Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising… kill yourself." –- Bill Hicks.
I didn’t set out to write an article about any of this. It’s just been one of those weeks here at the Labs where synchronicity has paid off in ways worth discussing. In a few short days, I’ve seen television that is genuinely profound, surprising in its honesty and in the respect shown for the viewer. If you were to try and sum up 99% of all the problems I ever have with films or television shows, it would come down to respect. If I feel like the makers of a piece of work respect me as a viewer, I’ll forgive them almost anything. If I feel like I’m being force-fed crap by someone who doesn’t care about what they’re making, I can’t stand it, no matter how professionally produced the crap might be. Maybe it’s because of the sheer volume of input. I mean, I typically see somewhere between two and five films a day. I’m also always reading scripts or novels or magazines or other websites or message boards or comics or I’m writing, something I manage to do for a minumum of three hours a day. As a result of this, I get tired of being insulted, tired of being sold soulless plastic widgets, and when I’m given something genuine, I tend to be grateful. If I embrace something with an evangelical zeal, it’s because, in some way, it cut through the white noise that is modern pop culture.
I hope you took advantage of the heads-up that El Cosmico posted about the FRONTLINE Episode that ran on Tuesday night called THE MERCHANTS OF COOL. Written by Rachel Dretzin, who co-produced the episode with host Douglas Rushkoff, it was one of the most incisive looks at the manufacture of culture that I’ve ever seen. I highly recommend that you head over to the PBS homepage, and do a search for their FRONTLINE section, where there’s a pretty great archive of material having to do with the special, including interviews and video clips and all sorts of links. I’d especially recommend it to our youngest readers here at Ain’t It Cool. If you’re in college or high school or even, as some of your letters suggest, junior high school, then this is all about the way that you specifically have been targeted.
"No joke here. Really. Seriously. Kill yourself. There is no rationalization for what you do. You are Satan’s little helpers. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself now. Okay, now, back to the show." –- Bill Hicks
Right now in America, according to FRONTLINE, the average teen sees 3000 discrete advertisements every day, and 10 million by the time they turn 18. The special showed how "coolhunters" have developed as an industry, market researchers on crack, basically, who sniff out underground trends specifically so that the mainstream can co-opt it by using those trends to sell things. The focus on the show, and on the PBS website, is on Look-Look, a firm founded by Dee Dee Gordon and Sharon Lee that offers "information and research connecting you to youth culture," according to its site. They’re well-paid cultural cannibals. Basically, all the entertainment that you buy or rent or read or go to the theater to see or download is associated in some way with one of The Five Media Giants: Newscorp, Disney, Vivendi/Universal, AOL/Time Warner, and Viacom. I might personally add Sony to that list. If you look at lists of the subsidiaries of all those companies and all their assets, it’s scary. The episode suggests that Viacom is the most influential, the hippest of the Media Giants, thanks in large part to MTV, which is almost completely an infomercial at this point. MTV doesn’t just show commercials. The entire network is designed to sell things. As an example, they showed the Sprite.com launch party, as covered by MTV. Kids were paid to be at the party and dance and mingle. Artists, all of whom are signed to labels associated with one of those Media Giants, get to perform and get a plug on the show. Sprite sponsors the show and gets plugs before commercial breaks as well as a hefty commercial presence during the break. MTV cross promotes the event with both Sprite and the music companies represented. Literally, everybody wins. I remember the impact MTV had when it was first introduced, and it seemed like a big deal at the time. The influence of the network started to wane, and they got smart about it. They started a major overhaul in 1997 and have now reached a higher ratings level than ever, thanks in large part to TRL, their biggest franchise show.
The show discussed the two major characters that MTV has identified as key to their programming, characters that have basically taken over youth culture in terms of the image that’s sold, male and female archetypes known as the "mook" and the "midriff," respectively. The mook is easy to spot, the guys on JACKASS or Tom Green or the average wrestling fan or Jimmy and Adam on THE MAN SHOW. Howard Stern, a sort of uber-mook, was exploited quite successfully by Viacom in book form and with his movie. The midriff is based on the Britney Spears model, prematurely adult where the mook is arrested in adolescence. The show looked at the way young girls are recruited to modeling
"You know what bugs me, though? I know that everyone here who’s in marketing is thinking the same thing. ‘Oh, Bill’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a huge market.’ Quit it! Quit it! Don’t turn everything into a dollar sign! Please!" -- Bill Hicks
We watched a 13 year old girl as she moved through an international talent modeling show held annually for girls to meet managers, agents, producers, casting directors. We met the guy who discovered Jessica Biel. Jessica Biel led to SEVENTH HEAVEN, which led to WB, which led to a discussion of how the network evolved, having started out aimed at family audiences. DAWSON’S CREEK was the show that bridged from family to teen audiences for them, and it was the introduction of sexally themed storylines that opened the market for them. This evolved into a discussion of teen movies. Neil Moritz (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, CRUEL INTENTIONS) came on to defend his films. There was a discussion of how schizophrenic much of this is, with a sort of willful innocence butting up against very sexually mature material. Suzanne Daniels, from the WB, talked about how much they’ve thought about teen sex on their shows. The Media Project, a teen-sex research group, was shown talking to the writing and producing team of DAWSON’S, including Greg Berlanti. Everyone interviewed basically says it’s all part of mirroring the real world, only showing kids what they’re already seeing. MTV’s completely out of control Spring Break coverage, which essentially plays out like those GIRLS GONE WILD "party tapes" that are advertised so ubiquitously during Howard Stern’s E! show, was brought up as an example. Which comes first? The show? The behavior that’s shown on the show? Is it a reflection or is it the instigator? They showed the 13 year old girl again from the Modeling convention, Barbara, at one of the parties held for the girls. She was dancing with a guy, and the way she and the other young teen girls all danced, it was like amateur night at Scores. Pretty shocking, but it shouldn’t be. Why wouldn’t she dance like this? This is how MTV shows her to dance. This is how dancing is defined for her. In voice-over, Rushkoff talked about the feedback loop, about people watching it and imitating it and being filmed so other people can watch and imitate it, whatever "it" is, ad infitum.
The special talked about kids who try to buck the mainstream, who turn to subcultures that are still "pure," like fans outside an Insane Clown Posse concert. To them, a song like "Tittyhunting" is rebellion, freedom. What do teenagers have to rebel against today? How about the youth culture that’s been created and packaged by corporate America? If it’s on the radio, it can’t be good. Everyone remembers feeling that way about certain bands, bands that were theirs, bands that were too good for the radio. These days, the only way to become indigestible by the machine is to be too offensive to package. Of course, Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson and Eminem fly in the face of that thinking. Limp Bizkit is the example here, and it's discussed how the band was pushed through using something akin to legalized payola, and how important it was when MTV got behind them. As Rushkoff said, "Take one part authentic rage, two parts marketing, add a sprinkle of cash, then place in an oven called Woodstock ’99 for instant fame." There’s no such thing as bad publicity. After all, what are a couple of rapes in the crowd compared to the fastest-selling rock record of all time? It all goes back to the way Sprite positioned themselves. No one understands you, they tell kids. Not your teachers, not your parents... no one, except for the corporate sponsors. The more you can tap into this, the more kids will theoretically buy into it. As if to prove the point, guess who’s on MTV now... the Insane Clown Posse, fully absorbed, now part of the machine.
"’Ooh, the plea for sanity dollar. Huge. HUGE.’ No, it’s not! Fuck you! It’s not a market. It’s just me begging you to kill yourself. It’s for the greater good." –- Bill Hicks
The message of both FRONTLINE and of the Bill Hicks routine, quoted here from his album ARIZONA BAY, seems to be about being educated, even cynical, about how you get your media and what agenda is being served. If one wanted, they could draw some sort of sinister connections anywhere. FRONTLINE, being broadcast on PBS, seems to stand outside the machine. I mean, it’s PBS, right? Never mind that this particular series was underwritten by Earthlink, and never mind that Earthlink is currently running a major ad campaign in print and on TV and on billboards that features, among other personalities, our own Harry Knowles. There’s no relationship between that and the fact that El Cosmico did a preview of the episode, or the fact that I responded so well to it. But how are you supposed to know that? How are you supposed to grow up in this culture and ever feel like you’re allowed to just find things on your own and enjoy them for what they are?
Of course, the other major theme of the special is about truth on television, something that becomes more and more fuzzy as shows like TEMPTATION ISLAND and THE MOLE and BOOT CAMP and GREENLIGHT crowd the airwaves, each of them showing us something that they claim is real. Never mind the fact that I don’t believe you can have reality in a situation as manufactured and as heavily documented as we see on these shows. The cast members on reality programs are all actively aware of being filmed, and they are performing, not just living. What is the truth in a situation that involves you, a roommate, and a camera crew? What is reality? As Doug Rushkoff put it, there’s a feedback loop that’s building towards critical mass now with reality programming and satires of it and shows like Kathy Griffin’s new MTV program which comment on the reality programs. USA Films is releasing their satire SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS this weekend in New York and Los Angeles. It’s timely, if nothing else, as we see SURVIVOR II sell an episode based on the idea that "the unspeakable happens," hinting strongly that someone gets hurt. This is the extra added appeal of the episode to get people to tune in. It turns out someone was hurt, and quite badly, actually, as Mike passes out face first into the fire at his camp. Watching him freak out as he tries to cool the insane burns on his hands and arms by dunking himself completely underwater, seeing the skin literally hanging off of his ruined hands, there’s no doubt that it’s compelling, but it appeals to that same terrible place in us that makes us slow down to look at car accidents. There’s something about the horror of it that makes us look, and the producers of these programs trade on that notion. Each new show seems to push the stakes a little further, redraw the line, and ask us to lower our standards, just a little bit.
This week, that idea was explored in an excellent LAW & ORDER episode written by William M. Finkelstein. The cast and crew of a REAL WORLD style program come under police scrutiny when one of the cast members goes off the roof of a building and ends up dead. When it’s revealed that there was an altercation between two cast members on the roof that was incited at the request of one of the network’s young executives in a move to improve ratings for sweeps, the show became a provocative exploration of where responsibility lies when something goes wrong.
And there’s that word that I’ve gotten yelled at for mentioning on this page before: responsibility. It seems like the word scares the shit out of producers, and even out of many of you. I’ve said before that I believe that anyone who creates television or films or music or any other media has a personal responsibility to be aware of the weight of the images and ideas they’re creating and distributing. I saw a perfect example of that this week on "The Body," the episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER that Joss Whedon wrote and directed. It was uncommonly well-made, and there’s a real significance to what they did. For those of you who aren’t viewers of the show, this week was all about the death of Buffy’s mother. She’s been struggling with a brain tumor this season, and had recently survived major surgery. She appeared to be on the mend, and at the end of last week, Buffy found her unexpectedly laid out on the couch, eyes open, obviously dead. This week was a series of only four scenes, each one in a different location, detailing the reaction of Buffy and her small circle of friends and her sister Dawn, and it was captivating. Joss Whedon used no underscoring in the episode, a brave choice that paid off by making us focus on the simple details of performance. For a show that has 22 episodes in a season and that’s ostensibly aimed at a young audience, it takes real balls to spend an entire episode dealing with the death of one character, especially when it’s from natural causes and not the work of some supernatural bad guy. By doing this, Joss reminds his viewers that death counts. Death matters. When someone dies, there are people that are left behind. There is an effect on the entire community of that person. In this show with the ridiculous title and the absurd premise, more truth was somehow exposed in 40 minutes of scripted drama than in all the hours of "reality" on TV this year. Even though it’s just another piece of product pumped out by the youth culture machine, it’s somehow striking grace notes, communicating ideas of import with real elegance. And it’s because of miracles like BUFFY that even in the face of such an overwhelming sea of choice, with so much of it of such negligible worth, I continue to read and watch and listen to all the things I do. It’s because of a miracle like BUFFY that I can honestly say I never give up hope.
Speaking of which, keep your eyes here this weekend. I’ll have those script reviews I mentioned, and you’ll get your first look at two of the most eagerly anticipated films of 2002, scripts I hope will be amazing. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
