corporate interests that would be required for such exposure. The slam community is generally made up of artists who lean far to the left and would like to see as little corporate involvement as possible in their community. The problem becomes that large festivals require corporate sponsors and, when the organizers pick the wrong sponsor, tensions flare up. The organizers of the 2009 National Poetry Slam recently learned this the hard way when the entire festival was nearly shut down over an argument about a sponsorship from Hustler magazine.
One of the first times that the media took an interest in our community was in 1996, when documentary filmmaker Paul Devlin filmed the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon and created the documentary SlamNation. The documentary has garnered mixed reviews from the community. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, reknowned New York slam poet, said of the film:
[SlamNation] showcased the best poetry and performances from the best poets across the country, and all within the anxiety-provoking context of the National Poetry Slam. One viewing of the movie could inspire a dozen new poems, and the seamless perfection of the group pieces found in the movie would forever change the number of and quality of the group work presented at the Nationals. It was also the perfect poetry slam propaganda for starting and encouraging new poetry slam venues.1
Others have complained that the representation of the slam community is largely inaccurate. Whether or not it was accurate for the time, in the 13 years since the films release, the National Poetry Slam has more than doubled in size, and the style of poetry has greatly changed from that featured in the film.
Then came Def Poetry Jam. The HBO television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam, a spin off of Simmons’s Def Comedy Jam, was a series which put spoken word poetry on television for, as far as I know, the first time. The show featured a combination of prominent slam poets and non-slam related celebrities reciting poems. Some of the most reknowned poets in the scene have appeared on the show, including Big Poppa E, Taylor Mali, and even some of my own friends in the scene such as Eamon Mahoney, Paul Graham, and the late Shannon Leigh. Russell Simmons also took the Def Poetry brand one step further and created a version of the show for Broadway in 2002. Some in the slam community have been happy to see their art form showcased on HBO, while some complained that the show cheapened the entire art form, and told stories of the show handpicking poets with the most attractive, mainstream look and poetic style.
The series is, at this point, said to be done, but that hasn’t stopped Russell Simmons from taking one more step in commercializing the slam culture. Starting this April, HBO will be airing a new miniseries: Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices. The series, narrated by Queen Latifah, follows seven teams from different cities on their way to the Brave New Voices festival in 2008. Rather than just showcasing poems, this series intends to tell the stories of the performers as well.2
I think that this newest show is the most problematic representation of the slam culture that we’ve seen so far. The documentary, SlamNation, for all of its faults, only sought to document an existing festival and culture for an audience. Def Poetry Jam, while it did feature many slam poets, also featured celebrities such as Lou Reed or Cedric the Entertainer reciting poetry. Thus, Russell Simmons branding the show with his own name wasn’t exactly a way of co-opting the culture. Nobody holds a copyright on spoken word and what he did, while it did pull heavily from slam, was a separate entity from Slam Poetry.
What becomes problematic about Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices is that Russell Simmons is taking a pre-existing festival and culture and putting his own name on it to brand it as his own. As someone who was a competitor in The Brave New Voices festival back in 2003, I can tell you that it did not just spring up in 2008 because Russell Simmons decided to put a camera in front of it.
I am not opposed to the slam scene getting more national exposure. I worry about how the exposure will cause the scene to grow larger than it already has, making it even more difficult to manage in the coming years, but I do believe that people in the community should try to bring more people into the fold in any way possible. My problem is not even with HBO or Russell Simmons choosing to broadcast the festival on national television. My problem is specifically with the words “Russell Simmons Presents” being in the title. Russell Simmons, an outsider to slam, has no right to claim ownership over a community that has been growing since long before he decided to capitalize on it. If the festival is going to be broadcast on HBO, credit should be given to those who worked so hard to build it into what it is now. Branding does not give one the right to take credit for someone else’s hard work.
Furthermore, he is also branding a community that has become a part of so many of our lives. While Def Poetry Jam was, as I said, a different beast than slam itself, this new series crosses the line and is actually depicting our slam culture. To give a rather extreme example, if Rupert Murdoch presented a series of specials for Black History Month and branded them as Rupert Murdoch Presents Black History Month or even Fox Presents Black History Month, there would be an instant uproar. Rupert Murdoch, not being black, does not have the right to brand Black History Month as his own. This is not to say that the Slam Poetry community is tantamount to an actual race, but it is a community that is special to a great many people.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more Slam Poets expressing outrage over this co-opting of our culture. Perhaps they’ve grown so used to Russell Simmons using our art form for his own commercial gain that they’ve simply decided to give up the fight. However, what Russell Simmons is doing here is much more of an affront to the community than anything he did with Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam. He isn’t simply using our artists for his show, he’s claiming our entire culture as his own. I worry that, when we someday look back on the history of Slam Poetry, Russell Simmons’s name will be covering up the names of those who actually did work to put the scene together.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Buffy vs. Twilight: Depictions of Women in Vampire Stories
So, as a heterosexual male who is almost a quarter of a century old, this is an embarassing thing to admit, but I'll have to say it: tonight, I rented Twilight out of pure curiosity. I wanted to see what the big hubub was over twinkly vampires and restrained sexuality that made all the pre-teen girls turn out to the theaters in droves. I'll admit, I didn't have a bad time watching it. The characters were interesting and sympathetic, and watching all the kids getting ready for prom brought back good memories of my high school days. What struck me as particularly interesting, though, was the fact that young girls across the country were so enthralled by this love story that they didn't notice, or didn't care, that the story was so disempowering for women.
Perhaps it's unfair for me to compare the movie to Buffy, since the two main similarities between them are that they both contain vampires and I've watched both of them recently. Yet, the vampire element does put them in a similar genre, and its interesting to see how the movie Twilight and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer use the same mythology to give distinctly different visions of femininity.
The first thing that struck me in Twilight was the fact that the vampires contain such supernatural speed and strength that humans have no hope of defeating them. When Bella is captured by the vampire, James, she has no way to defend herself other than with the help of the Cullen family. Buffy, on the other hand, shows a world in which the vampires, while stronger than the average human, can be defeated and killed by humans. While the series focuses on the one woman in the world granted the strength to be able to defeat vampires, her friends, who are not blessed with such powers, show themselves capable of defeating vampires, just with a little extra effort.
Thus, when Bella, in Twilight, finds herself inches from death at the hands of a vampire, her only savior is Edward Cullen, and his family who shows up afterwards. To be fair, the Cullen family is not all male, but it is a distincrly patriarchal family (the mission of the Cullen family is often said to be the mission of Carlisle Cullen, the "father") and Edward is the one leading the fight to protect her. Bella esentially becomes the damsel in distress, incapable of defending herself.
Joss Whedon, when he created Buffy, set out to intentionally show a more empowered version of women than what is normally seen in the horror genre. Rather than the blonde, feminine character being seen as the damsel in distress, he wanted to put one such woman in a position of power. In addition to her, there was Willow, who developed magical powers to assist her best friend. Add in Anya, Cordelia, Tara, Dawn, Faith, and the potential slayers in season 7, and you had a female centric team working to defend the world from vampires. The men in the series either served in an advisory capacity (Giles) or, in an interesting gender role reversal, as damsels in distress (Xander).
This is important considering the sexual role Vampirism has always played in fiction, dating back even to the earliest stories about them. The penetrating nature of their attack is distinctly sexual, as is the fact that it's normally a male vampire attacking female victims. The violent and non-consentual nature of the attack means that a vampire attack is usually symbolic of rape. Thus, we're left with two different views of how women are protected from predators in these two stories: in Buffy, we see powerful women protecting other women (although not exclusively, there are plenty of male victims too), in Twilight we see a woman whose only salvation from a predatory attack is a man with the same power and penchant for violence as her attacker.
Admittedly, I've only seen the first Twilight movie, and have not read either that book or any of the subsequent sequels. Perhaps Bella becomes more empowered as the books go on. I certainly hope she does, because I like her as a character and would like to see her become stronger. Still, there seems to be no intention to create a strong, pro-feminist character in the first movie of the series, and that doesn't particularly give me hope for an future installments.
Perhaps it's unfair for me to compare the movie to Buffy, since the two main similarities between them are that they both contain vampires and I've watched both of them recently. Yet, the vampire element does put them in a similar genre, and its interesting to see how the movie Twilight and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer use the same mythology to give distinctly different visions of femininity.
The first thing that struck me in Twilight was the fact that the vampires contain such supernatural speed and strength that humans have no hope of defeating them. When Bella is captured by the vampire, James, she has no way to defend herself other than with the help of the Cullen family. Buffy, on the other hand, shows a world in which the vampires, while stronger than the average human, can be defeated and killed by humans. While the series focuses on the one woman in the world granted the strength to be able to defeat vampires, her friends, who are not blessed with such powers, show themselves capable of defeating vampires, just with a little extra effort.
Thus, when Bella, in Twilight, finds herself inches from death at the hands of a vampire, her only savior is Edward Cullen, and his family who shows up afterwards. To be fair, the Cullen family is not all male, but it is a distincrly patriarchal family (the mission of the Cullen family is often said to be the mission of Carlisle Cullen, the "father") and Edward is the one leading the fight to protect her. Bella esentially becomes the damsel in distress, incapable of defending herself.
Joss Whedon, when he created Buffy, set out to intentionally show a more empowered version of women than what is normally seen in the horror genre. Rather than the blonde, feminine character being seen as the damsel in distress, he wanted to put one such woman in a position of power. In addition to her, there was Willow, who developed magical powers to assist her best friend. Add in Anya, Cordelia, Tara, Dawn, Faith, and the potential slayers in season 7, and you had a female centric team working to defend the world from vampires. The men in the series either served in an advisory capacity (Giles) or, in an interesting gender role reversal, as damsels in distress (Xander).
This is important considering the sexual role Vampirism has always played in fiction, dating back even to the earliest stories about them. The penetrating nature of their attack is distinctly sexual, as is the fact that it's normally a male vampire attacking female victims. The violent and non-consentual nature of the attack means that a vampire attack is usually symbolic of rape. Thus, we're left with two different views of how women are protected from predators in these two stories: in Buffy, we see powerful women protecting other women (although not exclusively, there are plenty of male victims too), in Twilight we see a woman whose only salvation from a predatory attack is a man with the same power and penchant for violence as her attacker.
Admittedly, I've only seen the first Twilight movie, and have not read either that book or any of the subsequent sequels. Perhaps Bella becomes more empowered as the books go on. I certainly hope she does, because I like her as a character and would like to see her become stronger. Still, there seems to be no intention to create a strong, pro-feminist character in the first movie of the series, and that doesn't particularly give me hope for an future installments.
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