The premiere of Plain Jane on the CW tonight was as inoffensive as I could have expected from a hetero-normative makeover show. It managed to avoid all the worst pitfalls of that heinous crime, The Swan, and geared itself instead toward the best intentions of Beauty and the Geek.
On a normal "change the girl" show, the first thing that happens is that the the girl is separated from everything she loves and then her look is changed immediately. The rest of the show is about teaching her to flaunt the new her. In The Swan, the victim was removed from all of her friends and family and surrounded by professional brainwashers who, as a very very first step, performed irreversible surgery on her body. Only when the victim had been gone from her life for weeks and thoroughly indoctrinated into the beauty cult, was she allowed to see her loved ones again, and only on the beauty cult's terms: the mirror was way more important than the gathered family when it came to the final reveal. Plain Jane did not do this. For one thing, the entire episode took place over only about forty-eight hours in the girl's own neighborhood. For another, the first move was to build up the girl's confidence, to show her that she was capable of doing things that she really wanted to do, but thought she couldn't. That's exactly what Beauty and the Geek got right--the confidence comes first. And after the girl was more sure of herself, she wanted to try new clothes, get her hair cut, and stop hiding her face behind her hands. All of this is a good thing. The worst we have here is a B-rated make-over show.
Until the end. The final challenge is that the girl has to have the chutzpah to tell the boy she's been crushing on for, like, forever that she likes him. The final prize is that he'll like her too. The message is that if you're willing to be the girl that Bloomingdale's wants you to be, the boy you desire will desire you too.
To be perfectly fair, in this premiere episode, the boy confesses that he's liked her all along, and that's nice. It means that the most important thing was her new found courage to confess her affections. That's a good message: have confidence! But unfortunately, in the structure of the show, the good things that have happened for this girl are overshadowed by the prospect of a boy's affection. Her crush is mentioned in every scene. The promise of his approval validates her every advance. The final scene is a photo montage of the happy couple. This is not helpful.
I hope that some episode will have the boy reject the girl, despite her new clothes, new hair, and even her new courage. The show should still be able to show that its process was worth it.
In the end, the show is not as ridiculous or addictive as The Bachelorette, not as charming as Beauty and the Geek, but certainly not as horrid as any number of shows where women are only as valuable as men make them.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Puckish Cat
Summer is difficult. With the storms, the heat, and the fatigue, I've been developing opinions about The Bachelorette. But like an answer to a prayer I saw Exit Through the Gift Shop a couple of weeks ago, a cure for the summer hiatus blues. Exit is a documentary (or is it?) about the street art movement and a man who made it his mission to film it. Banksy and Shepard Fairey are the protagonists, and Thierry Guetta (his current call sign is Mr. Brainwash) is the film's main subject. It tells the story of Guetta's attempts to film and create a documentary on street art; in the end he becomes an artist himself (sort of) to rave reviews and dubious results. Guetta's documentary was heinous according to Banksy, and so Banksy hijacked the project, focusing on Guetta where Guetta had focused on him.
The buzz about this film centers on whether it's a prank or a hoax or truly, sincerely, uncomfortably real. It's an interesting question. If it's a prank, then what is the prank? On whom?
For most of the scenes in the film, it's not plausible to argue that they're staged. When Shepard Fairey first appears he is with his wife, Amanda, creating decals together at Kinko's. Later, Amanda explains the rules for her husband's nighttime adventures--he's home by two, or if he's not going to be home by two, he calls by two, or else he gets beaten and sleeps on the couch. Some argue that these things didn't happen when the film implies they did. Maybe, but it doesn't matter. These are sweet moments in a marriage, and I haven't seen anyone claim that the Faireys' mutual considerateness was faked.
The scene when Banksy explains how he realized that he had accidentally counterfeited a hundred thousand pounds also rings true. In that instant we the audience are also reminded that this art, which by now we want to cover more streets in more cities, is operating on the edge of the law, that Banksy is not just anonymous for fun but because it makes some of his art possible. His career is no hoax.
So overall, this film a lovely and loving look into a world to which I am always only a spectator, and I appreciated it. But critics smell a rat. The Times is certain that the film is a hoax. Alissa Walker of Fast Company calls the film a prank. Rebecca Cannon thinks it's art's first "WTF moment" of the 21st century. They have a point: there are a few suspicious things about the film. The Banksy who first appears cutting out a rat stencil wears a wedding band, the Banksy who narrates through a voice modulator does not. But people get divorced, and besides, that's a small thing.
Others are not so small. As the film reaches its climax, Banksy asks to see Guetta's progress on his street art documentary. Guetta has been documenting obsessively for years; it seems like time to put together something real. The film Guetta excitedly shows him is heinous, unwatchable, insulting. In an attempt to save the embarrassing project, Banksy encourages Guetta to spend his time making his own street art and asks for the raw footage. He creates a monster: Guetta goes all out, hosting his own enormous Mr. Brainwash gallery show--with art that he has not himself created, but has commissioned his paid staff to plagiarize. The show sells enough art in pre-sales to finance the massive project, for which Guetta has spent his last dime, even mortgaging his house. The art is vapid and derivative, but Guetta bribes or extorts Fairey and Banksy to blurb his show, and lo and behold more than seven thousand people show up for opening day. The show, though an artistic black hole, is a commercial success. Recently, Mr. Brainwash was commissioned to create the cover art for Madonna's latest greatest-hits album.
In the film, Guetta is never shown making art, just spilling paint on posters and bossing people around. And could he really have come up with the money to finance this? Is this all really his show?
If the Mr. Brainwash phenomenon is a prank, so the theory goes, Mr. Brainwash is actually Banksy, and Guetta only a front. Instead of Guetta's customers paying too much for bad art, those that declined to buy it actually missed out on getting a really cheap Banksy. The evidence is that Mr. Brainwash's style looks like some second-tier imitation of Banksy, or like Banksy trying to do bad Banksy, and that Banksy is a prankster. So it seems plausible that he just laughed uproariously at all the suckers running out to see the crap he made for funsies. Banksy must have used Guetta, must have used the LA art world, for his own amusing gotcha.
If this is a prank, then the documentary is a lie, and we the audience, laughing at Guetta's folly, are all dupes ourselves for believing it. Banksy must have used us.
If we were used, then we have seen this before. Paper Heart, a half-documentary film about love, combines documentary-style interviews with a central drama, where Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera fall for each other. The structure is extremely effective--while we the audience hear theories of love and experiences of love from real people, chemists to Elvis-impersonating Vegas chapel ministers, we also witness it happening in all of its lovely specifics. The love story we live through as the audience is a fiction, but have we learned any less about love? In 24 Hour Party People, the story is based on truth, but the film is scripted and acted. The Tony Wilson played by Steve Coogan constantly calls attention to the fact that we are watching, that he is acting in, a film. When there is a difference of opinion on the events portrayed, he makes his case for his version on screen. This is not a prank; this is postmodernism.
So why would Banksy's prank (if it is a prank) be so particularly objectionable? Perhaps our feelings are hurt. Although his art has always seemed to have a puckish edge, we the in-crowd were never the butt of the joke. Other people were the squares who didn't get it, or took it too literally, or freaked over the illegality of it, or looked down at the vandalism and violation of private property. But we were on the level, and it sucks to be kicked out of the club in this cruel way.
As for me, though, I believe all of it. I believe that Mr. Brainwash's success was offensive to Shepard Fairey and Banksy, especially after all they did for Guetta. I believe that Guetta created every derivative piece of crap, and that he really believed what he was creating was art. And I believe these things because it makes for a much better story. If I was used, I have never been so happy to be used.
Either way, it's a great summer film.
The buzz about this film centers on whether it's a prank or a hoax or truly, sincerely, uncomfortably real. It's an interesting question. If it's a prank, then what is the prank? On whom?
For most of the scenes in the film, it's not plausible to argue that they're staged. When Shepard Fairey first appears he is with his wife, Amanda, creating decals together at Kinko's. Later, Amanda explains the rules for her husband's nighttime adventures--he's home by two, or if he's not going to be home by two, he calls by two, or else he gets beaten and sleeps on the couch. Some argue that these things didn't happen when the film implies they did. Maybe, but it doesn't matter. These are sweet moments in a marriage, and I haven't seen anyone claim that the Faireys' mutual considerateness was faked.
The scene when Banksy explains how he realized that he had accidentally counterfeited a hundred thousand pounds also rings true. In that instant we the audience are also reminded that this art, which by now we want to cover more streets in more cities, is operating on the edge of the law, that Banksy is not just anonymous for fun but because it makes some of his art possible. His career is no hoax.
So overall, this film a lovely and loving look into a world to which I am always only a spectator, and I appreciated it. But critics smell a rat. The Times is certain that the film is a hoax. Alissa Walker of Fast Company calls the film a prank. Rebecca Cannon thinks it's art's first "WTF moment" of the 21st century. They have a point: there are a few suspicious things about the film. The Banksy who first appears cutting out a rat stencil wears a wedding band, the Banksy who narrates through a voice modulator does not. But people get divorced, and besides, that's a small thing.
Others are not so small. As the film reaches its climax, Banksy asks to see Guetta's progress on his street art documentary. Guetta has been documenting obsessively for years; it seems like time to put together something real. The film Guetta excitedly shows him is heinous, unwatchable, insulting. In an attempt to save the embarrassing project, Banksy encourages Guetta to spend his time making his own street art and asks for the raw footage. He creates a monster: Guetta goes all out, hosting his own enormous Mr. Brainwash gallery show--with art that he has not himself created, but has commissioned his paid staff to plagiarize. The show sells enough art in pre-sales to finance the massive project, for which Guetta has spent his last dime, even mortgaging his house. The art is vapid and derivative, but Guetta bribes or extorts Fairey and Banksy to blurb his show, and lo and behold more than seven thousand people show up for opening day. The show, though an artistic black hole, is a commercial success. Recently, Mr. Brainwash was commissioned to create the cover art for Madonna's latest greatest-hits album.
In the film, Guetta is never shown making art, just spilling paint on posters and bossing people around. And could he really have come up with the money to finance this? Is this all really his show?
If the Mr. Brainwash phenomenon is a prank, so the theory goes, Mr. Brainwash is actually Banksy, and Guetta only a front. Instead of Guetta's customers paying too much for bad art, those that declined to buy it actually missed out on getting a really cheap Banksy. The evidence is that Mr. Brainwash's style looks like some second-tier imitation of Banksy, or like Banksy trying to do bad Banksy, and that Banksy is a prankster. So it seems plausible that he just laughed uproariously at all the suckers running out to see the crap he made for funsies. Banksy must have used Guetta, must have used the LA art world, for his own amusing gotcha.
If this is a prank, then the documentary is a lie, and we the audience, laughing at Guetta's folly, are all dupes ourselves for believing it. Banksy must have used us.
If we were used, then we have seen this before. Paper Heart, a half-documentary film about love, combines documentary-style interviews with a central drama, where Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera fall for each other. The structure is extremely effective--while we the audience hear theories of love and experiences of love from real people, chemists to Elvis-impersonating Vegas chapel ministers, we also witness it happening in all of its lovely specifics. The love story we live through as the audience is a fiction, but have we learned any less about love? In 24 Hour Party People, the story is based on truth, but the film is scripted and acted. The Tony Wilson played by Steve Coogan constantly calls attention to the fact that we are watching, that he is acting in, a film. When there is a difference of opinion on the events portrayed, he makes his case for his version on screen. This is not a prank; this is postmodernism.
So why would Banksy's prank (if it is a prank) be so particularly objectionable? Perhaps our feelings are hurt. Although his art has always seemed to have a puckish edge, we the in-crowd were never the butt of the joke. Other people were the squares who didn't get it, or took it too literally, or freaked over the illegality of it, or looked down at the vandalism and violation of private property. But we were on the level, and it sucks to be kicked out of the club in this cruel way.
As for me, though, I believe all of it. I believe that Mr. Brainwash's success was offensive to Shepard Fairey and Banksy, especially after all they did for Guetta. I believe that Guetta created every derivative piece of crap, and that he really believed what he was creating was art. And I believe these things because it makes for a much better story. If I was used, I have never been so happy to be used.
Either way, it's a great summer film.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sophist Cat
A new show appeared on Hulu when I checked this morning: Rubicon. This was a godsend, because the summer hiatus is driving me nuts. The pilot is premiering online, with additional episodes to follow on AMC in August. Because I don't have cable, this will be my only date with this show. I feel like we had a nice dinner and shook hands good night.
The episode sets up what's sure to be a season-long arc, a vast conspiracy. Lest we didn't get it, there's the off-putting tagline, "not every conspiracy is a theory." It's not just a pun; the main character, Will Travers, is an inevitably brilliant intelligence analyst. He is (get it?) a theorist, and not just a theorist, but a legend around his decrepit government office. Early in the episode he uncovers something fishy in a large pile of crossword puzzles.
Travers is sad, lonely, and directionless, having lost his wife and daughter in (what else) the World Trade Center. They were there waiting for him that day (also his daughter's birthday) at the top of World Trade. He was late, "he was always late." They died and he didn't. A fellow analyst tells the pretty new girl, "He's never been late for anything since."
Really? That's the useful lesson he chose to draw from the events-of-nine-eleven? In the context of the story, he could have just as easily have learned that birthdays were bad.
Et voila: the story opens on his birthday, and he's forgotten all about it. Good grief.
Now, I'm being far too catty. This is after all, a pilot, and these tics masquerading as traits would probably get worked out over the course of the season. The acting is pretty good, and I like James Badge Dale as Travers. But I have another reason for thinking this show will be a miss rather than a hit: the show's conspiracy motif is just hopelessly dated. The central questions are how, why, and really whether Travers's beloved father-in-law and boss, David Hadas, has been killed. In their last conversation, Hadas asks Travers to meet him at a train station before he leaves town; in the next scene the train crashes in a fiery blaze and kills everyone inside. Maybe Hadas has been murdered or maybe it's just another mass tragedy of the type that seems to follow poor Travers around. There's barely enough of Hadas's charred body to piece together for the closed-casket funeral scene.
It's too bad, since Hadas was played by Peter Gerety, the simpering Judge Daniel Phelan of The Wire, and the jolly alcoholic dad on Mercy. He's great, and I would have liked to see more of him. The relationship between the two men is the best thing the show has going, although it's sometimes over- and awkwardly-explained. (Such as when some minor character tells Travers that Travers had never broken Hadas's heart like that "idiot son of his." Travers replies, "Evan's troubled.") Alas, Hadas is dead. The one episode is all we get.
But wait! Remember the crossword puzzle clues? The proximity of the crossword-puzzle scenes and the death-and-funeral scenes heavily implies that he was either murdered, or that he is, in fact, secretly still alive.
Therein lies my problem. In the nineties, I was completely willing to entertain government conspiracy stories. The Cold War had just ended, and it seemed impossible that all the spies, that entire infrastructure of intelligence-gathering and covert ops just went home to enjoy the spoils of a rising Dow. The government that brought us the hydrogen bomb could surely aspire to be a modern Illuminati. But the nineties are over. In the 2000s, government has brought us a naked, not hidden, desire for control. Their machinations were at times inept, at times objectionable, but always obvious. And they were followed by a government that delivers weekly youtube addresses. Nothing really prevents this kind of government from calling out a hit on its think tank's middle-manager, but the aesthetics of it are all wrong. Spy vs. spy doesn't work quite as well when we can write to each other on Facebook and look up information on Wikipedia. Gossip Girl is well adapted to this new world of camera phones; Rubicon is not.
In the end I'm pretty sure that Hadas will be alive, having somehow been forced to betray the son-in-law he loves so much, but ultimately for his own good. But the secret that's worth keeping, that was so carelessly revealed in the newspaper? I'd be shocked if it shocked me.
The episode sets up what's sure to be a season-long arc, a vast conspiracy. Lest we didn't get it, there's the off-putting tagline, "not every conspiracy is a theory." It's not just a pun; the main character, Will Travers, is an inevitably brilliant intelligence analyst. He is (get it?) a theorist, and not just a theorist, but a legend around his decrepit government office. Early in the episode he uncovers something fishy in a large pile of crossword puzzles.
Travers is sad, lonely, and directionless, having lost his wife and daughter in (what else) the World Trade Center. They were there waiting for him that day (also his daughter's birthday) at the top of World Trade. He was late, "he was always late." They died and he didn't. A fellow analyst tells the pretty new girl, "He's never been late for anything since."
Really? That's the useful lesson he chose to draw from the events-of-nine-eleven? In the context of the story, he could have just as easily have learned that birthdays were bad.
Et voila: the story opens on his birthday, and he's forgotten all about it. Good grief.
Now, I'm being far too catty. This is after all, a pilot, and these tics masquerading as traits would probably get worked out over the course of the season. The acting is pretty good, and I like James Badge Dale as Travers. But I have another reason for thinking this show will be a miss rather than a hit: the show's conspiracy motif is just hopelessly dated. The central questions are how, why, and really whether Travers's beloved father-in-law and boss, David Hadas, has been killed. In their last conversation, Hadas asks Travers to meet him at a train station before he leaves town; in the next scene the train crashes in a fiery blaze and kills everyone inside. Maybe Hadas has been murdered or maybe it's just another mass tragedy of the type that seems to follow poor Travers around. There's barely enough of Hadas's charred body to piece together for the closed-casket funeral scene.
It's too bad, since Hadas was played by Peter Gerety, the simpering Judge Daniel Phelan of The Wire, and the jolly alcoholic dad on Mercy. He's great, and I would have liked to see more of him. The relationship between the two men is the best thing the show has going, although it's sometimes over- and awkwardly-explained. (Such as when some minor character tells Travers that Travers had never broken Hadas's heart like that "idiot son of his." Travers replies, "Evan's troubled.") Alas, Hadas is dead. The one episode is all we get.
But wait! Remember the crossword puzzle clues? The proximity of the crossword-puzzle scenes and the death-and-funeral scenes heavily implies that he was either murdered, or that he is, in fact, secretly still alive.
Therein lies my problem. In the nineties, I was completely willing to entertain government conspiracy stories. The Cold War had just ended, and it seemed impossible that all the spies, that entire infrastructure of intelligence-gathering and covert ops just went home to enjoy the spoils of a rising Dow. The government that brought us the hydrogen bomb could surely aspire to be a modern Illuminati. But the nineties are over. In the 2000s, government has brought us a naked, not hidden, desire for control. Their machinations were at times inept, at times objectionable, but always obvious. And they were followed by a government that delivers weekly youtube addresses. Nothing really prevents this kind of government from calling out a hit on its think tank's middle-manager, but the aesthetics of it are all wrong. Spy vs. spy doesn't work quite as well when we can write to each other on Facebook and look up information on Wikipedia. Gossip Girl is well adapted to this new world of camera phones; Rubicon is not.
In the end I'm pretty sure that Hadas will be alive, having somehow been forced to betray the son-in-law he loves so much, but ultimately for his own good. But the secret that's worth keeping, that was so carelessly revealed in the newspaper? I'd be shocked if it shocked me.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Introductions
Isn't everyone doing this these days? Is it like watching Friends (something that everyone else is doing), or is it like watching Battlestar Galactica (something that I should be doing)?
I love television, and I'm interested in narrative. I write historical and narrative non-fiction and I watch just a ridiculous amount of TV. I have many thoughts on narrative and an intense writer's block toward my own work. Oh, "my own work." I write this bittersweetly--I used to be a college professor with no time for my own work, and now I am happily working on a vanity project for a wealthy family and have no energy for my own work. But when I think of what I do, I still imagine that I am a writer, that I am writing a book, that at some point this book will be publishable, maybe even published, that I will be an author. I have three book projects in my head, and they ought to be written or abandoned, but the thought of abandoning them makes me almost as nauseated as the thought of writing them.
But writers write. And if I can't write what I should be writing, I can at least write what I'm always thinking about television and narrative.
"All the Cats of Greece" was printed on a t-shirt a friend brought me back from Japan. It features cartoons of many species of cats, including "siamese cat," "fat cat," "scaredy cat," and "kitty cat." It is fabulous.
I love television, and I'm interested in narrative. I write historical and narrative non-fiction and I watch just a ridiculous amount of TV. I have many thoughts on narrative and an intense writer's block toward my own work. Oh, "my own work." I write this bittersweetly--I used to be a college professor with no time for my own work, and now I am happily working on a vanity project for a wealthy family and have no energy for my own work. But when I think of what I do, I still imagine that I am a writer, that I am writing a book, that at some point this book will be publishable, maybe even published, that I will be an author. I have three book projects in my head, and they ought to be written or abandoned, but the thought of abandoning them makes me almost as nauseated as the thought of writing them.
But writers write. And if I can't write what I should be writing, I can at least write what I'm always thinking about television and narrative.
"All the Cats of Greece" was printed on a t-shirt a friend brought me back from Japan. It features cartoons of many species of cats, including "siamese cat," "fat cat," "scaredy cat," and "kitty cat." It is fabulous.
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