Media

On American Exceptionalism

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A word of advice for all of the American pundits and commentators who puffed up their chests in wounded outrage when the president of Russia dared to suggest in a New York Times op-ed that it was dangerous for a country or a people to consider themselves exceptional: look at the image below.

Not very encouraging.
Not very encouraging.

There are really only two possible ways to explain the fact that the US cover of Time Magazine diverged from all of the global editions on this occasion. The first is that the publishers of Time believe their American readership to be so shallow, insular or dumb that a story about important geopolitical developments would deter them from reading the magazine, and that featuring a story about college sports would be less intimidating and off-putting. And the second possibility is that the Bad Man, Vladimir Putin, said some nasty things about America a few days ago and hurt our feelings, so now we have to pretend that he doesn’t exist so that we can get back to our happy place as quickly as possible.

Neither scenario is really screaming “exceptional” at me.

This isn’t a post to denigrate America – clearly, any regular reader of this blog will soon sense my deep admiration of the United States and the belief that it remains, in some very important ways, exceptional in the world. And neither do I think it necessary to list (again) the many flaws of Russia, as they are manifold and frequently in the news, as a counterweight to what I have written here. Most people, given the choice of where to live, would choose the United States over Russia; it doesn’t need to be shouted from the mountaintops.

But I will say this to those “patriotic” Americans who feel slighted when every visiting foreign head of state doesn’t issue a statement declaring America to be superior to their own country, and who get upset when President Obama doesn’t take time out to lecture other nations about how the United States is the role model to be emulated in all matters (because we all know that would be such a successful diplomatic stance):

You sound like a spoiled, coddled toddler, always needing reassurance that you are special and perfect. Frankly, it must be quite embarrassing for your less insecure compatriots to be associated with you. Instead of stomping around the world, hammering out angry op-eds about how the USA is A-OK and super, super exceptional, how about you go out and actually do something exceptional to contribute to that exceptionalism? And if you can’t do that, how about just sitting at home and enjoying the exceptionalism in silence without bothering anyone else? Actions speak louder than words.

Ronald Reagan used the term “a shining city on a hill” to describe his aspiration for America, a really quite moving and wonderful phrase. It evokes a beacon of light, guiding people to America’s example through her very existence and perseverance; her deeds and not just her words.

By contrast, today’s neo-conservatives and others who wrap themselves in the cloak of exaggerated “patriotism” resemble not so much a shining light in the distance, leading others to prosperity, but rather a shrill, incessant car alarm, parked outside the house of every foreign nation, its loud, unceasing warble continually scolding them for not living up to America’s own ideals.

I will let comedian Lewis Black have the last word on this subject:

 

Are we clear, neo-cons? Good.

Bad “Journalism” Award

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

The people at Vice.com were unimpressed with the recent cover story at Esquire magazine, devoted to Hollywood star Megan Fox. Actually, “unimpressed” is putting it too charitably:

The cover story of this month’s Esquire is an interview with Megan Fox by Stephen Marche. And, though I haven’t read every single thing that has ever been written, I can say, with confidence, that it is the worst thing that anybody has ever written. Ever.

With our expectations calibrated to a suitably low bar, the Vice takedown zeroes in on some of the worst things about the Esquire puff piece:

MEGAN FOX BELIEVES THAT BEING FAMOUS IS WORSE THAN BEING BULLIED

“‘I don’t think people understand,” she says. ‘They all think we should shut the fuck up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don’t realise is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.'”

When I was at school, there was a kid who everyone picked on because they thought he was gay. One day, a bunch of older kids dragged him into the PE showers and forcibly inserted a broom handle into his ass. Pretty sure he’d trade lives with you, Meg.

And then this, on Fox’s approach to escaping fame:

MEGAN’S UNUSUAL APPROACH TO ESCAPING FAME

According to the article, “Megan Fox doesn’t particularly want to be famous anymore.” Obviously, appearing on the cover of Esquire in your underwear to promote a new movie that you’re starring in isn’t the best way to go about this. But what about some other methods she’s tried?

“She’s tried to escape from her fate as a sex symbol. She starred in Jennifer’s Body, a magnificent, delicious, criminally underrated parable about a bombshell who literally devours men.”

“In December, in Judd Apatow’s This Is 40, she plays a woman so gorgeous that the other characters cannot quite believe it.”

And neither of those things made it so she wasn’t famous anymore? Weird!

But the best part relates to particular pet peeve of mine, the overambitious / anatomically incorrect Photoshop attempt made for the cover picture. You may be familiar with the recent image in Vogue China, in which the model appeared to be missing a leg…y’know, just to tidy up the shot a bit:

I think there's something missing.
I think there’s something missing.

While Esquire magazine managed to (more or less) avoid losing any critical parts of Megan Fox’s anatomy in their Photoshop attempt, it nonetheless had many of the unearthly, not-quite-human characteristics that we are accustomed to seeing in glossy magazines:

No.
No.

As the Vice article drily notes:

How many people must have seen that cover before it went to print? And not one of them said, “Uh, guys, her left thigh is shaped like a teardrop, she has a wrist a third of the way up her arm and her vagina is, like, a foot wide.”

Quite. Good job, guys. Of course, the sheer level of half-assery on display here by Esquire will not have cost them anything in terms of reputation or profit. Nobody reads the drively words anyway, and I’m sure that the Editor’s mailbox has not been inundated with complaints about the photograph either.

Keep It Classy, Fox News

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Here we go again.

Slate.com, in their critical role monitoring Fox News 24/7 so that the rest of us don’t have to, picked up on the fact that everyone’s favourite Fair & Balanced (TM) news network decided to mock recently-convicted whistleblower Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning’s decision to live the rest of her life as a woman, via the surreptitious medium of their “let’s go to commercial” music.

 

They report:

Fox News wasted little time weighing in on the Great Chelsea Manning Pronoun Debate. “I don’t do what Bradley Manning wants me to do,” America’s Newsroom host Gregg Jarrett declared last week, explaining why he had just repeatedly used masculine pronouns to describe Manning. But as you can see in the clip above, Jarrett’s friends at Fox & Friends took that stance to the extreme this morning by mocking the Army private by playing Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”

It should come as no surprise to readers that the incident took place on that most highbrow and intellectual segment of the FNC’s lineup, Fox  & Friends. But the slowness of the mainstream media in responding appropriately to Manning’s decision is not limited to Fox. As Slate points out:

Setting aside the absurdity of that clip for a second, it should be noted that Fox News isn’t the only major cable network to decide that it won’t respect Manning’s wish to live out the remainder of her life as a woman. CNN says that it won’t make the pronoun switch because Manning has “not yet taken any steps toward gender transition through surgery or hormone replacement therapy.” (It’s unclear why announcing her wish to “begin hormone therapy as soon as possible” doesn’t count as such a step.)

But who can expect anything more from a so-called news network (CNN) that considers the twerking abilities of Miley Cyrus more newsworthy than the unfolding crisis in Syria?

Sadly, this is not the first time that this blog has felt compelled to cover the inexplicable need for US news channels to make their broadcasts more palatable to a dumbed-down audience by injecting them with lively, and (almost always) inappropriate musical excerpts. As I wrote last time:

Since CNN has probably already haemmoraged most of it’s wavering audience to Fox or MSNBC, why not quit catering to that tiny remaining sliver of their viewers who need their news to be lubricated with frequent doses of perky music, and just…y’know…report the news?

The world doesn’t need another Fox & Friends.

So no real progress, then.

On Saving Television

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Following on from my earlier rant about ludicrous and archaic regional restrictions on downloadable and streaming media, The Telegraph has an interesting piece looking at the future viability of the television industry as a whole.

They focus on a recent speech given by Kevin Spacey where he discusses how the TV industry (particularly in the USA) must adapt and break away from the pilot -> probationary season model that squashes innovation and sees too many potentially good shows canceled before they have the opportunity to properly establish themselves. Key excerpts of the speech are here:

 

The Telegraph reports:

Giving the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, the American actor called on the industry to take advantage of massive interest in boxsets and cult dramas such as Breaking Bad to take more risks and have patience with shows that are not instant hits.

Mr Spacey said: “[In 1990] the film industry didn’t believe that television could ever become its biggest competitor. I do not think anyone today 15 years later – [in terms of character driven drama] can argue that television has not indeed taken over.

“The warp-speed of technological advancement – the internet, streaming, multi-platforming – happens to have coincided with the recognition of TV as an art form.

“So you have this incredible confluence of a medium coming into its own just as the technology for that medium is drastically shifting. Studios and networks who ignore either shift – whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement – will be left behind.”

All very true. And as we have seen with the industry’s laggardly response in coming to terms with a globalised audience unwilling to accept phased release dates and geographically restricted online access, television does not appear primed to address these challenges.

Spacey continues, with reference to his recent remake of the British political thriller “House of Cards”, which was wildly popular and released as a downloadable “box set” on NetFlix rather than in serial form via one of the traditional broadcast networks:

“If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn’t that show an incredible attention span? We must observe, adapt and try new things to discover appetites we didn’t know were there.”

This last point really hits the nail on the head. Just as consumers no longer have to flick through a meagre three or four grainy broadcast network channels to get their television fix, neither do they want to consume their favourite shows in one hour increments, dosed out at weekly intervals by the paternalistic TV networks. It is for this reason that TV series “bingeing” has become a phenomena, with many people (myself included) preferring to watch five or six episodes of a favourite show in one sitting, as I have done with Game of Thrones, House of Cards and many others.

The longer that the television industry remains obdurate and inconsiderate of this shift in consumer sentiment and behaviour, the more they will continue to lose out to other business models (such as the NetFlix downloadable series model) and video piracy.

It has never been easier to find episodes of your favourite television show for free, hosted on anonymous websites of dubious legality. The television industry would do well to remember this as they continue to erect more and more bureaucratic and legal obstacles between the consumer and the media that they want to consume.

The full transcript of Kevin Spacey’s lecture can be read here.

On International Video Copyright Restrictions

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Rant Of The Day.

So apparently some crazy stuff went down at the VMAs last night. Something about Miley Cyrus gyrating inappropriately, Justin Timberlake reuniting with the Backstreet Boys (or is it ‘NSync?) and all manner of Hollywood elite naughtiness that promised to both amuse and titillate the audience.

I know this because various websites that I read to pass the time – Buzzfeed, Slate, et al. – have been writing and posting articles about the VMA shenanigans throughout the day. The format of said articles (and this doesn’t just apply to the VMAs, but about more or less anything that happens in America) generally follows this pattern:

1. EYE-CATCHING HEADLINE

2. FERVENT ASSURANCE THAT I REALLY WANT TO READ THIS STORY

3. BREATHLESS PARAGRAPH FILLING ME IN ON THE SCANDALOUS DETAILS

4. EMBEDDED VIDEO OF SAID SCANDALOUS HAPPENING IN ALL ITS SALACIOUS GLORY

5. THE “WASN’T THAT SH*T CRAZY?” PERORATION

Only I happen to live in the United Kingdom. Which means that the whole process falls apart when I reach Step 4. Instead of seeing the embedded video (from YouTube, or MTV, or Comedy Central or whoever the hell else), I get this:

4. SORRY, THIS VIDEO IS NOT VIEWABLE FROM YOUR CRAPPY THIRD WORLD COUNTRY. SUCK IT.

Thanks, Slate.com for linking to a video that only 4.45% of the world's population can watch
Thanks, Slate.com for linking to a video that only 4.45% of the world’s population can watch

But – and here’s the kicker – not before they make me sit through the obligatory 30-second commercial for J-Lo’s latest crappy perfume or whatever other shoddily-conceived and made wares that they want me to purchase. As a result, for viewers that God has chosen to curse by not conveniently placing them within the contiguous 48 states of the USA, Step 5 then becomes this:

5. WASN’T THAT GREAT THING THAT YOU DON’T GET TO SEE REALLY AWESOME?

I wouldn’t know, would I? I wouldn’t bloody know.

Comedy Central at least tries to be amusing about the fact that their bloodsucking intellectual property lawyers want to extinguish any last drop of enjoyment that I might possibly derive from their shows:

Even Colbert is in on the heinous conspiracy
Even Colbert is in on the heinous conspiracy

But somehow this lame attempt at humour just makes it all the worse.

And no, it isn’t one of the “detriments of living under a monarchy”. It is one of the detriments of living in a modern digital age still governed by dinosaurs and fossils from a previous era who seriously think that today’s web-savvy, enlightened global consumer will put up with their bullshit and tolerate a smug, scornful, condescendingly second-class service.

And the fact that many such content providers, such as Comedy Central above, offer to redirect you to “your local country website” – which is, without exception, massively inferior to the US version in every way, from design to content – merely rubs additional salt into the wound.

THIS IS WHY INTERNET PIRACY HAPPENS. THIS. RIGHT HERE.

Do the suits seriously think that I am going to shrug my shoulders and hop on a plane to the US of A so that I can watch their two-minute-long, mildly entertaining video clip, or else sorrowfully abstain from ever viewing it?

No. In my rage, I will turn to Google and hammer out a stream-of-consciousness search request into my long-suffering keyboard, and fifty websites of dubious legality will instantly offer to show me the same goddamn video clip, without asking me to move continents, kill my firstborn son or jump through a fiery hoop.

The bottom line is that I get to watch the thing that I wanted to see. Semi-Partisan Sam wins. Always. In fact, the only people who lose out are the blood-sucking corporations who tried to throw pathetic, unenforceable legal obstacles in my path, and – sadly – the content creators, who would have materially benefited had I been able to watch on the official site, maybe sit through a couple more ads, and even make a purchase from the online store once in a blue moon.

But I don’t expect much from the likes of ViaCom-NBC-Universal-CBS-Fox-MediaTron-Gargamel-Corp.

It would be nice, however, if the news and entertainment websites that I frequent – respectable websites and publications that should know that much of their readership originates from outside the continental USA and does not appreciate being titillated with the promise of content that they cannot watch – smartened their act up and linked to sources that do not enforce petty, control-freakish regional access restrictions (or at least pressured content providers to stop their errant ways for the good of humanity).

Henceforth, I will be naming and shaming any site that falls short of this entirely reasonable standard of behaviour on this blog.

Fair warning.