The Classroom Conservative

Ebert Presents: At The Movies

I teach my students that the greatest failure of modernism was its penchant for drawing attention to the differences that divide us while offering no effective strategy for overcoming them.  My complaint with contemporary culture, on the other hand, is that it often imagines away our differences.

One sees this in all manner of relevatism.

For resisting the tide of its culture, I have become a big fan of Ebert Presents: At The Movies, the worthy successor of programs Roger Ebert hosted, first, with Gene Siskel and, then, with Richard Roeper.  Disfigured and left unable to speak by a well-publicized, decade-long battle with cancer, Ebert appears in short segments where other people, usually Bill Kurtis, voice his reviews.

The bulk of the air time is devoted to dueling reviews from Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, in the time-honored format.  The two critics have an acceptable chemistry, developed further as they have honed their on-air personas.  By now, we have concluded that the more populist Lemire prefers movies with pace; Vishnevetsky leans towards foreign films with subtitles.  Thirty-year-old clips from Sneak Previews remind us that lengthier and more detailed discussions of the art were once more common, and Ebert Presents toys with the format in defiance of contemporary culture’s predilection for short, snappy sound bites.

But it is Roger Ebert, himself, who most persistently challenges the new status quo.  He has lamented how much time we waste hiding illness, and his appearances on camera never hide the limitations imposed upon him by his cancer.  To be clear: illness has not blunted Ebert’s critical acumen.  All that has changed is his appearance and his ability to speak.  To work around a handicap, he has enlisted able collaborators, and that – for me – is the lesson.  Roger Ebert’s cancer altered him; it did not diminish him in essence, but it rendered him different, without doubt.  While I would wish for him that it was not so, the grimly practical fashion in which he confronts his difficulty accomplishes something that one often encounters as a postmodern cliché.  His program is actually better for the contribution of all the people who seek to help him mitigate the differences he must confront.

Ebert Presents, on PBS, is on a summer hiatus, showing clips from the work done through the eighties with Gene Siskel.  These are well worth your time.  Here is hoping the program is back and stronger than ever in September.

If He Bleeds, He Leads

The expansion of the Lethbridge Cancer Centre, on which my wife has worked for more than two years, opened to great fanfare last week. The ceremony to mark the occasion was interrupted by a distressed gentleman who wished to complain to visiting politicians that individuals in Alberta still have difficulty finding a family doctor. Obviously, I do not want to talk about my wife's work in this space, and it is not my place to discuss the specifics of the gentleman's claim. This is also not a post about the gentleman, himself, whose ailment was clear to all who can see. But I am interested in the media coverage of what was described as a "protest."

The local CTV television newscast is the first of the evening in Lethbridge, and they led with a story about the hospital expansion, discussing the positive contribution radiation therapy will make in our community. A second, separate and shorter, item about the interruption followed the main story. The next day, the Lethbridge Herald had a front page story about the clinic, and its last two paragraphs dealt with the interruption. I thought the focus was right, though I thought it unnecessary for the paper to publish a "closeup" picture of the gentleman that emphasized the disfigurement resulting from his ailment. In the days that followed, I noticed one critical letter to the Herald about the actions of the security guard at the event.

Nobody expects congratulatory coverage masquerading as "news," but there are many positive elements of this story that should be of interest to the general public. All media outlets did a good job underlining how arranging weeks of radiation treatment in Calgary has, in the past, provided difficulties for cancer patients. Media looking for another angle have reported on the perceived challenges in recruiting staff to smaller cities. There are other things, from the technology installed at the centre to the difference between radiation and chemotherapy treatment, that might have also been of interest.

But no one took as much interest in the gentleman who interrupted the opening as did the six o'clock Global newscast. On the day of the event, the news led with the gentleman, underlining it during the anchor's introduction as well as in the voiceover that accompanied the filed footage, footage that included the gentleman bleeding on the floor of the atrium after being removed. Newscasts on the two subsequent days also referenced the man, again, though without any additional context. The reason for this is clear: there really is little direct connection between the resourcing of family practices and the expansion of cancer care in this province, though there was at least as much effort on the part of this media outlet, as with the gentleman himself, to make it so.

The image I remember, sadly, is of blood on the hospital floor. The old news maxim, "if it bleeds, it leads," it clearly still appropriate today. Just as troubling, we have to conclude that rather than separating and explaining parts of larger issues for the viewing public, the ninety-second soundbites on the news often serve only to lump together similar elements into a misleading whole.

Crap Is Crap, Lindsay Blackett

Alberta's Minister of Culture and Community Spirit set off a firestorm of controversy last week by asking, "Why do I fund so much crap?" His mistake was that he disparaged Canadian media at the Banff World Television Festival; most of us do so in the privacy of our own homes.

It has been fascinating to see this controversy spin and spin again. A number of individuals, including a darling older woman with a clipped British accent interviewed on the street for CBC Radio, objected to Mr. Blackett's vulgarity. Indeed, one issue for some people is how a booster for Canadian culture can be thus outspoken, whether or not it can be seen as simply refreshing for a politician to speak his mind, regardless of the apparent damage it might cause.

The real question is whether Canadian television programs and films are "crap." Of course they are. But that simple fact has little to do with their Canadian origins. They are of poor quality as so much of all media is of poor quality. Those of us in our forties can easily remember when a handful of television channels "signed off" in the late night. Now, of course, everyone has hundreds of channels, including movie channels, that require content twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is a simple statistical matter to acknowledge that, on average, one is far, far more likely to switch on the television (or even visit a cineplex) and see nothing worth one's time.

I am, of course, glossing over the thornier implication in Mr. Blackett's question. When I disparage media, I choose to ignore the fact that a great deal of substandard programming is immensely popular. On the "Homegrown Canadian Talent" panel that day was none other than Kenny Hotz, whose Kenny vs. Spenny has demonstrated for more than seven years that even the most pointless, infantile production can find an audience. By "crap," Mr. Blackett means media without any redeeming qualities that also appeals to no one.

This seems a harsh judgment on the talented Canadian artists and craftspeople who create Canadian media. If they produced as much stuff as Americans produce, I am confident Mr. Blackett would find things he likes. In the meantime, if this debate brings the kind of investment that will allow us to close the gap in terms of technical know-how, for example, that would be a fine thing. I think the inaugural season of CBC's Republic of Doyle demonstrates this point nicely. By spending the money to produce a high quality program in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, one that involved so many members of the local arts community, CBC was provided a sound return on its investment. But in spite of the fine cast, excellent production, and stunning location, the season as it progressed fell flat for me. Why? Well, to keep its supporting cast busy with their own stories, too many subplots competed each week with the main stories themselves. CBC was not going to give us, on spec, twenty episodes or more at prohibitive cost, so the brief season had an arc too short to avoid a narrative pace even more frantic than its action sequences. To give Mr. Blackett the benefit of the doubt, perhaps that is the kind of structural issue with which he should be concerned.

Motherlovers And Motherhaters

In our house, we have fallen into the habit of watching Sopranos reruns. On Friday nights, Telelatino runs uncut episodes, beginning at 8pm Mountain Time. (The channel originates from Southern Ontario, where back-to-back episodes begin at 10pm.) Pole dancers are shown at the Bada Bing! and mafia soldiers converse in similarly graphic terms. A&E shows edited episodes on Sunday mornings, beginning at 8am. There are many cutaways and "motherlovers" as much of the dialog is overdubbed. I marveled at one notable dialog change made to a recent episode. Julianna Skiff, played by Julianna Margulies, complains to Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) about how he ripped and otherwise ruined her dress during sex. As I recall, in the original, he counsels her to keep the article of clothing, like Monica Lewinsky, as evidence of "how hard" she makes him. The line was changed to "how hard" she makes him "sweat." Of course, it might be that "sweat" is replacing another word, and I have misremembered the original line. But it is also interesting that an "offensive" line can be made unoffensive (or less offensive, to some) by adding material to it: we generally think, of course, of cutting or replacing when censoring.

A specialty cable channel at night and a basic cable channel in the morning provide two extremes in a view of censorship that is absolute. In reality, of course, on a land mass with six time zones, it is impossible to identify clearly what ones audience will be. And last night's Family Guy was really just an exercise in underlining the futility of the exercise. While I was utterly nauseated by the storyline -- for those of you who did not watch, it involved Brian, the family dog, and Baby Stewie's diaper -- the first fifteen minutes of the program illustrated effectively that you can offend without using foul language, without showing any act graphically.  Another science fiction program, on in the house of a friend I visited recently, had invented the euphenism "frak" to stand in for an expletive.  Is listening to anyone "frakking this and frakking that" for 44 minutes really such an improvement?

Contemporary media has fragmented its audience into such tiny niches that it is impossible to determine what "community standards" exist. What is a media community? And when this thing is, apparently, discernible, the conclusions we draw about it are just as disturbing. In either version of Sopranos episodes currently running on television, little if any effort is put into toning down the violence. We remain a culture that cannot abide the human form -- unless it is mutilated in some violent act, of course.

Back From The Republic Of Doyle

Before the second episode of The Republic of Doyle screens, I wanted to lend my voice of comment to the discussion about CBC's latest "slice of life" dramatic comedy from Newfoundland.

Like everyone else who has opined, I find series star Allan Hawco a worthy descendant of James Garner's beloved private investigator, Jim Rockford. But if the series stars are going to develop the kind of chemistry Rockford had with his father "Rocky," things will have to pick up between Hawco and Sean McGinley. The use of a veteran Irish actor is better casting than we usually see -- with earnest "come from aways" looking into the camera and asking, "How are you, then, my old cockie?" -- but in the first episode, at least, he was just one of Jake Doyle's dysfunctional friends and family members. On the other hand, if we must have a tedious "will he, won't she?" love story with Constable Bennett (Krystin Pellerin), I like it as two corners of a triangle -- with the third provided by Doyle's estranged wife, played with edgy elan by Rachel Wilson.

The plot of the first episode was script-thin, though, wasting an excellent performance from Shawn Majumder, reminding us yet again of his range. Pilots seldom have the luxury of proper exposition, so we could not expect (and did not receive) much more than an introduction to the players who will take us through the half-dozen episodes on offer. But if you expect me to believe that St. John's can make private investigation compelling, do not ask me to accept that a salacious murder/drug/sex scandal will fall open in a matter of minutes.

Ah, St. John's. I hardly knew you with your edgy pursuits and raucous party boats. How much things have changed in fifteen years. The city is a rightful co-star: so bright and colorful. But just tell me the weather will not always be so pleasant. Having solved his first case in the sunniest stretch the Old City has likely ever seen, Jake Doyle deserves some rain, drizzle, and fog.

Cobamady On David Letterman

Eighty-two-year-old Don Rickles must have heard the deafening silence a million times before. He had gone a little too far, said something that offended the sensibility of his audience. But this time he was on Late Night With David Letterman, and the joke he made was about Barack Obama. He suggested that when faced with a crisis, the President-Elect would find it hard to turn his attention away from shooting three-pointers on the half-court at the White House. The gasps drew all the oxygen from the room.

It would not rank among Mr. Rickles' best jokes, certainly, but it has probably been a long time since he told one as important.

A lot of comedians have been fretting over how difficult it will be to needle Mr. Obama. Forget, for the moment, that he is immensely popular and has earned the respect of even some of his political enemies: that will pass. But, as an African American, he appears immune to the attention of late night comedians who are afraid of being labelled racist.

Now that we have crossed a line, life should be a little easier for everyone.

I have no doubt that Mr. Rickles, a lifelong Democrat whose Jewish background has exposed him to prejudice, was referring primarily to Mr. Obama's basketball proclivities; we know he is better with the roundball than with the bowling ball. But the stereotype, of course, is that African Americans are obsessed with the sport. At its most coarse, Mr. Rickles' steroetype is less offensive than, say, golfer Fuzzy Zoeller's famous suggestion that Tiger Woods stuffed himself on fried chicken and collard greens! Mr. Rickles knew what he was doing by drawing on a dodgy generalization that might offend some people, but it was no more offensive to me than invoking southern stereotypes to discuss Bill Clinton or drawing George W. Bush as a Texan who is a little slow on the draw.  It was certainly nothing like Ralph Nader invoking the "Uncle Tom" phrase when discussing the President-Elect.

Mr. Obama will soon be the leader of the free world. I think he can withstand the suggestion that hitting treys is, somehow, in his DNA. Much worse has been said about him in anger, after all. But if an offhand remark leads to legitimately funnier things in these dark times, no harm has been done.

America Wins, Canada Places, Coronation Street Does Not Show

This will not be your granny's post. You know her complaint: she enjoys watching soap operas, and she cannot endure it when they are pre-empted. I am not your granny, but I do share her concern. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's wall-to-wall-to-wall-to-wall coverage of our eighth consecutive eighth place finish in some Olympic sport none of the rest of us has ever played or before watched has smothered, once again, airings of Coronation Street, something many of us do watch faithfully. Is this any way to treat your loyal viewers?

It is not bad enough that episodes do not screen here for more than six months after they are first shown in England? It is not bad enough that nightly episodes of the program never see the light of day during the hockey playoffs so that fans have, for months on end, to watch them all at once in a Sunday omnibus? While the Olympics dominate CBC programming, Coronation Street is not shown at all.

There was a time when the program was aired on weekday afternoons, and I can only assume that its shuffle to prime time was an acknowledgment by CBC brass that Coronation Street pulls in viewers. Why, then, does the network - a network, after all, that exhibits all kinds of strange behavior to attract viewers, including wedging in sports programming we have all watched already on American HD channels - go out of its way to ostracize some of its most loyal viewers? I must conclude that it is because they can. Pure and simple.

If Coronation Street was aired in the middle of the night, they know we would watch it then. They have absolutely no fear that, if ill-treated, we will go elsewhere. There is nowhere else to go because we have to have our Corrie. Well, CBC, let me tell you: there is something very sick about abusing your power in a relationship in this way. If there was any way that I could go without, I would. I have tried everything. I have tried to follow screen captures and read summaries on the internet. This will not do. Oh, CBC I wish I could quit you. I cannot.

Why can you not preempt What's For Dinner? How about Steven and Chris? Does anyone watch that, anyway? Oh, I have an idea. How about showing us an occasional Corrie rather than air yet another repeat of one of the thirty or forty episodes of Arrested Development ever filmed?

Sure, I am bitter. But I will be watching, like the passive partner I am, the eastern feed of the CBC on August 25 to see, at the very first moment possible, if Violet takes Jaime back, even though he once left her for his own step-mother.  I am no less the doormat than is she.

Nudity, Violence, and Contemporary Community Standards

Does it seem sometimes like coalition forces have, forever, been in Iraq?  It’s certainly been a long time: we are coming up on five years.  The early months of 2003 seem an eternity ago to me.  But news has now surfaced that the U. S. Federal Communications Commission has been watching television reruns from those days, slapping ABC with a $1.43 million fine for nudity shown in an episode of NYPD Blue that aired on February 25 of that year.  The episode, in fact, was called “Nude Awakening,” and it began with a brief scene in which a young Theo Sipowicz walks in on Connie McDowell, his father’s girlfriend, in the shower.  This moment of humor contrasts the later discovery that John Clark’s father has committed suicide.

   

It seems as though no one is laughing now.

   

In its statement, the FCC notes that the scene features “close-range views of an adult woman’s naked buttocks” and “the material is… dwelled upon and repeated.”  They find the depiction of actress Charlotte Ross is both “titillating and shocking.”  ABC contends that the material is “not presented in a lewd, prurient, pandering, or titillating way” but is meant, instead, to demonstrate “the complexity and awkwardness involved when a single parent brings a new romantic partner into his or her life.”  No one is suggesting that this is a seductive scene; no one is claiming that the intent of the scene is to depict a sexual response from a child.  But the intent of the material seems to make little difference to the FCC.  It is not the demonstrated effect of Connie’s nudity on Theo that concerns them – nor is it the supposed effect of Ms Ross on Austin Majors, the young man playing Theo.  (It is doubtful that Mr. Majors was ever in a room with the naked Ms Ross.  But, in any case, as a recent guest star on Desperate Housewives, he has had to endure much, much more.)

 

They are concerned about the effect of Ms Ross’s body on the viewing public, of course, about an apparent breach of “contemporary community standards” committed by NYPD Blue.  ABC argues that the program’s robust ratings and the relatively few complaints they received suggest the community is conditioned (and perhaps somewhat indifferent) to this material.  The FCC claims not to be moved by the number of complaints: they admit only to having received “numerous complaints, including thousands of letters from members of various citizen advocacy groups.”  This is code, of course, for thousands of busybodies who, having never seen the program, add their names to petitions drafted by shut-in prudes who have nothing better to do.  In fact, the FCC uses ratings statistics against ABC: because many people were watching NYPD Blue, this increases the “likelihood that children were among those who may have seen the indecent broadcasts, thereby increasing the public harm from the licensees’ misconduct.”

   

How stupid is this?  We have now had five years to assess what “public harm” was done by Ms Ross’s behind.  If we scour the papers for reports of sex offenders who blame Ms Ross’s behind for inflaming their monstrous passions, we will find none.  Ms Ross had just celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday when her wares were displayed to the American public.  Perhaps therapists could report as to whether they saw a spike in thirtysomething patients ashamed, by comparison, of their own bodies.  Were advice columnists besieged by letters from women feeling residual guilt because their children walked in on boyfriends in the shower?  Perhaps we can ask Dan Savage if “Savage Love” has subsequently printed letters from men whose children walked in on their boyfriends in the shower.

   

The indisputable fact is that in 2003, and during the years since, American popular culture has never hesitated to depict wanton acts of violence.  Primetime television is ruled by forensic investigation and police dramas that show people killing each other while the cinematographers wallow in the aftermath of that violence.  If were are going to accept that “contemporary community standards” reflect a taste for limbs dismembered from torsos, perhaps we should accept that the public might be ready to see these body parts in working order.

   

When the nostalgic part of my soul gets a hankering for classic television, I pop in a DVD of Rawhide.  But the libertarian side of me must stand up for artistic integrity.  Have you seen the bowdlerized versions of The Sopranos on A&E?  All those “freakings” and “flippings” stretch credibility.  In Canada, CTV has decided that little eyes should be in bed after 9pm or 10pm, and after this “watershed” they show some unexpurgated programming.  This, of course, is how the matter is handled in England, where “timeshifting” is not an issue.  While CTV conveniently ignores the fact that kids in Alberta can watch “adult” programming on cable after 6pm, the FCC gets itself tied in knots by this fact.  It is hard to imagine that in the nanny state that is Canada, our broadcasters have more trust in parents to control what their children watch.  If you are a parent that lets your kid follow NYPD Blue or The Sopranos, you have already made a choice.  And I find it hard to believe that the kinds of parents who do not object to mob violence on A&E would object to foul language and nudity.  Are you picking up on the hypocrisy of industry watchdogs?

   

Have these folks ever surfed the internet?  Oh, right…  That shoe is left to drop.  As a society, we should spend time trying to shift “contemporary community standards,” teaching our children about the implications of rampant sex and violence.  But we should also support the right of artists to reflect our society back to us, instead of trying to pretend that our society is something it is not.  Perhaps television is not meant to be an honest representation of what we are.  But as long as we pretend it is so, we’d be a lot better off treating sex and violence in the same manner.

Some DVD Wishes for (Next) Christmas

The delightful Warren Clements recently ran a column in the Globe and Mail discussing film and television titles not (yet) available on DVD.  It often amazes me that in a society driven, largely, by leisurely consumption, there is anything we cannot get.  Still, there were some genuine surprises in the column, like John Huston’s The African Queen (1951), for example, but none of my Christmas DVD wishes made his list.  So, here, in no particular order, are a few things I would like to see available before Santa Claus starts thinking about next year’s gifts:

   

1. Far From the Madding Crowd (1967).  John Schlesinger directed this beautiful, sweeping adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel more than forty years ago.  Julie Christie is the most stunning woman in the world in her portrayal of the frustratingly shallow Bathsheba Everdene, and Terence Stamp is sufficiently smarmy in playing Frank Troy, the bad boy she should ignore.  Peter Finch is memorable as the jilted William Boldwood, driven beyond the edge by Bathsheba’s shabby treatment.  But Alan Bates steals the show as the unbelievably loyal Gabriel Oak who shows us the value of persistence – and a short memory.  The scene when Fanny Robin is brought home and mourned is haunting.

   

2. The Sound and the Fury (1959).  The DVD age has not been kind to Yul Brenner, a huge screen star of the 1950s and 1960s.  This is only one of his notable performances not available on home formats.  This adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel about the dysfunctional Compson family does not do justice to the greatest work of American prose of the twentieth century, but its absence from library shelves is still mourned by generations of students looking for a quick crib.  Sadly for them, and for us, director Martin Ritt appears to have misunderstood Jason Compson’s obsessive, controlling nature, softening just a little too much Brenner’s complex, tortured performance.  Joanne Woodward makes a captivating (girl) Quentin.

   

3. Leave it to Beaver (1957-63).  One of a handful of indispensible American situation comedies of the fifties, Leave it to Beaver saw two seasons recently hit the market with considerable aplomb.  Unfortunately, claims of “rights issues” that have postponed indefinitely the last four seasons suggest to me unsatisfactory retail numbers.  Thus, we may be a long time catching up with the later antics of the Cleaver family, and that is a shame for Tony Dow, whose Wally came increasingly to steal the show from his brother Beaver (Jerry Mathers).  Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley set an impossible standard as parents to two precocious boys, showing contemporary viewers that American culture has long established for itself ideals steeped in nostalgic longing – even in a period now viewed nostalgically.

   

4. Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching (2005).  God bless the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  The bigwigs at Fort Dork, thus coined by television critic John Doyle, are torn between showing us what we are and showing us what they think we should be.  As a result, Canadian programming is often sanitized, politically-correct pabulum.  Occasionally, when those bigwigs at Fort Dork fall asleep at the switch, we get some genuine television.  This happened most recently in 2005 with Mary Walsh’s vision of outport Newfoundland, Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching.  The Furey family is the dynasty of Cats Gut Cove, controlling ambulance service, wedding planning, and funeral details.  The resulting humor is dark and irreverent, and it represents perhaps Walsh’s most complete vision ever.  The supporting cast is a virtual who’s who of Newfoundland talent, and even Ron Hynes, the most talented Newfoundlander ever, contributes theme music.  C’mon, byes, Jesus!  Would a single disc series retrospective kill ya?

   

5. Plonsters.  It is no surprise that adults like television programming for children.  Spongebob Squarepants, anyone?  Long after the kids grow up, the slackers amongst us make up a profitable audience for the DVD release of original episodes.  The Plonsters are a German creation, three clay monsters who can shape shift at will.  The two (older?) characters never wish to play with the third, but they always end up getting taught a life lesson by him, anyway.  The premise is simple, the execution utterly brilliant.  To appeal to an international audience, the Plonsters talk a gibberish language sure to appeal to the same young adult crowd who watch, say, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  Canadian television used to get stray vignettes, but the series has a real following in Australia.  Check out this YouTube link to see what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crx_X4Y-7G4.  Someone in North America could make a mint marketing this stuff.