Tag Archives: movies

No sociological explanations for “the year of the sitcom”?

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A critic suggests we don’t need big sociological explanations to understand why television viewers have returned to sitcoms:

For the Chinese, this is the Year of the Rabbit; to the Jews, it’s 5772. And for journalists covering the TV business? That’s simple: It’s the Year of the Sitcom! Early coverage of the 2011–12 small screen season’s winners and losers has understandably focused on the fact that comedies such as New Girl, Suburgatory, and 2 Broke Girls seem to be doing far better than other kinds of programming this fall. This is what those of us who cover entertainment call a “trend,” and as such, we feel a profound professional responsibility to dig deep and search our souls for the answers: Why laughter? Why now? This will almost certainly result in a dramatic uptick in articles featuring sprawling sociological theories supported by quotes from ubiquitous TV historian Robert J. Thompson and all manner of Hollywood insiders: People want to laugh in a down economy! Comedies only take 30 minutes to watch, and we’re all too busy for dramas! We’ve found a funnier, totally new way to make comedies that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before! But no matter how intelligently the stories are written, or how wise the talking heads doing the explaining might be, the bottom line about TV’s alleged sitcom renaissance is much simpler. It’s just not nearly as interesting…

To understand what’s happening with comedies right now, consider how things often work in the movie business. After X-Men hit big in 2000, Hollywood decided to make Spider-Man and many, many more superhero movies. After audiences demonstrated a willingness to watch girls be gross in Bridesmaids, you could almost hear studio bosses shouting from their offices, “Get me the next Kristen Wiig!” TV is no different; it can just react to trends more quickly. And so, when ABC’s Modern Family rocketed on to TV in 2009, networks suddenly started feeling sitcoms might be worth the risk again, as co-creator Steve Levitan told Variety last summer. “My guess is that programmers see the success of a show like Modern Family and it gives them the impetus, the appetite to program more comedies,” he told the industry trade. This is why, post-MF, CBS decided to roll the dice and try half-hours on Thursdays; Fox chose to double down its efforts at finding live-action laughers by launching an hour-long post-Glee sitcom block; and this fall, new sitcom blocks have popped up on both Tuesdays (ABC) and Wednesdays (NBC). All told, that’s eight new half-hour slots for comedy to try to gain a foothold with viewers. Since TV types love talking in sports metaphors, put it this way: More at-bats generally result in more runners getting on base, and with a little luck, more runs scored. Likewise, while producing lots and lots of comedies is no guarantee of success (NBC once programmed a massive eighteen sitcoms one fall), you’re almost certainly going to up the odds of finding worthwhile new comedies by aggressively playing the game rather than sitting on the bench and hoping reality shows get you the win…

Bottom line? There may be no grand logic behind why sometimes we watch a lot of comedies and other times we waste our time on reality shows or obsess over the personal lives of melodramatic medical practitioners. And often it’s just a matter of finding the right balance of numbers of shows (a glut is a glut) and networks figuring out the best way to schedule them. So let’s all resist the urge to make up sociological or economic explanations for the sitcom’s resurgence. (Thereby freeing up Robert J. Thompson’s day: Hey, Bob, why don’t you and Paul Dergarabedian go whale watching? You deserve a break from all the quoting!) Yes, these are tough times, but they do not necessarily make people more eager to laugh: In boom times, do people come home and say, “I’ve been smiling all day and I’m tired of it: give me something dour to balance me out!” They do not. And viewers are not being lured back by new innovations in comedy: Sure, Zooey Deschanel is a unique personality, but Two and a Half Men remains top-rated, and that’s just The Odd Couple with more erection jokes. (Though who could forget the Odd Couple classic, “Felix gets his junk caught in his tie-clip case”?) As ever, trends are just another way of saying that success breeds imitation, whether it’s comedies, dramas, movies, or Angus hamburgers — available for a limited time only!

A few thoughts:

1. So the best explanation is that TV networks have simply put more sitcoms out there and several have caught on? This Moneyball-esque explanation (you are bound to have more hit shows if you simply put more out there!) could have some merit. Think about the music, movie, book publishing, and TV industries. The companies behind the products have little idea which particular products will prove successful and so they throw all sorts of options at the public. To have a successful year within each industry, only a few of these products have to have spectacular success. Essentially, these few popular ones can subsidize the rest of the industry. There is no magic formula for writing a successful sitcom, movie, book, or album so companies throw a lot of products at the wall and see what sticks.

2. A note: those people peddling “sprawling sociological theories” sound like they are not sociologists but rather “pop sociologists.” To really get at this issue, we would have to compare success of different genres over time to try to see if there is a relationship between genre and social circumstances at the time. Yes, I agree that people can be quick to find big explanations for new phenomena…and do so without consulting any data. Knee-jerk reactions are not too helpful.

3. At the same time, one might argue that the tastes of the public guided or at least prompted by some of these sociological factors. While there are no set formulas, won’t “good shows” win out? Not in all circumstances – think of the “critical darlings” versus those that end up being popular. Perhaps we need to ask a different question: how do shows become popular? What kind of marketing campaigns pull people in and how does effective “word of mouth” spread?

Rioting over cultural works and ideas: Blackboard Jungle and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

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Even though I have heard multiple times about the groundbreaking 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle, I finally watched it recently. (Side note: watching the film without commercials on AMC was excellent. Watching movies on TV is often so frustrating as they drag it out.) After watching the movie (and noting how “inspiring teacher” movies of recent years seem to build upon this film), I read on Wikipedia about riots that took place when the movie was first shown in theaters:

The film markedthe rock and roll revolution by featuring Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”, initially a B-side, over the film’s opening credits, as well as in the first scene, in an instrumental version in the middle of the film, and at the close of the movie, establishing that song as an instant classic. The record had been released the prior year, garnering tepid sales. But, popularized by its use in the film, “Rock Around the Clock” reached number one on the Billboard charts, and remained there for eight weeks. The music also led to a huge teenage audience for the film, and their exuberant response to it sometimes overflowed into violence and vandalism at screenings. In this sense, the film has been seen as marking the start of a period of visible teenage rebellion in the latter half of the 20th century.

The film markeda watershed in the United Kingdom. When shown at a South London Cinema in Elephant and Castle in 1956 the teenage teddy boy audience began to riot, tearing up seats and dancing in the aisles.[2] After that, riots took place around the country wherever the film was shown. In 2007, the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture published an article that analyzed the film’s connection to crime theories and juvenile delinquency.

This reminds me of the riots that accompanied the premieres of classical music, such as at the opening of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” (and detailed in The Rest Is Noise – though this description comes from Wikipedia):

The première involved one of the most famous classical music riots in history. The intensely rhythmic score and primitive scenario and choreography shocked the audience that was accustomed to the elegant conventions of classical ballet.

The evening’s program began with another Stravinsky piece entitled “Les Sylphides.” This was followed by, “The Rite of Spring”. The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start, some members of the audience began to boo loudly. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance.[6] Stravinksy had called for a bassoon to play higher in its range than anyone else had ever done. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns famously stormed out of the première allegedly infuriated over the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet’s opening bars (though Stravinsky later said “I do not know who invented the story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the première.”). Stravinsky ran backstage, where Diaghilev was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to try to calm the audience.

After the première, Diaghilev is reported to have commented to Nijinsky and Stravinsky at dinner that the scandal was “exactly what I wanted.”

Some scholars have questioned the traditional account, particularly concerning the extent to which the riot was caused by the music, rather than by the choreography and/or the social and political circumstances. The Stravinsky scholar Richard Taruskin has written an article about the première, entitled “A Myth of the Twentieth Century,” in which he attempts to demonstrate that the traditional story of the music provoking unrest was largely concocted by Stravinsky himself in the 1920s after he had published the score. At that later date, Stravinsky was constructing an image of himself as an innovative composer to promote his music, and he revised his accounts of the composition and performances of The Rite of Spring to place a greater emphasis on a break with musical traditions and to encourage a focus on the music itself in concert performances.

While we could do without the violence at these events, it suggests an era when ideas and cultural works prompted vigorous reactions. Today, do we have an equivalent? People going home and writing on their blogs (guilty as charged)? Critics spreading popular or contrarian interpretations? The occasional talkback session after a theater production?

I suspect that if people today read about these reports, they would do something like this: shake their head and ask why these moviegoers or concertgoers got so animated. But perhaps we could ask the opposite question: why don’t new ideas, particularly ones that push us to think beyond our accepted categories, animate us? Are we just so numbed by novelty and a plurality of ideas that nothing really shocks us anymore? Do we have space in our society to truly think through and debate the ideas presented in “entertainment”?

Of course, not all cultural productions are intended to push us in new directions. Some are there just for entertainment. But others push beyond typical boundaries. Take a recent movie like The Tree of Life: I saw it on the recommendations of a few friends and I’m still not sure what to think about it. But it certainly was thought provoking and wasn’t a “typical” movie. Is this simply an “art film” in its own category or is it more like what all cultural productions should be doing?

Movie stars: the political comments you make before your movie releases will affect who will see the film

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Last November, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Republicans and Democrats like different primetime television shows. A new survey now shows that political affiliation of the viewer affects how much the political views of major movie actors influences movie-going behavior:

With Dolphin Tale opening with a strong $19.2 million that first weekend and finishing No. 1 with $13.9 million in its second, the financial impact of Freeman’s comments is hard to quantify. But they did have an effect. In a far-ranging poll Penn Schoen Berland conducted for The Hollywood Reporter of 1,000 registered voters to gauge moviegoing tendencies of Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s clear political allegiances have shifted entertainment viewing habits. Jon Penn, the firm’s president of media and entertainment research, says that before Freeman’s words, interest in Dolphin Tale was considerably higher among conservatives and religious moviegoers than among liberals. After the remarks, 34 percent of the conservatives who were aware of them, and 37 percent of Tea Partiers, said they were less likely to see the film — but 42 percent of liberals said they were more likely. (Five days after Freeman’s remarks, 24 percent of all moviegoers were aware of them.)

In fact, overall, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Tea Partiers consider a celebrity’s political position before paying to see their films, compared with 20 percent of Democrats.

Many exhibitors say privately that they cringe when a star waxes politically just before one of their movies opens — like when, seven weeks before Contagion, Matt Damon attended a Save Our Schools march where some attendees compared Republicans to “terrorists.” Videos of Damon mocking conservatives for their fiscal policies spread like wildfire on the Internet.

I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at this information since we hear all the time about our overly partisan public sphere.

If this is true, should movie actors muzzle themselves and avoid sharing their political opinions? Why do movie actors often share this information while sports stars are more demure about this topic?

It would be interesting to know exactly why Republicans let these political actions and views affect them. Has this always been the case? Is this due to the commonly heard idea that Hollywood is a liberal place pushing liberal ideas? Do most Republicans think Hollywood puts out “enough” family-friendly or conservative-friendly films – do they really want to go to the movies more and the content is simply lacking? What are the movies most loved by Republicans and Democrats? (The article suggests people of both parties “say comedy is their favorite genre, popcorn is their favorite theater snack, Forrest Gump is their preferred blockbuster and Indiana Jones is their favorite action hero.” Now that’s bi-partisanship!)

Quick Review: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

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I recently viewed the latest (April 2011 release) Morgan Spurlock film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Here are a few thoughts about this film which could be a nice conversation starter for a number of sociology courses.

1. If you know of Morgan Spurlock and his “formula” (Supersize Me, the TV show 30 Days), you won’t be surprised by how this film goes as Spurlock tries to finance his documentary about product placement (“brand integration”) by having corporations pay to sponsor it. Even though the process may not be a surprise, the movie still feels fresh in a way that many documentaries can’t match.

2. At the most basic level, this film is about raising awareness regarding advertising. It treads some familiar ground about how companies are really selling images or aspirations and how Americans are bombarded with these ideas. While Spurlock doesn’t offer much of a solution at the end (go out into nature for a little?), he certainly is drawing attention to an issue worth paying attention to.

3. Here are a few of the more intriguing sociological insights I picked out of the film:

3a. Spurlock wants to pull back the curtain on product placement and marketing but interestingly, the big companies don’t want to participate. In the end, he catches the attention (and money) of mostly smaller/challenger brands who don’t have the big marketing budgets. From a Marxist perspective, we could suggest that the big companies want to continue to “hoodwink” consumers while the challengers are really interested in doing anything to get product exposure, even exposing their marketing tactics.

3b. Spurlock spends some time in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a city that recently banned outdoor advertising. The mayor and residents talk about how this helps eliminate “visual clutter.” Could we imagine this ever happening in an American city? How many of our famous spaces, like Times Square or Las Vegas, would no longer be famous spaces if advertising was not present?

3c. One marketer suggests Spurlock could play off religious imagery, perhaps portraying himself at the Last Supper surrounded by a bunch of companies who want to use him or to show Spurlock carrying a cross covered in advertising stickers (like a stock car in NASCAR). While the marketer suggests this might be considered blasphemous, it would also get a lot of attention. Later in the film, another insider says to Spurlock regarding marketing his film that “the path of salvation” is to “Sell! Sell! Sell!” in America. What does this commentary suggest about the role of religion in marketing and selling “Christian products”?

4. Spurlock leaves us in a tough spot: can we do marketing with integrity? Can one really “buy in” without “selling out”? The answer is unclear but Spurlock provides us an entertaining venue for starting to think about answers to these questions.

(The movie received fairly good reviews from critics: it is 71% fresh, 77 out of 109 reviews were fresh, on RottenTomatoes.com.)

The sociology of Star Trek

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Occasionally, I run across more unusual sociology courses. Here is a summer class that examines Star Trek:

In order to understand more about why the Star Trek cannon has continued to be popular and respected since its creation in the 1960s, I took a class this summer at Portland State University entitled “The Sociology of Star Trek.”  I learned about how the Trekkian visions of the future offered a lens through which to examine the culture of its time and about the vision of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenbarry, who highlighted enlightenment ideals and ‘exploration without conquest.’  Additionally I learned about the obsession and culture surrounding the show.

One of our assignments was to review an event that occurs annually in Portland: Trek in the Park. At this event, a full-length original episode is performed by the Atomic Arts theater company. For one month a year, Portlanders gather to show their Trek Pride.

Big sociological themes that you could play with in such a course:

1. The social change of the 1960s and how this was reflected in popular culture.

2. American fascination with:

a. Technology and progress. Even in space, we can’t escape some basic problems.

b. Utopias or idealized communities. This could be tied to a number of utopian communities that were actually built or perhaps even the suburbs, the space where Americans seek the elusive American Dream.

3. The subcultures that form and are maintained based on objects in the popular culture.

4. Cultural narratives as displayed in television (all the versions of Star Trek) plus movies.

See a draft of the syllabus here and comments from the Internet public about what the class could include here. Apparently, you can cover all sorts of topics through the lens of Star Trek…

Are sociologists more likely than the general population to be Star Trek fans? And is the competition to Star Trek, the Star Wars franchise, too low-brow for sociologists?

The problems with white stereotypes in movies like The Help and To Kill a Mockingbird

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Here is an interesting take on how the presentation of white people in The Help (and To Kill a Mockingbird) obscures the existence of racial systems in the Jim Crow South:

This movie deploys the standard formula. With one possible exception, the white women are remarkably unlikable, and not just because of their racism. Like the housewives portrayed in reality television shows, the housewives of Jackson treat each other, their parents and their husbands with total callousness. In short, they are bad people, therefore they are racists…

To suggest that bad people were racist implies that good people were not.

Jim Crow segregation survived long into the 20th century because it was kept alive by white Southerners with value systems and personalities we would applaud. It’s the fallacy of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a movie that never fails to move me but that advances a troubling falsehood: the notion that well-educated Christian whites were somehow victimized by white trash and forced to live within a social system that exploited and denigrated its black citizens, and that the privileged white upper class was somehow held hostage to these struggling individuals.

But that wasn’t the case. The White Citizens Councils, the thinking man’s Ku Klux Klan, were made up of white middle-class people, people whose company you would enjoy. An analogue can be seen in the way popular culture treats Germans up to and during World War II. Good people were never anti-Semites; only detestable people participated in Hitler’s cause.

Turner is arguing that the Jim Crow South was a system supported by much of Southern society of all social classes. In contrast, movies can portray racism as being the opinion of particular individuals or of people of smaller social groups. This “whitewash” perhaps helps us feel better today – only bad people were racists – and also reflects our own moral calculus where racists can’t be good people.

But we know from American history that this was not exactly the case. Many “virtuous” and celebrated Southerners supposed slavery and Jim Crow laws. And the North is also complicit: “sundown towns” were the norm and segregation were quite high (and still are). Overall, racism and discrimination still takes place within systems that require beginnings and maintenance provided by people living within the systems and also those in charge.

Looking for Chicago in movies and television

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This Chicago Tribune piece reviews some movies and TV shows that have used Chicago as a setting.

Here are a few takeaway points:

1. Movies and TV shows like to draw upon Chicago’s colorful police and politics.

2. Many film elsewhere. Interestingly, the creator of Against the Wall says, “you can’t fake Chicago as well as you can fake other cities.”

3. Many focus on known quantities, like the Chicago River or the El. The writer suggests this ignores Chicago’s real side.

And a few questions:

1. Compared to other American cities, is Chicago over or under represented? If so, why?

2. What are the best movies and TV shows for making use of their setting? It is one thing to have a backdrop (think of the credits of Family Matters which clearly shows Chicago) and another to really anchor the action within a particular place.

Companies still willing to pay for product placement, even in a film criticizing product placement

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Watch television or movies and it is not hard to find examples of product placement (some more obvious than others). But even with the negative attention this draws, companies are still willing to pay for it even when their placement is in a film criticizing product placement:

Though the film takes an all-out jab at this advertising trend, advertisers are on board. Morgan Spurlock’s “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” opens Friday, and it’s the real deal.

Among the companies that participated, Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp. paid $700,000 to “sponsor” the film, knowing it was buying into a documentary devoted to how stupid and awkward product placement can be. (Nearly every interview in the movie takes place at a Sheetz gas station where every beverage other than POM Wonderful is blurred.)…

“There are more and more attempts to avoid the commercial break,” said James Pokrywczynski, associate professor at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University in Milwaukee. “We use the remote control to change channels, we DVR shows or edit out the commercials or fast-forward through them.”

As a result, spending for product placements in TV, film, Internet and video games more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from $1.1 billion to $3.6 billion, according to Stamford, Conn.-based media research firm PQ Media.

In the long run, the companies will take the negative attention as long as a media outlet puts their product in front of people. This seems to go along with the idea that “all publicity is good publicity.” And with more organizations looking for money, like Chicago being willing to have corporate sponsors for CTA stops, even this new film won’t be able to stop the trend.

Just out of curiosity, I would be interested in knowing the sales figures of the new Kindle with a cheaper price due to “special offers.”

Australian commentator: movies don’t depict the suburbs

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A writer in The Daily Telegraph suggests that Australian films have not told the stories of typical, suburban life:

Yet it’s not the working class who are neglected.

In fact, according to our films, these are the only people who inhabit Australia.

For all the frustration that exists among moviegoers as to an over-representation of bleak morality tales, it’s this unspoken class warfare that goes unchecked.

From salt-of-the-earth drovers to down-on-their-luck-gangsters, we’re traditionally very fond of our battlers. It’s the prospect of venturing near a McMansion, 4WD or flat-screen TV that seems to paralyse our finest scriptwriters.

The aspirations of families in tree-lined suburbia all too rarely catch the eye of local filmmakers. Perhaps it’s all a bit common.

We pride ourselves on telling real tales, but we don’t want to get too real…

We have been too busy wallowing in the down-and-out to delve into where and how most of us actually live.

An interesting take. I have had the impression that Australia is more suburban than other industrialized nations but it is difficult to find data to back this up. (I spent about 25 minutes searching the Australian Bureau of Statistics website and it appears that at least part of the issue is how the Bureau defines suburbs. While the American Census Bureau essentially says suburbs are the spaces between central cities and rural areas, it appears that Australia tends not to make these clear distinctions. There may be Inner Sydney and North Sydney and Outer South Western Sydney but they are all part of Sydney.) We do know that in late 2009, the average new Australian home was bigger than the average new American home.

More broadly, this doesn’t seem to have been a problem in American media and entertainment. Whether we look at novels or TV shows or movies, the suburbs are a common setting. We could argue about whether these depictions of suburban life are accurate. There is a long history of suburban stories serving as suburban critique: the characters are often portrayed as being unfulfilled, shallow, and unsophisticated. Additionally,  the “typical” TV sitcom or movie family tends not to be that typical: their homes are fairly large, money or subsistence issues rarely come up, and the family always end up in wacky situations.

How one sociologist views boxing

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Boxing is a familiar subject for movies but not so much in sociology. French sociologist Loic Wacquant has written about his boxing experiences and plans to write even more. But this sociological writing about boxing may not be easy to digest for those who are used to movies like Rocky or The Fighter. Here are a few excerpts of Wacquant’s work courtesy of The Guardian:

We get analysis, but best of all we get a fist/hand account of the action: “Jabs from me, blocked by his fists, versus jabs from him, blocked by my nose. I’m better able to see his punches coming, but I still don’t move fast enough. He lands another punch on my face, a right that makes my headgear turn sideways. DeeDee growls ‘Move yo’ head, Louie!’ I’m trying!”

A second book, to be called The Passion of the Pugilist, will, Wacquant says, address “the dialectic of desire and domination in the social genesis of the boxer’s vocation”, “the work of the trainer as virile mothering”, “confrontation in the ring as a homoerotic ritual of masculinisation”, and other topics that did not fit or had not matured in time to go into Body Soul…

A paper called Whores, Slaves, And Stallions – Languages Of Exploitation And Accommodation Among Prizefighters, in the journal Body and Society, hard-boils down to this:

“The boxer’s experience of corporeal exploitation is expressed in three kindred idioms … The first likens the fighter-manager combo to the prostitute-pimp duet; the second depicts the ring as a plantation and promoters as latter-day slave masters; the third intimates that boxers are used in the manner of livestock”.

This sounds like weighty analysis. But it sounds like Wacquant certainly put in his ethnographic time: 35 months in the gym and thoughts about ending his study and turning pro.

(I’m not quite sure what it means that this story is part of a series called “Improbable Research.” Or consider the description about the writer: “Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize.” If you go to the website for the Ig Nobel prize, the tag line is “Research that makes people LAUGH, and then think.” Hmmm.)