I’d say at least three times a week I browse through nearly everything offered instantly from Netflix.  Typically there’s a heavy glass of red wine sitting next to me on my floor – that needs to be vacuumed with something of industrial strength – that I’ll get to once I put my X-Box controller down.  My intention is to see what is new on “instant watch” and then start buffering up a movie that hopefully doesn’t suck.  A good lot of the time I browse for too long then flash through my queue and can’t decide on any one thing.  Why?  Too many options.  I’ll even work together with my roommate Jordan to widdle down the choices, but usually I give up and head to my room for a comic or two before bed.

Sometimes too much is just too much.

I was born in ‘84 and I’ve seen the Super Nintendo (de)evolve into the Dreamcast then grow wings and become the 360.  Without having to read and recite a book about science, I’m saying that I’ve witnessed technology grow exponentially.  Today I have the option to watch hundreds of movies with the flick of joystick and a little pressure applied to a brightly colored button.  Oh, Band McMusic just re-released their live EP from the secret show they played in Hungary – circa ‘98 – during that accidental aerial bombardment from NATO Y-Wing.  ”Type type type” then “click click click” and I have that album sitting on my desktop.  It’s obvious that we’re spoiled when it comes to the entertainment that’s a hyperlink away and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

X-Box Live just added Last FM as an application for it’s fancy Gold Members – who pay 40 some dollars a year – and are given many more reasons to never bask in natural light.  Not that this invention is anything new to the interwebs, but I can pick an artist, make a station via that artist, and listen to music within the same vein of said artist.  I know, this sounds like the radio if you were able to put it under the microscope and manipulate what you wanted from it.  It is, but sometimes it’s just too much.

When I was a kid I had the radio, a small book of CDs, and the local Video Barn for entertainment.  I was content too.  As the years have passed and I now put onions on nearly every sandwich I make, it’s obvious my likes and dislikes have expanded.  My Mom would slice onions in our kitchen back home and just the scent was enough to keep me away from our downstairs for hours.  What used to sate or deter me as a child isn’t the case anymore.  Now I need three new movies in the mail twice a week to keep me from clawing at the walls.  There has to be a refresher from some new band I’ve never heard – or given any time to – at least a couple times a month, otherwise I start biting my nails down to the cuticle.  I’m American, I drink beer out of the can, and I need to be fucking entertained 24 hours out of the God damn day.  Yeah, it’s true.

I think I kinda lost my train of thought at some point in this rant, so I’ll get to some kind of point.

We used to worship idols made of stone and wood then men who said they were actual gods filled in that spot.  After that we started to hear these stories from wise elders about these powerful beings that have always been and will always be, so it was the smart choice to praise them.  Now we have the internet.  The internet knows all, tells all, and does all.  What else do we need?  If this laptop I’m typing on had a vagina built into it, could pour alcohol out one of it’s many ports, and ejected the makings for a sandwich from the CD drive… yup, wouldn’t leave the house.

I could go on with this, but I’d probably end up running my words and thoughts into solid wall of nonsense, which would most likely drive me to making dick and fart jokes.  Let me save you from that and tell you about some music you should be listening to.

1. Bang Maiden, they’re from San Francisco (make some unjustified generalizations from that fact alone because that’s what I’d do).  On Halloween last month they played their first show at The Parkside in the Misson and they definitely fit the bill if you wanna drink, dance, and bang your head.  They just uploaded a three song demo EP for download and I’m a fan.  Hardcore  - and whatever sub-genre within the same realm you babble about – is one of those sounds that’s in a bit of a slump as of late.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many greats acts currently putting out original and good tunes, but the majority is nothing more than the same old riffs that started in the ’80s, got reworked in the ’90s, and has continued the same cycle into the 2000’s.  What do these guys have that sets them apart from the fodder?  They don’t have drums, they got beats.  Patrick is the programming wizard in the three-piece that mixes the backbone of sound , which gives the group an artificial rhythm that is danceable… like boner-jams danceable.  It’s not too often you can listen to something that cuts a rug all Samurai Shodown 2 (I suck at that game), yet urges your veins to replace some of that red with drunk and maybe punch some random, all in good fun of course.  It’s dirty and fun, so give it a listen, go get tested afterwards, and pay me the ten bucks you owe.

2. Now these guys just got dredged out of the dungeon – I call it my iPod – and put a real dumb smile on my face.  Since the mammoth performance I witnessed a while back at the West Seattle Legion Hall, Giant became Brave Young, but the sound hasn’t changed a bit.  I’ve been allowing my music to grow a little more grand these days (drugs are bad), so the music I’m seeking needs to consume me and wall me up inside of it.  Brave Young is an undertaking that weighs on your ear drums with its heavy guitars and bass.  The sound becomes one looming entity that is lumbering with each bang of the drums and it’s one voice roars just far enough from the instruments before it melds back into the mass of noise.  This is one of those bands that I may never see live again, but from that one show – whatever summer it was ago – I feel lucky.

3. Oh yeah, I’m doing it.  Oingo Boingo has been the musical “first ice cold beer of the day” for me lately.  It’s fun, it’s upbeat, it can get a little spooky, and it’s one of those aspects of the ’80s that I don’t hate.  I’m not saying the 80’s were horrible, I mean come on, Earth Girls Are Easy?  You don’t have to say anything, just try not to get lost in Jeff Goldblum’s eyes, even though he does have mind powers.  There really isn’t any reason for me to explain any further.  Fire this shit up and let Danny Elfman do the rest.  Watch this too:

(EN) Pedro Cruz created a visual experiment with Processing analyzing the rise and decline of top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries. Looking at the video, biology and social phenomena seem closer than I thought.

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(IT) Pedro Cruz ha creato un esperimento di visualizzazione con Processing analizzando la nascita e il declino di 4 imperi marittimi del 19° e 20° secolo.  Guardando il video, biologia e fenomeni sociali sembrano più vicini di quanto pensassi.

I was thinking about film today, as I do pretty often, wondering what I’d pick if I tried to come up with a combo list of slightly strange sci-fi movies including some post apocalyptic stuff.  Films I liked.  Films that had an impact on me… couldn’t forget scenes from them, made me think a bit… that sort of thing.  This is what I came up with…. in no particular order.

2001: A Space Odyssey (68)

2010 (84)

A Boy and his Dog (75)

A Scanner Darkly (06)

Bicentennial Man (99)

Blade Runner (82)

Brave New World (80)

Capricorn One (77)

Cherry 2000 (87)

Damnation Alley (77)

Dark City (98)

Demolition Man (93)

Dreamscape (84)

Escape from New York (81)

Gattaca (97)

Handmaid’s Tale (90)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (78)

Jacob’s Ladder (90)

Liquid Sky (82)

Logan’s Run (76)

Mad Max Movies (79-85)

Matrix Trilogy (99-03)

Metropolis (27)

Minority Report (02)

Mission to Mars (00)

Omega Man (71)

On The Beach (59)

Planet of the Apes Films (68-73)

Quatermass and the Pit (68)

Scanners (81)

Red Planet (00)

Silent Running (72)

Soylent Green (73)

Stargate (94)

Tank Girl (95)

The Running Man (87)

The Day The Earth Stood Still (51)

The Island (05)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (77)

The Andromeda Strain (71)

The Time Machine (60)

They Live (88)

The Thing (82)

V for Vendetta (05)

Total Recall (90)

Videodrome (83)

The Warriors (79)

Waterworld (95)

Westworld (73)

Zardoz (74)

Des clips de toute beauté, un tantinet barrés, une musique lancinante aux voix tantôt voluptueuses, tantôt glaciales. Un style qui cultive le déséquilibre et la névrose, mais qui n’en délivre pas moins son pesant d’émotions douces. Un bon dosage de chant aux accents synthétiques et de machines-outils en quête d’humanité… Fever Ray, ce casse-tête chinois made in Sweden, est une belle découverte de la rentrée que je dois pourtant à site internet branché “bruits de fond”. Du méta-métal peut-être ???

This week has some interesting elements involving how a narratively starved culture is ripe for visual/physical over-stimulation and hungry for distraction. As explored in Gamer (Neveldine-Taylor, 2009), eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999), and The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999), the level of engagement with cyberspace causes the physical body to atrophy and become weakened. Gamer presents game-users diets as a white-bread and sugar spread regime, which also shows us a womb-like setting as the environment of game-console interaction. The absence of nutrition and exercise makes it easy for apathy to set-in and like a drug addict’s chase for the next ‘high’, as in eXistenZ, the game-users have to find a cheap hotel to setup-in for a few days to ‘plug-in’. All three of these films, and Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983), associate female reproductive organs to game-console interaction. This level of external forces, penetrating or surrounding the user, allows for outside forces to easily influence and control the flesh/mind of users. Gamer shows us a humorous dance sequence where the creator of the ‘nano-technology’, which is how remote control is possible,  acts as a puppet-master over his dance/fighting troop which seeks to prevent the protagonist from reuniting with his family and exposing the truth about the unbridled use of the ‘nano-bots’. The line between game-environment and real life is blurred and incites us to consider — as Lia M. Hotchkiss’s book “Still in the Game’: Cybertransformations of the “New Flesh” in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ — that the connection to the cyber-medium goes beyond formal perceptions of an ‘on/off’ button.

http://www.vimeo.com/5204772

Hotchkiss explores “the transformation of human experience: on the one hand, they seem attracted to the capabilities of new communications technologies but, on the other, evince suspicion of the corporate interests being served by the promulgation of those new technologies.” (p. 18) The naive positivist, of technological advance, fall prey to manipulation too easily and yet I still believe that grass-roots approach of communication technologies wins — over the narratively starved,  apathetic, spectacle junkie. Interesting how Hotchkiss uses the 1995 Cronenberg interview, with Salmon Rushdie, to parallel video game design creation with religious doctrine creation as a fictional endeavor. Notions of divine inspiration are put into doubt and the “divine word becomes a human construction”, which works to destabilize any interpretations, for that matter, surrounding the real and the virtual as “life itself is a hybrid of the real and the representational” (p. 29). Technophobes and tech-addicts both are shackled to their ideologies just as any religious sects or secular mindsets defend theirs. However, the corporate agenda preys on all divisive environments and sells to both sides. The ultimate distraction is one that lives inside or wholly surrounds the subject and impregnates its ideology into the host, just as the films discussed above make it difficult to see the line — the actual cable connection and the dividing line: real/representational.

Tomo el testigo que ofrecen Mister Crowley, Redrum, Homo Insanus y Mister Lombreeze ya que han abierto un meme bastante curioso, porque tras hacerlo uno se da cuenta que ha visto muchos finales de esos que te dejan el corazón en un puño, gloriosos, divertidos, apocalípticos y escalofriantes.  Pero también se deprime un poco porque uno se hace consciente de que ya no se hacen películas como las de antes, que vemos una enorme cantidad de basura, y que para ver algo con dos gramos de buen hacer y de buena planificación es harto difícil. Ni que decir tiene que si no has visto alguna de estas secuencias, te abstengas de darle al play, muchas son grandes e inmensos spoilers, así que en tu mano queda darle al play, yo en tu caso me iría a la mula y me la descargaba ya para verla entera. Ha llegado el momento, allá va mi top ten…

En el puesto número diez tenemos ….el final del film de Blake Edwards ”EL GUATEQUE”, está en esta lista por una sencilla razón: es muy costumbrista. Estos norteamericanos son todos muy serios y formales, pero cuando hacen fiesta es por todo lo alto y se desmadran un montón. Tan real como la vida misma.

En el puesto número nueve tenemos… el final de “EL PLANETA DE LOS SIMIOS”. Cómo recuerdo de pequeño ese final. Me puso los pelos de punta y creo que me hice fan del género en aquel momento. Además con esta elección quiero englobar a toda la trilogía de películas fatalistas que hizo Heston en su momento, como “Cuando el destino nos alcance” más conocida como “Soylent Green” o “El último hombre”, basada en el relato de Richard Matheson, y que la podéis encontrar como “The omega man”.

En el puesto número ocho tenemos… el final de “PSICOSIS”. Lo escojo por un par de motivos, el primero porque me han pillado ya “Los pájaros”, y creo que en este final mi tocayo planifica muy bien el plano utilizando la subliminalidad como recurso narrativo, eso es una plusvalía siempre. En segundo lugar, la inquietante actuación de Anthony Perkins, esas miradas a veces perididas y otras mirando fijamente a la cámara, consigue traspasar la pantalla y hacerte creer que va a por ti.

En el puesto número siete tenemos… el final de “APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX”. Esta elección es en representación del cine realizado por Francis Ford Coppola y por ser del género bélico. En este caso es magistral tanto la planificación, simbología de los elementos encuadrados, la musica escuhada me refiero al tema de The Doors “The end”, así como la soberbia actuación de Marlon Brandon y Martin Sheen. Era imprescindible que apareciera en esta lista.

En el puesto número seis tenemos… el final de “LA INVASIÓN DE LOS ULTRACUERPOS”. Mi elección es un tanto retorcida en este caso, porque trato de ilustrar que se puede hacer un remake y superar con creces al original, llegado ha realizar una obra maestra del género.  Así pues no me considero un purista, y no alabo el original por el mero hecho de serlo. En este caso Kauffman le dio una vuelta de tuerca a la trama, la actualizó, le impuso una patina sociológica que carecía la versión de los 50’s y encima nos ofreció un emblemático final que uno recordará de por vida. Todo, obviamente, gracias a la inmensa labor de Donald Sutherland y Veronica Cartwright.

En el puesto número cinco tenemos… el final de “EL IMPERIO CONTRAATACA”. Es hermoso, es grande, dice tanto que por ese motivo merece estar en esta lista. Todos los personajes ante el universo. Simplemente precioso. Creo que es el mejor final de toda la franquicia creada por George Lucas, y en él se nota la mano de su gran guionista Lawrance Kasdam.

En el puesto número cuatro tenemos… el final de “CRUISHING”. Mi elección obedece a que este actor, al igual que Charlton Heston, hizo un ramillete de películas en las que sus finales eran más que antológicos, no debéis perdeos “Justicia para todos”, “Tarde de perros” o ”Serpico”, son imprescindibles. Todas geniales y esta en concreto me encanta la actuación de Pacino que lo dice todo sin abrir la boca, además en un momento muy masculino, afeitándose. ¡Esa mirada! Es potente la escena, y Pacino consigue taladrar la pantalla al igual que Perkins, pero por otros motivos obviamente. 

En el puesto número tres tenemos… el final de “VIDEODROME”. En este caso obedece a varias razones, una es la niña de mis ojos y por eso le hice un monográfico. Dos, es uno de los finales más inquietantes creados por Cronenberg, pero no quiero olvidarme de “Scarnners” o “Vinieron de dentro de…” todos ellos memorables y que merecerían estar en este top ten. Y para finalizar, James Woods da un toque de verosimilitud con su actuación, está inmenso diciendo esa lapidaria frase: “Viva la nueva carne” 

En el puesto número dos tenemos… el final de “PRIMER”. Me encanta la simplicidad y sencillez con la que deshace toda la madeja. Eso por no hablar de la música y la tremenda voz de Shane Carrough que te va embaucando y te lleva en vilo hasta donde él quiere. Maravilloso. Este largometraje es el mejor dentro del género de viajes en el tiempo. Esta es una de las pocas películas que puedo decir que salí de verla y sentí una necesidad de volver a entrar a verla.  Y vaya que si lo hice, testigos tengo: el señor Sancho y Monsieur Copépodo.

En el puesto número uno tenemos… el final de “EL RESPLANDOR”. Me hubiera valido cualquiera del mítico Stanley Kubrick. Desde “Atraco perfecto” con esos billetes volando a ese feto mirando la tierra en “2001, una odisea en el espacio” o el caso que nos ocupa donde con la ayuda de Diane Johnson reinterpretaron el final de la novela de King y lo llevaron a su terreno. Magistral trabajo de adaptación.

Ahora os cedo el testigo, me gustaría saber cuáles son vuestros cinco finales favoritos: Miss Darko, Eulez, Marchelo, 39 escalones, Ángel, Chacal,  Ramón, Victor Guybrush, Empantallado, Gine, Álvaro, Ricardo, Mapoto, Fantomas, Dick, Miss Watflech, Varelax, Luis Cifer, Mister Frost, Alberto y todo el que quiera sumarse.

I love record shopping. Vinyl shopping to be precise, flicking through the racks, scooting for tracks and picking out potential winners, sometimes losers too, but always giving me that feeling of contentment; new grooves will soon be cut by the needle. The familiar crackle and pop of the first play – warm sound. Yeah, it’s vinyl for me.

Don’t get me wrong – I can handle a download or three, CDJs are fun bits of kit and the things you can do with mp3s are nothing short of genius. But I just can’t resist the back breaking slog of trecking out with a big sack of records. Old fashioned? No matter – my habit continues to be supported…

… I also continue to support those legends of the music world, independent record shops. Havens of the DJ and mecca to the muso, our independents continue to push the boundaries that we need to be pushed. We look to our trusty record shop staff to point us to the latest releases, pick out top pops, and like librarians of the beat with a touch more attitude, use their infinite knowledge to deliver unto us, the holy grail of record shopping – the limited release floor filler, that hasn’t yet dropped into the public domain.

I recently paid a visit to Rounder Records in Brighton and caught up with the team. Far from being swamped under the strain of the downturn, Rounder seem to be digging in for the long run. All things considered it has already been a long run – head honcho Phil has owned the place for around ten years now, but the store was opened in 1966 – that’s 43 years of vinyl trading my friends – rock on!

The sister store to Sister Ray in Soho, Rounder is currently run by Johnny and Steve of Chaos Rocks fame along with a handful of very helpful and knowledgeable staff. It’s regularly rated one of the top independent stores in the country and has been monickered by some as the “Rough Trade of the South”. It’s employed some staff in the past who’ve gone on to do pretty big things, such as  Mike Panteli, Damian Harris of Midfield General fame and some geezer called Norman. It all adds to the musical heritage of the place. Johnny and all the former staff got together recently over a fair few drinks and put together their “Best Records of Our Lifetime” list, with a top album for each year since the store opened. “It’s on a knackered computer somewhere and we’re determined to get hold of it” says Johnny. Damn right – we’d love to publish it!

In the early days; 66 to 79, Rounder was mainly a rock music oriented store, but as dance music evolved so did the the choice of what to sell. Along with all the regulars, the genres that are currently keeping business tidy are Drum n Bass, Dubstep and Disco with a healthy dose of indie and rock. “Nothing’s off limits though” says Johnny, “We just try and filter out the pop tat and give people what they want. The top tens we do here aren’t a hard and fast science – we make them up from what we love and what’s flying off the shelves. There’s always something new coming through and it’s difficult to say exactly what it is that we like the most – we just love music”.

That’s the essence really. These guys live and breathe music in a way that makes me just a bit envious – I have to switch off the noise in order to hold down my day job. These chaps brush their teeth with grooves, eat funky lunch and sleep on pillows of dub.

In his spare time Johnny DJ’s at the Maxxi Soundsystem nights (returning in May 2010 people) and is one half of musical duo Videodrome, who provide the mix of M’s “Pop Musik” in theTop Ten coming up. Videodrome are also releasing a remix of Michael Morph on December 1st (Pure Mint records), available on iTunes and Beatport (promos are around now – get yourself down to Rounder) and their first EP is out next year on Chateaux Records.

Just for you, we got hold of the Pop Music remix for you to listen to NOW!..

…AND for your delectation, Johnny / Videodrome have put together a disco / nu disco tinged Top Ten. We’ll try and get the links up to everything as the days go by and we’ll be featuring the tracks in their entirety on this Sunday’s Recess Radio Show on Deep Frequency between 4pm and 6pm. The show will be available to stream a couple of days after broadcasting here or to download here.

Johnny Rocks/Videodrome DJ Top 10

10. Sheila B & Devotion – “Spacer” – CARRERE
9. Vitalic – “Poison Lips” – DIFFERENT
8. Methusalem – “Zombie” -ARIOLA
7. M – “Pop Musik” (Videodrome Remix) – WHITE
6. Two Man Sound – “Que Tal America” – MIRACLE
5. Heaven 17 – “Penthouse And Pavement”  – VIRGIN
4. D.C. LaRue – “Let Them Dance” (PH Edit) – PYRAMID DISCO
3. Sparks – “Tryouts For The Human Race” -VIRGIN
2. Jackpot – “Brief Encounter” – RVNG
1. Phoenix – “Lisztomania” (Holy Ghost remix) -KITSUNE

“I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see”…”I am a Kinok”. Vertov is quoted here with regard to his last and most influential work “Man with a Movie camera” (1929), which presents industrial life in its often repetitious and dirty truth. The many looped segments of daily life echoes the cyclical routines that keep the world going. In a post-industrial era we are even more aware of cycles than ever before and how fragile they can be when not respected or ignored all-together — we are living an economic and Environmental shift. We are being shown how literally we are sewn to these cycles and trends, for good or for ill, just as Max in Videodrome (1983) is sutured to his video image.

The scarring that Jason Sperb explores in his “Scarring the New Flesh: Time Passing in the Simulacrum of Videodrome” (2006), describes a merging or suture of image and flesh. When this new being is created, it’s birth occurs when the represented image merges with its reference, it becomes a self-reflexive loop. The death of the old being is absorbed into the experience of the new and “he comes to embody this process directly, as he’s transformed into a human video machine”, not unlike Vertov’s Kinok. And not unlike internet users are merged to their content — as the following presentation from Socialnomics demonstrates that social media networking is the most sutured form of internet engagement.

“A scar is not the sign of a past wound,” Gilles Deleuze writes in Difference & Repetition (1994), “but of the present fact of having been wounded.” (Sperb, p.5) If the focus shifts from the scar itself — a permanent visual reminder — to the knowledge gained from the scarring experience, that when allowed to fully spread its wings, can begin to accept a new virtual flesh and its digital suture. Hopefully the best example, social media networking, becomes what the user/consumer chooses to focus on rather than a sado-masochistic fixation on the image of him/herself and other fetishized variations of the body — such as porn.

(EN) “Info-activism is about turning information into action”.  In a 50 minutes documentary,  activists around the world explain us what’s info-activism about and give us some real examples to reflect upon. Find  the screening near you or order your free copy, and maybe help them to produce subtitles in your language!

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(IT)“Info-activism serve a trasformare l’informazione in azione”.  Attivisti da tutto il mondo ci spiegano, in un documentario di 50 minuti,  cosa sia l’info-attivismo e ci forniscono qualche esempio reale su cui riflettere.  Cerca la proiezione più vicino a te oppure richiedi una copia gratuita, e magari dagli una mano a fare i sottotitoli nella tua lingua!

Productivity:  that’s the name of the game.  Things have been on the decline when it comes to me actually contributing to the world (being awesome I’ve been told isn’t enough).  I think I can change that.

So if I’m gonna get serious with creating my new true identity (Videodrome is actually a documentary) I’m going to start with, but not limited to:  throwing in my two cents, discussing film and literature with less of the word “faggot” (it’s horrible how much I love that word), maybe publishing some actual new writings of my own on here and not a bunch of unfinished thoughts, while also getting the word out on music that doesn’t make me wanna kidnap the elderly and force-feed them thumbtacks.

In summary: let’s all go get tattoos of chimps holding straight-razors.

Comadre Mixtape Vol.3

Comadre’s latest mixtape is a little bit from column A, B, and Dangers (that’s the most important part).  I’m finishing up my first time through it as I type this; loves it.  Canyons and Acts of Sedition were the ear-perkers for me in my current lull on new music.  Finally hearing Marrow recorded puts a crooked smile on my face too.  I saw them play with Gorlock, Dangers, and Sojourner some time ago at a YMCA in downtown Seattle.  Given, members of Greyskull compromise Marrow (singer included) and that band could put on a fucking hoedown, but they had such great energy for a new band.  It makes me smile to hear that energy being carried over to recording.

I think this is a good start, how about you?  Wait, don’t answer that… let’s just tango.  I’m kidding, but can you grab be two beers?  “Utah, get me two!”

At 17, Videodrome shocked me. In the first few minutes a talk show host asks if violence and stimulation on television are linked to violence in social culture, an idea which gets James Woods’ Max Renn so hot for his co-interviewee that he asks her out on national television.  Nicki brand, played by the surprisingly sublime Debbie “Blondie” Harry, in turn, is turned on by everything from being pierced mid-intercourse to hanging out watching snuff porn while being cut with a knife.  Watching these tender moments of the first fifteen minutes with my father was certainly one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my moviegoing adulthood.

David Cronenberg directs this fantastic tale of 80’s media obsession with all the surreal mania one would expect from him.  He has a very peculair love of the physicality of media, allowing videotapes to turn into human flesh on the one hand and controlling one’s mind on the other.  The characters slip in and out of multiple layers of reality, through the permeable membrane of the television screen.  Hallucination is reality after watching Videodrome, and ideas take hold and turn your stomach into an oriface; these extreme metaphors provoke some seriously stimulating cinema.  It foresaw the rise of media culture looming a decade over the horizon.  While it seems oblivious of the digital transformation about to take hold, it starkly predicts the advent of the internet / YouTube video craze.  Investigating the elusive hints of a “pirate signal” broadcasting extreme snuff videos  through cable lines, James Woods slowly becomes obsessed with the feed, searching for the creators of what is essentially a webisode, existing as short snippets of poorly produced, handheld, amateur video.  It blurs the lines between fiction and reality, and simultaneously, it anticipates the national craving for reality television which still grips the airwaves with its slimy claws.

Nicki Brand is a self-help talk-radio host by day, and a sex-craved femme fatale by night.  Debbie Harry plays her so sensuously, she makes burning oneself with a cigarette look sexy.  Seeing the movie for the third or fourth time with a lesbian friend of mine my final year in college, we both became so enamored of her gauzy beauty and sexual energy that it provoked – quite literally – a brief, but spicy erotic encounter between us.  This is the power of videodrome for true movie lovers, to turn even gay men and lesbians onto each other; it crosses my wires and fries my circuits, so boldly linking violence and film and media and sexuality as only Cronenberg could convinvingly do.  Long live the new flesh.

The Ring

The Ring introduced a generation of American moviegoers to J-Horror, a new genre of horror cinema from Japan. In reaction to the gore-driven American horror movies of the eighties, diverse influences across Japan, China and Korea began forging an artistic aesthetic for pitch-black horror films, at once minimalistic and deeply psychological, produced with an ominous mood and understated acting, eschewing torrents of fake blood and plastic face masks for sinister appliances and the iconic cloak of long, black hair. The industry was, and still is, extremely prolific, with surprisingly derivative themes, plots, and characters, but it wasn’t until The Ring that mainstream American audiences could catch a taste of this uniquely Eastern cinema. While The Ring does pay homage to the original, Ringu, it also updates it through and for American eyes. Without a doubt, screenwriter Erin Krugher does a better job of reinterpreting the genre than we have seen of an American remake since.

I think what’s especially memorable about The Ring is it’s iconography. The updates Gore Verbinski and crew made to the short film-within-the-film (the one that kills you!) really tighten its’ brief, but powerful emotional resonance – it possesses a fantastic subconscious logic, even just as a threatening series of overlapping images … Bees, horses, flies, and endless rings – it feels like we’re watching a pirate video, hacked from one of Satan’s more random nightmares, or maybe something David Lynch could have cooked up in his earlier years. Sunara, the psychic progeny of criminally negligent parents, is just as horrifying a villain as Freddy or Jason, with her chique backwards walk and mask of soggy black hair. Who cares that what she represents is now completely cliche? At the time she was certainly scary. Coughing up hair, horses like deranged lemmings, warped photographic images — these are extremely memorable visuals that ramp up the disturbing atmosphere J-Horror excels at. The cinematography, and editing, are particularly effective at creating a distance from the characters, isolating Rachel and Aiden from everyone around them cinematographically, as the narrative drives them further and further from humanity.

I’m not going to make the case that Ring 2 is nearly as fantastic a movie as the first, but the short film Rings (included with the DVD) is certainly worth watching, if nothing else but to simulate the effect of what watching all four original Ringu movies might be like. Rings is a prequel to The Ring 2 and meant to be played right before watching it. It expands on the most horrifying part of Sunara’s videotape madness, that in order to save yourself, you must make a copy of her tape and have another person watch it; in this way, you are forced to perpetuate the murder in order to save yourself. Rings takes this idea to the logical extreme, and explores a fictional community that has developed online to track the effects and spread of the tape. Given that the debilitating insanity that ensues in the 7 days after you watch the tape is much like a hallucination, teenagers have become addicted to the thrill the tape provides, pushing themselves to see how far they can go before having their “backup” watch their copy of the tape. It’s an interesting take on the idea of viral media, how an idea can spread from one person to another in the culture, and ties in a provocative metaphor about drug addiction and overdosing.

Overall, Ringu is far from the most powerful Asian horror film of recent years, but I do find it fitting that, for a horror film whose most obsessive anxiety is the spread of media as a kind of lethal disease, an American remake of it just might be.

Sterling Ruby, Anti-Print Poster, 2007

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome still haunts everyone with its refrain of “Long live the new flesh.” Here is the young James Woods as his hand and gun amorphously wrap around each other.

FOOTLIGHTS: Last week Vanessa Williams started her fourth season as Ugly Betty’s ever-scheming yet oddly lovable magazine editor Wilhelmina Slater,

WILLIAMS: Sondheim serenader

a roie which has won her three consecutive Emmy Award nominations to date. This week the former Miss America is plotting her return to Broadway with powerhouse Barbara Cook in a new nightly tribute to Stephen Sondheim. Williams starred as the Witch in the 2003 revival of Sondheim’s Into The Woods. “Ugly Betty is my priority,” she says candidly, “and we shoot in the spring — so there are going to be some days that I may not be able to do the Sondheim show. But we’re going to do as much as we can so I can do an eight-show week.” The new musical, Sondheim On

CHENOWITH: Bacharach baby?

Sondheim, will be directed by her Into The Woods champion James Lapine and is scheduled to open early next year … remember Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon in the 1960 Billy Wilder film classic The Apartment? Remember Jerry Orbach and Jill O’Hara in the 1968 Broadway musical version, Promises, Promises? Remember all those hummable Burt Bacharach-Hal David tunes like I’ll Never Fall In Love Again? Word on the Great White Way is that Wicked scene-stealer Kristin Chenowith will return

LAHTI: Carnage

to the New York stage to play opposite Will & Grace funnyman Sean Hayes in a modernized 2010 revival of the hit musical. Stay tuned … and here’s one for the Change Partners & Dance Dept.: A new cast for Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning black comedy God of Carnage will begin performances on November 17 on Broadway. Christine Lahti will replace Marcia Gay Harden; Annie Potts has signed on to replace Hope Davis; Jimmy Smits will replace Jeff Daniels; and original West End cast member Ken Stott will recreate his performance as Michael, replacing James

SMITS: replacing Jeff Daniels

Gandolfini.

FLICKERS: The 10^th annual Planet in Focus film festival, which opened here yesterday, features over 85 films on environmental issues from 25 countries, with pre- and post-screening discussions and panels and special programs for children and schools. A special section of the festival, Land & Conflict screenings, include Canadian premieres of Voices from El Sayed. The 2008 film set in the Bedouin village that is home to the largest community of deaf people in the world; and Jerusalem Moments 2009, a showcase of short films by seven young Palestinian and Israeli directors. To get all the W5, click here … and following a successful pitch at RomaFictionFest, veteran producer Pat Ferns is teaming up with Britain’s Scenario Films to

TOMLIN: class consciousness

develop Shakespeare in Venice, a dramatic series in the tradition of Shakespeare in Love. Based on exhaustive research by Alessandro Bettero, the screenplays will be co-written with award-winning British screenwriter Gareth Jones … and David Cronenberg is set to appear at tonight’s TIFF Cinemateque screening of Videodrome, his prescient 1983 thriller with James Woods, Deborah Harry and Sonja Smits, tonight at 9 pm at the AGO.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “I lived in a racially diverse and financially diverse neighborhood and I knew who was favored and who wasn’t and who had “nicer” material circumstances and who didn’t. It was the practice at our grade school in those days to stand and tell the class what you’d received for Christmas that year and it was gruesome because it was clear when a kid was lying or exaggerating out of shame, and I can remember being one of them. You might say you’d gotten a sweater and boots and a new coat and all kinds of things that you never showed up in. I can’t imagine what teacher would support such a practice today unless it was used anonymously to raise political and social consciousness and make it an illuminating exercise.”

The speaker? Lily Tomlin, on becoming class conscious at the age of 7.

MAPLE LEAF JOKES? WE’VE GOT A MILLION OF ‘EM!:

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs and possums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.

TOMORROW:

Liz Smith goes on a tear, Jacqueline Bisset goes Italian,

and Ragtime returns to Broadway — without Garth.

-/-

(EN) Imagine your 10 fingers all active in interacting with computer on a brand new interface. Would it change the way we think and create? Take a look at the future  with this infographic video created by 10/GUI to discover how higher-bandwidth interaction can give desktops new dimensions.

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(IT) Immagina le tue 10 dita interagire tutte insieme con il  computer su un’interfaccia completamente ripensata. Cambierebbe il modo in cui pensiamo e creiamo? Date un’occhiata al futuro con questo video infografico creato da 10/GUI per scoprire come l’interazione ad alta banda può dare al desktop nuove dimensioni.

Before going on to remake the Fly, Canadian director David Cronenberg made a name for himself with bizarre outlandish films designed to both expand the mind of his viewers while simultaneously causing feelings of revulsion. In other words, he is a consummate horror director. Released in 1983, his film Videodrome remains both of its time and ahead of its time all at once. A bold statement on the human condition as it relates to the media and the distancing of nearly any event through the media, Videodrome is sure to completely miss many people as it relates its message through sporadic bursts of extreme violence and perversion. Trying to understand the meaning of Videodrome is actually a lot like trying to find meaning in late night television.

The film follows the steady decline of cable TV producer Max Renn (played by James Woods) who comes across a stray transmission one night while looking for new program ideas. Having established himself as a shock TV personality, Renn is not satisfied with the base material he has to work with and is hungry for something new, something raw. Harlan, Renn’s soft-spoken his cohort who is assisting him in obtaining new programs using a pirate satellite dish, shows him Videodrome and Renn is lovestruck. The program consists of subjects being strapped to a wall and tortured, something that Renn seems hypnotized by rather than disgusted. This is something real, something raw, that he can use. In watching the film, I don’t think it really occurs to Renn that what he is seeing is not intended for entertainment at all.

During his TV appearances as a minor celebrity, he is pitted against a sexy psychologist named Nikki (played by Blondie’s Debbie Harry) whom he not only disgusts with his theories but propositions as well. The third interviewee, the eccentric Brian O’Blivion, is more concerned with the future of humanity through TV rather than what we accept as real. Exposing Nikki to Videodrome, Renn finds another convert. Nikki is determined to audition to be on the program and after finding that it is not transmitted from some obscure third-world country but Pittsburgh, she immediately boards a plane. Desperate to find out more, Renn encounters softcore porn magnate Masha who tries her best to put Renn off the scent by explaining that Videodrome is part of a political mission that has very violent aims… only to make him even more interested. The threads lead back to O’Blivion’s Cathode Ray Mission and soon Renn finds himself a tool of Videodrome and a vanguard of ‘the new flesh.’

Renn experiences several hallucinations throughout the film, such as the famous living flesh television set that urges him to interact as if it were his lover Nikki’s willing body and the horrific handgun that becomes fused to Renn’s hand. The nature of perceived reality becomes soft and pliable, much as Renn himself becomes twisted from a voyeur into an active participant in the horrific images that he is so attracted to.

When I first saw this film, I appreciated it on a surface level, recognizing it as an odd twisted film from a deranged director. As I grew more enamored with Cronenberg’s work, I could more easily appreciate the subtle touches that he placed in this film alongside the moments that both shock and repulse me as a viewer. Renn’s reaction to the torture chamber of Videodrome as entertainment speaks volumes of our society’s disassociation with reality as it has grown more accustomed to fiction. Even reality television has turned viewers into leering creatures peeking in on others if only to laugh at their expense. Videodrome exposes that truth for what it is and its message as a film is a brutal one.

Turner Classic Movies will be replaying Videodrome this Friday and offer a preview on their Underground mini-site. Honestly, I cannot imagine what this film will look like on cable, even at 2AM. Make no mistake, this is not a movie for the faint of heart. But it is also one of the most unique movies you’ll ever see.

Spéciale dédicace : Camaron, Bindhi, Perle, Grisette, Balthasar, etc.

faced with shame,
I accept a will that that’s long departed
phased with games,
I resent a world I once regarded
but now it seems the changes must be made…

celebrate! terrify me
don’t mystify your love

celebrate! terrify me
don’t mystify your love

laced with shame,
I reject a thrill that’s so misguided
faith in flames,
I’m exempt to blame that’s so demanded

but now it seems that changes have been made…..

celebrate! terrify me
don’t mystify your love

celebrate! terrify me
don’t mystify your love

a simple lie brings you down, in an ordinary way
a simple lie brings you down, in an ordinary way
a simple lie….

(EN) When computers were not a around, the supercartoon Disney camera was the ultimate tool:  a multiplane camera where every element of the scene has a different distance from the viewer. The video explains how it works.

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(IT) Quando i computer non erano in dotazione, l’oggetto preferito dei cartoonist era la supercartoon telecamera inventata dalla Disney: una telecamera multipannello dove ogni elemento della scena è posto a una distanza diversa da chi guarda. Il video spiega come funziona.

Hallelujah
as performed by Jeff Buckley

A man may be prepared to live a lie for his entire life, but many would argue that the belief someone will die to uphold proves it’s not a lie, at least not their own lie.

The problem is of course entrenchment.

As Jane Austen’s Marianne Dashwood points out, “What could be more glorious than to die for love?”

The risks of entrenchment in a concept, an “inner feeling” that (as Leonard Cohen warns) will “come and go”, that we mistake for Love is the subject that launched my first “note” two years ago.
A quick summation, us Knights on White Horses fall in love with fighting the dragon and the sweet girls fall in love with the idea of “A Walk To Remember” on which they’ll redeem the bad boy and both experiences are paramasturbatory in giving us some quest that is inwardly focused, our own affirmation of having a love that will conquer all odds, rather than Love, which is focused on the Other.

Love that is patient, and kind, and not self-serving, and all that lovely laundry list.

Love that is not so concerned with the idea of whether MY love is strong enough to WIN HER or to FORGIVE HER or to stand the test of the Montagues and Capulets and the fact that I’m a penniless Sitar Player.

No, rather, Love is concerned with the best interests of the Beloved.
“Speak the truth in love” to help another become the best they can be.
Give, out of love, without expecting return, recognition, acknowledgment, or anything else that in any way involves the Lover, but is ever focused on the Beloved.

But Death of a Lady’s Man, you say, that’s not at all romantic! Where’s the moment when [she]/[he] turns and sees you standing there, faithfully as you always have, and [she runs to your arms]/[he takes you in his arms].

“We’ll know, won’t we?
Stars will explode in our eyes.
But they don’t, do they?
Stars have their moment, then die.”
-Nick Cave
Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For

There is no waiting for someone.

As my last entry explored, we cannot find our strength in our hope for someone else, our hope in someone else, our hope in Love.

Because Love is not meant to give us our strength.

We are meant to give Love its strength.

To Love is an action, and the presence of Love in this world is not a matter of us tapping into The Force that surrounds us and being positively uplifted by a pop song or the way someone’s smile makes our heart stop and keeps it beating all at once.

The presence of Love in this world has everything to do with us taking action, it is on us to Love each other.
There is no good that comes without intention. The nature of the universe is destruction and disorder and so it is our active responsibility to go in the opposite direction.
And that is never easy.

And so we say we will require strength from outside of ourselves.

The moment we demand that Love provide us the strength to do anything, we not only cheapen Love, but we replace it with its lower-case modern substitute.

Rather, it is an act of will to Love unconditionally, and without expectation.

And I don’t just mean romance.

Most religions will agree that what you seek, whether Salvation or Nirvana or Transcendence, will require you to die to some aspect of the Flesh.

Even filmmaker David Cronenberg’s arguable masterpiece, Videodrome, demands a death of the old flesh to be born into the new flesh.

So what is it that Death of a Lady’s Man really means?

Initially, my concern was that we are at risk of destroying the concept of a “Lady’s Man” (singular possessive) in that monogamy with true fidelity is threatened, not by TV or Playboy, but by the new rules of the dating world that are based in subterfuge, manipulation, and even exploitation, as well as fear (both cultivating it in the other and the fact that fear drives so much of the new “strategy” of this game).

The fundamental argument though is before the question of the interaction even.

“You make me want to be a better man.”

And we all swoon.

Because it’s true.

When Jack Nicholson says it to Helen Hunt, it is the greatest compliment he can pay her.

But we have to go deeper.

Because there will be days she does not make him want to be a better man.

There will be days she makes him want to go on a three-week bender.

There will be days she makes him want to flirt with his secretary in such a way that she’ll find out about it. Not to make her jealous even, but to hurt her because he saw her swooning over Alexander Skaarsgard in last week’s “True Blood”.

But we can agree, it’s a good thing that he wants to be a better man.

We can agree, because if we’re lucky, we’ve encountered someone who made us feel that way.

But, like any drug, the high will fade and we better be damned sure there’s something more stable underneath it as a foundation.

And so, “Death of a Lady’s Man” calls for the death of that concept.

A Lady’s Man.

The Knight who did his deeds of valor for the honor of his fair maiden.

Isn’t it everything we want and more?

Well, if your answer was no, wait ’til you’re 30.

– Or so I’m told. I had the grave misfortune of being born far older than my years, like a Benjamin Button in desire rather than body.

It’s not enough though.

Before we can be a Lady’s Man, we have to be a Man.

It is essential that we find a way to translate the glorious ambition that loving a good woman instills in a man (I apologize, for the most part I’ll try to write less gender-specific in the future, but take what you will from it) and instead make that our standard for ourselves.

“I practiced on my sainthood
I gave to one and all
But the rumours of my virtue
They moved her not at all.”
-Leonard Cohen
I Came So Far For Beauty.

But we can’t do it for Beauty.

Do it for God, if you will.
Do it for World Peace.
Do it for whatever noble cause you choose.

And on the day that “God says nothing back but ‘I told you so’”,
on the day that they finally hold World War III out on Highway 61,
on the day even the most noble cause can’t rouse you from your bed,

On the day that Beauty is unmoved by all Leonard’s goodly deeds,

You may still be prepared to die for your belief.
But it won’t be your belief you die for, but your pride.

Because if you have claimed this cause, this “flag on the marble arch”, for long enough, it won’t matter whether it’s real, you’ll have to be heretic to yourself in order not to be heretic to the cause you’ve subscribed to.

Believe in everything outside of yourself, but first belief in everything inside of yourself.

“Man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”

But if man is finite, limited by knowing that he Is what he Is (“I yam what I yam” quoth Popeye) than his reach will not extend, and his grasp will pull his entire body down.
You do not reach the stars by looking up and stretching.

Growth.

Like a tree.

And what a tree requires to grow outwards is that it first take deep root.

Bury the ideal of the “Lady’s Man”, and in the same way that a seed must “die” to plant a new creation, there begin the roots of Man.

The possessive singular is wonderful.

You see, a modifier added to a noun adds so much.

That’s its purpose.

But first, let the noun be well built, or the phrase will have no meaning.

“I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch.
And listen.
Love, Love is not some kind of victory march.
No, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”
- Emphasis as performed by Leonard Cohen
London, 2009
Hallelujah

“Hallelujah” literally translated is “Praise Yahweh.”

It is praise and thanksgiving and an expression of gratitude and adoration.

And so, Love is not the Knight standing over the slain dragon.

But gentlemen, please do slay dragons for Love’s sake.

And Love is not Mandy Moore convincing Shane West there’s something more to his life and taking a victory lap down the aisle.
But ladies, please do continue to inspire men to better themselves.

Love is continuing to reach up and out in the midst of cold brokenness.

Love is the single most Courageous thing you can do.

Because Love is not really, really liking this person and just knowing that it’s going to work out.

Love is not candy and flowers.

Love is the definition of Courage provided by Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird”:

“Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

Because I have bad news.

Love doesn’t “win”.

The second Love wins, the world is over and Love has nothing left to do with itself.

Love, by definition, always hopes and always perseveres, and so, my friends, Love requires adversity.

Love simply continues to reach too high, not in an attempt to reach up and seize the hand of some damsel in the tower, but rather to reach up to Olympus and steal fire from the gods, not because we ourselves are cold and broken, though we are, but simply because it seems that those around us are in need of warmth.

DAVID CRONENBERG

Remakes are all the rage these days with all of the advances in visual effects these days so it’s not too much of a stretch to hear about a remake of a remake being remade by the director who did the remake of the original as well. Got all that? And one more for you to throw into the mix as well… Cronenbergs ‘VIDEODROME’ is also being remade – although not by him – as mentioned in a previous THRALL WORLD post. Read about that HERE.

David Cronenberg is again buzzing with “The Fly.”

The auteur is in talks to develop a reboot of the 1986 classic with Fox, the studio that released that film, writing and potentially directing the new pic.

The move marks an about-face for the Canadian director, who in the past has said he did not want to be involved on a remake of the film.

Read more HERE and watch the 1986 trailer for the Cronenberg directed ‘THE FLY’ below.

Movie Poster for the 1986 'THE FLY' Remake

DAVID CRONENBERG recently confirmed that he is “moving forward with an ‘EASTERN PROMISES’ sequel which starred VIGGO MORTENSEN. Read more on that HERE.

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avere un’esperienza allucinante di sabato sera non ha prezzo. Niente droghe, tranquilli. Videodrome! Film del 1982, di D. Cronenberg. non starò qui a raccontare la trama, perchè il film è da guardare senza avere avuto anticipazioni o cose del genere. Attuale e realistico, analizza gli effetti che i mass-media possono avere sugli spettatori. Arrivare ad identificare la realtà con quella dello schermo, al punto di far divenire quest’ultima la vera ed unica realtà, più reale di quella vissuta, è un rischio che si corre. Forse la mancanza di senso critico nel film è spinta all’estremo, ma, secondo me, un giorno o l’altro finiremo così, catturati, intrappolati dalla tv e da quello che ci vuole far vedere. Lomotomia di massa!

“L’arte è sovversiva perché fa appello all’inconscio. Non sono un freudiano, ma credo nell’equazione “civiltà uguale repressione”. L’arte è a favore di tutto ciò che viene represso. Quindi è contro la civiltà, contro la società con le sue norme stabilite. Più un film è collegato con l’inconscio, più è sovversivo. Come lo sono i sogni.”
(David Cronenberg)

(EN) Alternative rock band TMGB made a song about the fundamental elements of Periodic Table, and their music video it’s a stylized infographic tale about them.

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(IT) La band di alternative rock TMGB ha dedicato una canzone agli elementi fondamentali della Tavola Periodica e il video musicale che l’accompagna è una stilizzata favola infografica che li illustra.

I’ve been thinking lately about TV. Malachi Z. York, founder of the bizarre cult Nuwaubianism, once claimed that the word “television” comes from a contraction of “tell-lie-vision.” In a slightly similar but far less nonsensical way, I’ve long regarded the entire medium of television with derision. I don’t watch TV (outside of the occasional PBS or TCM, I’ve barely watched a single program on TV in this past 2-3 years) and I don’t really have any interest in it. People talk to each other about TV, or reference various shows (usually Arrested Development or something similar) to me, but I just tune out, as it were. By way of explanation, I quote Ms. Amanda Fucking Palmer:

i think i realized something profound. i only watch about 6 hours of television in a year.
when people start asking me advice about ANYTHING, from “how can i be a good artist” to “how do you manage to do so many projects” i think my new stock answer will be:
simple. i never watch any television, ever.

just don’t watch it. period. waste of fucking time. even on planes. on planes i can do movies. but television EATS YOUR BRAINS. throw that shit OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW. ok.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers had a song called “Throw Away Your Television,” and I think that sentiment still holds. Back when I was, oh, 12 or so, I could lose a whole afternoon watching whatever the fuck was on. And, in retrospect, it was a colossal waste of time. I wasn’t learning anything, creating anything, or doing anything. I remember one time, this bus driver I had, name of Destiny, was asking me about my plans for the weekend, and I said I was going to watch a Star Trek marathon. And she said, “Why don’t you try doing something that doesn’t involve TV next time?” Little did I know then what wise words they were. (This was the same bus driver who once bought the whole bus full of students ice cream, and when she moved on to a different job, told me, à la Dorothy to the Scarecrow, “I’ll miss you most of all.” Wonder where she ended up.)

In 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow referred to television as “a vast wasteland.” More than any other medium, television – “the boob tube,” back when a boob was an idiot – has been associated with the crass, the uneducated, and the lowest common denominator. So: is this reputation deserved? Is television a wasted medium, once full of potential but, over the decades, prey to corporate and commercial interests to the point that it’s basically a method of delivering advertisements with no artistic value? I’m not sure. I haven’t done enough research (yet). Nor have I read any books by Marshal McLuhan yet, sadly (though I started on Understanding Media once). But, nonetheless, I’m going to try delve for what it’s worth into what I know about television.

I am not well-educated about the history of TV (my specialty is film), but I could start with the trivial fact that a pioneering 1928 RCA television broadcast featured a Felix the Cat doll. The invention of television is generally credited to Utah’s Philo Farnsworth, or else RCA’s Vladimir Zworykin. In any case, it was invented, for better or worse, and in the years and decades following WWII, it became a more and more common household device, gradually edging out radio as the medium of choice for day-to-day news and entertainment. This is all general knowledge stuff, the basic background of a medium that colors the lives of most human beings on earth, whether by its presence or absence. So what distinguishes TV from other media? It’s superficially like film in the use of visuals paired with sound, but like radio in its episodic programming, free distribution, and commercial interruptions. This, I think, leads to some of the major reasons why Amanda Palmer, myself, and others disavow frequently watching television.

The facts are these: it’s a broadcast medium, so most programs require some kind of viewership in order to stay on the air. Not enough viewers mean not enough advertisers, which means the show gets canceled. The AV Club recently did a piece on how the fall network TV line-up has a theme of “consistency,” which I think reflects most TV programming in general – more of the same, more of the same, more of the same. When you’re writing, or making a movie, or recording music, even though many of the same content restrictions apply if you ever want to get your work distributed, they’re not as direct and inherent in your craft. The nature of television, as I see it, prohibits taking risks (in all but a few cases), because it’s all so immediate: this is going to be broadcast at a certain time, a certain amount of people are going to need to see it, etc., etc. So we get one set of bland sitcoms being cycled out for another every other year on network TV, or else we get bland specialized on programming on everything from the dreary Home Shopping Network to a channel devoted to racecars (I kid you not), and you wonder why some people have no interest in watching television?

Then there’s other attributes that have come to define television: a hyperactive tendency toward breaking everything up, so that we have a constant flow of clashing, largely irrelevant information. I very strongly suspect that hours upon hours of TV in our youth has led myself and many, many others of my generation to have mild-to-severe attention problems. I’m not condemning TV as the spawn of Satan or anything; I’m just pointing out some undesirable qualities. Every few minutes, whatever you’re watching gets interrupted by a block of fast-paced, garbled blips trying to sell you shit. This is not good. I watched Frank Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? not long ago, and it does a great job satirizing television from a 1950s viewpoint. Ads are TV and TV is ads; this is just how the medium evolved, but it means that any televised content is inextricably tied up with numbing, frantic commerce. You can’t turn on a television set without someone pitching shit to you – and generally that someone is part of the same corporate complex creating the content you’re trying to watch. As a random example, I have a video featuring a series of commercials shown on Fox in 1996.

Normal advertising is bad (and inane, and manipulative) enough, but God, when it’s directed toward kids, watch the fuck out. Sure, it’s a little nostalgic to see Captain Crunch and that godawful Casper the Ghost cartoon, but just look at how they’re presented. Here’s this! And now this! And watch this! And buy this! We’ve got a catchy jingle! Fast-talking corporate mascot! BUY! So it’s not just the actual content of TV shows that’s nauseating; it’s the in-betweens, too. And since TV is shown in these tiny chunks, it all blends together, one show to the next, in what intro CAMS calls “televisual flow.” So it’s like setting yourself into a river of (mostly useless) information – you have to decide when you want to get out. Otherwise, you’ll just get carried away, because there’s 24-hour programming.

I think another good reference point here is Hal Ashby’s 1979 film Being There, which stars Peter Sellers as the middle-aged manchild Chance the Gardener. Brought up by a maid in a self-contained Washington, D.C. house, Chance is raised solely by television, and it’s from TV that he learns everything he knows about the world. What’s most remembered about Chance are his innocently spoken words, “I like to watch,” which eventually lead to Shirley Maclaine passionately masturbating, but that’s not the point; the point is that, like Chance, we all like to watch. Television programming is generally designed to be neutral, affirming what we already know, and dully entertaining. After all, in this medium, who can afford to be aggressive, or do anything that might unsettle a viewer, either emotionally or intellectually? So we have news programs full of sound and fury, infomercial hucksters raving on into the early hours of the morning, and reruns of half-hour-long laugh tracks.

This is why I don’t watch TV. Because almost all of it sucks. As AFP says, it eats your brains, so throw that shit out the window. The more TV you watch, the more you’re hearing somebody jabbering on, literally eating up brains with meaninglessness that could be filled with important knowledge, with new memories, or with creative ideas. In an essay in Essential Cinema, Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses the Coen Bros.’ Fargo vis-à-vis Kieslowski’s Dekalog, and concludes that while the latter was originally broadcast on television, it engages a human reality, whereas the Coens’ characters exist in a TV world: they can mute other people or change the channel if they like. He cites one example – the scene where Peter Stormare sits watching a soap opera while William H. Macy’s wife lies in the corner, and the camera seems more interested in what’s on TV than the woman’s suffering. I think it’s an interesting way to look at the brothers’ work (I’m planning to watch their first 3 movies tonight, so I’ll see if anything supports it), though I’m not willing to condemn them on that basis; my reason for bringing this up is to suggest that the way TV works can negatively influence our minds and worldviews. I’m reminded of Albert Bandura’s research on aggression in children. There’s a reason parents are told to keep their children from watching too much TV. Ashley once told me of a study which found that cats, when forced to watch TV past a certain point, became neurotic. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s certainly an interesting possibility. Television is inherently fractured, and it’s fed to us by money-hungry corporations.

Along those lines, I want to bring up one last cinematic reference point, which I think I discussed in another blog long, long ago: David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), which stars James Woods as a slimy pirate TV broadcaster named Max Renn who stumbles upon some kind of sinister conspiracy (or does he? The plot, like a signal, gets kind of fuzzy) involving violent, hallucinatory television broadcasts. The film includes a professor based on Marshal McLuhan (with appropriate Canadian awesomeness) and, true to Amanda Palmer’s words, it shows that TV can in fact eat your brains. I think it’d be interesting to examine the movie in greater depth, in terms of how media affect our lives and how TV scrambles the way we process the world. It’s a great meeting of media theory and body horror, especially in the conjunctions of remote control and vagina imagery.

That said, I now want to double back briefly and clarify: I don’t watch TV now, for good reason. However. That doesn’t mean I think all TV programming sucks. From the sounds of it, some perfectly high-quality art is still being made; I haven’t watched any of “The Wire,” but I’ve heard very positive things about it. And so I also wanted to talk about some of my favorite TV shows – those that I’d rank up with great accomplishments in other media. The most obvious answer is what’s probably one of the prime achievements in all of television, The Simpsons. A sociocultural behemoth documenting as well as deeply affecting an era (late ’80s and on), it’s also the pinnacle of perhaps my favorite kind of TV, animated satire. Other examples include Ren and Stimpy (which I’ve discussed here before), and The Rocky and Bulwinkle Show, which heavily influenced both of them.

Why animated satire? A variety of reasons, I’d say: I grew up watching it and find that it rings true as an adult; television is an excellent medium for animation, since animation lends itself so well to short-form work; and as for satire… it’s great in any medium, and it’s a way to combat the reactionary qualities of television, which refuses to let artists linger on any one situation, since within 30 minutes, something else is coming on. Just think of the number of jokes skewering television on The Simpsons – even whole episodes, from “The Day the Violence Died,” “Homer to the Max,” “Homer Badman,” and more. “The Joy of Sect,” for example, ends with the Simpson family grateful to be thinking for themselves again; the TV then drones, “You are watching Fox,” to which the family replies in unison, “We are watching Fox.” The show was able to assert itself as work that transcended the TV’s many confines and conventions by pointing them out and making fun of them. That’s the triumph of animated satire.

Other shows I picked out as favorites also tended to be satires, like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (also discussed in an earlier blog), maybe Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and The Muppet Show, both ostensibly children’s shows also somewhat aimed at adults? Another television show, not quite satire, which I think clearly resides among the greatest is The Twilight Zone, with its anthology of generally allegorical sci-fi/horror tales. So these have been, I think, some of the most interesting or original works produced in television. It’s also produced endless conveyor belts full of shitty dross (not to mention drossy shit). So, is it worth it to watch more than 6 hours or so of television a year? Not a chance in hell, no. But is television as a whole a wasted medium which can be totally discounted? I’m stilll not sure about that. Maybe a couple more years of media studies classes will tell me.