5 posts tagged “pop culture”
24 is back on, so yay to that. Last season was completely over the top, but that didn't keep me from bouncing up and down on the couch when it returned. Is there a bigger badass on television than Jack Bauer? I say NO. I mean, he's died for real at least twice, and successfully faked his death once. And he killed his own brother. The man is unstoppable.
Over at What's Alan Watching, there's been quite a fuss over the use of torture on 24. Oh, the hand-wringing. What message does it send? How can we say we're against torture and still love this show? Just about the only thing I haven't seen is "shouldn't we think of the children?"
I'm as progressive as one can be without being a full-on socialist, and, yes, the torture kind of freaks me out. It's supposed to. But for real, I just don't care. I mean, it's television. Insane, absurd, mock-worthy-but-still-great-at-tension television. Half the fun is figuring out who the mole is, when Jack will end up A Man Alone, how much time it will take for the hard perimeter to be breached, and just what he has in that manbag of his.
A few of us dissented:
I said (some repeating of what I've said here):
I'm as bleeding heart as they get, but I'm with Shara on this. It's just outrageous, over the top fiction. The torture freaks me out a little, but I don't think it means anything, except that the showrunners want 24 to be as nuts as possible.
I'll be planted in front of the TV on Sunday, and will no doubt watch the entire season. The only thing that's bugging me is that I already know Tony is alive.
Someone responded:
To Maura and Shara,
24 is indeed fiction but there are cites that people in the Bush CIA and Defense department used 24 as justification for things that were done. As cuture it does have an impact. I remember reading that memos had to be cirulated with regard to the show and I think I even recall reading that the producors specifically filmed something for the government basically saying something like, "We're just TV; Don't do what we do!" I like the show but feel it peaked with season 2 but it isn't accurate to just dimiss its impact.
I said:
Oh yes, I'm aware of that. But those people are crazy, and will find any justification they can for their behavior. I can't put the blame on 24 and more than I would blame Dexter if there were a rise in serial killers only murdering bad people.
As Shara said, viewers will accept behavior from television characters that we would never accept in real life. How else can you explain the popularity of Gregory House, Al Swearingen, Tony Soprano or Don Draper? Even Lorelai Gilmore did things that would make me want to smack a real life friend. I wouldn't want showrunners to make every character palatable and bland because of nutjobs who will misinterpret the behavior of fictional characters as proof that such behavior is acceptable.
I hate the idea that characters should be dumbed down because someone might misinterpret their behavior. Showing bad behavior is not the same as condoning it. Amy Sherman-Palladino was not saying "It's OK to run off and have sex with your high school boyfriend/the father of your child because you just had a fight with your fiance", when Lorelai did just that. She was saying "this is what Lorelai Gilmore would do, because she's impulsive and emotionally immature, and Christopher makes her feel better, even though he kind of sucks sometimes." 24 was not saying "How cool. Jack just tore some guy's throat out with his teeth. Oops, he's dead." There was no message. They just wanted to be as insane as possible.
No normal person thinks torture is a good idea. If someone is so horrified by the torture on 24 to the point where they can't watch it, I sure as hell get that. There are no adjectives strong enough to describe how awful real life torture is, and the previous administration's approval of it turns my stomach. If they had to turn to an outrageous, crazy-ass, no-basis-in-reality fictional show to justify their actions, they don't have a leg to stand on. But I refuse to accept that 24 is in any way responsible for their criminal behavior.
If you don't like 24, don't watch it. You can always tune in to Two and a Half Men, starring that pillar of the community, Charlie Sheen.
Two things before I get to my point:
1) I don't usually condemn a movie without seeing it first. Like anyone, I have my rules: any movie based on a character from Saturday Night Live is most likely going to suck; ditto any Rob Schneider movies; and I'm going to hate all Tom Cruise movies, even if they don't suck. He ruins good stories in order to feed his enormous ego. (Given the chance to play Jesus, he'd be at The Last Supper by himself. Because he always works alone.) But previews can be misleading. What seems like a silly comedy turns out to be a movie about death, love and family dysfunction, e.g., Little Miss Sunshine; a movie marketed as a chick flick is actually a guy's movie - Beautiful Girls; a movie that should be awesome is really a piece of crap - Wonder Boys.
2) I say seriously and with no shame that I love good chick flicks. What qualifies as good is subjective, certainly. Movies about lost love just kill me. I've cried my eyes out at every viewing of The Way We Were and Splendor in the Grass. Edward Scissorhands upset me so much I don't think I can ever watch it again. But I still loved it. I'm also a sucker for love triumphing over class differences - Dirty Dancing is a favorite. It has everything a girl could want in a movie - Patrick Swayze. Jennifer Grey before the nose job. Creepy frat boy getting his comeuppance. Kelly Bishop. Sex. An illegal abortion. Dancing! And, my God, Jerry Orbach!
There are a ton of sub-genres within "chick flick", and "girls being shitty to each other" is one of them. I know girls can treat each other like crap sometimes. But the very premise of Bride Wars offends me to no end.
I've been seeing previews for the movie lately, and "you have to be kidding me" was my first reaction. But I thought that the girls were strangers fighting over wedding dresses and who gets the best caterer in town. Then I saw this preview, and got the full story. They're lifelong best friends. They're each others maids of honor. Then a mix-up occurs! And hijinks ensue! Kate Hudson tells Anne Hathaway her "wedding can suck it." Anne retaliates by attacking Kate while she's walking down the aisle.
The hilarity must be endless, I'm telling you right now. Look, I've been divided about weddings for a long time. I love them, but they bring out the worst in people. The only brides-to-be who don't want to lock their mothers in a closet are the ones who don't have a mother. I was ready to lock up both my mother and my future mother-in-law, and not let them out until after the wedding. The stress of planning a wedding can make anyone lose perspective.
But there's something that seems so completely distasteful about Bride Wars. It feeds on the idea that women are desperate to get married; that a wedding is the most important day of a woman's life; that all women have been planning their weddings since they were six years old; that women are, at heart, enemies of one another; that the wedding is more important than the marriage - so important, in fact, that no expense is too much. Even the expense of a lifelong friendship.
I know. It's just a movie, and a piece of fluff comedy at that. Comedy, after all, is often about the weaknesses and general dopiness of humans. Beneath all the funny is the truth of how people reconcile their idiocy with their desire to be good and loving to the people who matter to them. It's possible that Bride Wars is actually funny, because anything is possible. But, having seen only the preview, I can't get rid of the bad feeling I have about this movie being made in 2008, more than 40 years after the beginning of the second wave of feminism. I assume that Hudson's and Hathaway's characters are supposed to smart, talented, educated young women, maybe even professionally successful and ambitious. So why are they behaving like jealous, mean spirited harpies?
I have no doubt that Bride Wars will have an absolutely shocking ending, in which Anne and Kate realize the errors of their ways, and tearfully make up, swearing to never let anything come between them again. But you know what? Once you've told your best friend that she has a big ass, you can't ever take that back. I'll never know for sure if Bride Wars is as bad as I think it is, because I won't be spending either the time or the money to see it.
Joe the Plumber speaks for you. And he'll speak to you for just $19.95.
For any Mad Men fans who don't read Alan Sepinwall's blog, here's an interview with Matt Weiner about the show. There's a list of highlights and a transcript of the entire conversation.
I love Weiner's response to this question:
People lied this year about a lot of things.
I think they did last year, I don't think people were attuned to it. There were a lot of comments last year, "Why did she say that? We saw that she did something else." It's because she was lying!
I find it incredible that any fans of Mad Men, of all shows, don't get this. People lie every day. Anyone who watches MM and doesn't understand that, and can't accept that from the characters, should be watching reruns of Matlock.
Of all the comments Weiner makes, this is my favorite:
I can say one thing in advance: the Kennedy assassination is very well-trod territory, and I just don't see myself adding new to that. But I might start the day before it. Or I might do what I did with a lot of historical events, which is to put it in the background and show people's personal events overtaking it. That's one of the things I love about the finale. Here's the Cuban Missile Crisis, which other than the assassination was the defining moment of the '60s. It really changed people's lives. There is not one account, not one news report that says it was anything but completely catastrophic to people's personal lives and their perception of the world. I tried to get that feeling in there, but to show that, like any crisis, it's an excuse to tell the truth.
Writing is all about telling the truth, and Weiner does it better than most.
Not only do I watch a lot of television, I also spend a fair amount of time on-line talking about it. Maybe it's because I encounter so many more people at one time when I'm on-line than I do in real life, but I'm often surrounded by assholes. There are the regular crimes like name-calling, gasbagging and nitpicking, and then there are the two crimes that irritate me so much that I wish I were in charge of the inter-webs so I could ban the perpetrators asses forever.
This comment below (in bolded text), about Betty Draper, a character on Mad Men, is an extreme example of both crimes. (For the uninitiated, Mad Men is a show set in a Manhattan ad agency in the early '60s. Betty is married to Don Draper, the main character, and she is the women Betty Friedan wrote about in The Feminine Mystique.) Can you name the crimes?
"Like Betty, lots of women were depressed ...because they were stifled creatively and felt trapped by marriage and motherhood. They weren't necessarily "crazy." They were struggling with their identities and yes, self-medicating with booze."
"...but I do sympathize with her because being a suburban mom isn't easy nowadays...I can't imagine how stressful it was in the 1950s-1960s when you were expected to be perfect and have no life outside the confines of your home...and you had to be obedient to a selfish husband like Don."
"Interestingly, Betty Draper ...most certainly is suffering the malaise of the "modern" suburban housewife."
I'd like to argue this point, as my mother *was* one of those suburban housewives.
She wasn't depressed (my father was) she wasn't alcoholic (she would be after my father died, nearlt 40 years later) she *did* have to be obedient to my father, who was very often verbally abusive to all of us.
But when he was not there, she watched her soaps, fed her family, did the laundry, rushed just before my father got home to make it look as if she'd cleaned all day, visited with the neighbors - especially the elderly ones (and ran errands for them - on foot, as she didn't drive, but the grocery store was just down the street) as well as those her own age, and *spent time* (not just "quality time") with her children.
I knew my mother - her favorite color, movie, book (she read a lot too - her library card number was famous at our local branch) singer, actress, flowers, perfume, other things i can't recall right now, as well as her values and beliefs (and the way she protected me from my father, or at least comforted me after).
She was taught that the best thing you could do was to help other people. I admired her in that (if not in that if you were unhappy you should cure it by helping others). She was brought up by nuns after being removed by the state from a crazy mother in a large Catholic family that only grew larger before she got back. (after marriage, she was.. if not Protestant, at least in no way Catholic)
She was into walking and taking vitamins (none of which helped my asthma - though i learned to take lots of pills at once (pantothenic acid is something you *never* want to chew))
My father worked two jobs, so that she could stay home and take care of us. Which she did a very good job of (even if the cleaning was an afterthought (and her cooking wasn't that great - I gained a lot of weight after I left home - perhaps the girls on 90210 have my mother as a cook - i was 105 when I left).
The only thing she didn't teach us was that, for her daughter, the world would not be the same.
I don't think my mother was unhappy as a housewife. I don't remember her aspiring to be anything else (or anything). And I really think she was part of the glue that made good neighborhoods, well- behaved children (who weren't automatons, but were just polite, responsible citizens) and kept the elderly from having to go to nursing homes.
There may still be women like this. I just think my mother's priorities were pretty darn good.
When i was 19, she went back to work, and had no time for us (my brother was 13). I missed her.
When I was 22, the family moved to another state and I did not.
When my father was dying she quit to care for him and didn't go back(though she thought of it). she ran around with her friends for a while and then stopped, and then she watched a lot of tv and read a lot, she drank too much, so that when she started having health issues that affected her balance, we didn't notice, thinking she was drunk.
(at this point i must stop to gripe about Lexie Grey saying she's an ACOA, when her childhood was perfect. just because her father is a drunk *now*, that does *not* put her in that class. ACOA is more developmental, i think. a way to survive learned in childhood. my father was not an alcholic then either - he just blew up like one (something Thatcher and Susan never did - but I bet Ellis did.)
Back to my point - my mother would have said that life is what you make it - and she did good (unlike Betty) cared less for appearances than for good manners and politeness and giving to others, and she made the world a better place, both then, and in children who grew up resposible and not adding to the burdens of others in society (unlike siblings of friends who've done drugs, committed thefts, ended up in jail or unmarried with children they could not support).
Of course, when she chose not to have a funeral (both my parents chose this), all the people who admired her and loved her for all the good she did for them, were upset that they could not gather to praise her, and were angry at *me* but...
Perhaps Betty does feel unfulfilled, but I don't see any aspirations toward any kind of "work" or even "charity" or volunteerism in her (unlike my mother). She only cares about how she looks to others. And more and more, she really does seem a spoiled (or at least needy and damaged) child.
And, as "needy and damaged" goes, Meredith Grey (while perhaps whiny) is a far better (fictional) person than she is - at least *she* always gathers her friends in support of whichever friend needs it most, making a family out of those who are not her blood, while Betty couldn't be bothered with those who *are.* (at least not till they grow up to people who will "shame her" in front of her friends (and btw, where *are* those friends? her neighbors have husbands who cheat too. is she too "image" oriented to even gripe to them?))
Time's up. The crimes are 1) too much information; and 2) seeing everything through the prism of your own experience. They generally go hand in hand, although occasionally I see one without the other . It's possible to see everything through the prism of your own experience without the TMI, but it's impossible to have the TMI alone. The very nature of TMI means you see everything through The Prism.
I won't go so far as to say that personal experience should never influence your impressions. It's impossible to be completely objective all the time. But it is possible to interpret fiction subjectively if you accept that very few things are black and white. TMI and The Prism combine to create an even bigger crime - It's All About Me. IAAM with an emphasis on The Prism leads to people being sensitive to the tiniest perceived slight; as well, it's a symptom of severe myopia. "That can't be true because it didn't happen to me/we didn't do it that way in our family/my uncle was in the same situation and this is what happened to him." It's opinion as fact.
IAAM with an emphasis on TMI leads to "Oh my God, I don't want to know this about you." It's irrelevant to the discussion, and it's discussion as therapy. I mean, I know Road Runner is cheaper than counseling, but I wish people could keep at least a few things to themselves. In the worst case, the relevant discussion comes to a screeching halt, either because people don't know what to say (I can sometimes feel the discomfort), or because it results in endless expressions of sympathy. I know I'm being heartless, but please, what does this poster's asthma, or her fluctuations in weight because her mother didn't cook for her when she was 19 years old have to do with Betty Draper's slow, on-screen breakdown because her husband cheats on her and her entire life is a sham? How is this-
When I was 22, the family moved to another state and I did not.
related to anything having to do with Mad Men?
Great fiction always tells the truth, and great characters don't have to be nice people. Instead of watching this brilliant show and learning that truth comes in many forms, the only thing this poster learns from Mad Men is how much or how little it mirrors her own life. It's television viewing as narcissism.
Hmmm. although I'm very anti-torture and highly left-wing, 24 has always been one of my favorite shows. Until last season, anyway, when everything just fell apart. I had gone the entire run of the show without ever missing a SINGLE episode when it aired, and halfway through last season I just stopped watching because it was so painful. But, after several previous seasons that I seriously enjoyed, I'm willing to give it another chance this season.
I find a lot of the criticism of the show in general to be unfair (although bash away at last season). I see it as a show about people in high stakes situations seeking resourceful ways to operate in situations where they have very limited options. In order to maintain the suspense, characters have to be placed in danger; since there are a finite number of characters, they're gonna be put through the ringer (wringer?). I don't mind the torture, because its fictional. With fictional heroes, we get to witness their character development, moral code, and sense of honor - therefore, it is easier to trust a fictional character to make decisions (i.e., when torture is appropriate) that I would never consider trusting a real person to make. I trust Jack Bauer to make the right decisions, to protect us, and to find the real bad guys and stick it to them. Like Batman - I would trust Batman with the cell phone sonar technology thing in Dark Knight, but I would never trust a real person to do that. I guess that's how I can justify watching a show that glorifies something I would never condone (like most action movies, spy movies, and military movies that I also find myself able to enjoy).