Category Archives: Entertainment

Song invoking filling potholes with cement (which the gov’t is not doing)

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Potholes are problems in many places but it isn’t often that the issue makes it into a popular song. Here is part of the bridge for Twenty One Pilots’ “Tear In My Heart”:

You fell asleep in my car I drove the whole time
But that’s okay I’ll just avoid the holes so you sleep fine
I’m driving here I sit
Cursing my government
For not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement

Potholes are costly to the average driver but who knew that they can be detrimental to romantic relationships? Yet another reason for spending more upfront on infrastructure to keep the later potholes at bay. Plus, the artist is convinced that the government is misallocating his tax monies. Seems to be a popular American sentiment these days.

These failed romance/anti-government themes may just be popular together: at the time of writing, the song was #67 on iTunes and is #2 on the alternative radio charts. Or, maybe the reference to filling potholes with cement is the real secret…

Did Back to the Future succeed because it was set in a small town?

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One journalist argues Back to the Future was aided by its small town setting:

Strip away the time-travel facade and Back to the Future is a fun, zany small-town comedy, with its nastiest villain a high school bully and its biggest triumph a kiss between his two victims. Director Robert Zemeckis seized upon the concept of Marty McFly’s DeLorean trip to 1955 while looking through his parents’ basement and stumbling upon relics from their graduating class. He pitched the idea to Steven Spielberg, who agreed to produce the project. The strength of the movie is that its most fantastical element is rendered as something any audience member could imagine: the bizarre and frightening experience of meeting your parents as their teenaged selves. Compared to the current era of summer movies, so focused on omnipotent superheroes doing battle on a planetary scale, that simplicity feels revolutionary…

But Back to the Future topped them all, literally traveling back in time to tap into America’s small-town ‘50s nostalgia.

An interesting argument as Americans do like the idea of small towns. And I suspect that data may suggest that most recent blockbuster films – whether action/superhero movies, disaster films, and dystopian films – are primarily set in big cities. Big cities may offer bigger spectacles, more potential for destruction and a broader scale for both danger and heroism, while small towns in such films suggest more intimate lives. Of course, the devastation and action portrayed in such films would have a profound impact on a suburban or rural landscape (disturbing major sources of agriculture could be quite problematic) but there are fewer people and buildings involved.

Applying Weber’s concept of disenchantment to Jurassic World

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A journalist suggests Weber’s “disenchantment” could explain a world where scientists create new dinosaurs:

Yet the Indominus Rex’s business necessity is itself born of a spiritual void arguably endemic to capitalism itself. If “Jurassic Park” owes its ancestry to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there’s a straight line between “Jurassic World” and Max Weber, the early 20th century German thinker whose celebrated 1917 lecture “Science As A Vocation” is one of the source texts for an important sociological concept known as “disenchantment.”

“Disenchantment” is the process through which empiricism replaces mysticism as an organising and motivating principle for both individuals and society at large. For Weber, the rise of capitalism meant that the rigors of daily existence started to find meaning through earthly and numerable concerns, rather than through one’s relation to an ineffable metaphysical power. In a sense, disenchantment is shorthand for the victory of the market over religion…

This is the movie about the moral, spiritual, and economic crisis of boredom at a dinosaur park. The crisis is not as far-fetched as it seems. We’re in the era where the Lourve, repository of the some of the world’s most sublime artistic accomplishments, isn’t immune from the selfie stick plague. There are now classes dedicated to taking Instagram photos of food. Look at all these people with their smart-phones out as Nationals pitching demigod Max Scherzer closed in on a (tragically blown) perfect game on June 20th. Layers of distraction and disenchantment separate people from even the rarest and most spectacular of events, even when they’re unfolding directly in front of them…

The movie is a kind of sly meta-joke about the traditional entertainment industry’s finely-honed ability to shovel as much brand identification and fan service down audiences’ throats as is humanly possible. The Indominus Rex — really just a larger, more violent version of “Jurassic Park’s” T-Rex — embodies the soul-deadening, almost self-destructive character of an industry whose primary commercial readout seems to be monstrous retreads. It’s a movie about the movies’ failure to impress audiences, and those audience’s enduring inability to be impressed by anything that’s genuinely new.

And that is why we continue to read and teach Max Weber in sociology courses from the introductory level to graduate school. If this was the subject of an end-of-the-semester research paper in a theory course, it could end up being pretty good. As noted here, Weber saw some of the benefits of capitalism and modernity but was pretty prescient regarding its consequences. Even critiques of the system – such as this film which highlights the downsides of science and progress – still have to play by the same rules, meaning that it has to sell to the mass public to be considered a “success.”

TV watching crushes all other leisure activities

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Five Thirty Eight looks at the 2014 American Time Use Survey and finds TV still rules supreme:

Americans still spend more time watching TV than all other leisure activities combined:

Americans average 5.3 hours of leisure time per day (4.8 hours on weekdays and 6.5 hours on weekends and holidays) and over half that is spent in front of the television. Socializing and communicating is the next most popular activity and is the only one to nearly double on weekends (35 minutes on weekdays, 61 minutes on weekends).

libresco-datalab-timeuse

And an interesting parenting finding:

From 2010 to 2014, parents had deliberate conversations with their children for, on average, only 3 minutes a day, and they read to their kids for 2.4 minutes per day (about one picture book’s worth). Conversation with children helps spur language development, and several states run programs for low-income families, who may have less time at home, to help them engage their children and close the word gap.

That television still must provide something that other leisure activities just can’t compete with. Perhaps it is the compelling stories – something must be okay on those hundreds of channels. Perhaps it is just the plethora of options in HD on a big screen (improved TV technology goes a long ways, particularly for live events). Or maybe it is that TV doesn’t require much energy while many of the other leisure activities require more personal investment. For those who see this as a sign of civilization’s decline, at least Americans are persistent in their love for TV…

Sociologist: “Celebrity is a self-defeating construct”

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With a new Amy Winehouse documentary out, several sociologists weigh in on the nature of celebrity:

“Celebrity is a self-defeating construct,” says Dustin Kidd, a sociologist at Temple University and the author of Pop Culture Freaks: Identity, Mass Media, and Society. “Celebrities are seen as geniuses whose creativity comes out of [personal narrative]. Working artists, more common but more boring, develop their creative work through a daily grind of creative discipline, practice, and revision that is balanced with a full, multi-dimensional life. Tabloid culture turns the artist into the story themselves.”…

In other words, though this might be obvious, the attention Winehouse got as she rose to superstardom, like Marilyn Monroe or Ernest Hemingway before her, actually changed what society expected of her as an artist: the public was obsessed with how her image as an iconic trainwreck was reflected in her music, not with the music itself…

“There’s no boundaries to who can weigh in on what you’ve done and what you are doing,” says Joshua Gamson, a sociologist at the University of San Francisco and author of “Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America.” “Your story is a commodity, so people are actually competing for the profit from that commodity … [Celebrities] try to stay in control of their story — that’s why they hire publicists, why they hide out — but that’s part of the deal with celebrity. It’s what keeps you successful.”

“The working artists who survive and thrive,” Kidd adds, “seem to consistently either avoid the tabloid spotlight entirely, or they present the media only with a contrived performance, like Lady Gaga.”

And as noted later in the article, we all get a little taste of this today as we can project what we want through social media and receive attention from both those who know us as well as join a viral realm where what we say and do might be picked apart by millions.

Yet, to me this seems to beg some basic questions about celebrity:

1. Do the people who were or are celebrities actually enjoy it? To be turned into a commodity sounds exactly like Marx’s idea of alienation.

2. What are the long-lasting consequences of being positively or negatively famous?

3. Since we have some indications that humans can only have about 150 stable relationships (Dunbar’s number), does having so much social exposure from celebrity inevitably lead to social and psychological problems?

4. So much of this celebrity push seems to come from the mass media – indeed, you couldn’t really have celebrity in the way we know it today before the mass media of the 20th century. Are people who consume less media less interested in or influenced by celebrity?

TV show uses McMansions to show off differing personalities

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The TV show The Last Man on Earth features McMansions intended to quickly display the personalities of different characters:

“We wanted to play off the fact that we’re all worried about ‘bigger is better.’ With these McMansions, it’s kind of like, ‘Look what we’ve become,’ ” Hill says.

As with any good comedy, though, the main function of the McMansions is to reflect the personalities of the characters who live in them. The motley crew of pandemic survivors who unite in Tucson have little else in common, and the homes they adopt embody this.

“For Phil, we wanted something a little more masculine to kind of embrace the earth tones of the Tucson area,” Hill says. “Phil’s environment, obviously after the first few months he’s there, goes from this pristine environment with the artifacts he brings from all over the country to this completely slovenly layer upon layer of bottles and cans.”

Forte finds his foil in Kristen Schaal’s character, Carol, whose spotless home looks like a living Pinterest board. “For Carol, we wanted it to be a little bit more formal, a little bit colder,” Hill says. “She brings her own layer of craftiness.”

This works on two levels. First, television – particularly comedies – have limited time to develop characters. Thus, they have to use some shorthand to quickly convey character traits to viewers. Big differences in houses could imply quite a bit. Second, Americans generally have believed that their homes reflect them. Poorly maintained lawn and messy house? Garish decorations? Immaculate style? Lots of rooms but not as much furniture? Americans also think homeowners are more invested in their properties and communities than renters. Additionally, homes help denote status in their size, upkeep, and furnishings. Overall, McMansion owners are likely viewed poorly because their homes are designed poorly, try too hard to impress, and may be viewed as wasteful while homeownership gives them back some points. But, if you are truly the last people on earth in Tucson, Arizona, perhaps you have to differentiate yourself in some way…

See this earlier post about the use of McMansions on The Last Man on Earth.

Frank Underwood gets in on the critique of McMansions

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The second episode of Season One of House of Cards includes this commentary regarding McMansions:

Frank Underwood: Such a waste of talent. He chose money over power – in this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who does not see the difference.

Watch the YouTube clip here.

Underwood’s statement hints at three facets of the criticisms of McMansions:

1. Sarasota represents the booming Sunbelt flooded with new money and new developments. McMansions are often associated with the sprawling suburbs of recent decades that quickly gobbled up land.

2. He suggests McMansions are about money (represented by a lobbyist here) and not about longer-term influence (power in this case). Critics suggest people buy McMansions – which often stretch them beyond their financial means or at least lead to a big mortgage – in order to impress people.

3. Critics argue McMansions are not of the same kind of quality construction as other houses or structures. With builders/developers interested in quick profits and providing as much space for as little money as possible, McMansions won’t stand the test of time. Of course, even stone buildings require some work but people expect them to last longer than suburban tract homes.

Frank Underwood might claim he is everything McMansions are not: he is not worried about first impressions but rather plays the long game of influence and power, he has attended schools like The Sentinel (modeled after The Citadel, a name suggesting stone and permanence) and Harvard Law, and he is from the old traditions of South Carolina (one of the original colonies, not an upstart booming suburb).

Some band had to eventually take the name “Mcmansions”

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If you can play lead guitar, you can join the band with the great name “Mcmansions.”

Mcmansions seek lead guitarist (Marietta Ga.)

We are primarily an original band based out of Marietta,Ga. We sing about Love, Loss, sadness, insanity and yes redemption. all of us are over the age of 40 and prefer the same.We are acoustic guitarists/lead singer,bass/backup vocals, and drums. We enjoy live performance and recording,mostly on weekends.We are actively seeking you electric guitarist to make our music even better. We all have obligations but nonetheless we live to write sing and play and will quit when we are dead. Our arrangements are not difficult we just need an energetic new friend to fill in all the blanks with stylistic embellishments to whip the band up into a frenzy of rock n roll bliss.

And the style or ethos of the band?

We are proudly playing a distinct original blend of lightly salted alternative Rock/Americana self styled tunage The music speaks for itself We have a 60s garage sound in our music that draws from the Rock, soul, pop ,punk,country and gospel that we have all come to love Actually we have a lost Identity covered with kudzu, rust and condemned asbestos habitations with chipped lead paint…

Given the criticism the McMansion has taken in the last 15 years, there is a lot of sadness and insanity to explore here with this particular band name. However, I’m not sure audiences would be ready for love and redemption stories regarding McMansions…

Two other thoughts:

1. Even with their many problems of the suburbs according to critics (including a lack of community and poor design), there are a good number of music artists who have emerged from this social space in last half century. Perhaps it provides teenagers lots of time, space, and social connections for putting together a group? Perhaps it is because people in the suburbs get some decent music training as kids or have access to instruments and time? Perhaps suburban ills push people toward music as a way to escape?

2. McMansions may not be appealing to some but they offer a lot of space for music equipment and practice space. Imagine how much sound it takes to fill that two-story great room. Or the way that the loud noise of a rock band might just rattle the poorly constructed abode.

SimCity set path for games about systems, not about characters

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In contrast to video games about characters, SimCity made the gameplay about the complex system at work in cities:

Such was the payload of SimCity: not a game about people, even though its residents, the Sims, would later get their own spin-off. Nor is it a game about particular cities, for it is difficult to recreate one with the game’s brittle, indirect tools. Rather, SimCity is a game about urban societies, about the relationship between land value, pollution, industry, taxation, growth, and other factors. It’s not really a simulation, despite its name, nor is it an educational game. Nobody would want a SimCity expert running their town’s urban planning office. But the game got us all to think about the relationships that make a city run, succeed, and decay, and in so doing to rise above our individual interests, even if only for a moment…

The best games model the systems in our world—or the ones of imagination—by means of systems running in software. Just as photography offers a way of seeing aspects of the world we often look past, game design becomes an exercise in operating that world, of manipulating the weird mechanisms that turn its gears when we’re not looking. The amplifying effect of natural disaster and global unrest on oil futures. The relationship between serving size consistency and profitability in an ice cream parlor. The relative unlikelihood of global influenza pandemic absent a perfect storm of rapid, transcontinental transmission.

And system dynamics are not just a feature of non-fictional games or serious games. The most popular abstract games seem to have much in common with titles like SimCity than they do with Super Mario. Tetris is a game about manipulating the mathematical abstractions of four orthogonally connected squares, known as tetrominoes, when subjected to gravity and time. Words With Friends is a game about arranging letters into valid words, given one’s own knowledge merged with the availability and willingness of one’s stable of friends. A game, it turns out, is a lens onto the sublime in the ordinary. An emulsion that captured behavior rather than light…

There’s another way to think about games. What if games’ role in representation and identity lies not in offering familiar characters for us to embody, but in helping wrest us from the temptation of personal identification entirely? What if the real fight against monocultural bias and blinkeredness does not involve the accelerated indulgence of identification, but the abdication of our own selfish, individual desires in the interest of participating in systems larger than ourselves? What if the thing games most have to show us is the higher-order domains to which we might belong, including families, neighborhoods, cities, nations, social systems, and even formal structures and patterns? What if replacing militarized male brutes with everyone’s favorite alternative identity just results in Balkanization rather than inclusion?

Fascinating argument. Could video games truly be a tool that help players move beyond individualism? At the same time, even a game about systems still can provide an individualized experience: SimCity players could spend hours by themselves crafting a city in their own image (and the game even provided some space for this with honorary statues and the like). Such games could be social – you could have various players interacting with each other either as leaders of different cities or even as leaders within the same city – but they generally were not.

This doesn’t have to stay at the level of argument. Why not run some tests or experiments to see how players of character-driven versus system-driven games compare on certain outcomes?

14 times The Simpsons took on famous architecture

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Curbed put together a short list of times The Simpsons has lampooned architecture:

Frank Gehry crumples up a piece of paper, tosses it to the ground, and suddenly becomes inspired to build a similar-looking concert hall for Springfield, hometown of The Simpsons. Rem Koolhaas, with his eyes closed, teaches nine local children about “Lego architecture” using a model of OMA’s CCTV tower in Beijing. Since The Simpsons began airing in 1989, there have been countless references to landmarks and architects, new Dwell-reading neighbors and postmodern malls filled with identical Starbucks stores…

Dialogue from an episode aired in 2003:
Lisa: I’m impressed that you drew up blueprints, but these are for a go-cart track.
Homer: Did Frank Lloyd Wright have to deal with people like you?
Lisa: Actually, Frank Lloyd Wright endured a lot of harsh criticism.
Homer: Look. I have no idea who Frank Lloyd Wright is.
Lisa: You said his name two seconds ago.
Homer: I was just putting words together.

Some fun moments here. In fact, I suspect there is an interesting dissertation or book to be written about how The Simpsons presents spaces, from homes to Springfield (which really is a zany community) to broader geographic and social contexts. What if a two-dimensional animated show ended up offering one of the most astute mass market analyses of our spatial lives?