The Spelling Bee is the rare event that would get people to tune in due to word of mouth. It would become the rare communal event in 2024.
You have to watch it live.
Thursday night, the Spelling Bee went to a lightning-round tiebreaker and 12-year-old seventh grader, Bruhat Soma, came out on top.
Sounds awesome. It would’ve been fun to watch it with everyone else.
That is a tall order for the fragmented world – entertainment-wise, politically, socially, economically – of 2024.
Jeopardy! is another show that comes to mind as contestants show off their knowledge and win money. It has a good audience and show happenings can generate strong online/social media debate.
But how many shows involving learning or knowledge would Americans watch if there was not competition? Can learning itself make for compelling television?
Since he started the account in December 2020, it has exploded into a social media phenomenon, amassing more than 4 million followers across the major social media platforms and spinning off an HGTV show that debuts next month with Mezrahi as executive producer. Throughout it all, Mezrahi’s recipe has remained mostly unchanged: Find the zaniest homes on the market – castle-themed mansions with full drawbridges, for example – then blast them out to the internet with a bit of pithy commentary, and watch the clicks, likes and shares pile up. The simplicity of the premise is part of the brilliance; it’s the result of the decade-plus that Mezrahi spent charting the internet’s fascinations as social media director for BuzzFeed.
Does all this interest in houses translate into money?
None of this, however, was enough to save Mezrahi at BuzzFeed. The now-struggling company laid him off last spring. He had survived previous cuts, “but eventually you don’t last, especially as a strategist kind of person,” Mezrahi says. Already, he’d been mulling the prospect of leaving the full-time gig to focus entirely on his personal projects. BuzzFeed simply made the choice for him…
Still, there is one thing that Mezrahi shares in common with the rest of them: He’s trying to figure out how to make more money off the internet. Aside from the HGTV executive producer credit, most of Zillow Gone Wild’s revenue comes from ads. He did one for “The Bachelor,” posting what looked like a typical listing but for the show’s famed house. PopTarts and Royal Caribbean have also paid him to promote fake listings for a house made of PopTarts, and for the new Icon of the Seas cruise ship.
But the account still brings in “very little” money, he says. He imagines a future where his newsletter has a paid classified section or where he dedicates more time to growing a YouTube audience because that platform can be the most lucrative.
It will be interesting to see how this goes in the next few years. How big can the social media audience get for this account? Would users be willing to pay for such content or special content? How much content could there be? Will a TV show lead to more opportunities or spin-offs or streaming shows? Can Zillow Gone Wild be its own brand soon with different content and products?
While recently rewatching The Matrix, I noticed multiple references to Chicago streets. And then there is a map in the second half of the film:
Looking closely, this is not exactly Chicago. But, the waterfront kind of looks like Chicago, there is a neighborhood on the map marked “City Loop,” the city has a river, and things do appear to converge in the district next to the waterfront.
Why the resemblance? One source suggests this is deliberate in the depiction of Mega City:
Early drafts of the screenplay identified the city as Chicago, and most of the street and landmark names referenced in the films are from Chicago,[4] such as Wabash and Lake, Franklin and Erie, State Street, Balbo Drive, Cumberland Ave, the Adams Street Bridge and the Loop Train.[5] Some street names, such as Paterson Pass and Wu Ping Ave., are derived from names of production staff.
In a brief screenshot of the first movie, wherein Tank zooms in a map on the screen to give Cypher directions to the telephone, the map of the city shows a coastline similar to that of Chicago’s Lake Michigan Coastline.
Sure, most of the trilogy’s urban scenes were shot in Sydney, and close watchers of the first movie can spot several Sydney landmark buildings. But creators Larry and Andy Wachowski were raised in Chicago and drop at least five references in the first script…
The Wachowskis attended Whitney Young High School and spent two years in small liberal arts colleges before they each dropped out and started a construction business. Then the quirky film resume began to take shape.
This is not unusual in today’s filming of movies and shows: creators are from certain places, scenes may be shot in a variety of places, and the name of the place in the film or show may or may not align with the places that are depicted on screen. In The Matrix, a combination of modern cities produce a soulless but recognizable setting.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Good Times sitcom on CBS, which ran until 1979. Mike Evans, who played Lionel Jeffferson in The Jeffersons, and Chicago native Eric Monte created the television show, which the legendary Norman Lear developed.
The opening credits showed an aerial view of the red towers with Chicago’s skyline in the background as its iconic gospel-tinged theme song played. Good Times was an honest depiction of a loving Black family trapped in poverty. The show never shied away from racism — whether taking on crooked Chicago politicians, critiquing the lack of jobs in African American communities or being unapologetic about racial pride. And the youngest son, endearingly dubbed the “militant midget,” aspired to be on the U.S. Supreme Court.
White American sitcoms often depicted a sanitized version of real life, a la Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. By contrast, Good Times did not…
While the show has been lauded, it also has taken in criticism over the way the family was depicted in a never-ending cycle of keeping their heads above water. Walker’s character, J.J., became the breakout character, but some saw his portrayal as playing to a negative stereotype with his signature “dynomite” line. Amos has said he was fired from the show because he spoke out against some of the stereotypical elements of the show.
Today, a low percentage of people in the United States live in public housing. According to the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are roughly 970,000 public housing households. What would a Good Times type show in 2024 look like in terms of depicting their experiences? In a more fractured media landscape, could such a show find a decent-sized audience?
The Sims felt like a trial run for adulthood, exploring how you’d make use of your future autonomy. Much of this validated the importance of personal space: how to lay out a room, how to choose a sofa that balanced aesthetics and comfort, how to make a house a home…
The official trailer for The Sims 4: For Rent emphasizes the potential of “multiunit life,” promising “ample opportunity … [for] eavesdropping, snooping, or even breaking and entering”—a description that instantly evoked memories of my worst roommates…
Inevitably, a lot has changed. The peaceful suburb I remembered from childhood has been replaced by elaborate “worlds” that I can (effortfully, via a loading screen) switch between to grow my property portfolios. TheSims 4 is more immersive and finely drawn, visually, than the original was, but it’s also more involved: It took me a whole afternoon to create my first Sim and set her up in her “hovel.”…
But soon my frustration (as Edith) with Jazz’s requests started to outweigh my commitment to being the Only Good Landlord. Every notification from the rental instantly provoked my impatience. Not the damn tenant again! The slow, clunky transition within the game between Edith’s home and the rental only added to my frustration and my creeping sense of Jazz as a burden. Why did this guy need so much of Edith’s energy?…
With For Rent, The Sims has perhaps moved too far toward reflecting brutal reality, forcing players to choose between being on one side or the other of an often fractious and all-too-familiar power imbalance. As a child, I was drawn to The Sims as a role-play for adulthood, a world of expansive promise and possibility; playing For Rent, I was reminded, depressingly, of how the game is rigged.
The Sims is a game, a product intended to provide enjoyment for players. Can one gamify the rental experience in the United States?
Anyone able to offer an analysis of housing, landlords, and properties in general across the Will Wright creations? Simcity offered a particular take as did SimTower – has this changed noticeably over the years? Are there any video games that do a different or better job of portraying property and renting?
The state’s film production tax credit allows qualified productions to receive a 30% transferable tax break on most production costs and certain salaries. Producers can also receive 15% more for hiring workers living in “economically disadvantaged areas.” In return, these productions generate jobs and draw business from outside the region.
According to a new report commissioned by Dudley’s group, the state’s film incentive is the biggest box office draw for Hollywood. A survey of producers included in the report indicates more than 90% of the productions shot in Illinois would not have occurred without the incentive…
Producers of the television series “Fargo” used Elgin and other suburban locales as a stand-in for Kansas City a few years ago. Acclaimed director David Fincher turned downtown St. Charles into upstate New York for his recent Netflix film, “The Killer.” And parts of Warrenville and Lockport are used as substitutes for Manhattan, Kansas, in the HBO series “Somebody, Somewhere.”…
Yet, it still is a strange experience to see a location you recognize on-screen that is supposed to be somewhere else. Imagine you live in a suburb listed above. These communities have their own history roughly 30-40 miles outside of Chicago. They exist alongside dozens of other suburbs. But, you could be watching what is supposed to be Kansas City and you recognize this suburb. Or, Manhattan, Kansas is on-screen and it happens to look like Lockport. Do these geographic switches make the on-screen presentation less real? How many people notice the disconnects?
The article also emphasizes the role of finances: tax breaks help drive where filming takes place. I assume there are also efforts to try to make sure the stand-in location looks similar to what is supposed to be depicted. Do certain suburbs make good stand-ins for all suburbs or are particular metropolitan regions good to offering the variety of locations studios might want?
Television shows may use a variety of settings to film scenes. Given my research on suburbs depicted on television, this example struck me as it combines a famous suburban show and a Chicago suburb:
A variety of websites back up this claim (IMDB, blog). The first home in the show, what I describe as having “two stories, a one-car garage, three bedrooms, and at least two bathrooms (Bennett 1996),” was on a Universal Studios backlot. The show is often held up as an exemplar of suburban-set TV shows in the postwar era yet I noted that it “ran six seasons but never cracked the top 30” most popular TV shows.
As a fictitious show set in an unnamed community, it is interesting to consider why Skokie might have been chosen. Was there existing footage that could be used? Did someone connected to the show or studio have a personal connection to Skokie? Did Skokie represent the experiences of American suburbs at this time? Would someone watching the show then or now see this scene and connect to particular places?
Here is a similar view from Google Street View in August 2019:
The sort of construction on the right – what looks like mixed-use four-story buildings – is common in suburban downtowns where they hope that increased numbers of downtown residents will patronize local businesses and restaurants in addition to those who want to visit such locations. These streetscapes have often replaced one- to two-story structures such as those in the top image.
Hotel rooms in the United States can look different across brands and locations. However, one feature I have noticed through recent years is consistent: there is a large television mounted in a prominent location in the room.
The primary purpose of a hotel room is sleep. It is a place to stay when away from home. It is a bedroom. The bed or beds are usually the biggest pieces of furniture of the room and take up the most square footage.
Yet, it is hard to miss how big the TV often is in hotel rooms. There is a lot of entertainment available through this TV. When I was a kid, I remember lots of hotels advertising that they had cable or particular cable channels or particular premium movie channels. This is not the case now and you can often log into your own streaming accounts through these TVs.
The design of hotel rooms suggest Americans want to continue to do what they do plenty of at home: watch TV. Perhaps this reflects what Americans have done for decades: watch hours of TV a day. Even with ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, and laptops, Americans keep watching TV whether home or away.
(Other ways to get at this topic: what percent of Americans have a television in their bedroom and how many TVs, particularly big ones, are in Airbnbs.)
The best suburban stories, on the page or on-screen, are deceptively complex, affixing irony or self-knowledge to what may initially appear to be mere scathing social criticism. Take Revolutionary Road, the searing 1961 Richard Yates novel adapted to the big screen by Sam Mendes in 2008. This is the tragedy of Frank and April Wheeler (played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), average New Yorkers in the ’50s who move to a tree-lined Connecticut suburb to start a family and watch their dreams die. Frank commutes to the city for a sales job he loathes. April whiles away her days with the kids, forgoing whatever ambitions she might otherwise have had.
Here’s the catch: As April and Frank plan a move to Paris—where Frank will do an unspecified creative something—then retreat back into a domestic existence both tortured and predictable, it becomes clear that they would live quotidian lives no matter where they laid their heads. Paris. Connecticut. New York. The suburbs just happen to be the perfect venue for their smallness, the place where their silent scream can disappear between the hedges. In this sense, Yates’s suburban critique carries a strong whiff of irony. After all, it’s hard to blame the perfect lawns and fake smiles when you carry your misery the way a turtle carries its shell.
The only truly honest person in these suburbs is John, the adult son of the community’s busybody real estate agent. John is a mathematician who has undergone extensive shock treatment for his mental illness, a spirit stifled by his family’s shame and hyperconformity. (Michael Shannon plays him in the film and walks away with the whole thing.) John might actually be happier in Waldie’s Lakewood, where strange behavior, including obsessive hoarding, arguably becomes part of the town’s beautiful fabric, the answer to any easy assumptions of conformity…
The naked reality Waldie depicts subverts any impulse to indulge dystopian visions or Twilight Zone–like allegories. (The suburbs, incidentally, provided a feast for The Twilight Zone. Take 1960’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” in which a bland collection of suburban neighbors, walled off from the rest of the world, become a self-immolating mob when they suspect an alien invasion.) Waldie doesn’t need such devices to conjure his uncanny suburbia. He accentuates minute details of housing and neighborhood construction—drywall, crape myrtle, layers of stucco—with philosophical musings and remembrances that sometimes cross over into the macabre. “In the suburbs,” he writes, “a manageable life depends on a compact among neighbors. The unspoken agreement is an honest hypocrisy.”
Is the suggestion here that the problems people face in the suburbs are the same sorts of problems they would face in other settings? Or that people in the suburbs are idiosyncratic just as they are elsewhere?
I wonder if the difference is that the American Dream placed a large burden on suburbs: life had to be good, not just normal. The sparkle of the new home and suburban lifestyle were not just to be settled into and lived in; it had to be the apex of American, and perhaps global, life.
On the whole, the standard of living in American suburbs is pretty high compared to historic and global settings. But, could any place easily be the promised land? It is probably not a coincidence that this book is titled Holy Land.
On one hand, it is exciting to be watching a film, TV show, or commercial and recognize a place. It pops out at you out of the other anonymous scenery. On the other hand, this is not a real place. It is a backlot where all sorts of “places” can be made. With some work and added elements, these backlots can look like a lot of different places.
As I have found in studying suburbs on TV shows, places are presented on screens in particular ways. It is hard to communicate the feel and experience of a place on a two-dimensional screen when the emphasis is often on a few characters. Backlots can be changed up but if you know what you are looking for, you can spot them in all sorts of displays. Or, films, shows, and commercials tend to be shot in some places and not others. With these patterns, we do not necessarily see real places or the range of places within the United States.
Legally Sociable 