Giving Dominic The Business: coincidences or memes?

My family and I have a running debate over what constitutes a coincidence. Basically, they believe in them and I don't. I think that most (if not all) coincidences are neither random nor signs of some mystical grand design, but are indicative of logical patterns that scientists haven't yet perceived. Coincidences precede science. They're patterns without any meaning, but instead of just accepting that lack of meaning, that randomness, we can start to speculate as to what the meaning behind the pattern might be.

The most recent couple of "coincidences" involved concepts (e.g. a song and a phrase) that hadn't been heard of at all and then were suddenly heard twice or more in a matter of days. The first was "Dominic the Christmas Donkey," a song I hadn't heard of until last week when a couple of my friends played it on a YouTube video, insisting that the song had been around for awhile, acting shocked when I told them I'd never even heard of it. Then, days later, another one of my friends told me she had the same experience: never heard of Dominic, and then suddenly heard people talking about it as if it had been around forever. As Wikipedia indicates, the song has had a 47 year history in and out of the limelight, revived and forgotten in ways that will probably be more common thanks to YouTube and such.

The second coincidence involved these videos of football referees using the obscure (and hilarious) phrase "giving him the business." As the poster of the second video writes, the phrase is so uncommon that it seems likely that the second ref was making an homage of sorts to the first ref. I had sent a link to the video to my father and we'd talked about the origin of that phrase and whether or not it was ever popular, and one day later, his colleague used that phrase in a conversation.

Both Dominic & "giving him the business" didn't conform to our notions of how ideas, phrases, songs, whatever spread through a culture. We're used to ideas spreading gradually through opinion leaders who seem to be up on every new trend or through major media hubs. But it occurred to me that the internet has changed the ways we encounter ideas. First off, they tend to travel through major media hubs (e.g. NYTimes, CNN) at later points in their life cycle. Had I seen a news story on CNN about Dominic the Christmas Donkey and then several people I knew started humming it, I would've been less surprised. Secondly, the path that ideas take are an amalgam of like-minded members of the same offline social network and disparate people who happen upon the same news aggregation site or obscure blog. In the case of "the business," neither my father nor his colleague are likely to go to YouTube, but its conceivable that people they know (e.g. their technology addicted offspring) would go to such a site and draw their attention to a humorous phrase they noticed on it. Its that new combination of online and offline networks that memes move along that make the speed and direction in which they spread seem random.

We wouldn't say that its a coincidence that many blogs are writing about the same thing because we accept that kind of viral spread of information online. But when it starts popping up in the real world, we evaluate it in terms of the ways information spreads in the real world between real people, and that's where we're wrong. If five people you know suddenly start humming a song that you hadn't heard of before, you would assume they were all reading the same blog or watching the same TV show, when in actuality, they might've gotten the tune from 5 different (but tangentially linked) sources. Because people are nodes on a network, the ideas they have (about everything from Christmas songs to terrorism to sex) change at a faster rate and appear to be synced up with other people's ideas in a way that appears to violate the "physics of ideas" that we've become so used to.

Christmas Letters: The First Blogs?

The Christmas letter, like all snail mail, seems increasingly antiquated. I was never old enough during the snail mail era to have sent or received many Christmas letters, but my parents got plenty, and so I became familiar with their format. Basically, you write old friends and casual acquaintances and tell them all the good things that have happened to you over the past year. This typically consists of babies being born, people getting married, vacations, and crazy weather. If there is bad news - say, a parent or grandparent passing away - its spun in relatively positive way (e.g. "they're in a better place"). Evidently, bragging is also a staple of the Christmas letter.

It got me to thinking about what people write in their diary blogs: does it serve the same function - keeping geographically remote people up to date on their yearly doings? What does it mean to stay in touch with people? Is it enough to passively follow their news feed on Facebook, or should I comment on their blog? Maybe there's more of an obligation to be positive in the Christmas letter than a rando blog entry, just as there's this obligation to be happy in general around the holidays. Diary blogs seem to be much more about self-loathing than bragging. Maybe the average blogger and the average Christmas card writer are leading very different lives (angsty teen vs. content grandma), or maybe the ways in which the modes of expression are made available to their readerships affects the content.

When I read diary blogs or watch diary vlogs, I desire a middle ground between too much bad news (which makes me uncomfortable b/c its just too candid, or just makes me think the writer is a pity junkie) and not enough bad news (which makes me think that the person is being fake b/c no one has that perfect of a life). As I visit with friends and family for the holiday and update them on my life, I also feel obliged to mix good news with bad (but mostly good) so as to give them the feeling that they're getting the "real" story of how my life is going. As sprawling and unrehearsed as our life stories are, I think we still try to maintain some balance of positivity and negativity in our recounting.

The Self Conscious Documentary

This weekend, I saw the thought-provoking documentary My Kid Could Paint That. The movie could've been a straight-forward presentation of the story of Marla Olmstead, a 4 yr old whose paintings sell for several thousand dollars. That subject alone is enough to get people talking for hours. Instead, the documentary turned into a story about the manipulative nature of non-fiction narratives. In fact, there were odd parallels between this movie and The Insider: both films centered on one story but gradually became about the coverage of the story, in particular the coverage provided by 60 Minutes. In The Insider, the producers of 60 Minutes are portrayed as objective heroes fighting big network honchos who are in the pockets of corporations while MKCPT portrays them as spin-meisters who are so intent on making a compelling story that they don't mind ruining the career of a young artist.

Things get really interesting towards the end of MKCPT when the documentarian includes himself as one more person profiting from presenting a certain, inevitably distorted version of the events surrounding Marla's rapid rise to prominence. In this respect, it reminded me of Some Kind of Monster, the oddly entertaining documentary about Metallica and their relationship with psychologist Phil Towle. In both cases, the audience gets to sit back, analyze, pass judgment, and laugh at the subjects of the documentary. Then, suddenly, shockingly, the subjects talk back, accusing the filmmakers of profiting from their real emotional turmoil. The audience feels implicated, too. I'm sure there are other instances of this mini-genre in which documentary makers acknowledge their own construction of reality.

In MKCPT, New York times art critic Michael Kimmelman articulates a point that I'd been trying to make for awhile: there's something manipulative and deceptive about all documentaries (in fact, Kimmelman quotes someone who says that even all photos are an assault on the subjects). Kimmelman says that there might be a real physical event that takes place, but in the retelling of that event, things must be left out, thereby skewing the depiction in a certain way. I suppose you could give a viewer a lot of raw footage and allow them to construct their version of an event, but no matter what, the viewer's version of reality is limited by an intermediary (the documentarian).

We may laugh at aboriginal people who refuse to have their picture taken b/c they believe that the photographer is stealing their soul, but I'm beginning to think that they might have it right. Once you begin to tell another person's story, you're using their existence and their actions for your own ends. As soon as the camera starts rolling, the subject lends some authenticity to the person behind the camera who may then make claims about who the subject is. Its a power balance that is all around us, given the number of camera phones and online photos and videos.

At the center of this particular documentary is the controversy over whether or not Marla's parents helped her paint. The evidence that is used to refute that claim is a DVD recording of Marla creating a painting, unassisted. The message of the film is clear: film is the ultimate evidence. The documentary is also looked upon by many as evidence. It casts itself as getting "the real scoop" behind the smear campaign that 60 Minutes launched against Marla, but ultimately, the documentary maker realizes that the mere fact that he is editing, that he is telling a story about someone else and is profiting from how compelling the drama is (and all good drama needs conflict, heroes, and villains), puts him on the same level as 60 Minutes.

In a wonderfully revealing moment near the end of the film, the mother, after beginning to cry about the fact that she had let so many people use her daughter for their stories, says exactly what I was thinking: "documentary gold." Tears are documentary gold, and its good that the documentary maker is able to recognize that and leave it in the movie. Does that let him off the hook? I was surprised to read that A.O. Scott thinks it does not let him off the hook.

Really, there are degrees of manipulation. The fact that a good chunk of the film emphasized the the turmoil in Marla's family, instead of the heady questions raised about the nature of art, is what made it something worth apologizing for.

Entertain Yourselves

It seems that the WGA is going on strike. So what?

Frankly, I possess a weak understanding of the economics of the entertainment industry, but from what I've been able to observe, financiers, producers, writers, and actors all assume that profits will keep growing at a steady rate as the economy in general grows. If the growth stops, there's something wrong. But isn't it possible that DVD sales could keep going up for a period as people built their libraries, and then plateau? If this is the case, then slowing growth isn't anything to get alarmed about. Besides, can't they just make cheaper pictures?

As far as TV goes, maybe people don't watch as much TV as they used to. Maybe people go online for entertainment. Anything could be used as a substitute for TV, from social networking sites to YouTube to craigslist to message boards. Reality TV substitutes for scripted TV. So, what exactly do we need unionized writers for? What do we need producers for? What do we need studios for? If anyone can pick up a camera, create, promote, and distribute a movie or a show, what do we need Hollywood for?

Of course, most people will point out that most online content sucks compared to Hollywood fare, and also point out that as major Hollywood studios produce content for the web, there's not much of a distinction between old media and new media. What I don't get is the collective bargaining approach to making entertainment. If you make something that Joe Blow would have a tough time making - say, an automobile - then you can go on strike and the corporation that employs you as well as the public will have a tough time replacing you. But if you make entertainment, then couldn't people very easily find a substitute for you?

We could make like most other industries and offshore it, get content from overseas. Would it really be so bad if we watched foreign films that were subtitled for a year, or a decade? Would the world or this culture or our economy really be that worse off? Basically, our culture can be divided into two camps - those who will watch material from overseas, and those who watch a lot of reality programming and/or repeats of old shows. New scripted American content needn't figure into the equation.

The logic of a strike implies that there's something exclusive or superior to what Hollywood creates. Hollywood created "superior" fare in part b/c of the tightly-knit social network of nepotism and reputation that keeps things running relatively smoothly. They also had a monopoly on equipment, sets, and funding. But now, everybody else can get in on the entertainment game. More importantly, everyone can form and maintain the social networks needed to produce the collaborative arts of film and TV.

Hollywood's promotional muscle is overrated. Big advertising budgets are capable of spiking the sales of a product at first, but the quality of the product determines its long-term profitability in the long-tail economy. Initial promotion matters with products that require constant streams of funding to be produced, like material objects or a high-budget TV series with unionized workers. It doesn't matter with a low-budget 30 ep web series that catches on via word of mouth or based on the existing reputation of the artists involved.

Producers, studios, and big-name stars had writers over a barrel for decades. Ultimately, this might teach them that its the whole system that isn't needed by the public. What people really want is a good story, drama, characters they can relate to. Individuals (be they producers, writers, directors, actors) who can create those stories will always be of value. To me, this all seems like what the music industry went through post-Napster. Their economic models predict growth, but that's just b/c they assumed an exclusivity that no longer exists. Inflexible unions and collective bargaining are relics of a less open marketplace. This is a golden opportunity for non-unionized entertainers (i.e. everyone with a camera, a laptop, and an ego) to become semi-famous, make a few bucks, and have some fun.

Most Favorite Media Vs. Most Popular Media

One of the many things I love about YouTube is the function that allows the viewer to see what the most watched videos are AND what the top favorite videos are. That's an important distinction that box office figures and Nielsen ratings don't make.

Even the "favorite" function on YouTube leaves something to be desired, since marking a video as your favorite isn't that exact an indication of one's adoration of the video. I've marked some videos that I found mildly interesting as favorites, and others that I've gone back and watched over and over again. There's no ranking feature within favorites (yet).

If you could see how people rank their favorite videos, movies, books, TV shows, that would really tell you something that initial revenue or viewer #s wouldn't, namely: how much a person would be likely to pay to own the media text in question, or shell out for a sequel or another text made by the author of the text; how deeply influenced the individual is, in terms of their values, by the text.

From some evidence I've gathered (an audience study I ran as an MA at UTexas; conversations with undergrads I taught at Emerson), Fight Club is among young people's favorite movies. And yet this film didn't do so well at the box office. A more extreme example of this is Donnie Darko, which tanked upon its initial release, yet seems to have quite a following. The DVD sales numbers indicate that these films have more of a following than initial #s would indicate (the same is true of ratings challenged TV shows that do well on DVD), but even that is an imperfect gauge of how much people really love something. The thing is, we've got the technology to tell what media texts really resonate with people right now - you can see the Top Favorites in various social networks on Facebook.

So, let's say your a TV exec. One show does really well in the ratings, but its not on any of the top favorite lists in any social network on Facebook. Another show has mediocre ratings, but is featured in many of the Top Favorite lists. You've got the opportunity to create a spinoff of both shows. In a world where TV execs are beholden to Nielsen ratings, you definitely go with the first one. Its entirely possible, maybe even probable, that the spinoff of this highly rated show won't do well b/c the fan base of that show was probably watching it not b/c of any inherent quality, but b/c it happened to be popular. They'd be just as likely to migrate to any other new show (probably whichever show was on during a time slot that appealed to them, or whichever show was most heavily promoted) as they would be to watch the spinoff. The fans of the highly favorited show would be much more likely to watch its spinoff, and maybe more likely to preach the gospel of how good the shows are, acting like an unpaid viral marketing team.

Bottom line: the technology to gauge fan passion exists. Even beyond Top Favorite lists, you can see how many people wrote lengthy positive reviews of something, etc. Its time to start paying attention to this, not just b/c you want to know what movies, TV shows, etc people will like in the future, but b/c you care about what media influences people's lives. The idea for this blog hit me when I thought: "which movie resonated more with people, and arguably shaped the philosophy and actions of its viewers: Fight Club or Norbit?" If you go by box office revenue, Norbit was 3 times more influential than Fight Club.

And you Thought Your Roommates were Annoying

Finally, the era of (semi) high-profile web series is upon us, an era of more shows with smaller budgets and smaller audiences. The first entry: MySpace TV's Roommates.

One way to critique it would be as a reality-based show. We could evaluate how contrived or realistic the relationships and dialog are. After debating the level of reality of various reality-based shows, I've sworn off trying to determine how "real" any show is, and I think that ultimately what matters is not whether the show's producers claim it is real but whether or not the show "rings true." That is: can viewers identify with the situations and characters? Even if the characters are being as real as they possibly can be, it might not appear to be real from someone outside of their subculture. In this respect (and many others), Roommates plays like a cheap knock-off of Laguna Beach and The Hills. Producers understand that attractive females are probably the best way to get young viewers (young straight males like looking at them, young females can, perhaps, identify with them), so you can't really blame them for focusing on the same demographic as producers of LB and The Hills.

The characters in LB and The Hills tend to talk more about other characters who aren't there on camera with them at that moment, and this, to me, feels more realistic than the characters in Roommates who, like inhabitants of The Real World or Big Brother, force conflicts on people in their immediate vicinity. That's a key difference between reality and many reality-based shows: real social lives tend to sprawl, which makes them hard to film, and certainly hard to film and edit in a compelling way on short notice. The Real World made filming everyday melodrama more feasible by concentrating it in one physical space, but they sacrificed some crucial elements of the way people talk, fight, and hook up. There's also a woeful lack of passive aggressiveness in Roommates, another thing that I think makes LB/The Hills more realistic. Its part of that need to make as many dramatic things happen as quickly as possible.

We could judge it as a scripted drama, in which case it plays like a WB show with worse acting and worse writing. We could judge it as a sexy "romp," but if you're going for the male demo, why wouldn't they just watch free porn (which doesn't seem like its ever going to irritate its fanbase with interstitial ads, like MySpace is likely to do) instead?

One big problem seems to be the fact that they have to crank out one episode every day. Most vloggers don't even produce that much content. Really, I don't think its possible for any group of writers and editors to produce that much quality content. Most reality-based shows have the luxury of an extended period to edit the footage into something resembling a story. Also, if the action takes place over a long period or time, the producers might be able to get a sense of where things are going and intervene so as to create a compelling narrative. The "quantity, not quality" schedule of Roommates seem like it would lead to a shapeless, meandering story with endless make-ups, break-ups, and make-outs, not unlike the most enduring once-a-day narrative, the soap opera.

The only compelling aspect of the show so far is the acknowledgment of the cameraman as a male friend/possible pervert/possible audience proxy. It would be cool if he changed from fly-on-the-wall to active participant, shifting the show from 3rd person to 1st person. But i doubt that will happen. In the meantime, we have to put up with the lazy producer's way of conveying plot and background info: the direct address confessional.

Can't producers have more faith in audience's voyeurism and just shoot a year's worth of someone's, anyone's life, edit it down to 20-30 eps, put some decent music to it, and show it online? They should've copied the form of Laguna Beach and not the characters/setting/content.

WGA Strike and Online Video: Talking Through Some Scenarios

This blog entry at Newteevee.com got me thinking about the role of unions in the development of online video. Let's assume that the best writers are part of the WGA. If the WGA uses its clout in the TV industry by preventing its members from generating online content in order to get its members more benefits, then it seems likely that many creative people who want to break into the business will create better online content to fill that gap. Granted, the content they produce probably won't be up to TV/film standards, but it won't have to compete with TV/film that's very good b/c the writers will be on strike. In that sense, a strike is the best thing that could happen to budding online video makers.

As I scanned the past month's blog entries on newteevee, I began to realize just how big the rapidly expanding world of online video has become. I started to feel overwhelmed and a bit guilty about not knowing more about this world, but I tried to use my outsider status to put it all in perspective. Really, I have yet to see anything that isn't in sync with my general thoughts about the motion picture ecosystem: online content (be it blogs, video, whatever) is of some value, but it will always be more disposable than books, TV, and film. Maybe that's why there would be no point in offering a subscription to an online video series. But I still think those things are tied together - that online video will be disposable because it won't adopt a subscription model, because it chooses to embrace the advertising model.

Its not just the disruption-of-narrative issue. Its a sign of a lack of faith by the creator or owner of that story. Distributing your story through an ad-based model is essentially acknowledging that it is not worth people's time and attention. Watching motion pictures with advertising is paying for it, not with dollars but with cognitive energy and attention, both of which are in short supply these days. The viewer who thinks they "put up with" ads is actually depriving him or herself of complex (and therefore superior and lasting) narratives and diminishing his or her ability to complete complex tasks relative to those who pay for their content. Just because we haven't been able to measure this effect doesn't mean it is happening or won't happen in the future. Nor does it mean that it will, but I'm committed to following up on my hunch.

What HBO Taught Me That Ethnographies Couldn't

After reading a play based on Harry Wolcott's controversial ethnography of Sneaky Kid and after making my way through another qualitative study of a marginalized group, I became frustrated with the mission of qualitative research geared toward social reform. Of course, I agree with the motives and ethics behind the research, which aspire to make the world a more tolerant, egalitarian place, but the actual experience of reading this work gives me the impression that its authors are trying to wrap their politics in the guise of science. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that per se, but at the end of the day, I think the most important question is: is it effective? Does it actually change minds and behavior, or does it just make its authors feel good and boost their chances at tenure?

It should be obvious by now that I feel that the latter is more true than the former. So then I asked, what could change people's minds and behavior towards marginalized groups? What had changed my mind about such things? The most valuable attitude/politics-changing information comes from 1st hand experience. Spend a few years in a poor neighborhood or a poor country, or befriend members of a marginalized group, and you're bound to sympathize more than you did before (although Robert Putnam's work on diversity and distrust might disprove this) . In the absence of such experience, I think a well-told fictional story can do the trick. At least that's what's worked best for me.

After watching The Wire and The Sopranos, I feel differently about the cause and remedy of pretty much every social ill. At first, you wouldn't think that qualitative research and TV shows have all that much in common, but I think that they have or could potentially address a lot of the same issues. If you take a close look at any aspect of society, you start to see how messy things really are, how everyone is guilty to one degree or another - something that these shows are able to convey.

Both shows even have stand-ins for the ethnographer that act at proxies for both the audience and the author - Melfi in The Sopranos and the entire police force (particularly McNutty) in The Wire. Both Melfi and McNulty wonder whether what they're doing really makes a difference. They wonder whether they can possibly help reform society, and wonder what gives them the right to intervene the ways that they do, just as an ethnographer would. I wondered along with these characters whether or not I merely used my hope that Tony would reform as an excuse to vicariously experience his supreme selfishness, and also whether that vain sense of professional competitive satisfaction mattered more than actually helping people, which might be impossible given the extent of corruption in 21st century urban America.

Supposedly, it is up to the reader of the qualitative study to decide if qualitative researchers' work is generalizable beyond the population that was studied, but the very fact that they're bothering to publish this work implies that they do see it as indicative of larger patterns. Wolcott gets into a whole mess of trouble by becoming involved with his subject of study. Its hard to fault the subject because, really, who likes to be scrutinized to that degree and used as an example of a certain type of social problem? Even if you make the study anonymous so as to protect the reputation of the subject, I still feel uneasy about the relationship between ethnographer and subject. Either they make these people into bad guys, repaying their openness with harsh criticism of every aspect of their lives, or they lionize them, which isn't telling the whole story and ultimately helps no one.

That's what you need the protective layer of fiction for. Not only does it protect the identities of the not-so-innocent. It also doesn't necessarily claim to be realistic and generalizable the way that qualitative research does. If people happen to think The Wire and The Sopranos are realistic, great. And as much as the creators and fans of the shows crow about the "realism" of the show, what makes them both great, what sucks people in and keeps them watching, is the entertainment value of the show. They're exciting, hilarious, dramatic, ironic, and moving. Ehtnographic studies can be all of these things, but its much easier to make a story reliably entertaining if you're permitted to take massive liberties with reality, and that's something qualitative researches have no business doing.

Why Screenwriters Get No Respect, and How They Can Get It

Listening to this interview with Akiva Goldsman on The Business rekindled my interest in the status of screenwriters. We all know that screenwriters are treated like shit in Hollywood. They're typically not well known and not well paid. I've always thought of the screenwriters as the primary authors of films. Yes, I know that directors and cinematographers shape the look of the film, that producers' tastes are the only reason the screenplay gets made into a film, and that movie stars bring certain cultural cache that affects the interpretations of the audience and helps films get made. I've come to value all the input of every creative person who works in the industry. I firmly believe that every one of them has some impact on how a film is received, and that if even one of those elements is out of place, a film that could've been great would turn out to be awful. But still, the appeal of Hollywood films is less about lighting, acting, and even subject matter. Its about a well-told story. Its still my contention that everything else can only either augment or detract from the core emotions and ideas that are in the screenplay. As they say: the story's the thing.

Then why aren't writers more well known and paid more $? It has something to do with how many there are of them and how quickly they can be shifted from picture to picture. Goldsman points out that everyone piece of the cinematic division of labor pretty much stays put during production. It would be unthinkable to go through 10 wardrobe people during a film, but completely normal to go through 10 writers.

A less extreme version of the infinite monkey theorum applies here, and while I'm not quite calling screenwriters 'monkeys,' I am saying that they're partially responsible for their low status in Hollywood. Part of the reason that everyone has a screenplay (and not everybody is a budding cinematographer) is b/c the tools of the trade - paper and pen - are pretty damn cheap. As digital production and distribution costs fall, maybe they'll be the kind of glut of talent in other realms of filmmaking, but still, it seems like writing will always have this edge.

How are screenwriters responsible for their lowly status? I think that they have a certain view of writing and are unwilling to depart from it.

My theory is that screenwriters are:

A) too married to their work. So when a producer asks them to change something in the script b/c it doesn't test well or b/c the producer has done many films like this and "knows the audience," the screenwriter refuses, and is summarily replaced. They don't think about the finished screenplay as something that can be radically altered after it has been completed, by them or by anyone else. The economics or production and distribution necessitates that work be seen this way. Producers can't know exactly how a film is going to play from looking at a treatment. Screenplays are like theories, and the process of bringing one to the screen involves various little experiments, each of which either confirm or deny the effectiveness of the film. If its denied, you don't just give up. You retain some elements and introduce new ones. You revise. Sure, the producer is a false proxy for the audience, but still, he's more detached and experienced than most screenwriters.

B) too into the idea that storytelling is an art and not a craft, and that the spirit that moves one to write and the place where the ideas come from cannot be pinned down. Either you got it or you don't. It comes from the soul, and the worst thing you could possibly do is to compare writing to a science (like I just did).

The theory I offer here is a self-serving one (but that doesn't make it wrong). I want to teach visual storytelling, therefore I'd love it if writers looked at screenwriting as more of a teachable craft and less of a "you got it or you don't" kind of art.

Maybe that's true, and maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. But there seems to be some evidence to the contrary. If you look at the most successful screenwriters, a good number of them have read screenplay manuals (which are imperfect for reasons I'll explain), have gone to film school, or generally see writing as (at least partially) a teachable craft. If good writing really "came from the soul" and not the textbook, then wouldn't all successful writers not have read any screenplay manuals or taken one screenwriting class? I'll readily concede that plenty of great writers aren't taught but born, but the amalgam of taught/born writers suggests that there's something about writing you can teach. And I think part of the reason more great writers haven't been taught is b/c they're not teaching in the right way. Manuals provide a hard-and-fast formula, when really its an ever-mutating process that is (like pretty much every phenomena in the world) better known through a combination of ongoing experiments and classic books . So, if Hollywood continues to run this way (at least partially), how long can screenwriters keep preaching the gospel of the gut and scratching their heads at why they can't get any respect?

Also note that writing screenplays in the revisable, experimental mode isn't antithetical to creativity. Someone has to come up with the ideas to try, and the best screenwriters will still be the ones with the deepest wells of creativity, the "biggest guts."

If they did change the way they thought about screenwriting, then maybe the hierarchy would change a bit. Maybe a flexible writer would stay put on a film longer, or collaborate with a producer or studio longer. Its in the best interests of producers to collaborate with known entities. The business isn't out to screw writers. They just want them to be a bit more flexible.

Subscriptions, eh?

After reading this article in the New York Times magazine on Rick Rubin’s move to Columbia, I’m giving more consideration to the subscription-based model for the distribution of media. For the record, I can think of at least 3 ways how we might consume abundant media (I’m assuming that all media texts will be abundant in the coming era):

1. Ad-driven – this assumes that spot advertisements (or any kind of ads outside of search-based ads) actually work. After reading this book my Michael Schudson and speaking with my friend who works for a new media marketing firm in San Francisco, I feel increasingly confident in claiming that the kind of push advertising that consumers don’t seek out but is foisted upon them (as opposed to ads based on a google search for a consumer good) never worked very well. I have to admit that I’m thoroughly disappointed to see YouTube going down this road.
   
2. Micro-payments – This is how Itunes works. I had an idea about a new "nickelodeon" where you would pay 5 cents to see a short film that was made on a low budget. So as we’ve seen music adjust from album-oriented sales (which dictate what gets made), we’ll see a change from 2-hour movies and half-hour or hour episodes to shorter, more serialized online videos. If they are serials, then in a sense, it will be like a subscription, though it will be one with rather unfair terms that will ultimately hurt the show’s lasting value – viewers will be strung along as long as the network can string them along for. With an ideal subscription network, viewers are loyal to the aesthetic of the network, and therefore aren’t liable to jump ship when one particular narrative ends. In that case, the narrative doesn’t have to get dragged on and become watered down.
3. Subscription – I used to be against the idea of more media going this way, just for personal reasons. I hate bills, I hate being locked into something. There’s something about he subscription-based way of consuming media that makes it more habitual and less critical or reflective, and therefore you’re more liable to end up with shittier, shallower media. But after reading Rubin’s prediction, I thought a bit more about subscription media. Suddenly, I realized that the two brand name ways of disseminating and producing media that I praise the most are subscription-based: HBO and Netflix. I still think that the way people consume music and the way they consume narrative media is and always has been radically different, so I’m not sure that any restriction on when a person can listen to a certain piece of music would work.
   

Whether micro-payments or subscriptions are the way to go, for music or video, depends on how the media is consumed. If its a serial narrative (or a series of serial narratives) then a subscription would make sense because consumption is so habitual. But with something like music, you want to listen to it many times over, but you might put it away for a few years and then rediscover it. I feel like this happens more with music than it does with video.

Already, I think we're seeing a tiered system develop in music: there's music that people are OK paying for (maybe music that's in greater demand, had a higher budget to produce, or is, by critical accounts, damn good) and then there's music that people don't expect to pay for (poppy, temporary hits). There hasn't been much of a price hierarchy in music before: the pop album cost roughly the same amount as the rap, classical, indie rock albums. But it would be interesting to see that change in the future. Maybe there will be a bottom-feeder genre of music that is free but that contain product placement in their lyrics, or are ad jingles.

Is Kid Nation as Bad of an Idea as it Sounds?

On the face of it, Kid Nation sounds a lot like the last season of Survivor (the one in which participants were separated according their race): designed to court controversy. Its basically Lord of the Flies as a reality show - kids, left to their own devices, competing, forming alliances, and getting injured. Considering the knee-jerk, "well, I never" reaction that this show is sure to provoke, I thought I'd consider what the likely risks and rewards of such a show really are.

The NYTimes article seems to dwell on the worse-case scenarios outlined in the participant consent contract. So, why would a parent allow their child to risk life and limb for a shot at $25,000 and possible semi-fame? First off, I think that critics of the show's ethics will likely exaggerate the risk to the children involved. Though I haven't seen the show, I'd guess that the actual risk of bodily harm to the participants is very low, but is made to look much higher than it actually is. This is the case with most reality shows. The producers play up the danger element and play down the fact that their are highly trained medics just off camera. It wouldn't be to the producer/network's advantage to have a participant seriously hurt, even if they weren't at financial risk b/c of the air-tight contract. Really, they're all about trying to make situations seem far riskier than they really are, and they're quite good at that.

But why risk any chance of harm to your children? I think its less about the monetary reward and more about the changing nature of celebrity and what it means to be on national television. Setting aside the questionable motivations of the stage-parent for a moment, we can safely say that many more Americans can realistically aspire to be recognizable to people they do not know personally (my basic definition of fame/celebrity) thanks to YouTube and reality TV.

Celebrity before reality TV and YouTube was a rare commodity that was synonymous with a dramatic increase in one's monetary and social capital. There was always a downside - your public identity would be predetermined. Before you met new people, they'd already have a fixed (often inaccurate) idea of who you were. The ability to shift our perceived identities according to context is something we do unconsciously all the time in order to communicate with others. To be deprived of that ability is likely to make a celebrity feel isolated. Of course, this was a small price to pay for all the money and adoration that old-school celebs received.

After almost a decade of popular network reality TV, it seems apparent that the notoriety achieved by the contestants comes with a different set of trade-offs. Advertisers and producers still recognize the value of minor celebrities - familiarity to an audience garners attention (and perhaps affection) for their product, but its unclear how much that audience familiarity really boosts sales or viewership (I'm guessing that a cameo by Gervais from Survivor doesn't result in the ratings boost that a cameo by Bill Murray would). Also, more and more reality shows are niche marketed, so that a person's inability to function as a mutable public persona would only be limited to a segment of the public.

If nothing else, we can say that the duration and extent of fame seems to have shrunk both the upside and downside of fame, though I'd suspect that people would still recognize you long after your value as a spokesperson or promoter diminished. There are good parts about being on TV and bad parts, and its difficult for either the critic or the proponent to say which outweighs the other until we come up with some sort of unbiased longitudinal study of celebreality. Until then, you can't fall back on the old "they knew what they were getting into when they signed the contract" defense. If no one really knows the long term effects of semi-fame on one's mental health, then the "informed" in "informed consent" doesn't really mean anything.

...
10/13/07
Upon further reflection, I've decided that the new fame (reality TV, online fame) is a much worse deal than old fashioned fame for this reason: the rewards, the positive reputation and the money that comes with it do not last very long, but the inability to be anything other than what you were at the moment that fame struck is just as long as before. In other words, the perks are fewer but the downside is just as big.

Art vs. Commerce, Resolved

While wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago, I started thinking more about the difference between "classic" art that lasts hundreds of years and commercial "art" that is replaceable and disposable, at least in terms of the way it is created, received by the general public, and its role in the economy. Some of the art in that museum had been appreciated by billions of people, and had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the years. What accounted for that? Was it a cadre of critics who deemed the work "classic," or did those critics and curators recognize some intrinsic appeal that is not limited by time or culture?

I'm pretty sure that the determining factor between art and commerce is longevity or lasting value and universality. Longevity and universality can be achieved two ways: remaining in sync with the aesthetic and cultural values of society over time and space OR by using one's station in life to acquire the markers of "classic" status, if not the substance.

The relevation that I had while staring at "The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist" was this: certain kinds of art critics are no different than advertising: they're both using their accrued capital (either social, in the case of critics, or monetary, in the case of ads) to artificially boost the value (the longevity and universality) of a work.

If you'll allow me the opportunity to completely "dork out," I've worked up this chart that better explains what I'm talking about.



I think this might be related to thoughts I've had on the debate over the wisdom of crowds vs. the wisdom of experts. You could replace "experts" with "critics." In order to determine the relative value of crowds vs. critics, we must first determine which critics simply use their station in life to subject the masses to their opinions and which critics predict the popularity of a work over cultures and time. Then, you could compare the thoughts of the predictor critics to those of the masses (i.e. crowds, the public, first weekend box office, democracy). My guess is that they'd fare pretty well, b/c as wise as crowds are, they can't see beyond their own micro-culture and they tend not to base their collective decisions on thorough research of previous successes and failures the way an informed critic could.

Of course, predicting the future success of a work is pretty difficult (though not impossible). As I was driving back from O'Hare today, I heard Marky Mark Wahlberg's "Good Vibrations," which, thanks to Wahlberg's rising status as producer of a successful show and his Oscar nominated turn in The Departed, probably gets more airplay than Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations." I guess critics can analyze the intrinsic values of some work and say that, "all things being equal," its likely or unlikely to withstand the test of time. But some of those "things" are the careers of the artists and the subsequent assignment of kitsch value. But that's a subject for another blog.

Terrorism and Contagious Media

There was a truly provocative blog post on the NYTimes' Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt. The blog entry solicited ideas on which terrorist attack would wreak the most havoc. Predictably, the article prompted both scathing rebukes and praise for its openness in roughly equal measure.

It got me to thinking about whether the scathing critiques had any merit. As I understand it, the worry of most of the naysayers was that either terrorists or unhinged people looking for ways to lash out at the world would get ideas from this blog and be more apt to try to carry those ideas out. It might be that they actually get a specific idea on how to cause the most fear, or it might be that just talking about terrorism in this manner puts it in the forefront of their minds and gets them to act out while not necessarily cribbing an actual idea from the website.

This is similar territory to that which I covered in my blog post-VA Tech. In both cases, we imagine an unhinged individual with nothing to live for who wants some sort of revenge on the rest of the world. He has this nebulous rage built up, but its unclear as to how it will be released. Maybe if he is presented with one set of stimuli (say, a lot of ultimate fighting videos and some death metal), he will train to become an ultimate fighter and beat the shit out of similarly frustrated young males. If he is presented with another set of stimuli (say, non-stop coverage of a mass murder or extensive, detailed speculation as to how to carry out a terrorist attack that would cause the most fear), then he might be more inclined to carry out such an act. A third set of stimuli might prompt him to merely kill himself, etc. With Virginia Tech, the worry seemed to be more emotional than logistic. The images of the gunman had a certain visceral power that offended people. In the case of today's NYTimes blog, its just words.

Many comments on the blog that fall into the pro-openness, pro-Levitt category take a "cat's out of the bag" approach to the potential harmfulness of information. This assumes that all nodes on the information network are equal. If a bit of information is on some obscure message board, then its liable to have the same effect on people's behavior as if it were on a higher-profile webpage. The linked nature of the internet means that if a bit of information is interesting, funny, or dangerous enough to warrant attention, it will get attention via digg, delicious, or the viral spread of blogs, vlogs, and emails.

Here's my problem with that reasoning as it applies here. What Levitt wrote isn't what might actually cause harm. He sketched out only one scenario. Its the aggregation of reader comments that could contain the terrorist scenarios that are superior to any that have been thought of before.

I've been waiting for the Wisdom of Crowds wiki-logic to hit the war on terror. By aggregating these scenarios, we seem to be doing the terrorists' work for them. It takes time, energy, and intellectual ability to think up plausible scenarios for terrorist attacks. One writer (e.g. Tom Clancy) could be pretty good at that, and a bunch of devoted terrorists could be just as good if not better, but a larger group of well-educated, creative people (if they worked collectively) would certainly be better at it than either Clancy or the terrorist. So I think you'd be mistaken to say that if we can come up with a bright idea for causing terror, it would've already been thought of. Even the most sophisticated think tank is probably no match for the collective wisdom of the NYTimes' readership (as I pat myself on the back).

Then there's this paradox: the people who think the information is harmful and comment accordingly are, in some sense, aiding and abetting the harmful information by making it more visible. In the inexorable logic of online community popularity, if a comment has many comments, it is more likely to be considered "important," to be forwarded, to be read. The virus spreads.

If indeed this discussion is followed by a large scale terrorist attack (or a few of them), we shouldn't assume that it caused it/them, nor should we fall back on the well worn truth that terrorism is extremely uncommon and therefore is nothing to worry about. Personally, I have never been hit by a car even once in my life. Does this mean that I shouldn't look both ways before crossing a street? We have lived in a world where Tom Clancy and other writers have dreamed up scenarios for terrorism, and one where groups of terrorists have spent a lot of time and energy thinking up ways to disrupt societies, but I don't think we've ever had an instance of a large number of creative, intelligent people brainstorming about ways to cause mass fear. In the sense that this is unprecedented, I think its impossible to definitively say whether or not this kind of openness is necessarily good.

But it could be good. The quicker we can think of potential problems, the quicker we can plan solutions. Dubner and Levitt have always been convinced that people are worried about the wrong things (handguns instead of swimming pools, for instance). There are those who believe that the threat of terrorism is way overblown and think that Levitt's exercise proves that by showing the disparity between possible scenarios (lots) and actual events (very, very few), we prove this. But I would say that we might learn what kinds of terrorism would be worth prepping for by discussing in this way. If we talk about it openly, we might discover that we should spend the money we're spending on airline safety on protecting the food and water supply or developing a well-known, well practiced quarantine protocol. Dubner and Levitt are all about correcting conventional wisdom when its out of whack, and this would seem to be an instance where they're needed.

You could also argue that by familiarizing us with possible doomsday scenarios, the article and the discussion makes eventual hysteria less likely. And really, that's what would cause a society to collapse: not the attack, but the ensuing hysteria. If we can convince potential attackers that we'll bounce right back from an attack (either b/c of our preparedness, our short attention span, or both), they'll be less likely to attack in the first place.

Hmm. Short attention spans...

So maybe its good that our attention spans have been whittled away by advertisements. This way, we can't stay scared for very long.

Mad Men - an HBO show by any other name?

While watching the series premier of Mad Men on AMC, I was straining to see the similarities between this show and the show its creator- Matthew Weiner - used to write for, The Sopranos. Usually, writer/producers leave the stifling confines of network TV for the liberating ad-free world of HBO (the 3 Davids are all former network scribes). So, what happens when they go the other way, and what influence is more powerful in determining the flavor of a show - the network brand or a staff writer? This is sort of a flawed question, b/c Weiner isn't David Chase, but still, I think you could look at Mad Men and ask whether it was an HBO-type show just by seeing how much it resembled the show Weiner used to write for.

AMC (and F/X, which has a few critically acclaimed shows like Rescue Me and The Shield) aren't network TV, but still, they have ads. Therefore, shows on those networks are broken up, interrupted by distracting advertising, and can't allow much in the way of swearing, nudity, violence, etc. Perhaps they're less likely to stand by a ratings challenged show, though its worth noting that even HBO has its limits in that regard. What I identify with HBO shows goes beyond profanity and violence. Its dramas (I'm thinking primarily of The Sopranos and The Wire, though I'm going to check out Deadwood and 6 Feet Under to see if it applies to them) seem to be:

• more serialized - the stories unfold over many episodes, and not much is wrapped up in each ep
  
• more dense in terms of plotlines and information doled out by the narration
• less redundant in terms of that information
  
• slower-paced - more scenes that work to develop character and don't advance the plot
  

I've surmised that these qualities are direct results of not having the interruption of ads. According to this theory, no show on an ad-driven network (like Man Men) could possess these qualities and maintain enough of an audience to survive for a few seasons. The ads take a viewer's attention away from the narrative, and if the show is too complex, then the viewer will become lost. Mind you, complex shows like The Sopranos or The Wire can be shown on ad-driven networks in syndication and have a significant audience b/c they've already built up an audience on distraction-free HBO. But to start out on the distraction-heavy medium of ad-TV and gain an audience while maintaining narrative complexity of this nature - impossible!

There's also a certain moral position on class in America that some HBO shows share (again, I'm thinking of The Sopranos, The Wire, maybe Deadwood): there is not one hierarchy but many, some on the right side of the law, others on the wrong side, though there seems to be very little meaningful difference between the two. Protagonists pursue success on their own terms, trying to climb the ladder and beat the other guy while vaguely aware that the whole point of their existence - to climb that ladder - may be utterly bereft of meaning.

I can't think of any network shows that address themes of class, power, and culture in that way. Though I can't say for sure, I've heard that ad-driven cable net shows like The Shield, Rescue Me, and Battlestar Gallactica do. As far as Mad Men goes, so far it seems to resemble the HBO thematic preoccupations. One of the main characters - Don Draper - is at or near the top of the game, but seems to slip into reveries every now and then, perhaps having doubts about the life he's living (but, unlike Tony Soprano, he can't blame it on not getting in on the ground floor). There's also the detached wit of those HBO shows, the way they occasionally cue us to laugh at the whole backwards culture, so seldom seen on network TV and even the aforementioned ad-driven cable net shows, which are more geared towards getting us to identify with the protagonist. Again, Man Men seems to be mocking the culture as much as it presents it as hip and appealing.

One way Weiner could maintain a certain integrity while working on advertising-driven TV: by having his show be about advertising. Its a bit too early to tell, but it seems to take a somewhat cynical approach towards advertising in general. The show would seem to offer more opportunities for product placement than any scripted show in TV history. But what does it mean for a brand to be featured in a show that's message is: ads are lies created to manipulate the masses into buying things they had no previous intention of buying, to convince them, as the protagonist so eloquently put it, that everything is OK? So, there's two questions: does a brand (like Lucky Strike, which was featured in the first ep and, not coincidentally, just stopped selling products in North America last year) suffer from being featured in the show; does a brand suffer from being featured in the interstitial ads during the show?

The answer to question two is most likely no, but perhaps sales wouldn't be boosted as much as if the product were featured in a more ad/product-friendly show.

In the end, I hope that this show, along with the other show created by an HBO ex-pat - Damages) embody some of the characteristics of The Sopranos. Given the lasting popularity of that show, in syndication and on DVD, maybe TV execs of all stripes will get the message that there's an audience for that type of show. Even if its inevitably watered-down, that distinct mix of narrative complexity, detached wit, and class consciousness that HBO pioneered in the beginning of this decade would be a welcome change from what we've seen so far.

The Coming Era of Visual Storytelling: Building to Last

I've been kicking around the idea of applying meme-tracking to the study of the proliferation of certain stylistic and narrative elements in movies, TV shows, and online video. Also, I'd like to track the popularity of individual texts.

The first step would be to log which movies, shows, videos had certain elements (non-linear plotting, infidelity, a female protagonist, dense information within scenes, intricately woven subplots) or were of a certain genre. The second step would be to track the popularity of a text or an element within texts over the course of many years. Step 3 would involve making some falsifiable hypotheses that would be supported or debunked by the data.

Let's go ahead and skip to step 3. Some films have stuck around. Others haven't. Now that we've started to make more and more films and TV shows available on DVD (and soon online), I think its worth asking why it is this way. Perhaps critics cause films and TV shows to stick around by drawing the public's attention to them, or perhaps some inherent quality of the texts caused them to stick around and the critics merely recognize these characteristics. Of course, the elements themselves might not matter as much as the frequency with which they change. We might be able to see more clearly the degree of variety and familiarity that is demanded by the public.

I don't think we can really say at this point whether either of these are true because until relatively recently, films and then TV shows were seen as a transient medium. Their economic and cultural value were temporary. They had expiration dates. Just within the past few years, with the expanding inexpensive and accessible libraries of motion picture texts on DVD (soon to be online), we're getting our first glimpse of what texts are still valued by the general public well after their release. To some degree, this happened with books, but even there, some amount of capital was required to take the book into a 2nd, 3rd, 4th printing.

And here we get to the "so what" of it: people (especially vendors and owners of texts) never really cared about what separated a classic text from a temporarily successful text because it didn't matter, economically speaking. If a film, TV show, or book were popular within the first year of its release, then it would get syndicated, or re-released, or go to a second printing. All texts (except maybe oral legends) cost money to keep going, and the best way to get that money was to make it popular right away. Any text's initial popularity is a reflection of its immediate relevancy as well the strength of the promotional campaign behind it, NOT qualities which might make it of value to people living in a different culture (either on another continent or in another era). Stories weren't built to last because it wasn't in the producer/distributor/ owner's best interest.

We trundled along, mixing advertising (time-sensitive messages that are intended to distract) with storytelling, for the better part of a century. Given the available technology and the high cost of storage and distribution, this made economic sense. But now things change. With the dramatic fall in storage and distribution cost, it is significantly cheaper to keep an old title selling than to produce a new one. For the first time in the history of commercial storytelling, the economic emphasis should be on creating a lasting product.

In terms of examining culture, its always been important to ask what makes classic stories so enduring and universal. Culture (particularly storytelling) has been yoked to commerce for so long that the only studies of storytelling that were read widely and mattered to those outside the academy were ones that pertained to stories that produced profit. Now, the study of the classic story can get that outside momentum behind it.

So, what makes a classic story? Joseph Campbell's pretty much got this covered, but to speak about it in more practical and exact terms, I'd love to examine the films and TV shows that have been produced so far.

A few testable hypotheses:

1. So-called "body genres" (porn, horror, and melodrama) are somewhat similar in narrative structure (simple, unvarying), and popularity arc (steep drop off after a brief period of time).
2. Films and TV shows that are unified and complex (in terms of the threads of the narrative) are likely to have a less steep drop off in their popularity arc than films and TV shows with simpler narratives. In terms of commerce, these stories have a longer "shelf life" than others assuming the appeal of all other things - the timeliness/timelessness of the themes and content, the acting style, and other elements that may go in and out of fashion - is equal.
   
3. Certain critics, over the years, have been more adept at picking movies that did poorly initially but sold well later and continue to sell well decades since its initial release than others. There's a problem of causality here - did the critic's praise result in higher ticket sales, or was the inherent superiority of the story responsible, and the critic's and public's reaction merely an inevitable result of those qualities?
   

My hope is that we can get past the rather defensive stance that all genres, subject matters, and styles are equal. When theorists use this term (or imply that it is the case by rescuing oft-overlook and maligned genres like the aforementioned body genres), its a value judgment - a soap is no worse or less important than a highly rated, critically acclaimed prime time show like Seinfeld; a forgotten B film from the 50's is no less important than a Hitchcock film. OK, fine. Though they can be considered equal, different types of films, shows, and videos are not the same in terms of their style and content (rather obviously, since that is what is typically used to tell them apart) as well as (less obviously) their "patterns of popularity": how quickly they fade from the public's consciousness, how often they return to it.

Then there are those movies, TV shows, and especially songs that weren't all that popular to begin with, then sank under the radar for years, maybe decades, only to resurface later. When you dig one of these long forgotten texts up, you feel this proprietary need to defend it. It feels rare. But maybe we can set this personal passion aside and look at things with some distance. Of course, the existing history of visual storytelling is tainted for the reasons I mentioned (lasting popularity relied on initial popularity in a way it doesn't have to anymore), but if we correct for things like differences in advertising budget and pay special attention to the texts and characteristics that weren't so popular initially but stuck around and grew in stature over the years, then we might begin to understand the qualities that make a visual story a classic.

You Tube - Public Television

The more I follow the circuitous pathways from comments to YouTubers' profiles to their favorite videos to that persons' posted videos, the more I'm sure that YouTube is not about being entertained or enlightened in the traditional sense but about finding people who are similar to you. YouTube is unlike so many other online video sites b/c its primarily used as a social networking tool.

People seek out media that espouses viewpoints consonant with their own all the time, but when it comes to film, TV, and music, they've had pretty limited choices. I don't think you could find this video of kids blowing stuff up on any other medium. The closest thing might be Maximum Exposure on TV, which features the obligatory "don't try this at home, kids" voice, but mostly makes a mockery of attempts to temper the audience's delight in watching carnage.

So there are people on YouTube watching other people get hurt, or blow shit up, and then there are people watching "9/11 is an inside job" docs. There are people watching ironic mashups, and there are people making earnest fan tribute videos to soap opera characters. In short, there is nothing remotely resembling a cultural, moral, or aesthetic consensus on YouTube (other than a universal bias towards youth). Unlike TV, this is not a storytelling medium (even reality shows, which favor lifestyle and culture over story, possess narratives). Its enough to simply signify who you are by posting of montage of you and your friends blowing stuff up.

When someone says "I hate your video," what they really seem to be saying is "I hate you," or at least "I mock your value system." Again, I think what separates YouTube from traditional media is the extent to which our preferences and production of media represents ourselves. I can share this person's love of Slayer and Slipknot, but I think that blowing shit up is a dangerous, annoying attempt to assert one's diminishing authority in the face of a modernized world in which the person in question can't fit in or compete. I'm relatively sure that said person would think I was a stuck-up prick for thinking so. But that's the variety of opinions that we're dealing with online.

Certainly, YouTubers still have some overlapping interests. One Tuber may seem to be exclusively interested in Cameros and explosions, but his preference for a comedy sketch might put him in the same audience as someone who hates Cameros and is indifferent towards explosions. It would appear that diversity of lifestyle and value system within a fan group is less prevalent on YouTube than it is w/ other media, but the linked nature and the search function (and what people choose for tags, and the fact that the middle frame of each video represents it) connect diverse viewers in ways that cable TV - with its certain channels for certain interests - doesn't.

Something tells me that diversity of one's media diet depended on two things:

• A paternalistic media oligarchy that deemed certain types of diversity of values reflected in our media to be necessary for civic health (the high-minded ideals behind public TV programming)
• Imperfect search technology that gives us some of what we're looking for, but also some things that we weren't looking for.
  

We can even search for people, but those people have some values we agree with, and others we don't (just as in real life), and that's good. But what happens when no one is there to impose diversity? What happens when the search technology gets so good that no one has to be confronted by values they don't agree with? I can't shake this nebulous fear that we'll all hate each other a little bit more in the future.

Free Thoughts on Violence

I listened to two interviews with the directors of Hostel II and Captivity recently, which made me think a bit more about "torture porn" and the public debate over the effects of violent media. I'd always dismissed extreme horror from afar, but these guys seem pretty intelligent and sensible. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about the audience. So, though its a dead-horse subject, I thought I'd wildly speculate about the effects of violent media, just for kicks.

One thing that bugs me about the debate is the exclusive concentration on ratings. This implies that negative effects can only happen to people who are 17 or younger. I'll accept the fact that the younger you are, the more susceptible to media messages you are, but that doesn't mean that everyone over 17 is not influenced by what they see in movies, on TV, and on the internet. My feeling is that kids are deprived of violent and sexual media (or at least it is discouraged by parents) and then when they go away to college, they binge on it. It has the appeal of the forbidden fruit, and they feel as though they have to find out what they've been missing (and there's a natural draw to it, at least for males).

Is it that hard to believe that watching a ton of extremely violent media might make an adult more apt to be violent? Chuck Klosterman had a good point in the terrific doc Metal: A Headbanger's Journey about media effects. He knows that the lyrics to Ozzy Osborne's Suicide Solution is about boozing, but accepts the fact that maybe someone might misinterpret the lyrics and think its primarily about killing yourself. That's all I'm saying here: its not a huge leap to think that someone might not get the subtle subtext of a movie like Hostel II (which, according to Eli Roth, is about young Americans' lamentable lack of worldliness in the post-9/11 world).

Let's say one 22 year old watches Hostel II (fine, Hostel PART II) once, watches about 2 or 3 extremely violent movies and plays 40-50 hours of extremely violent videogames every year, while another 22 year-old watches Hostel II 5 times, watches 20 or 30 extremely violent movies and plays roughly 400 hours of violent videogames per year. If these individuals were 17 or under, we could blame the parents of the second one. But they're not. They're adults, and they can do whatever they want. Does that mean that the second individual cannot be swayed by what he watches and plays? That seems to be the common wisdom, which is complete bullshit (I think).

My understanding of the existing research on media violence is that only those who are prone to violent behavior and/or have behavioral problems are likely to be negatively effected by violent media. So clearly, its less about an individual text and more about the context in which it is seen, the context in the viewer's life. I'd speculate that if a person who is prone to violence could be made to act violently, it wouldn't be by an individual movie or game but through an unvaried "media diet": nothing but torture porn, 1st-person shooters, and Faces of Death. If you had two anti-social 30 year-olds, and one of them watched nothing but torture porn for a year, and the other watched one or two per year and instead just listened to a lot of metal and lifted weights to get out his aggression, it seems possible that the second person might not only be less apt to be violent, but be less apt to be an anti-social person.

That's another thing: I doubt that watching or playing a ton of violent media will make you more apt to torture or kill someone, but it might make you a shittier person in general. It might have the same effects as heavy porn use. Neither is going to make you go rape or kill someone, but you'll be less apt to go out and try to make deep, lasting bonds with people. Like drugs or booze, excessively sexy and/or violent media (or rather excessive use of such media) makes a person happy; its tricks your mind into thinking that you're doing something good by releasing endorphins, when in actuality, you're just fucking with the chemicals in your brain without really changing your life circumstances.

Maybe anti-sociability is the real threat, not Columbine or Virginia Tech-like disasters which, sad as they are, are still extremely uncommon. Consider the following detriments to being anti-social:

• Politically, you're easy to control. By listening to the new Rage Against the Machine album, anti-social adults think they're sticking it to the man, when in fact they're just listening to music. Not that RATM is excessively violent or sexual (certainly not excessively sexual), but only that the adult whose desires are sated by media is less apt to interact with the world at large, less apt to learn about something from someone else or debate a point and more apt to regurgitate whatever the rock star said. Sure, sometimes media can be a catalyst for action, but from what I've seen, its just as often used as a substitute for action.
  

• Economically, you're destined to spend most of your life on a lower rung of the ladder. To achieve success in any line of work, it helps to be able to connect with other people, and if all you can talk about is the Burning Crusade, you're not gonna make it very far, whether you want to start an organic farm or work for Goldman Sachs.
  

• Healthwise, you're more likely to be a burden to the system. In the long run, anti-social people are more apt to be angry and depressed, and angry and depressed people are more apt to require treatment (which funnels R&D $ and time away from cancer research, etc).

If you're going to treat the concept of media effects seriously, I think you've got to get past two ideas: only children are susceptible to media's influence; seeing or playing an individual text once is likely to have a substantial effect. It seems like there's going to be more and more violent and sexual (and sexually violent) media out there, whether we like it or not. Perhaps this will mean that we have to stop thinking about individual texts (because if you ban or regulate one, someone else will just make a similar one to replace it) and start thinking about regulating media diets the way we are starting to regulate tobacco or booze use, for instance. Maybe you could tax the shit out of all sexually violent videos to deter people from using it. You can't just rely on parents to dictate their offspring's media diet for the rest of their lives. At some point, adults will need to realize that media they freely choose could make them as anti-social (and as much of a burden to the system) as an alcoholic.

The industry, academia, and the world at large seems to tacitly accept the fact that a 16 year-old who watches extremely violent and or sexually violent material will be negatively effected by it, but I can't imagine that they would ever be willing to accept the possibility that a 22 or 32 year-old can be negatively effected by violent media as well. 'Sup wit dat?

When thinking about how to regulate violent media, I like to compare the negative social impact of violent media to that of drugs and booze. We've decided that people are too easily fooled into thinking that the pleasure of doing heroin outweighs the negative effects on them and, since they cannot help but be a part of society, on society as a whole. We've also decided that that's not the case with booze, or cigarettes for that matter. Sure, people can drink themselves to death, but its harder to really fuck up your life with booze than w/ heroin, so one is legal (but heavily regulated) and the other isn't. Where does violent media fit in to all this?

I'd say its more like booze, for now. Maybe, you get a few cases of it possibly influencing someone who wouldn't have been as violent as they turned out to be to become more violent, but society is hardly falling apart. But this could change if people inundate unregulated online video sites with homemade torture porn (and if people think that Eli Roth is the problem, they should wait until the internet does to the horror genre what it did to porn - make it more extreme, cheaper, and more accessible). And maybe the measure of how bad things are getting has less to do with how many massacres we have and more to do with how socially, politically, and economically active a violent/sexual media-sated generation turns out to be.

Network Narratives

Understanding and enjoying network narratives (such as Babel, 21 Grams, and several Altman films) depends not on how complex or how out-of-order the plotting is, but rather on when the information that will lead the viewer to piece together a coherent linear story is doled out.

While watching 21 Grams, I assumed that the reveal (the part that lets us know how everything fits together) would be at the end. Instead, it comes gradually around 30-40 minutes in, and without much fanfare.

Generally, we're told how the pieces all fit when the narration reveals a crucial cause-effect relationship between certain scenes. Until we get that crucial linking scene, we treat the film as a puzzle. We can't become fully immersed in the film because we're too busy trying to figure it all out. That's generally how I felt about Babel. It kept me at a distance, and the payoff wasn't worth the trouble.

By revealing this crucial piece of the puzzle earlier than some network narratives, 21 Grams is less of a puzzle or a stunt and more of a clever way of getting us not to choose sides, a way of making more than one character sympathetic, which under normal, linear plotting circumstances, may be impossible.

After the moment we learn how the puzzle fits together, we're concerned with when certain characters will find out information that we know but they don't know (Naomi Watts finds out that Sean Penn's character has her dead husband's heart at 1:28 or so) and what chain of events will lead to the the events we see throughout the film - like a mystery - (Sean Penn getting shot in the chest after hunting down Benicio Del Toro), and also what will happen to the characters in the end, which is what we're generally concerned with when we watch any movie.

That said, this movie revels a bit too much in its poignancy for me, and 21 Grams has to be the most misleading title for a movie I've heard in awhile. It sounds drug-related.