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.