text:
A moonless night, pricked with stars. I am at the old train station in downtown Boulder, the one built in 1890, sitting in a streetcar from the next century, a sleek red rocket with the familiar sea foam ceiling and maroon and cream exterior. A pair of binoculars hangs around my neck. There are no other passengers, and no driver.
With a lurch, the vehicle lifts off, moving forward while somehow traveling backward in time, linked to a vast web of cables and tracks that stretches impossibly from earth to sky. Making a left near the Flatirons, the car rises and falls like a roller coaster across the eastern plains that yield imperceptibly to western Kansas, buoyed by the winds that whirl above Lawrence, rattled by the rush of the Missouri River, veering north toward Springfield, Decatur and the corn and soy bean fields of central Illinois. I am elated: through the binoculars I glimpse my grandmother's farm outside Jacksonville, the house with its wrap-around porch and green-roofed corn crib looking just as they did in snapshots from the 1960s.
Sailing on past the suburbs of Chicago—Downers Grove, Naperville, Oak Brook—the streetcar descends perilously close to the lake, blue-black and brackish, as if homing for water. I love hovering over the waves, riding an unexpected gust due east through the hills and valleys of the Lower Peninsula, and, more than anything, swerving around the Giant Tire by the highway just south of Detroit, the one that used to be a Ferris Wheel at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Pure exhilaration. My parents must have passed it when they emigrated in 1965; we drove by it every year on long family road trips to Texas.
My internal compass knows what comes next: everything turns green, and there is more and more water. As Lake Erie leads to Lake Ontario, and the parks and bogs near London cede to the ravines and canopy of Tkaranto, the place "where there are trees are standing in the water," the car leaps and dips, glides and soars, shakes, screeches, brakes and switches, sparking as it touches down and careens into the CNE. The midway is awhirl with light. Nearby, the lake lies quaking in the dark.
I have landed in Toronto twenty-five years before the boom. In the glinting tracks ahead and "neon glamour" at my back, I feel the allure of that not-too-distant future.1
I wake with a start, suddenly derailed.
I'm not there.
Toronto Boom Town (Leslie McFarlane, 1951), a National Film Board of Canada short narrated by radio broadcaster Elwood Glover and produced by Sydney Newman (twelve years before he created Dr. Who),2 charts the rise of the "Queen City" renowned for its Sunday Blue Laws and as the birthplace of Standard Time, now an urban center "growing like mad, bursting at the seams," its dreams of "expanding industrial might" putting it at risk of being "strangled by its own prosperity."3 Struggling with traffic and congestion due to post-war suburban expansion, the film documents the building of Canada's first subway, which opened in 1954, promotes the city's glamorous nightlife in a montage of hotspots and watering holes known for their spectacular neon signage (The El Mocambo and The Horseshoe Tavern among them), and reminds us, through a remark made by a visitor to mansion-turned-museum Casa Loma, that Toronto is a city of one million people (still) "living in a forest."
But the film's most telling riff, a textbook illustration of NFB founder John Grierson's vision of documentary as the "creative treatment of actuality," is its depiction of Canadian-American relations through the fictional meeting of Albert McConachie, from equally fictional Pine Tree Rapids, and Chester Vanderwick, a businessman from Ohio. In a conversation replete with the requisite long o's and broad a's defining each country's accents, Mr. McConachie insists that Toronto is too big for him, and that he "wouldn't live here if they gave [him] the place!" Mr. Vanderwick, however, bestows America's highest compliment, describing TO as "smart and up to date, just like a good American city. Makes me feel like I'm back in Cleveland!" Framed by "Mr. Nice Guy" Glover's perfectly pitched boosterist voice over, which lends humor and enthusiasm to the entire exchange, "Toronto the Good" in 1951 is primed to become the "City of the Future" emblematized 14 years later by the modernist City Hall designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, with its curved twin towers of differing heights enclosing a space-ship like council chamber.4
Toronto Boom Town's idealized future takes an apocalyptic turn in Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998), a film showing the city on the verge of obliteration, littered and looted, its streets strewn with peculiar totems made from animal masks impaled on parking meters. Sandra (Sandra Oh) walks through this urban wasteland in search of a ride, sounding like a latter-day Dorothy Gale when she tells everyone she meets, including widower Patrick Wheeler (McKellar), "I have to get home."
She wants to get there, however, to fulfill a mutual suicide pact with her husband Duncan (David Cronenberg), before the film's unexplained catastrophe occurs at midnight. In one attempt to do so, she boards a driverless streetcar (a Canadian Light Rail Vehicle from the late 1970s, not the Art Deco Pullman car that haunts my dreams), whose two passengers, a despairing mother and her impatient daughter, seem to be waiting for something to happen. Rioting crowds eventually overturn the abandoned vehicle, and Sandra spends the final moments of the night exchanging personal intimacies with Patrick, whose way of describing his wife's death rings with significance beyond the confines of the narrative: "After she died, they said the world would end." The loss of a loved one, or even a beloved place, often feels like that. For a while, there is nothing left; the familiar terms of the universe are no more.
If I could, I would give Sandra another future, or at least add to the present that is (was) her last night, by giving her a ride—another ride, or perhaps a few—one down Bay Street to the waterfront on a working CLRV. Getting off at Queens Quay, she would board a time-traveling ferry to Centre Island (a "Technicolor" ride, thanks to the strength of magenta dyes), arriving during the Canadian Centennial (1967), a few years before her birth. There, bathed in the glow of a late summer sunset, after walking by the shore while children play nearby, she might stroll to the Centreville amusement park, and take a spin on The Scrambler, like Margot (Michelle Williams) does in Take this Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011), years down the line. Whirling in the dark, her blues diffused by the lurid blend of lights, filled with a sense of abandon, thrilled at being in motion, and uniquely attuned to the passing of time, Sandra might find solace, I like to imagine, in being shaken up and turned around, before returning to a final evening of human communion which culminates, in the film's last shot, in an unanticipated kiss.
In Take This Waltz, Margot also seeks temporary solace in a thrill ride, when she boards The Scrambler with a possible paramour as a way of shaking up her own life. Five years into a marriage that on the surface seems just fine, Margot is restless at the core, in search of something else. A woman who freely admits that she dislikes dislocation (the "rushing, not knowing," of air travel, of being "in between things"), she nonetheless courts a new experience by responding to Daniel's (Luke Kirby) attentions, thus placing herself in an emotionally liminal zone. "Life has a gap in it, in the big picture," her former sister-in-law tells her much later in the film, after Margot has left her husband. Getting on The Scrambler, part of a long day with a man to whom she is irresistibly drawn, is one way of trying to fill in that gap. The ride is a diversion but also a place of transformation: first elated, then deflated, Margot's expressions bring to light an internal struggle—her dark night of the soul.
All of the characters in The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger, 2013) experience dark (days and) nights of the soul when their acting teacher gives them an exercise that unexpectedly derails them. After watching a short film he made with his son Sam (Jacob Switzer) some ten years earlier, Leo (Aaron Poole) decides to adapt its method for a group of young performers, including himself. In the original film, called The Bunny Project, Sam, in full rabbit costume, offers hugs to passersby, and muses on life, death, and the nature of dreams.5 "Do you dream?," he is asked by an off-screen voice, presumably his father's. "I've had a dream that seems really real," Sam answers—an experience, we soon learn, his father knows very well. Leo poses the same question, with slight variations, to his fellow actors, asking of one, "Have you ever died in your dreams?," and of another, "What is the last thing you remember dreaming?" To the latter, he gets an answer that might be part of what unhinges him: Saul, with whom he has recently shared an unexpected moment of intimacy, answers, "It was about you."
How and why this happens, and how the entire "chorus of misfits," as Leo eventually describes himself and his six students, breaks apart, comes together, forges new bonds and deepens their connections, precisely because of the exercise he devises for them, creates a film which is an intricate study of projection, anonymity, authenticity, and identity, and the human capacity for intimacy, against all odds. The exercise? Don a full animal costume, mask and all, and go out into the world, interact, and see what happens—with others, and in you. Self-obliteration, Leo insists, is a "different kind of risk taking." "Those animal heads wipe out the actor's expression completely," one student protests. "You could put anyone in those heads and it wouldn't make a difference at all." To some extent this is true. But what happens to each actor internally is distinct, and for each, adopting a guise ultimately yields something genuine. The exercise proves to be an unforeseen vehicle of transformation.
Toronto is the place where these transformations occur, in locations ranging from the elevated to the mundane, each beautifully shot by cinematographer Cabot McNenly: its glistening streets and glowing alleys, its parks and ravines, its laundromats, living rooms, diners (Vesta Lunch: "Reputable since 1955!"), churches, theaters, bars, clubs and, of course, down by the lake.
In one especially memorable sequence, Pippa (Jessica Greco) and Alice (Hannah Cheesman), The Donkey and The Rabbit, respectively, walk by the Cameron House, a 1920s hotel turned music venue in the 1980s, their bouquet of red balloons thrown into relief by the vibrant red of the club's door, which is echoed by the orange glow of a passing cab, its turquoise trunk a perfect complement to the teal background of the striking mural on the club's wall, which frames a window filled with an inviting arc of blue lights. As if beckoned, they enter, and dance in costume, while a balloon or two drifts to the ceiling. Later, on the street, a man gropes at Pippa after she offers him a balloon, and then he laughs at her distress. She breaks down.
Given how significant balloons are for her ("they are magic to me"), their inclusion here reads as a telling evocation of The Red Balloon (1956), Albert Morrisette's fantasy film about a young boy in Ménilmontant who finds a sentient red balloon that follows him everywhere. Jealous children ultimately destroy his silent friend, but fantasy wins the day: all the balloons in Paris take Pascal on a cluster balloon ride over the rooftops of the city. As one critic put it in 1957, the film is "a poignant symbolization of dreams and the cruelty of those who puncture them."6 The same might be said of The Animal Project. 7
Other characters in the film wander the streets alone, exhibiting varying degrees of comfort with their costumes. While Mira The Mouse (Sarena Parmar), wearing only her mask, walks through a dark alley, its slick sidewalk glinting with gold, Jason The Cat (Johnathan Sousa), in full attire, meanders down to the lake at sunrise, raises his arms to the waxing moon (a stretch of despair or an appeal for strength?), then sits on the dock, waves lapping at his back, pondering a momentous decision. When the light shifts, he leaps up, runs all the way to The Mouse's house, takes off his mask, and declares that he is going to kiss her. He does.
Lingering by the "Lake of Shining Waters" facilitates his transformation. Gazing out at that infinite expanse of blue, as balanced and restorative as a minimalist painting,8 Jason faces his own emptiness, and feels "the blue of longing." Blue, writes Rebecca Solnit, is "the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not."9 To get there, Jason jogs the distance, taking the lake's quiet enlightenment with him.
Whenever you leave, wherever you go, you take that blue glow with you, its radiance at your back. On the next ride, on the road, out of town, on the tracks, in a streetcar, in the air, looking back, glancing ahead—longing, Solnit reminds us, is a sensation to be cherished on its own terms. Something is always far away, and something always needs letting go.
A moon, a red balloon, a faint blue gleam in a vast black sky. A wish drifting heavenward. A streetcar creaking homeward. This is my dream.
For my mother, who helped the Toronto Transit Commission make the streetcars accessible for everyone. 10 And for Ingrid, whose films brought me home.
Image Credits:
1. Toronto Boom Town (Leslie McFarlane, 1951).
2. The Canadian National Exhibition, 1922. City of Toronto Archives.
3. Official opening of Toronto City Hall, 1965. City of Toronto Archives.
4. Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998).
5. Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998).
6. The City of Toronto Archives.
7. The City of Toronto Archives.
8. The Scrambler at Centre Island in Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011).
9. The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger, 2013).
10. The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger, 2013).
11. The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger, 2013).
12. Lake Ontario: "The Lake of Shining Waters" in the Wyandot (Huron) language. The City of Toronto Archives.
13. Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011).
14. The Canadian National Exhibition, 1954. The City of Toronto Archives.
15. The Animal Project (Ingrid Veninger, 2013).
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
Television and feature film cinematography have long been treated as fairly distinct areas of practice. My past research, for example, focused on feature film cinematographers, in particular their discourses of professional and aesthetic value, and how they navigate technologies that disrupt their production culture. I kept television at arms length in that research as it was a distinctly different work environment from feature films. Recent developments in television production, though, suggest that those distinctions – while not falling away entirely – are beginning to shift. Authorial discourses, as John Caldwell has written, are domains of significant contest in an industry where the boundaries that inscribe above- and below-the-line work represent real frontiers of wealth and prestige.1 These fault lines of professional value and hierarchy are felt within craft areas as well, and television's recent embrace of complex imagery and visual flair has, to some extent, shifted discourses of craft value as new creative possibilities emerge for that medium's below-the-line professions.
Of course, high-end, or "cinematic," visual style has long been a marker of the "quality" end of the programming spectrum on television. Jeremy Butler, among others, has traced how various genres of television have adopted single-camera and other cinematic flourishes over the years—often in piecemeal fashion, as a signifier of quality.2 Hill Street Blues (1981-87) pioneered a more low-key, naturalistic style that was very influential and other series followed. Other programs flirted with self-consciously cinematic one-off experiments and there have been many stand-out programs like Thirty-something, Twin Peaks and Homicide: Life on the Streets with memorably expressive photography. In general, though, television cinematography has been limited by broadcaster demands for amply lit sets and faces, and a lack of time (and budget) to create careful effect lighting, colors, or compositions. This difference of creative possibility did much to sustain an unspoken caste-system within cinematography, a hierarchy in which the feature film represented a creative and professional North Star.
Television's new competitive landscape has contributed to the erosion of that hierarchy. Cable (subscription and paid) and digital platforms have used quality drama to forge a place for themselves in popular culture, and in these productions the cinematographer has found new prospects for creative distinction and professional reward. My discussion here is by no means exhaustive, but, using reports from productions of AMC's Breaking Bad, HBO's Boardwalk Empire, and the Netflix series House of Cards, I hope to introduce a few lines of inquiry around the production culture of television cinematography and I welcome your comments.
The cinematography of Breaking Bad developed following a pattern that seems increasingly common: involving "name" feature film talent (in this case, Oscar-winner John Toll) to help create the pilot. Reynaldo Villalobos, an experienced, older journeyman DP, finished off the first series of six episodes. In the second season, though, showrunner Vince Gilligan hired Michael Slovis, whose work extended and shifted that of Toll and Villalobos to establish the program's signatures of sharply saturated tones, complex chiaroscuro, use of motivated light, and slightly wacky POV shots. Slovis was formerly one of several cinematographers for the CBS series, CSI, a program also known for a distinctive look, although in a blaring, high key and quick-cut style that quickly became formulaic. All told, Slovis photographed 50 episodes of Breaking Bad and directed four others, and he describes his experience on Breaking Bad as a break from past practice, largely thanks to AMC's need to create distinctive programming: "It had one original program going on, Mad Men, and they were just starting to build their brand…so, they said, "We know what we're asking; we're filmmakers, and we want you to do this." As a result, Slovis said, "I have been given an extraordinary amount of freedom, never before seen by me in television, and very rarely given to anybody."3 We might see Slovis is an example of the cinematographer at his or her most authoritative in the new production culture of television—given wide latitude to experiment, create, and collaborate with others on the team and largely responsible for the look of a series across its run.
Boardwalk Empire follows a more common template, in which a small group of cinematographers alternates duties, temporarily paired with each episode's assigned director. The challenge with this "team" approach for today's productions is maintaining a consistent look when cameras and digital tools allow so much flexibility in creating and revising images. Many programs create a "look book" that becomes a guidebook for the series' cinematographers and other craft areas. However, Boardwalk's pilot, directed by Martin Scorsese, and photographed by Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, did not generate a look book.4 Jonathan Freeman (who completed the first season, alternating with Kramer Morgenthau, ASC ) reported that in the absence of an established look he and Morgenthau had some freedom to develop unique looks for each episode, treating each as a "mini-movie." Freeman specifically mentioned the painterly Ashcan School as reference point for his episodes.5 Still, the team works in close collaboration: watching each other's dailies, visiting each other's sets, sharing much of the same crew, and coordinated some basic stylistic elements, such as avoiding practical electric lights much of the time (except on the Boardwalk), avoiding primary colors and consistently de-saturating images to support the period mise en scene.6 In this model, the control of the look is relatively loose, but the team works together to maintain consistency across the series based on the look of the pilot.
In my final example, House of Cards, we see a much higher degree of control from the program producer. Series executive producer David Fincher directed the first two episodes with Danish cinematographer Eigil Bryld and Bryld stayed on to photograph the next nine episodes. Igor Martinovic, a relatively young cinematographer best known for his documentary work, took over in the second season.7 Unlike my previous examples, the look of House of Cards was largely established in an intensive 10-week preparation cycle in which the workflow of the series was thoroughly mapped out. In most productions, the cinematographer's vendor relationships (with Panavision, for example) would be crucial in this stage – however, it was Fincher's relationship with the Red Company that held sway here—the program is shot in an unusual 2:1 aspect ratio, using the Red digital cameras that Fincher has used on every project since The Social Network. According to Bryld, much of this time was spent designing the camera package, custom-building a camera truck, and absorbing Fincher's stylistic ground rules, such as prohibitions on Steadicam, handheld, or zoom shots. Motifs such as having Frank emerge or disappear into darkness, or using more uniform, bright colors to signify settings close to power were also discussed. Two camera set-ups were used regularly, limiting lighting and other cinematography options, and the intensity of the shooting schedule kept Bryld from being involved in post-production.8 This degree of pre-planning and on-set control doesn't negate the creative role of the cinematographer, but the sum of these seems unavoidably to shift control of the look toward the producers.
In the past, limitations of budget, schedule, and the home viewing experience have created obstacles to scripted television that aspired to a fully "cinematic" look. Over the last decade, though, the crafts that supply cinema with its distinctive artisanal feel—cinematography, editing, production design—have moved to the foreground in television and more daring, ambitious visual styles are the result. Certainly, this new ambition owes much to producers' willingness to define (or defend) a novel look against the concerns of studio executives (although in some cases, as we've seen, executives are demanding more distinctive looks). The efficacy of new, lower cost imaging technologies, tools for look management, and the better home screen are important aspects here, too. However we parse its source, the emergence of a more 'cinematic' television raises questions about long-standing verities within cinematography's professional and stylistic hierarchies, as well as our sense of the complexities of authorship in television's latest "golden age."
Image Credits:
1. House of Cards
2. Breaking Bad
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
After mounting two seasons a year for 9 years, by 2014 Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) was suffering the natural exhaustion all reality formulas do and increasing trouble locating bona fide "stars" to compete. In the absence of stars, the program increasingly relies on a number of canned, well-worn, easily available story arcs that add dramatic tension and keep viewers engaged in spite of inconsistencies in talent and performances. These narratives are constructed by the producers through weekly filmed rehearsal "packages," the dancers and stars, the program's judges, and audiences. In a competition centered on intense relationships between opposite sex dance partners – one positioned as a teacher, the other as student – heterosexual romance – the showmance – reigns supreme.
The DWTS showmance is strongly shaped by a key tension in the gendered discourses of ballroom dancing: on the one hand, dance teams are almost always opposite sex pairs whose performances involve hyper performances of heterosexual desire; on the other, male performers are frequently scrutinized as to whether they are, in fact, heterosexual. Intense fan scrutiny of dance pairs' relationship status becomes a key way to resolve such tensions. The intensive physical, mental, and time demands of the series, which requires presumed novices to master ballroom dance techniques and learn a new dance a week, undoubtedly fosters close ties between the dance professionals and their celebrity partners. The "showmance" occurs when there are any hints of romance between stars and pros. Playing off the "will they or won't they" trope, a key television narrative device at least since the days of Moonlighting, a well-played "showmance" can guarantee fan support.
Season 18 began with a leading contender for showmance of the season, as contestant James Maslow was paired with pro dancer, Peta Murgatroyd, after the two had reportedly dated. Enter the ringers, Sochi Olympic gold medalist ice dancing pair, Meryl Davis and Charlie White. Quickly, the relationship between Davis, and long time series pro, Maksim Chmerkovskiy emerged as the dominant showmance of the season. While Davis's dancing prowess was to be expected given her background, the unexpected chemistry between the quiet, calm Davis and the loud, quick to anger Chmerkovskiy was increasingly read as a tale of Beauty and the Beast, and constructed as a redemption narrative of the pro, effectively reducing the contestant to supporting player. In the process, Davis's own accomplishments as an athlete were consistently placed as second to her relationship with her dancing and skating partners.
From the start, Davis was situated first and foremost as "partner" to her male counterparts. Publicity in the week's leading up the show continually tried to emphasize that Davis and her skating partner, Charlie White, also a contestant, would now be pitted against each other. Like ballroom dancing, ice dancing is performed by opposite sex pairs who are often read as potential romantic partners rather than teammates. The 17 year partnership between Davis and White was already the source of intense speculation, and the pair had a devoted following of shippers, presuming or wishing that they were a couple.1 The fact that the skaters would now be performing with different partners was treated as a possible threat to their relationship. Pre season publicity for Chmerkovskiy, focused on the DWTS pro's bad boy reputation, earned for his quick temper and contentious relationship with the judges. In fact that relationship had grown so contentious that Chmerkovskiy was returning to the show after a two-season absence with a desire to clean up his act. The filmed "package," purportedly capturing the first meeting between the pair quickly establishes Davis's currency, as Chmerkovskiy asks her if she is dating White, and expresses his instant attraction and satisfaction with her obvious talent.
Over the next few weeks, the pair increasingly becomes situated within a beauty and the beast narrative. Tall, "dark", bearded, muscular, and hot tempered, the Ukrainian native Chmerkovskiy's rugged masculinity was the exact opposite of the blonde, slight, clean shaven, perpetually cheerful and upbeat Charlie White's boyish masculinity. Chmerkovskiy was a beast, and the beautiful, ethereal, and ever-unflappable Davis was set up as his saving beauty. In the week 6 rehearsal package, viewers hear Davis express dismay at their low scores from the week before and see her competitive spirit kick in. However, as the package proceeds, we witness Chmerkovskiy grow increasingly frustrated so that Davis ends up comforting him, letting him know that they can support each other. This narrative of transformation is further highlighted by judges' comments, especially from Carrie Ann Inaba, who excitedly tells the pair that they bring out the best in each other.
During week 9, the beauty and the beast narrative reaches a critical point. In the rehearsal footage, we first see Davis get a visit from her idol, figure skater and former DWTS contestant, Kristi Yamaguchi, to talk about her experience on the show and handling its unique pressures. But the attention quickly turns to Chmerkovskiy's temper. Telling her that he feels the stress of having the best dancer on show, we see him get angry during rehearsal, frustrated that Davis cannot learn her steps. After throwing his microphone towards the camera operator, we see a confessional of Davis explaining away his behavior, and finally a scene of her flirtatiously giggling and trying to distract him and get him out of his mood.
By the finale, weeks of intense media speculation, impressive performances, and carefully curated video packages had created a seemingly unstoppable showmance train. From questions by the producers through comments from the judges and hosts, marriage emerges as the only possible conclusion, despite the fact that the pair had neither confirmed nor denied that they were even dating. Producers query both on their future, and while Davis hedges, Chmerkovskiy, cheekily declares his desire to have "big Russian babies" named Boris and Oleg with Meryl. Erin Andrews interviews them right after they see the tape, and we see the beastly Chmerkovskiy, finally tamed. Even host Tom Bergeron jokingly refers to him as the "Blushing Russian."
During the pair's final "freestyle" dance, they come close to, but never actually kiss. Well, is there anything more tantalizing that denied consummation? The intensity is too much for judge Carrie Ann Inaba. Overcome with emotion, she blurts out what no doubt many fans had been wishing, "first of all, I think you should get married!" The desire of romantic closure is heightened when host Erin Andrews cheekily teases the pair about their non-kiss.
Other moments in the competition continued to highlight Davis's status as currency. During week 4, in an attempt to add interest to the formula, the show's producers decided that contestants would switch partners. In this case, Davis moved from being paired with Maksim Chmerkovskiy to his brother and fellow DWTS pro, Valentin Chmerkovskiy. In the rehearsal package we witness a jealous Maksim, upset to see how well Valentin and Davis are dancing together. And while the program generally downplayed the competition between Davis and her long time skating partner, White, they were purposely pitted against each other in the semi final elimination round. Placed on stage as the last two to hear their fates for going forward to the final, they are told that they do not necessarily have the lowest number of votes, but that one will be going home. White publicly expressed his frustration with producers afterwards.
Were Davis and Chmerkovskiy romantically involved? Were they cynically playing up the showmance for ratings and votes? I personally suspect the truth the lies somewhere in between. But there can be no doubt that the pair were formidable competitors with a natural chemistry that easily translated to the screen. Of course, they are each trained to perform such chemistry as a key to their professional success. The point here, however, is the sometimes disturbing way that their narrative was presented. Rather than situated as a professional, accomplished athlete (though to be fair, the judges often praised her dancing abilities), in the constructed discourses of the show Davis was reduced to currency traded between her male partners. The troubling beauty and the beast frame discursively stripped her of any agency beyond her function of helping her dancing partner achieve his goal of mirror ball victory. This is not to say that this was the experience of the pair themselves, but rather speaks to our broader cultural investment in a narrow set of gender norms in which women and athlete continue to remain incompatible categories, and in which heterosexual romance is reinforced as a woman's truest desire and greatest accomplishment.
Image Credits:
1. Meryl Davis tames the beast, Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
As I have argued in co-authored work elsewhere, the audio-visual translation practice of dubbing, where the audio track of an exported film or programme is replaced with one in the language of the target market, continues to be marginalised and reductively understood in a range of debates.1 This is despite the unquestionable importance of dubbing to cinema and television in a range of countries, and despite a resurgent interest in matters of globalisation within film and television studies. Continuing with my interest in the lived experience of contemporary screen culture, I will now pay attention to dubbing actors: performing labour that is by its nature literally invisible and at the same time raises issues of transparency, the work of the dubbing actor needs to be understood beyond dogged fixations on dubbing's supposed lack of originality, and authenticity, as well as the constraining matters of practicality, such as the need for lip-synchronisation.
I will hinge my discussion around the work of one particular dubbing actor as it features in the German version of Lord of the Rings. The dubbing of this film franchise, and Gollum's voice especially, received positive attention within fan, industry and press discourses in Germany. The dubbing scripting and direction as well as the vocal performance of Gollum were all undertaken by Andreas Fröhlich, a voice artist whose long career spans different forms and genres. My discussion will combine my own close analysis with a recent original interview conducted with Fröhlich, in order to engage with the insider knowledge of a practitioner in a sector of the creative industries that has been without a voice in scholarly debates for far too long.
Of course, focusing on the dubbing of this fictional character is an interesting choice, given that he is originally a hobbit known as Sméagol who, corrupted by the Ring, becomes Gollum, named after his habit of making, as Tolkien himself put it, a 'horrible swallowing noise in his throat'.2 Thus, vocal performance is inscribed into the character from its very genesis. And indeed, for Peter Jackson's big screen adaptation, Andy Serkis – who was initially offered short-term employment to provide the voice-over for Gollum but went on to gain international prominence for his motion capture work for this digital character – has spoken of the importance of the voice for the part:
For me, it is where his pain is trapped. That emotional memory is trapped in that part of his body, his throat. In just doing the voice, I immediately got into the physicality of Gollum, and embodied the part as I would if I were playing it for real.3
Given the centrality of the voice to the role, and Fröhlich's extensive professional experience, it comes as a surprise that Fröhlich's casting was marked by a degree of chance rather than the result of an extensive search for the right vocal performer. Hired to take charge of the dubbing script and direction for the first film in the trilogy, Fröhlich did not originally expect to take on the German voice for Gollum. However, he stepped in when the part – rather minor at this stage – had not been cast in the run up to the film's release in Germany due to a studio oversight. In terms of his approach to the role, he notes the importance of Serkis' work in bringing the character to life, and tells how:
I basically oriented myself on what Andy Serkis was doing, and instantly ruined my vocal chords. I didn't know how to do this. I wasn't breathing correctly, I started off too high […].4
Interestingly, the practitioner's perspective here bears out that dubbing is not, or perhaps rather should not be, so concerned with imitation – indeed, imitation can even play havoc with the very instrument needed for dubbing, the performer's voice. This usefully complicates scholarly views such as Hassanpour's that dubbing should be understood 'as an activity involving a recreation of the original text.'5
With Gollum's part from the second film onwards substantially bigger, Andreas Fröhlich knew he had to change his approach, and making use of the time available, set out to find the voice for Gollum. His search saw him pacing through his Berlin flat, 'muttering and giggling and looking for this special voice.' He says that he struggled until the moment when:
I went to bed and my wife was lying beside me and I couldn't sleep. I was muttering and doing these strange voices […]. […] Then I turned my face to her, and then I started whispering 'my precious' into her ear. She was laughing, and then I found this voice, lying in bed with my wife, because I started talking to her like Sméagol was talking to Gollum. I realised that when I have a person to talk to, that I found this voice. […] You have a relationship to your wife, and like I have a relationship to her, Gollum has a relationship to Sméagol.
What his fascinating account here shows is that, while Serkis' performance was, of course, an important point of reference for Fröhlich, it was when the latter was not in proximity to Serkis' work that he made progress. It was only when Fröhlich realised the importance of Gollum as a relational creature, in a moment of direct embodied experience for himself, that he could begin to find the voice. With Serkis' performance a point of reference but not an object for mere imitation, Fröhlich's dubbing performance drew on a range of input, including his own critical reflection of Serkis' work, physical techniques, emotional experiences and technical skills, to find his own voice for Gollum.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
The voice for Gollum that Fröhlich ultimately developed can be experienced, and will be compared by me to Serkis', via the provided clips, which show the same scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and Der Herr der Ringe: Die zwei Türme (2002). This is an interesting scene in terms of performance, given that the film here explicitly foregrounds the split personality of Gollum/Sméagol, with the two personas arguing over their loyalty to Frodo.
Serkis has spoken of his decision to develop a choking sound for Gollum's voice based on the character's guilt over strangling his brother, and further inspired by Serkis witnessing his cat retch up a fur ball.7 Certainly, his is a guttural vocal performance, for which, I would argue, he lowers the centre where his voice is produced and makes use of phlegm in the back of his throat as a resonator to produce a rumbling sound. This underlying growl, combined with the physical strength evident in the jumps the character makes, invest his Gollum with a sense of malevolent threat. While the sibilant 's' in Gollum's speech inevitably connects that character to the snake, there is a quality of a lurking, ape-like monster to Gollum with Serkis (who, interestingly, went on to undertake motion capture for primate characters twice).
Fröhlich, on the other hand, to me produces his voice more through lips and tongue, and with his pitch located more mid-register, his Gollum has a drier, more hissing delivery. In congruence with the prevalence of sharp sounds (such as 's', 'ch' and 'sch') in German, Fröhlich's voice connects to and reorients Gollum's coiled hunch to shift the character more emphatically towards connotations of the snake. His Gollum is certainly a relational creature; developed here, I would suggest, to a point of being a more devious, if not sadistic, character – note the pronouncedly gleeful modulation of Fröhlich's tone when Gollum tells Sméagol that nobody likes him. These nuances of performance shift the dramatic construction in subtle and interesting ways.
Much, much more remains to be said about the performances here, including those of Sméagol. But in need to conclude, I will note that the work of a highly skilled voice artist such as Andreas Fröhlich shows that dubbing needs to be understood not simply as a recreation, but as a re-creation of the source text. Paying more attention to dubbing as a creative act of performance stands to make an enriching contribution to scholarly (and other) debates about performance and screen culture. Here, the perspective of the creative personnel involved is a fecund resource that can yield intriguing insights and generate new knowledge.
Image Credits:
1. Serkis-Gollum-Fröhlich
2. Andy Serkis Motion Capture
3. Andreas Fröhlich
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
Dascha Polanco, who plays Dayanara Diaz on the series Orange is the New Black (Netflix, 2013- ), is quoted in press material announcing its award for Special Achievement in Television by the 2014 ALMA (American Latino Media) Awards: "The diversity that we represent [on the series] is becoming the face of America. The show is very real and focuses on real issues." She continues more somberly, "The fact that it is such a big deal that there are six Latinas on a hit show is an indication that there is more work to do."1
The unbridled optimism of the first part of Polanco's quote is an apt illustration of the usual tone of the awards show, which celebrated its "Quinces," turning 15 with its October 15 broadcast on msnbc. In addition to Orange is the New Black, this year's show recognized the film Cesar Chavez, rapper Pitbull, and Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro for their contributions presenting or promoting progressive Latina and Latino images. Sponsored by the National Council of La Raza, the largest U.S. Latino advocacy organization, the show is similar to the NAACP's annual Image Awards in celebrating actors, directors, and other notable media professionals, as well as films and television series that have enhanced Latina/o American representation in the prior year.
Click here to view the embedded video.
I've always had a soft spot for the ALMA Awards, since my late mother and I got to attend the show in 1998. Decked out in hastily purchased but still-elegant evening gowns for the occasion, we basked at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in the close proximity of the likes of Constance Marie, Edward James Olmos, Rita Moreno, and then up-and-comer Jennifer Lopez and caught unforgettable performances by Celia Cruz and Lalo Guerrero. But as I'll elaborate on below, I think it and similar awards shows have limitations as forums for promoting greater and more meaningful inclusion of Latina/os or other marginalized groups in film and television.
On the plus side are the shows themselves. In the case of the ALMAs, it's a festive celebration of Latina/o achievements, a party for the hard-working members of Latinowood that have pulled them off, and an entertaining treat all of us who get to eavesdrop on the event through the broadcast. As a slickly produced media event (co-host Eva Longoria underwent an impressive ten wardrobe changes during this year's show), it's accessible to viewers of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. Clearly, it aims to raise awareness of issues of Latina/o marginalization in the media and to do so in an upbeat, entertaining manner. This is no small thing. But what gets lost if such events are the only method of Latina/o media advocates hoping to improve the "quantity and quality of representation that Hispanic Americans receive in the mass media"?2 I would argue that an oversimplification of the politics of Latina/o representation can be the unintended downside.
First, awards shows, in their emphasis solely on a handful of successful projects, actors, and media producers, neglect to educate viewers about the more complex dynamics of the typical exclusion of Latina/os and Latina/o communities from most film and television narratives (and therefore from the American imaginary) and of Latina/o representation that still excludes many Latina/os—those too brown, too poor, too Spanish-speaking—while making stars of a select few. While the NCLR has honored actors, films, and television shows that highlight the diversity of American Latina/os, with Orange is the New Black and Cesar Chavez useful illustrations, the performers recognized on Latina/o media awards shows such as the ALMAs too often reinforce Hollywood paradigms of ethnicity and casting that have dictated the casting of fair-skinned or comfortably bronzed and fully assimilated Latina/os almost exclusively over the decades.
Second, shows such as the ALMAs can give the false impression that there is no more work to be done, that Latina/os have gained employment and status at all levels of decision making in film and television production, and that we can now just sit back and enjoy the fruits of this progress. Sadly, that scenario is far from reality today. As researchers at Columbia University found in a 2013 study, Latina/os are still dramatically underrepresented as lead actors in television series and films (none were found in 2013 prime-time series or in the top ten films of the year) and as media professionals, despite making up 17% of the American population.3 From 2010 to 2013, Latina/os comprised 2.8% of television directors, 0.4% of television producers, and 1.7% of television writers. In film, they were 2.3% of working directors, 2.3% of producers, and 6% of writers. Among the top 53 radio, television, and film executives in the media industries, only one (of 1.88%) was Latina.4
While there clearly is a dire need for it, Latina/o media activism and other advocacy for underrepresented groups is no easy task, particularly in this era in which many Americans think we've graduated to a post-racial and post-feminist media culture and no longer need to fight for egalitarian representation and in which media advocacy organizations operate on shoestring budgets. Scholars of ethnic media advocacy such as Kathryn Montgomery, Chon Noriega, the TeleVisions Project team (led by John Downing and published as Mary Beltrán, Jane Chi-Hyun Park, Henry Puente, Sharon Ross and John Downing), and Scott Wible have also noted the challenge that media advocates face with respect to keeping their mission interesting and timely to the news media and public.5 Wible noted in a study centered on advocacy encouraging viewership of the Showtime series Resurrection Blvd. (2000-2002) that Latina/o media advocacy has had to evolve in the last decades based on FCC and market shifts; media advocates are now expected to approach viewers as "consumer-citizens" who enact progressive change through their remote controls and their pocketbooks as opposed to through former tactics of sit ins, boycotts, and protests targeting studios and networks.6
With this in mind, awards shows and annual "report cards" given to each major network regarding their employment and representation of specific groups are some of the primary tools used in recent years by ethnic media advocates such as the National Hispanic Media Council, which spearheads Latina/o efforts targeting the television industry. Notably, both of these strategies can become limited through rewarding "positive" but at times unsubstantial progress, such as in the casting of recent TV roles with actors and actresses of Latina/o and partial Latina/o descent paired with characterizations and storylines that included very little or no acknowledgment of Latina/o cultural identities or communities.
Finally, these awards shows also can reinforce the misleading dichotomy of "positive" and "negative" images, sidestepping more complicated but potentially enriching discussions of meaningful inclusion, narrative importance, and the ways in which Latina/o culture and communities are valued or not within Hollywood narratives and thus within the American imagination. And who gets to decide? Ultimately, notions of positive and negative are subjective to each of us. Too often, these notions also get simplistically paired with ideas about class, in relation to promoting the myth that poor characters are always negative stereotypes and that conversely, "positive" images always present a group aspirationally with respect to profession and income. The one-dimensional Latina lawyer with no connection to her cultural heritage then might be viewed as a more desirable image than a working class Latina maid with dignity and intelligence who takes pride in her identity as Latina and who is connected to and fights for her Latina/o community. I don't think the NCLR has fallen into this trap this year, with its recognition of a series about women in prison and a film celebrating the leader of the Chicano farm workers' movement. But it's an issue to be aware of when awards shows aim to decide on the most "positive" images and narratives of the prior year.
I'm still drawn into the pomp and exuberance of the ALMA Awards and the stars who participate in and are recognized by them, but I believe the awards should be paired with efforts to introduce these more complex issues to audiences as well.
Image Credits:
1. Selenis Leyva and Dascha Polanco accepting the ALMA Award for Special Achievement in Television for Orange is the New Black
2. Jennifer Lopez receiving the 1998 Alma Award for her role in Selena
3. The cast of Resurrection Blvd., which aired on Showtime from 2000-2002.
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
Warm up the projector, queue the clip, turn up the volume, and dim the lights. This routine is no doubt familiar to many of us, as we prepare to show a film, a short clip, or other media in our classrooms, at a conference, or in other presentations. It is not, however, without its challenges.
The wireless internet is patchy, and the clip doesn't load. The projector bulb is burned out, with no means to quickly replace it. Your university has scrapped all of the VCRs. For some reason there's no volume. Any of these, or similar, mishaps can derail a presentation for all involved.
The failure of such presentational media technology has been described as the "slightly hilarious" curse of the new media scholar, who depends upon digital tools to conduct and share scholarship.1 And the curse is spreading. Within increasingly digitized classroom spaces, and in online course contexts, we all become subject to the whims of technological systems, making choices and creating workarounds to accommodate what our tools will and will not do at a given moment. Students, similarly, experience the failure of new media performance, as online forms refuse to submit, videos do not load, and readings that we know were posted are suddenly inaccessible; the volume of screenshots documenting such failures speaks to students' growing familiarity with such failures.
The very commonplace nature of such failures, or glitches, ought to indicate that the functional media, presentational tools, and classroom technologies that surround us are neither transparent nor free of embedded values and expectations. Yet, as Peter Krapp has argued, "our digital media culture is predicated on communication efficiencies to an extent that can obscure or veil the sources of noise as faults, glitches, and bugs are too often relegated to the realm of the accidental."2 In fact, these inefficiencies are constitutive of digital media technologies and their operations, leading Krapp to call for the study of digital media culture from the perspective of these pervasive misfires.
This corrective is necessary because of the grand narrative of digital media as a march toward ever better, smaller, more reliable, and more pervasive technologies integrated seamlessly with our needs and uses. Such a narrative is as strong, if not stronger, in the context of presentational or educational technologies. This was the claim made by educational radio,3 by Channel One and Sesame Street, and it is the claim most recently made by purveyors of massively open online courses.4 When one states that a given media or technology will "revolutionize" education, one partakes in this narrative, which is, at heart, an ideology of ability.
By calling this an "ideology of ability," I want to indicate that this discourse presumes that media technology will function seamlessly, will enable its users to do particular things, and will ultimately improve the state of education. No matter the evidence to the contrary, as seen in countless glitches, miscommunications, or failures, these precepts remain in place. Under an ideology of ability, classroom media are both valorized and made invisible in their functioning. The media, and the pedagogical activities that rely upon them, are furthermore technologies of ability, in the Foucauldian sense. They assume and enforce a normative set of bodily abilities as prerequisites for learning, and their growing imbrication in standard forms of pedagogy and academic communication only cements their power to exclude those who may not embody these normative bodyminds.5
To begin from the point of failure, from the inefficiencies, from the exclusions means that it is particularly fruitful to consider the use of presentational and educational media within film and media studies from the standpoint of disability. Several cases of digital media inaccessibility have risen to national attention in recent years, most notably the injunction against campus use of e-readers that did not have controls that could be navigated non-visually. Yet, at a more mundane level, standard presentational and educational media technologies exclude students with disabilities on a daily basis. The ideology of ability evident in these media technologies reinforces a broader cultural ableism that casts disability as an individual deficit to be solved privately (rather than as a social problem requiring collective solutions).6
For example, our omnipresent media clips may not be captioned (for d/Deaf or hard of hearing students) or audio-described (for visually impaired students). In some cases, this is a failure of technology–these features may not be available. In other cases, it is an enactment of instructor privilege, assuming these features to be unnecessary to a class presumed to be able. Yet, there is no simple solution. Clips that are not captioned require instructors to find campus services to help, or to learn how to caption clips themselves (a time- and labor-intensive process). Campus services may offer to make clips accessible for students with disabilities, but often do so via private, streaming services that the student must access from their own computer on their own time. Though this provides accommodation, it is, in the words of one closed-captioning professional, "not the same experience" as the shared viewing of a traditional media screening or in-class clip.
There have been some indications that, "with the growth of online education, it is now largely the obligation of the instructors themselves to proactively design courses that are equally accessible to all students."7 Such a stance drastically increases the scope and quantity of instructors' labor, particularly as course management systems are often purchased from third parties and offer limited technological flexibility. The accessibility oversights of software are being made the responsibility of those with limited knowledge or skills in this area, or are being put off as matters of accommodation (which requires students with disabilities to be extremely proactive advocates for their needs and rights).
Accessibility of media technologies, in classrooms and online, is a crucially important issue. Since the advent of online education in the early 1990s, these technologies have been hailed as "liberation technologies" for students with disabilities;8 their inclusive potential, however, is contingent on accessibility measures. In 2010, the Departments of Justice and Education issued a joint letter to universities reminding them of their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504: "it is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students."9 Yet, accessibility problems persist, in classrooms and online.
Scholars and instructors of media studies are unusually well-suited to critical reflection on classroom and course management technologies in their functions as technologies of ability. In our regular use of media screenings and clips, and our experience critiquing media systems, we have two areas of expertise that could better inform the growing integration of digital media in higher education. We are well-positioned to recognize the failures and exclusions of these media, and to advocate for structural changes that make it possible for individual faculty to create accessible learning environments without taking on another full-time job. As this field has been active around the changes brought by digitization to copyright policies,10 so ought we to be active regarding proposed measures such as the TEACH Act, which would create guidelines for the adoption of accessible technologies in higher education.11 Not the realm only of technologists or administrators, the media technologies used in our teaching are deserving of the same attention to power, agency, and exclusion that we might give to popular media and technologies in other contexts.
Image Credits:
1. Elizabeth Ellcessor
2. Elizabeth Ellcessor
3. Elizabeth Ellcessor
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
Shortly after NBC announced it wouldn't be renewing its cult sitcom Community for a sixth season, I sat down to re- (re- re-) watch the series. I already miss the show – an apt reaction to a series that encourages nostalgia for a shared pop culture past. Through allusion and parody, Community chronicles how seven students at Greendale Community College evolved from study group to close-knit circle of friends. The show has even been called "perfectly postmodern television" for how it jumps playfully from genre to genre, self-consciously referencing cultural texts and trends along the way.
There is definitely pleasure in Community's rapid-fire references; "App Development and Condiments" lampoons Zardoz, Logan's Run, and Animal House, among others, to depict a social networking dystopia. Yet the series differs from Fredric Jameson's characterization of postmodern mimicry as pastiche: a "blank parody" devoid of any critical or reflexive impulse.1 Instead, Community's characters (and not just its audience) turn to pop culture for comfort and security, constructing meaning in the present by weaving together past texts. In doing so, the study group demonstrates what Jean-François Lyotard identifies as a postmodern "incredulity toward metanarratives," a loss of belief in stories we use to explain and organize everyday practices.2 Family, romance, meritocracy – these types of narratives no longer carry the comforting weight of Truth; the patterns they predict and expectations they generate are frequently stymied by experience.
A string of such disappointments has brought Community's protagonists to Greendale. Britta's grassroots activism doesn't create change; Shirley's housewifely devotion doesn't prevent her husband's infidelity; Pierce's inherited wealth doesn't secure respect; Troy's athleticism doesn't lead to a football career; Annie's determination doesn't lead to academic success; Jeff's skill as a lawyer doesn't ensure stable employment. These failures define and haunt the characters over the course of the series, and in a climate of permanent precarity, the students seek solace in nostalgia.
Nostalgia is an affect: not a quality built into texts, but our emotional response to a text. This response is heightened when we are reminded of a time when we believed things were simpler, easier, more comfortable, more secure. Nostalgia tells us less about the past and more about the present: "The simple, pure, ordered, easy, beautiful, or harmonious past is constructed (and then experienced emotionally) in conjunction with the present – which, in turn, is constructed as complicated, contaminated, anarchic, difficult, ugly, and confrontational".3
Community's study group nostalgically re-experiences past pop culture to work through current feelings of failure and inadequacy. In "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas," for example, Abed imagines (and the audience sees) his reality in stop-motion animation, a striking visual homage to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. The study group sets out to find the meaning of Christmas, a trip Abed warns will "test your commitment to Christmas, Wonka-style." Half-hearted participants are booted from the mission (Jeff is devoured by humbugs who were drawn to his sarcasm), and their comeuppance chronicled in song, like those by the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
As the episode unfolds, we learn Abed's mother (long divorced from his father), has given up their yearly tradition of watching Rudolph together – she has a new husband and child. Abed is attempting to preserve the importance of this experience so he doesn't have to confront its absence. However, this is only "the past as imagined, as idealized through memory and desire," a point driven home when Abed finds a box marked Meaning of Christmas, which contains the first season of Lost.4 As he explains, "It's a metaphor. It represents lack of pay off."
Similarly, in "Basic Human Anatomy," Troy grapples with ending his relationship with Britta. Stuck between the known framework of a romance he no longer desires and the unknown fallout to their friendship if he ends it, Troy turns to the plot of Freaky Friday, convincing Abed that the two of them have switched bodies. It's easier for Troy to lose himself in the possibility Freaky Friday represents: taking on the attributes of someone else to so that he is not the one navigating uncertain emotional territory. Like Abed's imagined winter wonderland, this fantasy is ultimately unsustainable and its precipitating emotions unavoidable, as Troy eventually realizes: "I understand why you had to go high concept – because you're scared – but Britta deserves better." Troy and Abed switch back into their own bodies, and Troy and Britta amicably, if sadly, end their relationship.
By the start of the fifth season Jeff has graduated, failed to get his own law office running, and returned to Greendale as an instructor. Highly anticipated by fans, this season's "G.I. Jeff" episode deftly reproduces the look of the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon series. At the centre of the cartoon's story is Wingman (Jeff), a dedicated soldier who is suddenly lethal – a riff on the original cartoon's large amount of gunfire with very few casualties. Wingman, along with Buzzkill (Britta), Tight Ship (Annie), and Three Kids (Shirley), get locked up in a cell, where they meet Fourth Wall (Abed). Fourth Wall insists that their lives aren't real, something he discovered at a secret Cobra site named Greendale.
The very mention of Greendale makes Wingman black out; these moments are filled with parodic G.I. Joe television commercials in which children play with action figure versions of Wingman and his team ("It doesn't hurt because it isn't real!"). Both the cartoon and the commercials are hallucinations, from mixing a bottle of scotch with a handful of homeopathic "youth pills" as Jeff tries to run from the reality of his life at 40: "I'm not going back. I don't want to be a middle-aged community college teacher. I want to be in G.I. Joe. I want to fight for freedom wherever there's trouble – forever!" An "inadequate present and an idealized past" collide when Jeff confronts his changing career and self-identity.5
Popular culture is worked into the emotional heart of Community because these texts have real meaning for the protagonists. The study group uses narratives from their youth as a way to manage the fact that their present lives aren't what they imagined. As Abed tells Jeff in "Anthropology 101": "I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense. It has structure, logic, rules, and likeable leading men. In life we have this." Pop culture is how these characters make sense and meaning when other narratives – nuclear family, happily ever after, corporate ladder – have failed. In comparison to other postmodern television programs, Community anchors the nostalgic potential of pop culture references in the characters' experiences of past texts. In doing so, it encourages the audience to remember a shared past as a way to empathize with characters whose dreams aren't coming true, yet who keep going anyway. Or, as Jeff describes them, "the Traveling Wilburys of pain."
Image Credits:
1. The Greendale study group
2. Abed finds the meaning of Christmas: season one of Lost
3. Troy and Abed switch bodies, Freaky Friday style
4. Buzzkill, Wingman, and Tight Ship
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
We already know the standard pro and con arguments for product placement: brands fill our lives, advertisers say, so it makes films more realistic when they feature those brands as well. But no, detractors argue, product placement only disrupts, stopping a narrative dead in its tracks when it appears.1 The pro/con discussion varies with usage and depends upon individual cases, so I don't intend to argue for or against product placement. Plus, I think most viewers can distinguish between realistic, unobtrusive placement and shameless cynicism: between a character simply drinking a Diet Coke and the banality of a sitcom produced by and set at Subway restaurants.
Instead, I want to move away from evaluating product placement as good or bad, realistic or distracting, and clarify what I experience when I see this practice employed: such advertising serves as an unwelcome reminder that so much of the entertainment that meaningfully fills our time, memories, and lives is made for profit. It's not that we're naïve enough to believe the opposite: we know that Hollywood filmmaking is a profit-generating business governed by economic decision-making, but we prefer that fact to remain hidden. Consider a related phenomenon: native advertising on the internet. We know that websites, like television and radio, are ad-supported, but we balk when we see web content labeled "paid post" or "sponsored content," when we know, for sure, that advertisers directly produce content or make creative decisions. Furthermore, if we oppose such web ads, how much more strongly we respond when ads invade the news (which, we hope, is as objective as possible) or the dream world of cinema.
The better a movie is (whatever one's criteria), the less we like to think of it as a commodity rather than a work of art; when we love or admire a film, we form a connection with it—aesthetic, intellectual, emotional—and to speak of the film as an industrial product seems to cheapen it. Yet product placement bluntly signals film's commodified nature: it exposes the side of cinema that most films conceal.2 The branded products made out of films (merchandising) or seen within them draw attention to the disposable, consumerist junk of capitalism: sodas, cars, toys, shirts, fast food, housewares, etc. Yet merchandising and product placement rarely surprise us in tentpole films, contemporary Hollywood's most unabashedly commercial form. After all, what else can you expect of films produced by Hasbro or Lego—or Disney? We're then quick to make distinctions between Hollywood's most commercial products and movies that matter as art—an idealistic distinction that, however false, we often make.
It's convenient to fall into the same trap that early auteurist critics of the 1950s and 60s did: to view canonical films and filmmakers as outside history and to locate filmic value in the individual creator (director). And there's a definite allure to such thinking: the idea of a great work, universal and ahistorical, surviving the test of time. That's why the early auteur critics, eager to establish cinema as an art form on par with literature, painting, or theatre, insisted on the separation—the transcendence—of auteurs from socio-historical context. As Graham Petrie explains, "By distilling something called 'personal vision' from a film, and marketing this as the 'essence' of its success, it was hoped to evade all the sordid and tedious details of power conflicts and financial interests that are an integral part of any major movie project."3 Such details, of course, are largely hidden from us unless we go in search of them. We can enjoy a film without knowing the myriad decisions that go into each shot or the financial constraints that affect what we see onscreen. A forward-moving narrative, engaging characters, and a credible diegetic world help efface, or at least postpone, such thinking about how the film is actually constructed, let alone how large a role economic incentives govern aesthetic decisions.
Yet the history of American cinema is the history of this balance between art and commerce, and it's generally acknowledged that the scales have tipped toward commerce more and more since the heyday of 1980s conglomeration and synergy.4 Watch enough contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, and you soon find yourself channeling Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Hitchcocks, the Cukors, the Capras! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!
But not so fast: it's easy to posit a mythical past, a golden age when the movies themselves mattered. That's why it's startling to learn about movie marketing techniques of Hollywood's classical era in the 1930s and 1940s. Just like today, classical Hollywood used merchandising and product placement. The former method, what Charles Eckert calls "showcasing," involved creating products—like dresses and cosmetics—based on the film, which would then debut simultaneously. The latter method, known as a "tie-up," placed branded products in films and often included magazine and show-window displays as well. 5
Such marketing was often part of ballyhoo campaigns, which promoted films in ways that make today's advertising seem lackluster by comparison. Here's an example that sounds bizarre, but is quite typical: Fay Wray was the star of Universal's 1934 film The Countess of Monte Cristo, and a dress she wears as the Countess was designed for sale in Macy's Cinema Fashion Shop. To promote the movie's premiere and the dress, Macy's put out a radio announcement that the Countess herself would visit the store. A police presence was needed because so many people gathered, many present only because they heard rumors about a countess. The moment arrives: Fay Wray pulls up in a Pierce Silver-Arrow car (another co-promotion), steps out, walks to the Cinema Fashion Shop, and then asks to see the dress she read about in the newspaper that morning: The Countess of Monte Cristo dress. At that point, some realize it's all a publicity stunt. Wray tries on the dress and then poses for photographs, which soon become the subject of new advertisements, news articles, and even a Macy's press release.6 Marketers had a clear goal for such ad campaigns: to prime audience members (especially females) before they watched a movie so that they would recognize certain objects onscreen and immediately know where they could purchase those dream-world accoutrements. And it worked: by the late 1930s, over 1800 shops carried star-endorsed clothing lines.7
Product placement and merchandising, then and now, wouldn't exist were they not effective. For example, jump to 1983, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer sees patrons leave a screening of Flashdance, walk across the street to buy the soundtrack album, and head back to the theater to watch the movie again, thus closing the loop.8 Fast-forward to 2014, and the Dunkin Donuts cups, Dreyer's ice cream, Sony electronics, or Volvo SUV you see in Gone Girl should, in theory, prompt you to purchase such items. In fact, there's no real difference between this Macy's ad from 1934 and this Volvo tweet from 2014:
This comparison gets at what's key here: when you combine the power, allure, and suggestiveness of the cinematic image with consumer products, the resulting effect is provocative in a way that a simple television commercial, magazine advertisement, or web ad could never be.9
My initial qualm about what product placement and merchandising do to the movies is perhaps misplaced; the real perniciousness of advertising, then, becomes not what it does to our media, but what it does to the spectator. Advertising shapes the movies that, in turn, shape us. On screen, we may notice individual branded products, but not realize marketing's pervasive influence. As Eckert suggests in his essay on marketing, the very glamour we associate with classical Hollywood—luxurious settings, elegant clothing, gauzy close-ups, top-of-the-line furnishings, etc.—was manufactured by ingenious publicity departments and salespeople.10 And if that's the case in the 1930s, today's situation is enormously magnified: now that traditional market research has combined with big data, corporations have enough information about our lives, our past purchases, and desires (in fact, at least 1500 "data points" per person11 ) that they know us better than we know ourselves—and thus have the ability to craft works that appeal to what they already know we want.12 Or as Google's CEO puts it, it will soon be "very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored to them."13
Although I have focused here on advertising and movies, much of what I say applies to media in general, whether radio, television, the internet, or print news. The more the line between content and ads grows blurry, the more commonplace the practice becomes, and the more we'll accept it—to the point where a branded reality is simply reality itself. When I see product placement in films, it's still an uncomfortable reminder, but we may be nearing a time when such negative feelings disappear altogether. In his recent documentary for PBS's Frontline series, Douglas Rushkoff interviews teenagers for whom advertisements and branding have become so naturalized (through the social media experience) that he cannot find anyone who knows what the word "sellout" means.14 Or as Morgan Spurlock wryly quips, there's no more selling out; henceforth, there's only buying in.
Image Credits:
1. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
2. Subway's 4 to 9ers
3. Fay Wray Macy's ad
4. Volvo tweet
Please feel free to comment.NOTES
The final Core Conversation of Flow 2014 brought to the stage a panel of industry executives with first hand experience with the challenges the arrival of a post-network era has introduced to the television industry. Panelists included Kevin Beggs, the Chairman of Lionsgate Television group; Jordan Levin, Executive Vice President of Microsoft Xbox Entertainment Studios; Kevin Reilly, former Chairman of Entertainment at Fox; Rob Thomas, television writer and producer (Veronica Mars); and Judy Trabulsi, Co-Founder of GSD&M media advertising and design company. The panel uniformly acknowledged that there remains significant change yet to come in the industrial norms of US television, but also seemed optimistic about what those changes could mean for television as a storytelling form, the audiences that love those stories, and even the corporations at the heart of the industry.
Much of panel discussion reflected on the various changes already evident. Representing the perspective of those who create television, Rob Thomas and Kevin Beggs acknowledged that there is a lot of opportunity in the contemporary industry. Buyers of original content have expanded well beyond the network era broadcast monopsony to include cable channels and various broadband delivered aggregators (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, etc.). This opportunity is not without its downsides, as few opportunities are as lucrative or even potentially as lucrative as those of the past. Thomas also noted that though there are more opportunities for writers, there are still the same number of good writers and that attracting good writing talent to projects has become challenging. Speaking more from the network/distributor side of the industry, Jordan Levin expressed concern that the "middle" is dropping out of the industry, as one sector of production continues to grow more expensive (House of Cards, Game of Thrones) with a similar expansion on the low end of production budgets (MCN/amateur space). Does this disappearing middle make it more difficult for those voices that sites such as YouTube now allow us to hear to reach broader audiences or achieve financial sustainability? Is the "middle" the terrain of certain kinds of stories that might be lost? Can this be compared to the loss of mid-budget films in Hollywood and eventually yield similar consequences?
Several panelists also addressed the substantial changes in television consumption that are evident as "emerging" practices and may one day be "dominant"—to draw from Raymond Williams' categories of technological change. In contrast to the perspective of the first Core Conversation, the panelists identified significant evolution in the form of television programming. Whether the blurring of genres that has become common, expanded flexibility in program lengths, or the increasingly myriad business models through which the industry and program creation are financed, it is clear that the present and future of television feature much more multifaceted possibilities than the past, even if the actual process of making programs has not profoundly changed.
Both those on the panel with primarily creative duties as well as those representing the work of networks and distributors agreed a fundamental shift that might be described as the transition of television programming from a form designed to reach mass audiences to one designed for niche audiences has enabled the medium to explore very different stories. Thomas distinguished this as the shift from a goal of making television "20 million people like, to the television two million people adore." Though a lot of television continues to aspire to reach audiences of 20 million and does so—particularly football and some reality contests—all seemed excited by the possibilities this transition might allow (though it should be noted no panelists currently employed by a broadcast network were present). And though programming strategies, technology, and distribution systems now allow for this post-network version of television, the industry's economic model remains mired in network era norms and practices.
Discussion of niche content also allowed the panel to return to a question Horace Newcomb had posed to the first Core Conversation panelists—a question of the cultural consequences of the segmentation that corresponds with developing programming adored by two million audience members that likely share like- minds and tastes. Kevin Reilly suggested that broader audience reach may still be possible; he explained that developing stories that target narrow sensibilities and then trying to scale them from that target has emerged as a potentially more viable strategy than producing content designed for a broad audience. Beggs noted that a lot of the content that now stands out in pockets of cultural conversation engages viewers to "lean in" and may lead that content to inspire even deeper conversations and deliberation even if those programs are not as broadly shared.
But, as Reilly noted, the "genie is only halfway out of the bottle." Despite the sizable changes evident thus far, the panelists suggested many substantial changes remain on the horizon. The nature of the future of television seems dependent on the evolution of network era business models and rights structures that are poorly matched to the technological and distribution possibilities of the post-network era. Levin provocatively suggested that the sizable burden of financing content creation currently characteristic of television's first window is misplaced in the emerging viewing environment. The panelists concurred that the frustrations many avid television viewers articulate about uncertain and changing access to programs on different VOD and SVOD platforms result from the structure of rights agreements that Reilly characterized as "insane," which echoed an earlier statement by Beggs who noted that it took longer to develop the rights contract for Orange is the New Black than to make the first season. It was clear that panelists understood viewers' desire to consume content at their convenience, and Reilly suggested that he expected an expansion from the "rolling five" VOD availability on many MVPDs to the full current season. This discussion highlighted an important voice missing from this conversation—the MVPDs that deliver content. Pending regulatory action on both "net neutrality" and various mergers have significant implications as the future of the Internet is very much related to the future of television.
Reilly also emphasized "discovery" as an important feature of how television is yet to change, and Levin hailed social media as the most revolutionary thing to happen in media in the last century. Smarter search mechanisms will enable greater downstream value if business models evolve in the way Levin suggests. The panel also featured insights from Judy Trabulsi, representing the perspective of advertisers. Trabulsi emphasized television's continued importance to advertisers as a medium capable of spreading advertising messages widely and quickly, though also noted that pricing needs to start acknowledging the smaller reach. Given the substantial disruption to network-era business models that will be needed to resolve the complicated rights and distribution contract structures, it remains unclear whether advertising will continue to be as central to funding all or most of US television to the degree it has to this point—though it certainly works well for time-sensitive programming such as sports and reality contests. Levin's thought experiment of shifting the financial burden out of the first window may make advertiser-supported television particularly important to financing programs first being introduced to viewers, while it may be less significant to models that allow the expanded access those who prize particular content continue to desire.
Image Credits:
1. Core Conversation 3
2. Game of Thrones
3. Multi-Channel Networks
4. iZombie
5. Orange is the New Black
Please feel free to comment.]]>
A familiar conceit runs through most of Aaron Sorkin's television series, from The West Wing, to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and most recently The Newsroom. Each of these shows is organized around creative, smart, and insightful characters who rail against mediocrity, ignorance, and petty self-interest. In some of these programs' most satisfying moments, these characters' frustration boils over, and we see them finally knock the troglodytes back on their heels. This trope arguably worked best on The West Wing, whose shadow Presidency was liberal porn for disgruntled Democrats through the Bush years. The late night comedy setting of Studio 60 was ultimately incommensurate with the ambition of its lead characters to save television for all those who were mad as hell (an outrage that found a more apt arena on The Newsroom), but the narrative pleasures of all three series were more alike than different. In each, smart men did smart things for the common good.
Such was the tone in the room at the first Flow Core Conversation at this year's conference. It was an impressive lineup: journeyman writer and director Michael Zinberg (The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, The Good Wife, and dozens of other prime-time directing credits), Howard Rosenberg (25 years as the LA Times' chief tv critic), and the beloved TV auteur David Milch (Hill St. Blues, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, Luck), in a free-wheeling and lively discussion moderated by television scholar and former director of the Peabody Awards Horace Newcomb.
It was an engaging conversation, and one that led both to familiar moments of recognition and some genuine insights. For starters, the participants all lived up to their reputations as smart, funny, and reflective about both themselves and the medium they've been working in and around for their entire careers. Rosenberg invented a position for himself as a newspaper TV columnist first in Louisville and eventually at the LA Times, self-deprecating that "the bar was so low, it was almost impossible to fail." In the process, he helped to reinvigorate popular TV criticism, an omnibus task that required a decathlete's diverse skill set. Television is, after all, in Rosenberg's words, "about everything. I could write about politics, I could write about sports, I could write about housekeeping."
For his part, Michael Zinberg began working in local television in his home state of Texas, and moved to Los Angeles in 1968 in hopes of writing and directing. Working his way up from usher and gofer, he built his early career at MTM Enterprises, most notably as writer, director, associate producer, and eventually producer of The Bob Newhart Show. At several points in the conversation, he made TV scholars' hearts flutter just a little, as when he reflected on the 1973 writers' strike and the subsequent reorientation of the industry that began at Lorimar, Tandem, and MTM: "it was the best thing that ever happened to TV." Zinberg went on to characterize the networks as dominated by risk-averse non-thinkers, and asked the scholars in the room to pay more attention to the impact of ownership and the FCC's Financial Interest in Syndication rules. "There are no more Norman Lears, no more MTMs, because the networks own everything. Creative opportunities are due more to the diversity of outlets than anything." The industry is much less favorable to independent production today than it was in the 1970s, because "the studios own damn near everything."
Much of the conversation circled around questions of creative agency, and despite their obvious thoughtfulness about the limitations of the corporate system, they largely agreed that television remained a medium in which creative people could find a voice, and an audience. As imagined by these industry figures who got their start in the 1970s, television remains more or less the same storytelling medium it has always been. Zinberg insisted that "once TV became the primary storyteller for the American public [in the early 1960s], not much has changed."
It's likely that no one embodies the fierce charisma of the idealized TV writer more than David Milch, who came off as the enfant terrible of the group. His first gig was wrangling the peanut gallery on The Howdy Doody Show: "There was a kid blowing his nose into his hand, and that was disgusting. So I crossed over there, and knocked out his two front teeth. That was my first job in TV." True or not is irrelevant; the story works. When discussing the impact of new distribution technologies like Netflix on the working life of a writer-director, his voice dropped, he leaned out over his glasses, and he growled that "the jungle will find out what you're doing there." Milch could clearly be both wildly imaginative and deeply insightful, as when he reflected on the twin dramas of watching Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on television in 1963 and the grisly ISIS beheadings of this year. The fundamental role of television storytelling, fictional or otherwise, he said, is to create a world with which "you can coexist emotionally," balancing fascination with repulsion. Those horrific murders ruptured that balance, but in doing so revealed something about our relationship with television, and with Milch's work in particular. He went on to characterize his HBO series Deadwood succinctly; it was an experiment about "what happens when a lie is agreed upon."
Click here to view the embedded video.
Perhaps because they were all invested in an ideal of TV authorship and creativity to which they've devoted most of their lives, none of these longtime pros seemed especially willing or able to be critical of how the industry defines, measures, or rewards success, or the kinds of representations of American life that circulate on it. Maybe it's because they recognize that their biggest commercial successes weren't necessarily those that they felt were genuine creative achievements; maybe it's simply well-earned cynicism about the corporate decision-making machine. Regardless, even when pushed by the audience or by Newcomb, who raised the issue of television's waning role as what he has enduringly theorized as a cultural forum ("we're losing the sense of a shared experience, and satisfying only personal tastes; something has altered the relationship, the ecology of the medium. We need to talk about this a little bit"), they had little response. Milch was mostly interested in reflecting on the nature of creativity, a mad waltz he knows well; Rosenberg recapitulated the vague progressivism of TV executives' own self-image when he credited Modern Family with helping to change the landscape of LGBT rights; Zinberg was more reflective, observing that "diversity is something that is spoken about in Hollywood with great sincerity. By and large, the real decision makers are chicken-hearted, and when it comes down to it, they will make decisions that will baffle you. Some of us raise hell about it. Some of us don't."
Near the end of the conversation, Newcomb reflected on the centrality of network television to his experience of the civil rights movement growing up in the South, observing with regret that "we could have a great show about race today, but the only people who would watch it would be those who wanted to watch it, not those who needed to watch it." This kind of cultural forum argument may have once seemed to be a descriptive observation ("this is how television works"), but it's clear that for many of us – Newcomb included – it's also an ethical argument ("this is how television should work"). For all their insights, and for all their obvious good will and generosity, this wasn't a line of inquiry that the panelists could speak to. It was clear that their most meaningful relationship with television was through the muse of fictional storytelling – which is, perhaps, enough.
And yet, just as with The West Wing or The Newsroom, it seems a little empty to simply revel in the (genuine) pleasure of watching smart guys demonstrate their chops. Their magnetic personalities and wry disaffection make them great storytellers of lives spent in the Hollywood trenches, but I have to think there's more to the conversation than that. Because the panelists were all very successful older white men at the end of their careers, there was very little friction about how we define such things as "success" or "creativity", and there was little space to critique just who has the opportunity to pursue those virtues. By not asking hard questions about who holds that power, and why, the panel reinforced the sense that despite its capricious economism, the TV industry is ultimately a meritocracy within which the truly creative can thrive. I found myself wishing that the panelists had been participating in some of the other conference roundtables (like the one on job opportunities for women, people of color, and women of color in the industry), or even the Twitter backchannels about the unselfconscious nepotism that so clearly gave several other industry panelists their foothold in the business. Milch, Zinberg, and Rosenberg are all obviously smart and thoughtful, and they would likely have had even more to say in a conversation that pushed them a little off the auteur center.
So, too, for the representation of our field in these Core Conversations, which act powerfully to define a perceived center and its margins. Of the eleven invited panelists who participated in them, ten were from the industry, and ten were white men. As we look ahead to future Flow conferences, perhaps we can embrace the broader history of our field – a new discipline founded largely by a generation of feminist scholars who helped make television an object of legitimate study precisely by exploring its cultural illegitimacy. This observation was discussed very thoughtfully in at least one roundtable, and would make a fantastic Core Conversation in the future. Our field was shaped heavily by outsiders; they deserve to be at the center of the histories we tell.
Image Credits:
1. Core Conversation 1
2. The West Wing
3. MTM Enterprises
Please feel free to comment.]]>


text:
Carolina Lugo & Carolé Acuña's Ballet Flamenco
Ballet Flamenco Dance Starring Mother-Daughter Duo Carolina Lugo & Carolé Acuña
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Artistic director Carolina Lugo, her daughter Carolé Acuña and their talented company of singers and musicians bring the sultry and sensuous flamenco dance to vibrant life. Their show combines the pulsating sounds of footwork, song, castanets, syncopated hand-clapping and guitar for a riveting display of this true Spanish art form. The award-winning ensemble has been providing Bay Area audiences with passionate performances for more than 15 years, bringing artists from Spain and abroad to appear with them. Sunset Magazine writes, "Flamenco star Carolé Acuña brings the soul of Spain to San Francisco."
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The last date listed for Carolina Lugo & Carolé Acuña's Ballet Flamenco was Saturday June 28, 2014 / 7:00pm.
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The New York Times nailed it when the Grey Lady declared playwright Rinne Groff "a maste...Learn More
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attended Apr 26 2014
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The dancers, singers, and musician were all fantastic -- beautiful performances. Thanks to the dance troupe and music, a crowd descended on the restaurant, which was not well prepared that night. I hope it goes better next time.
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Stelle Bistro offers a fusion of traditional and modern Italian cuisine with other international dishes and features an extensive wine list.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Brocard's problem asks if $(n-1)(n+1)$ is ever a factorial. My question is similar: is $n(n+1)$ ever a factorial?
This can be seen as the special case $k=2$ of the question: for $2\le k\le n-2,$ when is $n!/(n-k)!$ a factorial? I know of only one case, $10!/7!=6!$ (see A109095).
I have verified the absence of solutions for $n<10^{85}$ so their absence seems certain. Can this be proved? (Has it been?) I would also be interested in information on the general problem.