This past Sunday’s Chicago Tribune featured a book excerpt where two music critics debated the merits of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the psychedelic, late 1960s, Sgt. Pepper vs. Their Satanic Majesties Request era. An interesting read if only for the suggestions that the Rolling Stones laughed their way through the psychedelic era while the Beatles, Paul McCartney in particular, couldn’t stop themselves from wanting to be accepted by the British establishment.
Category Archives: Entertainment
The next biggest US TV network: Univision
Amidst lower ratings and numerous articles about how to avoid TV all together, the big four American TV networks have some major competition: Univision. With already decent ratings and a growing Hispanic population, Univision may just be the network of the future:
With double-digit ratings growth this season, Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is off to a better start than any of the major English-language networks, and the future is promising as well.
The new census is expected to show a nearly 45% increase in the number of Hispanic Americans since 2000, to a total of 50 million. This couples with continuing audience erosion at the major networks and Univision’s recent deal with Mexican programer Grupo Televisa, which locks up the source of much the network’s popular programing for at least another decade.
Just a few years ago, the notion of Univision catching and surpassing them would have had mainstream network executives rolling with laughter. They’re not laughing now.
And they’re not talking publicly about it either: When asked to comment, the Big Four nets refused.
So while the big 4 networks are chasing edgy 18-49 year olds (or older viewers), Univision is capitalizing on the big demographic changes taking place in America.
How will the big 4 networks respond? They have been having troubles for years, losing viewers to cable and other media. Might we see some crossover programming from Univision and other Spanish-language stations reach the air through older broadcast networks?
College courses created by students include looks at Mad Men and Seinfeld
The University of California-Berkeley has a program called DeCal. In the program, college students teach other college students for college credit. One recent article about the program highlights how some of the courses take a longer look at television shows:
That’s because the popular show based in the 1960 is the subject of a fall course.
It’s a two-unit class that meets once a week in the school’s DeCal program. It focuses on the “thematically, symbolically and historically rich television series.” DeCal classes give a platform to students who want to dig into atypical subjects, according to the university. This fall’s topics range from a class on the “Sociology of Seinfeld” to longboarding. DeCal is run by the students themselves, but the classes give real college credits…
The teachers…say they are covering the following themes:
- contemporary culture
- politics of the 1960s
- the role of women, class and society
- the family unit
Students have more than just a television show to watch as homework, they are also given supplemental reading assignments.
I can imagine one category of reactions to the article: “of course, when you let students teach their own courses for credit, you will end up studying television shows.”
On the other hand, there are courses like this at other schools where media content, film, movies, and other cultural products, are analyzed. As one of the student teachers suggests, Mad Men could be read/watched as saying important things about our culture. Not only does it offer some reflection on early 1960s life, it also could be read as how people in 2010 view that era.
Overall, teenagers (8-18 years old) and emerging adults (18-25) consume a lot of media-produced stories like Mad Men. Courses like this might help them better understand what they are viewing and how it lines up with the real world.
(I would be curious to know what kind of evaluations these kinds of courses receive. Do students perceive that they learned more or less in a student taught course? And then, did they actually learn more or less?)
Vatican newspaper says Homer J. Simpson is a Catholic
The Vatican’s newspaper recently said that they consider Homer Simpson to be a Catholic:
But in an article headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics”, the newspaper said: “The Simpsons are among the few TV programmes for children in which Christian faith, religion, and questions about God are recurrent themes.”
The family “recites prayers before meals and, in their own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter”…
“Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic,” insists L’Osservatore Romano.
This must be a very loose definition of what a Catholic is or how one should act. In fact, it strikes me as a very American sort of idea: Homer’s Catholicism is a grab-bag of practices and beliefs of his own choosing. Is Homer’s approach to religion really much different than many Americans?
But one point the newspaper makes seems accurate: the Simpson’s portray “old-fashioned family values” in a way that few other shows do today.
Banksy and the Simpsons: a wink to what watching the show actually means
Part of the long-term appeal of The Simpsons has been its ability to effectively play with ambiguity: it has had the ability to both mock television in general while at the same time creating a likable cast that reach resolutions that are not that different from many sitcoms. Should viewers revel in its put-downs of all aspects of society or should they enjoy the heart-warming family outcomes?
The latest stunt on this front involves the elusive British street artist Banksy:
The episode, “MoneyBART,” opens with an extended “couch gag” — the opening sequence in which the Simpson family takes its place on their sofa — created by British street artist Banksy. The artist’s dark vision gives viewers a horrifying look at how he imagines the hit show and its lucrative merchandise are made: sweatshop conditions for its animators; unsafe conditions for producers of its apparel; boxes sealed with the tongue of a disembodied dolphin head; the center holes popped out of its DVDs with the horn of a shackled, emaciated unicorn. Really…
Were the show’s creators trying to draw attention to the unethical business practices an animated series must engage in to remain competitive? Are viewers meant to draw conclusions about our own complicity as we consumers indirectly fund companies that enslave people overseas? Or was the sequence merely a stunt calculated to bring attention — negative or not — on an aging, fading series?
While an interesting opening sequence that was longer than normal and contained typical Simpsons absurdities (like the unicorn), is this really edgy or new? Any television watcher should know what is really going on with shows: they are about making money. In its early days, the Simpsons was a rebellious show, drawing in a young audience and selling a lot of merchandise. Today, it is still about making money (and perhaps sowing ground for a second successful movie). The Simpsons may now be part of American culture but that is not why the show is still on television.
Ultimately, this may simply be about gaining attention. And with the show then moving on to a typical 22 minute storyline, can the opening really be construed as some sort of powerful statement?
Learning the norms of audience behavior at the orchestra concert
Going to a symphony orchestra concert of a major group, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is an event: certain behavior is expected of the audience. An article from the Chicago Tribune offers some tips and a comment from a musician about how to learn about going to the orchestra:
It is extremely hard for anyone without significant exposure to classical music to truly understand it, he said.
“It’s something that has to be cultivated,” he said. “Beethoven’s music is filled with philosophy. …You can’t just come to one concert and understand it.”
But he hopes beginners try. One concert, after all, can lead to another. And another.
I would like to know when exactly symphony halls became places of quiet and decorum. If you read about classical music in the early 20th century, such as in The Rest Is Noise, some concerts, particularly those featuring modern music by the likes of Stravinsky and others, were places of displayed emotions. Classical music wasn’t just nice background music; it was music that was tied to bigger ideas and revolutionary thoughts.
Considering “Lennonphilia”
With Lennon’s 70th birthday and the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death approaching, there are both predictions of commercial success (with items like the newly remastered music catalog) and criticisms of Lennon’s commodification.
Ben Folds + Nick Hornby = new album
Time reports on the collaborative efforts of musician Ben Folds and novelist Nick Hornby. Here is a description of what the creative process looked like for the album that was released September 28:
For Lonely Avenue, Hornby e-mailed lyrics to Folds, who turned them into songs. “The process almost goes against what I’ve learned, which is that songwriting should be a labor,” says Folds. “I find it so easy this way. It’s natural and quick.”
Well, not that quick. The songs on the album took several months to produce, with Hornby writing lyrics in London and sending them to Folds, who arranged and recorded the music in Nashville. An e-mail between the songwriters, reprinted in the liner notes, illustrates the complex process of turning one man’s words into another man’s music. Hornby wrote a song called “Belinda,” about an aging rock star who has to sing his big hit, a love song about someone he no longer loves, at every concert he plays. “You’ve quoted the chorus of this fabled hit song in the second line of the verse,” Folds says to Hornby in the e-mail, before going on to explain the difficulty of writing a song about a song, and the placement of the fake chorus in between the real one. “It was like a hell [of a] crossword puzzle.”
I am going to have to go to Amazon and listen to the song clips right away. To me, Folds and Hornby operate in the same creative genre: tales of sad sack, hipster, occasionally endearing, 20 to 30 somethings. So if the two are put together, will we get an extra heavy dose of sad sack hipsterdom? Or will they create something new?
Quick Review: 15 years ago, the release of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
I have lots of music that I enjoy. But few albums rank as high as this 1995 release from Oasis. I estimate that between its release on October 2, 1995 and today (to be fair, I didn’t purchase the album until sometime in 1996), I have heard Morning Glory hundreds of times. (My best estimate at this point would be around 1,200 times.) Some quick thoughts about this masterpiece:
1. This is Oasis at their musical peak. Coming off a very successful debut album, this finds the band both brash and melodic. Many of the lyrics may not make sense (just read the lyrics to “Some Might Say”) but it is an irresistible combination of music, swagger, and atmosphere.
1a. Some of these songs are spectacular, particularly “Don’t Look Back In Anger.” The three-song run from tracks 2 to 4 (“Roll With It” to “Wonderwall” to “Don’t Look Back in Anger”) is great.
2. The popularity of this album would cement their claims of being the biggest band in the world. Perhaps most importantly, it even became popular in the United States with “Wonderwall” becoming a hit, other songs (like “Champagne Supernova”) making some radio headway, and Oasis playing much of this album on MTV Unplugged (which is a very fun album to listen to).
3. There is an atmosphere surrounding this album that comes out in some of the music. This was during a period of music known as “Brit-Pop” though Oasis was on the more traditional, brash side of this movement (while bands like Blur where more on the artistic/experimental side). London was being reborn after years of drudgery, Tony Blair was on the horizon of British politics, and all seemed bright again in England. Part of the irony is that Oasis was leading this charge, a band of working-class members, led by occasionally vulgar brothers, and hailing from the dreary northern city of Manchester.
4. I have many good memories of hearing this album. I was discovering a number of bands at this point, most of them British. The link between the Beatles and Oasis seemed (and still does seem) pretty clear. While some have always been mad that they tried to ape the Beatles, I don’t hold it against them. At the time when I first found this album, it is a short step from listening to Revolver to then listening to Morning Glory.
5. Though they weren’t on the album, there are a number of very solid B-sides from this era. These songs were evidence that Noel Gallagher was swimming in good music at the time – all of the B-sides could have easily made an excellent album in their own right.
All in all, an excellent album. With Oasis being no more and all the albums after Be Here Now lacking their 1990s swagger, I will return to Morning Glory many more times to hear Oasis at its peak.
Prescient EW bullseye quote: “My generation…would never watch a show called My Generation.”
I’ve wondered who is the target demographic for ABC’s new show My Generation. Will the generation who the show depicts (people around 28 years old who graduated from high school in 2000) actually watch or is this show made by and made for the over 40 or 50 crowd who are curious about these kids are up to?
I’ll be curious to know how realistic this show is or whether it is just full of the typical high school archetypes (the geeks, jocks, cheerleaders types). Unfortunately, the trailer suggests it is full of these archetypes: “the over achiever,” “the nerd,” “the rock star,” and so on.
Legally Sociable 