OMFG TV! The Response

It appears my last post stirred some people up. In particular, a friend of mine (Lets call him MJ) and I had a long discussion about it over MSN. He agreed with some of my points but had several opinions that differed from my own! To be honest I missed out a lot of points in the last post. First of all he said:

there's more good films than there are good shows, you're not really considering the amount of other crap that also comes on TV that also DO follow the conventional "White man" story etc.

I responded that I personally believed that when film is good, its very very good. But when TV is good it's better. On his point about the focus on white men in both mediums I agree, but this divide is far more pronounced in cinema then TV (see ensemble casts in my previous post as a way writers get around producers on this point) For better or worse it is TV, not cinema that tends to define a generation, especially from the 90's onwards with the onset of shows like Friends. Film did use to have more power in depicting and shaping the zeitgeist in the 80's and earlier with films like Thelma & Louise, Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Taxi Driver. We don't have those anymore. He then said:

I think there have been a lot of very important films in the past decade, but in terms of defining a generation, you've gotta take into account the fact that TV is easily accessible thus more people end up viewing what's right in front of them and we all know how apathetic a lot of people are to go and see "important" films.

Accessibility was half my point, if you want to reach the maximum amount of people, television is a much more suitable medium for your work.

You've got an interesting point, it's just when I look at TV as a whole, I see more crap than good.

I seldom see really good shows like The Wire, Shameless, Six feet under etc. It's congested with a lot of other crap too, that I think is slipping your mind because you don't watch them lol.

This is true, television is as full of as much crap as film is for the most part, this is true of all mediums to be honest. But you cannot deny that mainstream television has so many more gems then mainstream cinema.

His final point that I don't watch the other stuff got me to thinking however. It is true that now a lot of my generation (Generation Y/Millennium babies) are a lot more technologically savvy, for example me and most of my friends for the most part download TV shows to watch when we want, thereby avoiding a lot of the rubbish stuff and selectively watching what we want.

My point about accessibility still stands but in a wholly different way, the changes in television were made by the previous generation, what my generation does once we become the primary media creators, will be interesting.

In other news, Pushing Daisies got cancelled! Which is a bit shit.

TV > Film, why this (indie) film-maker jumped ship

I wasn't always this way. If someone invented a time machine and allowed me to use it for my own egotistical ponderings, me-three-years ago would laugh at the notion that me-right-now prefers TV.

But me-three-years ago had asymmetrical hair so I think its safe to say that guy didn't know much.

I still love cinema, nothing can beat the experience of popping in that special DVD or sitting in the dark with a hundred strangers collectively gasping, weeping or jumping for joy. But I'm tired. Cinema has let me and everyone else down.

Progressively, television feels like it's 20 years ahead of film. Mainstream film with LGBT charecters!? Big whoop, TV did that two decades ago. Multi-ethnic casts? Social issues that don't just revolve around Straight White Men? Film just got owned.

But disregarding all of that for the moment, as an art form, television when done right is the equivalent of an epic text or novel like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, when even the best films can rarely surpass the feeling of a somewhat good novella. You simply have more TIME and SCOPE to play with when it comes to TV.

Consider the epic story arc of shows like The Wire and Six Foot Under, can you even imagine anything comparable in the world of cinema? Character development? When you have over a hundred hours to play with in some cases, how can film do anything to counteract television when the best it can offer is a narrative that asks you to fill in the blanks?

If this sounds like I'm ragging on films a bit too much then I apologize. I do still love film and I still write film, but lately I've just been feeling it's so limited. Because of time constraints and film conventions, film demands almost always one principle character, so a lot of the time we are forced to put up with an 'everyman', which as we've learnt in our postmodern era, means diddly-squat.

TV shows allow for ensemble casts so much more easily, you can tell one story from myriad points of views, you can open up your audience to other viewpoints, you can avoid stupid concepts like good and bad to make your point.

TV is also far more accessible, though there are many brilliant examples of foreign and indie cinema out there that could destroy my point completely, most people won't seek them out. I mean, media geeks like me will, but most peoples experience of cinema is 'how to lose a guy in ten days'. But anyone can turn on their spirit box and see Lost or Shameless with the minimum of effort.

My opinion makes me unpopular among my peers I know, television is a low art whereas cinema is regarded as at least being able to achieve the loftiness of what the elite deem to be 'true art'. Bunch of snobs.

I'll always love film, but I truly think TV has taken it's place as the new medium where the best in narrative can be found. Here we all were waiting for video games to take the mantle, when TV came out and proved itself more then capable of filling the role. Ah well, maybe in five years Quantic Dream.

Oh the new episode of Ugly Betty just finished downloading, must dash...

Gobama or Nobama - What to make of it all?

I've been meaning to write about the new President-Elect for the past few days, but I thought I needed a cooling off period after my feelings of joy and relief subsided. I want to take a measured look at the whole thing so a post that would have been essentially OMG OBAMA FTMFW!!! might have been a tad asinine.

Now I definatly believe that Obama will be a much better president than McCain and the crazy lady who hates Polar Bears would ever have been but he's not going to be the guy us progressives have been calling out for. His ideas about the economy are mostly sound and his stance on civil rights, education and energy policy is fine for the most part. However he has indicated he still wants to be BFF with Israel (undivided? seriously?) and he supports rewarding bankers for their foolishness/greed... oh I mean the bailout. Oh (and this is a big one) he also voted FOR the Patriot Act... gosh darnit.

Now I still think if he doesn't surround himself with idiots Obama can get a lot of good done, but he isn't perfect, nor should we expect him to be, but we definatly need to hold him account and question some of the things he's doing. We can't give him a free ride just because he's better than 'the other guy'.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the big one; race. No, don't shut off your internet browser or throw your computer through the window, this is important. I've already started to see some of the stupid stuff being spouted by a lot of people I had feared we'd see if Obama won. Racism Is Over™ and 'how can we be racist if elected a black guy?'. Now this post-racial crap has been floating around for a while now but now a lot of people have an easy response to any sign of the dreaded R and that's Obama.

This is stupid and problematic on several levels, first of all people tend to just talk about racism in the terms of black and white, this is obviously crap when you consider all the brown, yellow and 'miscellaneous' peoples of the world (I constantly lament the lack of a specific box come census time, must I be cursed as an 'Other' till my dying days!?). Then even with black people, Obama can easily fall in the category of 'exceptions to the rule' or to say it another way 'Oh wow, you speak so well! I hardly even noticed you're black!'. Obama being elected isn't going to stop a large group of people thinking Native Americans are drunks and East-Asians are subservient and whatever other stupid things people seem to believe.

Now Obama being elected is a great event and does show just how far we have come, but it doesn't mean that Racism Is Over™ and that we all need to stop whining. Now the only thing left for me to worry about is the fact that Obama's administration seems to be shaping up to be a sausage-fest, seriously get Sebellius in there if you can, she rocks.

Is it wrong to imagine that she's saying 'I own this shit'? Didn't think so.

The Magic Number

Hello there and welcome to my own private little slice of blogland.

My name is Mammith (well not really, but let's just go with that for now) and I'm simply here to say I love you and let's all be friends. Kind of...

God I hate first post type things, I'm never sure what to say... let me start by detailing some exciting upcoming topics I may write about!

Why London is a monster that should be slain!
Why Lesbian cinema seems to be 500 light years ahead of bog-standard Gay cinema.
How a country can elect a mixed-raced president and still be racist.
Why kittens are AWESOME.
What music I am currently digesting with glee.
Discussions of all the geeky topics I can think of (first stop, Lost?).
Why bisexual people, do actually exist (what a concept!?)
More blog posts with song titles because I can't think of anything else :)

If all this turns you on then you need to get out more. But seriously, stick around, it can only get better from here! Now for no particular reason, heres an Angus Cow:




Amazing.