American Idol has gotten really boring lately and I’m almost ready to take back all the praise that I heaped on it earlier this season. In my defense, it was never the institution that I was really praising, but the structure, the form, its potential. And it did produce one superstar. Check out this Sanjaya vid.
I don’t really have a fav in the final. I’ll be watching LOST anyway.
More good news today. LOST has set an end-date. Of course, I’m a little sad that one of the only television shows that I have liked in my adult life will be ending, but ending it any other way would have been a disappointment. This is thoroughly appropriate. I’m still waiting to write my blog entry/mini-essay on why TV shows with beginnings, middles, and ends are so great, i.e. why the British Office makes the American one seem trite and repetitive (not that I don’t like the American one either, but come on!).
* I know that some of my regular readers will get a kick out of this: http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/go_fug_yourself/2007/03/well_played_win.html
* I’ve been obsessively listening to the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits album these past couple days. It’s the blue one with the eagle on the cover that sold 25 million copies and that all of our parents owned. I still have mixed emotions. Based on my love for Fleetwood Mac from the same era, I should be sympathetic to this stuff, and admittedly the musicianship and workmanlike songcraft on tracks like “Take It Easy,” “Take It to the Limit,” and “Lying Eyes” really impresses me. But I do feel that old Dude-like hatred as an irrepressible something in my stomach. See this great essay by Robert Christgau for more.
*And while we’re on the topic, I’m ambivalent about Christgau too. Some of his writing, I think, is the best rockwrite in the business, but his ‘dean’ persona infuriates me. I generally agree with his opinions, but not always. One thing that I was thinking about yesterday as I pondered my mixed emotions, though, is this: his seems to be one of the most programmatic, consistent, and well reasoned rock aesthetics among the rockwriters, but whether this really allows him to say anything or not, or describe anything accurately is another question.
*I’ve resolved to write a song a day for the rest of my life.
When I had written that last post, I had actually sat down to write about tonight’s LOST episode, but then I read about the Shaikh and it made me mad.
So with no further ado, LOST. I never offered my thoughts on the last couple episodes. The Hurley episode of a couple weeks ago was clearly subpar. I can’t really remember all the details right now, but I guess Sawyer and Kate finally made it back to their homebase, a development that I had been waiting for for some time. The Others’ side of the island (i.e. Ben, Juliet, etc.) was getting boring for me. Other than that, though, I can’t remember anything being resolved in that episode. The flashback was OK. It’s always fun to learn more about Hurley, but it wasn’t particularly insightful or well written, only slightly better than the Jack flashback in Thailand, which has to rank as one of the all-time worst (mainly for its stereotyping).
Last week, obviously, was much better, up there with the best of this season along with the Desmond flashback, and in fact, probably better since it 1) made more sense, and 2) actually seemed to answer some long standing questions about the eyepatch man, Klugh, where the LOSTies were heading, Dharma, etc. Also, it was probably the most well made episode in awhile, really getting back to the suspense, creepiness, and fast-pace that hooked us all on the show in the first place.
But that episode, alas, is now old news . . . doubly so since it seems like almost everything that came up there — eyepatch man, the map — has been resolved. This week’s episode was good too, but not as good, but then again, they can’t all be great. I really dug how they seemed to carry over the knowing glances between Locke, Bakunin, and Rousseau (funny that they’re all named after political philosophers) as though what went on at the Flame and what has continued to go on this episode were staged, scripted out, planned. The preview for next week assures us that we will find out how Locke became paralyzed and regained his ability to walk, and it also suggested that there’s going to be a major development in his character. This and the knowing glances suggest to me that more has been going on than has met the eye in the last couple episodes. (Also, there was the issue of Locke stealing the C4, lying to Sayyid, killing Bakunin, and Sayyid’s suspicion of Locke’s ulterior motives for coming on this expedition). So long story short . . . I’m totally willing to buy the fact that Locke has been communicating with the Others and planning something bigger all along, if that’s where this goes.
I also had a premonition during Bakunin’s big speech where he almost mentioned Locke’s paralysis that “He” (Jacob?), the Others apparent “leader,” could actually be one of the people that we have come to know as a survivor — Desmond? Jack? Locke? etc. Or at least someone we have seen before. Very creepy, very intriguing stuff.
One part of the episode that I thought was awful was the fucking pylons. If it was that easy to avoid the system, then why even set it up in the first place? Really stupid, and from a visual design point of view, it’s not even like they looked cool or something. Bakunin’s death was insanely and gratuitously violent and grotesque, but the writers could have accomplished that effect in any number of visually more clever ways . . .
Anyway . . . the flashback was also good. I liked goth Claire, though not as much as I dig her (and Sun’s) new bangs. Hubba hubba! Christian Shepherd being Claire’s dad is fine by me. It makes sense, doesn’t really open up any new mysteries, and in fact, solves some. (Like what Christian was up to with Lucia on that rainy night in Australia, why he went there in the first place, etc.) I can only imagine that over time, Claire’s relationship with Jack will bear narrative and psychological fruit, which is great (and cool that it makes Jack Aaron’s uncle . . . interesting).
So yeah, I think LOST has been pretty good these last couple weeks. Always could be better, but I’m satisfied. Right now, I don’t think that we’re going to get any gigantic questions solved this season, but with some luck, we’ll be left with some mysteries solved, good character development, and hopes for the future. Who’s with me?
Also, American Idol was pretty awful this week. Even the great singers weren’t great (Lakisha, Melinda), and I think that this is largely because Diana Ross is not a great singer. She’s a great performer and a classic personality, but she never had the chops of Gladys, Aretha, Marvin, Levi, etc., etc. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else singing “You Can’t Hurry Love” or any other Supremes hits, but that’s largely a matter of history, not aesthetics. I’ve grown used to the voice and love the songs. Ross fit them perfectly, but maybe only because that was the only option we had. (Just look at the plot of Dreamgirls and the success of Jennifer Hudson over Beyonce for proof of this.) The best performance on Tuesday, for me, went to Lakisha, and of course, she wasn’t really singing a Diana Ross song, but a Billie Holiday one. She didn’t sing it that well, to my mind, mainly because it doesn’t really fit Lakisha, but that’s fine. It’s good to show some range. I still can’t buy into the whole Melinda thing, and won’t. I’m fine with Lakisha. Melinda reminds me of an adult contemporary singer or something, which is fine, but not to my taste. Lakisha is all soul for me, pure talent out of the Gospel tradition. I think she’s the real deal. Melinda’s good too, but she can’t match Lakisha’s charisma. Jordin Sparks annoys me. Young girls, i.e. teenagers, on Idol always do. The men are laughable. Brandon was a fine elimination. Now to lesson plans . . .
In honor of the Oscars, I went to see a French movie from two years ago tonight called Innocence as part of the Francophone Film Festival that was held here at UVA this weekend. Wish I’d seen more of the festival films, but alas. Innocence was excellent — totally creepy and enigmatic — actually a lot like Pan’s Labyrinth, but also much better in certain ways. It reminded me a lot more of a long, projected video art piece than it did of a feature-length film really — like something Matthew Barney might do. It’s about a “girl’s school” of sorts in a forest where no one gets out and no one comes in. Impossible to tell what’s going on in the film, except for the fact that the girls are trapped there. A weird psychic tension permeates everything, which is increased by the fact that the girls are often put on semi-sexual, almost anthropological or biomorphic display, both for the viewer and for characters in the film. Also, they’re seen naked fairly frequently, which is pretty unheard of on American screens — these are very young girls. But none of it is salacious either. In fact, it’s quite beautiful, and it’s obvious, in one sense, that the movie is driving you to wonder whether this is not such a bad fate for the film’s characters. In other words, perverse viewpoints win the day, but the film is never exploitative, and it nevers goes for any easy shocks, which I’m usually quite vigilant about in a movie of this nature, viz. ungeneric, indie-type.
The Oscars were the usual sort of good fun that you’d expect. I’d had a party the past couple years, so it was kind of a bummer not to do that, but I still enjoyed myself. Of course glad to see Martin Scorsese win — really he’s the only real ‘artist’ that won anything tonight. Well, actually, that’s not true. I have respect for Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker and Ennio Morricone and Jennifer Hudson and a lot of other people too. So I guess I’m just talking shit. But Marty is in a class by himself, and it was great to see the cat finally win even if it certainly wasn’t for his best film (probably just cracking his top ten, actually). Or maybe not even . . . Let’s see. What’s better? At least No Direction Home, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Casino, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Last Waltz, Taxi Driver, and Mean Streets. So, being generous, that’s just top ten, not counting Last Temptation or King of Comedy, which are probably both way better, but neither of which I’ve seen in awhile. (Also Cape Fear and The Color of Money, which are borderline, and probably ten or so other flicks which I haven’t seen, but could be just as good.)
But anyway, it was good that Scorsese won. That shit with the scrim and the shadow puppetry was totally whack. Al Gore proved so many of my theses about American political life. And the singing contest between Beyonce and Jennifer clearly went to Jennifer. In fact, I found the whole evening a little embarassing for Beyonce. It seemed like the Academy was attempting to let her retain some of her dignity, but it really didn’t work. Poor woman. She’s still a pretty good singer with some great songs, but the personality just doesn’t work for me. Does it work for her “public”?
OK, I took a nap after class today and didn’t get up in time for the French movie so I did watch The Office. It was a fair episode. The stuff with Michael and Jan was predictably awkward, but still funny, and the bits about Pam asserting herself were endearing even if she is becoming far more of a cartoon character than Dawn on the British version ever became. Dawn always maintained her mystique. But of course, comparisons to the British version are unfair . . . We must judge this Office on its own merits, right? The final scene with Roy and his brother in the bar I actually found pretty disturbing, but in a good way. When they started destroying stuff in the bar, it was hard to tell whether you were supposed to laugh at their barbarity and immaturity, or be impressed by their repressed anger. At this point, I feel like the season has gone too far with the back and forths between Jim and Pam. I mean, hasn’t their status changed about once an episode? It’s not even that annoying, just, like, bad writing.
I was generally OK with the Idol eliminations. The two girls were utterly forgettable and Rudy Cardenas was fucking annoying. As Paul Kim mentioned during his audition, I think that he was facing an uphill battle as an Asian-American contestant. There just haven’t been that many Asian-American male pop stars in the U.S., so I don’t think he had a strong archetype to fit in with. I mentioned a few posts back that I think that the show’s producers are largely open-minded when it comes to race, but this doesn’t say anything for the voting audience. I think that non-African-American minority candidates face a distinct disadvantage, which is troubling. But I also don’t think that the going barefoot thing helped at all.
As for LOST last night (spolier alert!), I really wasn’t all that impressed. The promos promised to solve 3 mysteries. I saw one, which wasn’t even a mystery. The kidnapped kids came back along with the stewardess tailie. I hadn’t been worrying about these characters since the tailies originally came on the scene. In fact, their return really seems to raise more questions than it solves. I guess the producers counted these appearances as two mysteries, right? The third was Jack’s tattoo, which I’ve admittedly been wondering about, but whatever was said and shown about it didn’t really tell us anything, did it? Certainly, patience will pay off here as I’m sure that more will come to light about the tattoo and Jack’s experience in Thailand, but I guess that I was also annoyed by the exoticism of the Thailand episode. I’ve been fairly well conditioned to be annoyed by Bai Ling by the girls over at gofugyourself, so I admit that that was a factor, too, but the stereotypes about the Orient into which the episode was playing are pretty obnoxious. But then again, who knows, Bai Ling could develop into a totally interesting, well rounded character.
Still, I’m looking forward to next week’s episode. I’ve been waiting for Sawyer and Kate to make it back to the survivors. Hopefully, sparks will fly.
This is why cultural markets/late capitalism suck: While you have the pleasure of watching 5 hours of American Idol this week, the show is going head to head with The Office in its 8:30 timeslot, which makes for a difficult choice. Since its an elimination show, which is usually drawn out, I will probably focus mainly on The Office with occasional forays back to Idol. Unfortunately, I don’t have a remote for my TV, which makes this tough. And NBC, don’t think that any of your viewers see this as anything less than a crass attempt at forcing us to download this weeks episode from iTunes, which I basically refuse to do.
Well . . . actually I just remembered that I plan on going to UVA Francophone Film Festival tomorrow, so scratch all that. Cultural transcendence trumps administered boredom.
Oh yeah, and by the way, somebody searched the terms “animal collective overwrought pose” and found my blog this week, which is my greatest blogging accomplishment yet, I think.
Probably the best scene in a movie last year.
And while we’re on the subject of performing, the American Idol performances tonight were, in general, pleasantly pitiful. I thought AJ Tabaldo was the best, really the only one that I would describe as quality, but I also don’t know his song, and from what I could tell from the judges comments, the original was much better. Sundance Head was the biggest disappointment. I mean, he just blew. “Nights in White Satin”? Are you kidding?
As American Idol’s ratings continue to climb, I reflect ever more seriously on its long-range cultural impact. The show is here to stay, is changing music, and will continue to change music. And I think that these are all, basically, good things. New technologies, distribution systems, economic conditions all enabled the great performers of the twentieth-century — Elvis, Frank, the Beatles, Broadway, Brill Building and Girl Group pop, punk, etc. American Idol will have, indeed must have, its own Beatles eventually, unless the Frankfurt School (read: Adorno and Horkheimer) really were right about the culture industry but just jumped the gun a little.
I would wager not, though, gesturing towards the show’s Utopian aspect, viz. No one gets killed on the show. It is not violent. And it is not really sexist either, if you ask me, at least not overtly. Better put, it is sexy, and this is a good thing. It is probably the most culturally, ethnically, geographically, sexually, and racially diverse show on television (at least style, clothing, and complexion-wise, i.e. the pop standards format is a little limiting). Basically, it is, to my mind, something like a widely watched sports event that attracts a far more diverse audience, gender and sexuality-wise, than sports themselves do. It is people coming together to watch people singing, and probably sing along themselves, or tap their foot, or maybe get up and boogie — a mass mediated instance of a primieval habit. And if this signing and the songs generally suck (and they do) perhaps that tells us something even more dire about the human condition than even Adorno and Horkheimer were willing to fess up to.
Haven’t written in awhile, but strangely the blog has continued getting hits. Maybe more hits than it was when I was updating more regularly. Stopped writing mainly because I got busy with school work and I hadn’t been pleased with my past few posts. Thought they were getting a bit pretentious. I’ve decided to try and remedy this problem by writing more, shorter posts instead of going for clever, highly descriptive things, like my typical record reviews. My efforts in these reviews were pitched towards overcoming the commodity structure of the typical record review, viz. selling shitty records, but I figure now that as long as I keep my opinions honest, they can also be short, so that’s fine. I was partially inspired in this new approach by a lunch that I had a couple weeks ago with Tyler Cowen, GMU economist and author of the blog marginalrevolution. He commented at lunch that keeping an economics blog was easy because econ news can usually be covered in one or two sentences and a link. I’d like to come up with a similar formula here to model the structure of my thinking about art, music, literature, TV, everyday life, politics.
In the meantime, LOST! I am in the clutches of LOST-mania, and thus was disappointed to hear that this week’s stellar Desmond episode’s ratings sucked. Coming into this whole LOST thing late, I don’t think that I’m feeling the pinch of confusion so painfully as many long time fans. But also the confusion doesn’t really bother me. Most good art is confusing, even TV art. Remember Twin Peaks? What does worry me about LOST, though, is that if the ratings continue to fail that’s exactly what’s really going to prevent the writers from being able to tie up the loose ends effectively, that, and having to kill off characters like Mr. Echo for reasons that seem unrelated to the show’s overall narrative structure, e.g. contract disputes, personal issues, etc. It’s fairly obvious that a show of this nature would really start to suck if it’s main characters had to disappear for economic or interpersonal reasons, which is why a great serial is probably very hard to keep up for very long.
Although it has been done. For instance, right now, I’m watching Hill Street Blues on DVD — very consistent and very engaging, and highly stylized in a way that at first seems merely dated, but to my mind, eventually reveals itself as singular and exceptionally distinctive. Highly recommended. I also remember NYPD Blue have a similarly good run there for awhile. Maybe it has something to do with the cop show format, or maybe its just because they shared the same truly exceptional production team.
So that’s all for now on LOST, but I’ll probably be trying to blog on it more often in the comings weeks and months, and I’ll also be trying to write more on the economics of TV production and its relevance to matters of televisual form, which is really fascinating to me right now. I’m mainly interested in it for its relevance to the American Office vs. British Office debate. But more on that later, this post is already too long.
