3 Ways to Define Good Cinema: Box Office, AFI, and IMDB

As the subjective coronation that is the Academy Award for Best Picture approaches, its interesting to compare a few gauges of public and critical enjoyment: AFI's top 100 (critics), Box Office revenue adjusted for inflation (public), and IMDB's top 250 (a certain segment of the public). If nothing else, a comparison might give us some clue as to what kind of sample of the public IMDB users are. Also, it might give us some indication of differences between public and critical perception of films.

What the lists have in common
Amazingly, Star Wars is on all three lists (#2 B.O., 15 AFI, and 11 IMDB). My personal opinion on this film is that the acting and dialog are awful and the special effects haven't aged well. Still, the themes resonate across time and cultures, the story is well constructed, and its a good mix of humor, romance, action, and philosophy. The Godfather just misses being in the top 20 on all lists (21 B.O., 2 AFI, 1 IMDB). Just as I'm surprised that so many critics like Star Wars, I'm shocked that The Godfather, with its European art cinema tendencies, is as popular as it is. I wonder if this film is a lot more popular with men than with women. Might that also be true of Star Wars? If that's so, then the male bias in movies isn't just coming from the critics or IMDB users. Its coming from paying customers. And yet, there are plenty of women who consume media. Historically, were they (and are they still) not making the decision as to what films to go see? Might this change in the future? Are TV and books more women's media than film and video games?

What they don't have in common
Gone with the Wind is #1 in Box Office, #6 with the critics, but its nowhere to be found on the IMDB site. IMDB definately has a bias towards newer films while AFI skews much older. The average age of a film in the IMDB top 20 is 30 years, while the average age of AFI's top 20 is 50(!). The average age of the top 20 box office hits is 38.

Casablanca is 3 on the AFI, 9 on IMDB, and nowhere to be seen on box office. Could it be that the general public didn't or wouldn't really like this movie as much as the critics or the semi-elite users of IMDB? Possibly, or maybe Casablanca was never promoted properly in the theater or re-released widely. Perhaps its stature grew over time. Perhaps all of these things account for the discrepancy.

E.T. is the 4th highest grossing film of all time, and rates a reasonable 24 on the AFI list, but is nowhere to be found on IMDB's 250. The critic/public hybrid represented by IMDB seems to be more testosterone heavy than either the general public or the critics. IMDB's top 20 is packed with men and violence. E.T. is a bit schmaltzy and certainly isn't very high in testosterone. This male (presumably young male) skew is a big reason why IMDB should not be confused with public or critical praise, but more likely represents, on average, the desires of young male Americans.

The Empire Strikes Back is 12 on all-time BO, 8 on IMDB, and its left off of the AFI list. I've always felt that Empire is vastly superior to Star Wars in every way: acting, cinematography, character development, pacing. The Joseph Campbell mythic themes that made the first one great are still there, too. The only reason I can think that AFI found Star Wars so superior to Empire is the former's cultural and economic significance, which is weird b/c they have no problem putting films that didn't exactly change cinema or the public consciousness (The Searchers, for example).

Critical godhead Citizen Kane (the Stairway to Heaven of movies, as it were) sits atop the AFI list. Only 3 films stayed in the same spot from the 1998 top 100 AFI list to the 2007 list, and this was one of them. IMDB rates it a respectable 24, and of course, its not on the box office list. I wonder if this were re-released and promoted heavily, would the public show up? Would they like it? Would they get what the big deal was about this movie? I kinda doubt it. Again, maybe critics are rating this movie highly for being innovative, in terms of style (depth of field), story, and themes. Sure, its still a good story, and the look of the film, the acting, and the dialog still hold up reasonably well, but I think the critics are mostly rating it so highly for its influence on subsequent movies (and the IMDB folks are probably acting like critics on this one). Ditto to Wizard of Oz (10 on AFI, 110 on IMDB, nothing on BO).

The Searchers, considered by many to be the apotheosis of a critics movie, is number 12 on the AFI list, 241 on IMDB, and nowhere on box office. What's most interesting is that on the 1998 edition of AFI's top 100 list, this film was 96(!!!). What the hell happened in those 10 years? Other big jumpers include Vertigo (52 spots) and City Lights (65 spots to 11).

Many films (Psycho, Schindler's List, Vertigo, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia to name a few) are higher on AFI's list than IMDB by 20-50 spots, but that's not really that much of a discrepancy. They both think the film is great. But none of these films grosses all that much $. Unsurprisingly, epics do better on the box office list, probably b/c they play well on big screens and are heavily promoted to recoup high costs of production (both of which critics and IMDB users don't seem to care about). Sequels and films based on existing properties do better on the box office list, too, for obvious reasons.

So, what lesson can we draw from this brief comparison? I think we should pay more attention to IMDB and AFI for a few reasons: big screens won't really account for that much huge revenue in the future. Only 3 out of the top 20 films of all time were released during the home video (VHS/DVD) era. Back when theatrical release was the only revenue stream for film, they made them so that they would play well on the big screen. AFI and IMDB lists are made by people watching films that were made during that era and the era of home video, so I don't think they'd have this big screen historical bias that the box office list has. Presumably, home video, with its smaller screens, isn't going away. It would help to have a list of top 100 grossing films in all formats (theatrical, VHS, DVD, online, TV, etc). The same is true for repeated viewings: critics and IMDB users have time to pour over films again and again, so that might be a better indication of what people would really like, instead of what they've been told to like by marketers.

On a similar note, I think that in the future, promotion won't influence film revenue the way it has in the past. The long tail economy of the internet will allow good films to rise to the top over time. For these reasons, the top box office list might look more and more antiquated as the years go by. I think that the critics list are just as prone to cultural elitism bias as ever, but there also needs to be a way to track audience desire that can factor out the effects of marketing. Maybe that's what truly "good" criticism can do.

Box Office adjusted for inflation:

1	Gone with the Wind
2	Star Wars
3	The Sound of Music
4	E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
5	The Ten Commandments
6	Titanic
7	Jaws
8	Doctor Zhivago
9	The Exorcist
10	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
11	101 Dalmatians
12	The Empire Strikes Back
13	Ben-Hur
14	Return of the Jedi
15	The Sting
16	Raiders of the Lost Ark
17	Jurassic Park
18	The Graduate
19	Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
20	Fantasia

AFI:

1	Citizen Kane	1941
2	Casablanca	1942
3	The Godfather	1972
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
6	The Wizard of Oz	1939
7	The Graduate	1967
8	On the Waterfront	1954
9	Schindler's List	1993
10	Singin' in the Rain	1952
11	It's a Wonderful Life	1946
12	Sunset Boulevard	1950
13	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957
14	Some Like It Hot	1959
15	Star Wars	1977
16	All About Eve	1950
17	The African Queen	1951
18	Psycho	1960
19	Chinatown	1974
20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975

IMDB

1.	9.1	The Godfather (1972)	263,716
2.	9.1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	311,972
3.	9.0	The Godfather: Part II (1974)	151,051
4.	8.9	Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)	85,867
5.	8.8	Pulp Fiction (1994)	267,773
6.	8.8	Schindler's List (1993)	179,754
7.	8.8	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	134,305
8.	8.8	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	189,692
9.	8.8	Casablanca (1942)	117,857
10.	8.8	Shichinin no samurai (1954)	65,877
11.	8.8	Star Wars (1977)	229,423
12.	8.8	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)	239,837
13.	8.7	12 Angry Men (1957)	63,122
14.	8.7	Rear Window (1954)	77,927
15.	8.7	Goodfellas (1990)	145,925
16.	8.7	Cidade de Deus (2002)	90,867
17.	8.7	Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	162,612
18.	8.7	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)	273,337
19.	8.7	C'era una volta il West (1968)	43,490
20.	8.7	The Usual Suspects (1995)	184,812

Are 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will Be Blood' good movies?

Right after seeing No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood (both of which I liked, kind of), I got the feeling that critics would love them and the public would wonder what the critics were smoking. The lackadaisical pacing, the meandering plots, the lack of distinct musical cues, emotionally remote protagonists, and the oddball endings all seemed like something that people wouldn't like nearly as much as critics. I was right about the critics, but I'm not so sure about the second part.

One hint that this is the case can be found on metacritic which aggregates critical reception of a film and compares it to the opinions of users. The 18 point difference between critical praise and user praise of Blood and 17 points for No Country are larger than those of any other film out now, maybe bigger than any film on the site ever (need to do more research there). Granted, the sample of users is so small (329 & 401) and is interested enough in critical reaction to come to a site dedicated to aggregating it, and therefore it probably isn't very representative of general public opinion. IMDB users (larger samples at 30,000 and 60,000) rated both films very highly, so highly that they're both in the top 40 films of all time according to users.



For a moment, let's assume that the public didn't (or wouldn't) like either of these films as much as the critics. As I've always been interested in the relationship between critical praise and popular success, having rejected the reductionist platitude that critics like one type of film and the public another, I thought I'd take another look at why the discrepancy might exist.

One explanation would have it that there are certain static characteristics, both thematic and stylistic, that critics are drawn to more than the general public. Grandiose themes like the criticism of American capitalist arrogance, might be a thematic thread that is common to so many critically acclaimed films, while long-duration shots and any of the attributes listed above seem to fare better with critics than audiences.

In some cases, I think critical praise, of a film or the themes and stylistic traits of a film, precede the popular embrace of those things. Does the praise cause the public to like those things; that is, does the public or has the public ever looked to critics to tell them what's good and what isn't? Are the critics merely good at predicting what the public will eventually like? Are they just as likely to guess which movies will be popular if they were to pull a film's name out of a hat (the times they anticipate popularity are roughly equal to the odds that they would do so by chance)?

It would be fascinating to do an analysis of films that were loved by critics and hated by the public. Within that category there would be to sub-categories: the films (or attributes of films) that the public came to love (or at least accept) and films/attributes that the public still dislikes. The former would show us instances critical anticipating of popularity (critics doing their job well) while the other would show us what the critics like that the public will never like (critics acting like cultural elites, trying in vain to force the public to like what they like).

Limited access might skew there numbers. Even if all critically praised films become available to everyone via online or in-person rental, some will be better promoted than others, and so their popularity would reflect their promotion budget more than any intrinsic characteristic of the film. But still, the internet allows people to see some prima facie indication of what films critics liked that the public wouldn't like if they were made to watch the film instead of selecting it b/c they sought it out or b/c it was heavily marketed. Critics are made to watch every film, so for it to be a sensible comparison, the public would have to be made to watch every film too.

Mood Matters

Looking at my Netflix queue can be pretty depressing. By that, I mean that many of the movies I've put in the queue aren't exactly uplifting fare. The movie I watched tonight, L'Enfant, is a perfect example: critically acclaimed, but sad as hell. I have a really tough time getting in the mood for such films so I tend to bump them down in my queue. Turns out I'm not alone in this kind of behavior, as this article from the Wall Street Journal indicates. Even better, someone did an empirical study on the phenomenon of thinking you'll be up for a high-brow film on a later date, and then once that date rolls around, you'd much rather see "low brow" fare (though I take issue with Read et al's categorization of Groundhog Day and The Breakfast Club as low-brow).

Though the study and the article pertained to the high-brow/low-brow distinction, there's an implicit assumption in both: critically acclaimed = downer. Here's the interesting thing that my Netflix queue, with its swelling number of TV shows, points to: this is NOT true of critically acclaimed TV. In particular, I'm thinking of several shows from HBO (The Wire, The Sopranos, Rome) but I think you could apply it to any of the most critically acclaimed TV shows ever. Its not that the aforementioned shows are lighthearted, exactly. In fact, all of them can be quite depressing at times. However, they've all got moments of humor (albeit dark humor) and its those lighter touches that keep me coming back, and make me unafraid of diving in to 13 hours of a show even though I'm in a pretty good mood these days and don't particularly want to be brought down. When I think about settling in for a season of any of those shows, I think it won't put me in a bad mood. I cannot say the same for many of the "better" films of the past 10 years.

Earlier, I wrote about the tone of The Sopranos and that tone seems to pervade HBO dramas in general. Somehow, those shows manage to be deep and insightful without being horribly depressing. Is it the length of films that prevent them from being insightful and wry instead of insightful and leaden? Is it merely a convention, a habit? Whatever it is, its keeping me away from more and more films and making me more enthusiastic about the future of serial motion picture narratives, on TV and online.

Corporate Image and Social Networks

I'm starting work on a larger project about the economics of online video, but before I delve into that, I thought I'd kick around a few ideas about its possible antecedents. I see online video as a combination of online social networking (which has roots in social network theory in general) and film/TV (so film theory of all types might be useful). Some users treat it like TV: passively watching hour after hour of viral vids or, if you're more creative, generating episodes of the webshow that you hope will launch your career in showbiz. Others use it as a way to interact with people, either by making videos or frequently commenting on others' videos. I'd suspect that most users use it as some combination of both.

Let's start with the social network side of things. I'm interested in why some social networks get popular and others don't. The allure of social networks, as I see it, is the ability to make contact with other users. The network host, be it Facebook, MySpace, Virtual Laguna Beach, or what have you, is just a venue that has some special characteristic (an incentive) that draws in some people. If those people are cool and plentiful enough, other people will come to socialize with them. Maybe that incentive is brand association. Maybe its some new way of interacting with people (an easy way to check up on what you're friends are doing, or a way of sharing photos or playing games with friends). Maybe the network is a hub for people to exchange valuable information about stuff like Yahoo.answers.

Social networks can make money in several ways. They can promote an existing product. If, say, Jergens were to have a forum on which members could discuss the finer points of makeup, the venue itself (along with plenty of banner ads, I'm sure) would act to promote the real-world product, and members would tolerate that as long as they were getting useful info and the pleasure of interaction with other members. Maybe Bud.tv is an example for the online video world: its centered around a product, the videos act as entertainment to get people there, and the socializing with other members keeps them there. Its not truly "user-generated," as the shows are produced in-house, but still, there's a community centered around a product.

Social networks could also sell adspace to all sorts of different products. When I think of video sties, I think of collegehumor.com, or YouTube for that matter. But more broadly, we could think of the current incarnation of Facebook or perhaps MySpace (though MySpace tends to advertise only the properties that its parent company, NewsCorp, produces). People come for the socializing, they stay for the advertising.

But here's the key distinction between a Bud.tv and a Facebook. One started out as an obvious attempt by a large corporation to sell its wares while the other started out as a small-scale ad-free social network designed to connect people. What I'm getting at is that the trend setters that advertisers covet probably won't go to a site that they see as corporate in order to socialize with other trend setters. They'll only go to small start-ups like the Facebook of 2004 or the YouTube of 2005. Facebook and YouTube needed some sort of innovation or entertainment to lure people there in the first place, but they don't have to overcome the "lame factor" that corporate sites like Bud.tv have to overcome. Bud.tv, or the hypothetical Jergen's forum, have to have an incentive that is that much more appealing to the public (specifically the trend-setters in each demographic) in order to lure them there.

So if you're a big corporation, you can either create some sort of appealing innovation or content to lure the trend-setters (and once they're there, try not to be too pushy about your product, less you scare them off), you can advertise on someone else's social networking site, OR you can acquire a fledgling social network. If you do this too early on in the life of the fledgling site, trend-setters will probably jump ship and your site will be sunk. But if you wait long enough, there will be so many people on the site and so much momentum that they won't jump ship just because the site is now owned by Viacom. You'd really have to fuck with the site to get enough people to leave to make a difference.

So the cycle goes like this:

• Some undergrad invents some new application and starts a site.
  
• Trend-setters flock to the site and start networking.
• Undergrad sells site to larger company, resulting in some attrition.
• Larger company sells ad space, makes millions.

There are an endless number of applications that could act as draws for those trend-setters. But I think whether you're an undergrad or NewsCorp, you've got to offer people some new way of interacting. You can't just give them content and expect a community to form around that, unless its ridiculously convoluted content that millions of people love to talk about (see Lost).

I really think that what people think of the companies that own and advertise on these sites will determine their success. Corporate image acts as a discount, meaning that users will go to the site with the coolest people, the most innovative applications, and the best content, but if any of those are really that much better than another site that isn't owned by NewsCorp, then they'll go to the other site. For this reason, big corporations can acquire social networks late in the game (MySpace) but they can't start them up.

Fewer, Better

On the year-in-review podcast of NPR's "The Business," I heard Cynthia Littleton of Variety make some pronouncements about the state of the TV industry that sounded similar to a few predictions I made in a paper last spring, specifically that the internet would take on the speculative role of nurturing lots of new talent while TV would move towards the "fewer/better" model of production that film studios adopted in the 60's when TV came on the scene. Her long term prediction that "all the execs are talking about" involves a ratcheting down of the budgets committed that is, ultimately, a correction of an extremely wasteful practice. "I think what you're really going to see is people going more to a cable model of developing fewer pilots, putting more time and energy and sweat into casting them, honing them, perfecting them...In the long term, if it helps cut a lot of the fat out of the TV business, it could be a good thing."

There are two forces at work: the inertia of the well established entertainment industry and the opportunities for dramatically increased efficiency in terms of getting the desired entertainment to the appropriate audiences (whether or not that entertainment is deemed "high quality") that new production and distribution technology permits. Institutional inertia can keep obsolete impractical, inefficient systems in place for awhile. But there's something about the openness and immateriality of online video creation and distribution that makes me believe that its revolutionary momentum won't be slowed by stick-in-the-mud institutions.

Let's compare two ways of making money by buying visibility for your product on an entertainment program.

The Upfronts: representatives of products show up to a yearly convention and look at pilots produced by established production companies, auteurs, and studios. They make a speculative decision based on the track records of those involved and the perceived appeal of the show as wehther or not to buy time on that show.

Online: Joe Nobody and 5 of his friends create a compelling, hip, humorous web series, build an audience on YouTube, then take their show off of YouTube and show it exclusively on their own site with advertising. In this model, the advertisers buy space/time on the creators' site based on established (not speculative) audience figures. What would be even better is if the next online auteurs wouldn't stretch serial narratives way beyond their breaking point (lonelygirl15 is still going. Enough already), but rather they created finite, stand alone serial narratives more like the extended-film or novel-esque stories of each season of The Wire. Then, based on their successful reputation of garnering an audience for that first low-budget series, they get more ad $ upfront for their next project. So yes, that reintroduces speculation to the equation, but its based on a reputation that can be established at a far lower overhead than on TV. Millions of $s go into developing pilots that don't hit. Could this really last?

Its just a tightening of the feedback loop that's always been integral to all forms of communication.

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.