“The “can women be funny?” pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer, Aubrey Plaza, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes: Case closed. The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.”
Tag Archives: television
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Five years ago, the only successful television drama about a woman in politics was “The Good Wife” on CBS, and that was about the blindsided wife of a philandering governor. A few years before, ABC tried to make a go with Geena Davis as the first female president in “Commander in Chief.” That show fizzled and was canceled.
But what is especially striking is that in an age of deep cynicism about Washington, the new portraits of women in high office are painted in rosy shades of respect and admiration. While many of their more self-serving colleagues pursue ignoble agendas, network heroines in top positions are multitasking do-gooders trying to keep the nation safe.
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The growing intellectual currency of television has altered the cultural conversation in fundamental ways. Water cooler chatter is now a high-minded pursuit, not just a way to pass the time at work. The three-camera sitcom with a laugh track has been replaced by television shows that are much more like books — intricate narratives full of text, subtext and clues.
On the sidelines of the children’s soccer game, or at dinner with friends, you can set your watch on how long it takes before everyone finds a show in common. In the short span of five years, table talk has shifted, at least among the people I socialize with, from books and movies to television. The idiot box gained heft and intellectual credibility to the point where you seem dumb if you are not watching it.
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“Paradoxically, a format that hasn’t changed since Mr. Carson codified it (monologue, celebrity, musical guest), is ideally constituted for the cut-and-paste ethos of YouTube and Twitter. Far more than a drama or a reality show, a joke or musical number can be plucked and posted online as a stand-alone. There is no need to DVR: Why record the cow when the Internet and social media can give viewers the milk free?”
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Albatross, thy name is DVR. It is the thing that turned TV into homework, ruthlessly cataloging my failings in the form of a queue that never dies. When the old DVR had to be returned before moving, 30 or so hours of unwatched programming went with it. (Apologies to the Kardashian-Humphries wedding. I just couldn’t.)
Stumbling onto oddball TV used to be one of my great pleasures, but the urge to keep up with too many shows necessitated a recording tool that allowed for viewing flexibility, and then that same tool, by constantly reminding me how behind I was, became the thing that made life the most inflexible.
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The U.S. cable-TV business, much like telephone and radio, has been consolidating from dozens of regional players to a handful of giants. Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable would unite the nation’s two biggest cable operators, giving Comcast roughly a third of the nation’s cable-TV subscribers. Below is a chart of major acquisitions (both partial and whole) by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter and Cox since the early ’90s.
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Why would so many talented mathematicians forsake academia to write outrageous stories and gags for an animated TV show? After all, the contrast between the elegant abstractions of higher mathematics and the foibles of the imbecilic Homer Simpson could hardly be greater.
But perhaps the similarities are closer than it appears. Think of it this way: To write an episode of “The Simpsons,” one begins with a known set of characters — Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge — and confronts them with a problem. The rest of the episode follows the characters through a complicated series of moves until the problem is resolved.
And while the show certainly allows for a wide range of improbable turns (Homer disappears into the third dimension, Lisa is rescued from an angry mob by Stephen Hawking), not everything is allowable: The characters must remain true to their personalities and the stories must follow their own inner logic, for a story free of the constraints of personality, logic and motivation is no story at all.
Now think of proving a geometric theorem: Once again, one has a certain set of elements — points, lines, triangles, circles — and is confronted with a problem. What is the sum of the angles of a triangle? What is the area of a polygon? The proof then consists of a series of moves that leads to a resolution of the problem.
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“Beginning this August, fans will have access to 24 complete seasons of The Simpsons – 530 episodes and counting – via FX Networks’ new advertiser-supported “TV Everywhere” app FXNOW, available right now in limited release.”
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Today, Sunday is handily the most-watched night of the week, with an average of 124.2 million viewers using their televisions during prime time, according to Nielsen. That figure gradually declines with each successive night of the week, bottoming out on Friday and Saturday before rebounding again on Sunday.
Of course, in the digital era, not every show that is aired on Sunday night is watched in real time. According to data from TiVo, five of the 15 most time-shifted shows of the week are on Sunday nights; for series like “Mad Men,” “Girls” and “Nurse Jackie,” as much as 90 percent of their viewership occurs in a time-shifted mode.
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If modern American popular culture was built on a central pillar of mainstream entertainment flanked by smaller subcultures, what stands to replace it is a very different infrastructure, one comprising islands of fandom. With no standard daily cultural diet, we’ll tilt even more from a country united by shows like “I Love Lucy” or “Friends” toward one where people claim more personalized allegiances, such as to the particular bunch of viewers who are obsessed with “Game of Thrones” or who somehow find Ricky Gervais unfailingly hysterical, as opposed to painfully offensive.
The baby-boomer intellectuals who lament the erosion of shared values are right: Something will be lost in the transition. At the water cooler or wedding reception or cocktail party or kid’s soccer game, conversations that were once a venue for mutual experiences will become even more strained as chatter about last night’s overtime thriller or “Seinfeld” shenanigans is replaced by grasping for common ground. (“Have you heard of ‘The Defenders’? Yeah? What episode are you on?”) At a deeper level, a country already polarized by the echo chambers of ideologically driven journalism and social media will find itself with even less to agree on.
But it’s not all cause for dismay. Community lost can be community gained, and as mass culture weakens, it creates openings for the cohorts that can otherwise get crowded out. When you meet someone with the same particular passions and sensibility, the sense of connection can be profound. Smaller communities of fans, forged from shared perspectives, offer a more genuine sense of belonging than a national identity born of geographical happenstance.
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– http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115687/netflixs-war-mass-culture
shaun james bockert 