The radicalization of renown is good for America.
In these times of seemingly limited job and business opportunities, celebrity has become a goal attainable by all.
Gaining public attention by performing for the masses once required skills — deft strokes with ochre on the walls of Paleolithic caves, facility with trident and net in the Roman coliseum, recitation of iambic pentameter by the swath from the stage at the Globe.
Talent and practice were needed for popularity from the dawn of time until the debut of America’s Funniest Home Videos in 1990. And even then a contestant had to have steady hands and steely resolve to keep the video rolling while his son pedaled off an improvised plywood ramp trying to leap a row of Tonka toys on his Big Wheel and got whacked in the testicles.
But what does 18-year-old Bethany Mota who still lives at home with her parents (two-page spread, People, pp. 196-7) do? She does “reviews of new makeup, clothes, and other mall finds.” Her YouTube channel has 5.9 million subscribers. She “reportedly makes $40,000 a month.”
There are 10,900,000 teenage girls in America, an estimated 10,899,999 of whom have the same skill set as Bethany. This includes the teenage girl at my house who is presently locked in her bedroom sharing “reviews of new makeup, clothes, and other mall finds” with her 5.9 million Facebook friends. She is about to get pages 196 and 197, torn from People and heavily marked with a highlighter pen, shoved under her door. Bethany Mota, you are a beacon of hope.
P.J. O’Rourke, “Welcome to Showbiz Sharia Law: No talent? Kind of dim-witted? No shame? Perfect. The celebrity industry needs you — just don’t ever veil your face”, The Daily Beast, 2014-05-04
January 2, 2015
QotD: The democratization of fame
December 22, 2014
QotD: Celebrity gossip as a common good
Celebrity gossip is psychologically healthy.
It provides an outlet, a useful sublimation, of our self-destructive subconscious compulsion to lean over the back fence and cluck (or tweet) about the godawful things our relatives, friends, and neighbors do.
Celebrities are not our family. Although there are so many celebrities that we are probably related to some. But they’re not the niece looking daggers at us across the Thanksgiving turkey because of what we said to Uncle Bill about her hookup with that McDermott idiot. They’re not the daughter locked in her bedroom running up our Visa card bill with online shopping for new makeup, clothes, and other mall finds.
Celebrities are not our friends. They don’t borrow our money or power tools. They don’t forget it’s their turn to carpool the kids to junior high. They don’t come over when we’re busy watching The View and litter the kitchen table with used Kleenex, pouring their hearts out about their (remarkably frequent) divorces. They don’t get caught — unless Dean McDermott is late to the set for his televised therapy session on True Tori — necking with our spouses in the coat closet at our cocktail parties.
P.J. O’Rourke, “Welcome to Showbiz Sharia Law: No talent? Kind of dim-witted? No shame? Perfect. The celebrity industry needs you — just don’t ever veil your face”, The Daily Beast, 2014-05-04
November 29, 2014
QotD: Celebrity journalism
The formula for celebrity journalism is to mix schadenfreude with celebration at about the ratio of gin to vermouth in a dry martini.
The May 5 issue of People may not be the best example. Its theme is “50 Most Beautiful” and those selected do look enviably better than you and me. But, going back to the April 28th issue, the lead story is “Tori & Dean in Therapy on TV — Sex-Addiction Nightmare.” There’s a headline that provides us all with contentment and joy in our ordinary, un-illustrious lives. This is a great social good.
And in the matter of “making anyone and everyone prominent,” who the heck are Tori and Dean? They are Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott. “Tori Spelling” rang a bell. She was on Beverly Hills 90210 20 years ago, appeared in such films as Scary Movie 2, wrote an autobiography that would have been more interesting if she’d waited for Dean to start mainlining booty, did some reality-TV stuff, and had a falling out with her mother over a bunch of money her dad didn’t leave her in his will. If you fertilized your lawn today, you have led a more productive life than Tori Spelling.
P.J. O’Rourke, “Welcome to Showbiz Sharia Law: No talent? Kind of dim-witted? No shame? Perfect. The celebrity industry needs you — just don’t ever veil your face”, The Daily Beast, 2014-05-04
May 4, 2014
Three Japanese fencers and 50 opponents
H/T to Tim Harford for the link.
January 19, 2014
TV as a form of birth control
There’s been some noise made about how the “reality TV” show 16 and Pregnant has influenced teens to such a degree that the teenage pregnancy rate dropped by a significant figure. Nick Gillespie has a few questions about the claims:
Television: Is there anything it can’t do?
After decades of being slammed by bluenoses, bureaucrats, and Bruce Springsteen for sexing up and dumbing down the masses, it turns out that the small screen has accomplished what no amount of promise rings, Twilight movies, or mandatory banana-on-a-condom classes have managed to do: reduce the number of teenage births.
At least that’s what the authors of a widely discussed new study say. In “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing,” (available online for the low, low price of $5.00 from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Melissa S. Kearney (University of Maryland) and Phillip B. Levine (Wellesley College) write “The introduction of 16 and Pregnant along with its partner shows, Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2, led teens to noticeably reduce the rate at which they give birth.” According to their calculations, the shows are responsible for “a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months following [their] introduction.”
[…]
The study is far less interesting for the specific claims it makes about teen birth rates than it is as a variation on persistent attitudes toward cultural production and consumption redolent of Frankfurt School anxieties over media’s impact on the proletariat. In many ways, “Media Influences on Social Outcomes” is simply the latest echo of the idea that TV, music, movies, novels, and the like don’t simply move audiences to laughter, tears, or contemplation but compel them to act in particular ways.
In other words, we’re all just mindless, easily brainwashed dupes who are being programmed by our media.
In more doctrinaire versions of Frankfurt School analysis, the producers of content are drivers and audience members are, well, just passengers along for the ride. To their credit, Kearney and Levine aren’t nearly so deterministic, even though they are quick to ascribe causative power to a particular set of programs.
In 2002’s Is Art Good for Us?, University of Tulsa professor Joli Jensen refers to this sort of thinking as an “instrumental view of culture.” It presumes “that art is an instrument like medicine or a toxin that can be injected into us and transform us.” This view, says Jensen, “is very tempting because if certain kinds of culture cause bad things in society, then you can change that culture and fix society.” The instrumental view implies formal or informal commissars that must oversee and direct cultural production, making sure more “good” art is made. After all, you are what you read, or watch, or hear. Morally suspect art leads to crime, chaos, and bad behavior.
May 7, 2013
Fox cancels COPS after extremely long run
Andrew Kirell bids an unfond farewell to a show that spent all its time on the air glorifying the police:
After a 25-year run valorizing America’s police forces to the thumping reggae pulse of Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys,” Fox has canceled its weekly reality TV series COPS. To which we should say: good riddance.
Yes, the show is being picked up by all-things-manly cable network Spike TV, but critics of the increasing militarization of American police should celebrate nevertheless: the long-running series will no longer air its highly-selective take on “policing” to as large an audience as Fox’s Saturday night lineup.
Of all the police reality shows available for viewing today, COPS may actually be the most tolerable. Unlike its cop-shows-on-steroids successors, COPS often did a good job depicting the monotonies of police beat work, and the oddities of dealing with some of the more bizarre domestic disputes. That being said, the show’s legacy is one of glorifying and overlooking abuse through a highly-selective, heavily-edited depiction of “reality.”
As part of its 25-year-long weekly reveling in the humiliation of perps and victims alike, COPS provided a cringe-worthy dose of schadenfreude for those who enjoy hearty laughter at tatted-and-toothless caricatures being taken to task by virtuous, cowboy-like heroes. Viewers with a more skeptical eye, however, might recoil at police officers bragging about “tasing a man” or the weekly knee-in-the-back of a minority teenager for the victimless crime of carrying a bag of marijuana.
Yes, there are many violent crimes broken up by the hardworking police officers shown on COPS, with plenty of gracious victims being helped. But for every breaking up of domestic violence, there are embarrassing displays of arrogance. COPS‘ turning of serious matters into cheap entertainment has often been coupled with the willful neglect of serious issues like police misconduct and civil rights.
October 4, 2012
Here’s a reality TV show that should exist
At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has a pitch for a new reality TV show that deserves a chance:
I suggest a game show, So You Think You Can Be President? SYTYCBP would have at least three segments.
Coase it Out: Presidential candidates have 12 hours to get a bitterly divorcing couple to divide their assets in a mutually agreeable manner. (Bonus points are awarded if the candidate convinces the couple to stay together.)
Game Theory: Candidates compete in a game of Diplomacy. I would also include several ringers — say Robin Hanson, Bryan Caplan and Salma Hayek. Why these three? Robin is cold, calculating and merciless — make a logical mistake and he will make you pay. Bryan is crafty and experienced. And Salma? I couldn’t refuse her anything but presidents should be made of stronger stuff so we need a test.
Spot the Fraud: Presidential candidates are provided with an economic scenario (mortgage defaults are up, hedge funds are crashing, liquidity is tight). Three experts propose plans. The candidate must choose one of the plans. After the candidate chooses, the true identities of the “experts” are revealed. One is a trucker, another a scuba diver instructor and the last a distinguished economist. Which did the candidate choose?
Entertaining? Check. Correlated with important skills for governing? Check. Can the voters tell who the winner is? Check.
“Reality TV may even be the next stage in the evolution of television”
Grant McCracken goes ultra-contrarian in this article at Wired:
It’s easy to assume reality TV is the place where bad TV went to hide when the rest of TV got a lot better. Like that old Wild West town where criminals congregate, reality TV is often perceived as the last, “vast wasteland”: uncouth, desperate, lawless.
But while some shows seem irredeemably bad (Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, anyone?), others offer an indication of good things to come. In fact, by turning all of us into virtual anthropologists, reality TV may lead to the improvement – dare I say it – of Western civilization. Reality TV may even be the next stage in the evolution of television.
In its early days, TV was confronted with a series of problems. It was a new medium struggling to find a place in the world. It had quality-control problems in sound and image. And it was talking to millions of American for whom English was a second language and American culture was still a mystery. TV solved these problems by relying on genre. Once you understood you were watching a “cop show” or a “Western,” the rest was easy.
Genre was like a cheat sheet. It flattened every difficulty: technical, intellectual, cultural, linguistic.
September 10, 2012
The non-romantic reality of a book tour
Poor Charles Stross has experienced one-too-many book tours. It’s so not conducive to anything like comfort or a normal life:
A book signing tour sounds romantic, but actually it’s not. It’s like one of those cheap package holidays in which you get to tour South America or Europe in seven days. Each day you have to get out of bed at dawn or earlier and head to the airport for another cavity search and economy-class ticket to a new city. When you arrive, a new guide meets you in, shovels you into their car, and then takes you on a whistle-stop tour of sights of the city. (On a tourist tour, it’s museums or monuments; on a signing tour, it’s bookstores, where you render the stock non-returnable by defacing it with your signature.) You might be allowed to dump your bag in a hotel room if timing permits. The hotel room will be luxurious and expensive and you will spend so little time awake in it that it seems like a cruel joke, because your time will be programmed so tightly you barely have a chance to eat. It is possible that you will be dragged in front of microphones or cameras to answer confused or confusing questions by journalists who haven’t read your book; then, each evening, you will show up at a bookstore where hopefully there will be an audience who will listen to you deliver a canned speech and/or reading and then buy books which you will then sign. And you will have to be nice to everybody, on pain of potentially not getting another tour (which might sound like a blessing in disguise until you work out what’s going to happen to your income thereafter). Finally, your head hits the pillow around 11pm — don’t forget to check in for tomorrow’s exciting anal probe and air-sickness theme-park ride! — for as much as five or six hours’ sleep.
But then, the nightmare thought: a book tour reality TV show…
April 3, 2012
June 25, 2011
“How very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid”
I think my niece mentioned this show over dinner the other night. Ilkka explains:
I recently watched two episodes of “Swamp People“, another low-budget realimentary that sets the camera to follow people with exciting and physical jobs and edits the result down to a highlights reel of action and drama with some narrative added on top. The show not only reminded me of the essay “Rednecks” by Fred Reed, but also of Tommi’s old observation of how very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid, really just simple and predictable automata. Armed with but a boat, a baited hook and a shotgun, these fellows hunt, kill and pile up 500-pound prehistoric monsters that will then be given a more useful and productive existence as delicious meat, suitcases and boots. Come on, you can’t tell me that this show doesn’t beat the initially amusing but then later just repetitive and a little bit too obviously scripted “Pawn Stars” any day…
June 9, 2011
Arizona’s First Police Armoured Division goes into action
Earlier this year, facing a looming threat, with ordinary police procedures considered too ineffective, Arizona teamed up with Hollywood for a solution. Rather than sending a squad car to serve the warrant, Maricopa County unleashes the awesome armoured power of the 1st SS Panzer division police plus actor Steven Seagal:
We have previously followed the feudal system created by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona. Arpaio’s insatiable desire for media attention has led him to turn over areas of his office to Hollywood producers. Last week, Arpaio’s unhinged administration gave the public another bizarre scene as Steven Seagal was seen attacking a home with a tank, armored cars, bomb robot, and dozens of SWAT team members. The crime? Suspected involvement in cockfighting.
The police acknowledge that there was no evidence to suggest that the man was dangerous or that he was armed. He was indeed arrested without a struggle and no guns were found in the house. Well, without a struggle on his part. The armored Seagal attack blew its windows out and caused the neighborhood to think that an invasion was afoot. The huge operations (and its attendant costs) was basically a stage set up to give Seagal good footage for his reality program, “Lawman.” Seagal is shown riding in the tank in the assault on the suspected cockfighter.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.
October 29, 2009
An appreciation of Norm Abrams . . . and a hearty damnation of ‘Reality TV’
By way of a Twitter update from Gerard van der Leun, an entertaining post from Sippican that combines a farewell to TV woodworking great Norm Abrams and a nicely judged condemnation of that modern atrocity called “Reality Television”.
Norm Abram is the penultimate example of true “Reality TV.” He made real things, and encouraged others to do so. No pretense. Not a scam. The balloon boy’s father will get his 15 minutes, but being part of Katie Couric’s nightly geeks and freaks sideshow act is a virtual reality, it’s not real real. He’ll get a book deal or an ankle bracelet, maybe both, but he literally contributes nothing to the sum total of the world’s worth. If you count up just the Twitter time he wasted, which is all waste anyway, he was the most destructive force on planet Earth for a week. But you didn’t have to look. I didn’t. You can’t even dissect him as an example of a media frenzy, because there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s all just stupid.
“Reality TV” is an absurd concept to people that live in the real world of work and worry. They get reality every day, they don’t need a faux one to amuse themselves. Cubicle-bound endomorphs think a contest that looks like figuring out a subway map, a bus schedule, and an airport tote board is an “Amazing Race.” Catching a trolley is not a bloodsport, no matter how heavy your backpack full of energy bars is. Adults going camping while participating in activities too silly and sedentary for an overweight child’s summer camp, with office politics thrown in, hardly makes them a “Survivor.” I’m told that when you’re all done watching all this onTV, you’re going to weave your own clothes and barter with your next-door neighbor, the grizzly bear, with Kruggerands. Sure you are.
There actually is one hint of unreality to Norm. The workshop isn’t his; not many people know that. It belongs to the producer of the show. Norm, as successful as he is, has been dragging his ass to the factory every day as if he was just another schlub.
October 20, 2009
Only in America? Yup.
Colby Cosh makes a convincing case that “the hoax apparently cooked up by world’s-worst-dad frontrunner Richard Heene” could only have happened in America:
Richard Heene obviously wanted to be an experimenter-entertainer in this American, Edison-meets-Barnum tradition. He was, allegedly, willing to embroil his family in a criminal conspiracy to advance the cause. His determination was so total, he doesn’t seem to have given any thought to the possibility that the suspected domestic-violence complaint recently investigated at his residence might be revealed. What sealed his fate, though, was a near-total lack of genuine scientific knowledge or understanding.
When it comes to detecting folderol, television networks have a poor track record, but even the suits at ABC detected the stench of flim-flam on Heene, who had been a success on their series Wife Swap. His pitch to the network consists of a mix of tiresomely familiar classroom experiments, untrue folkloric claims he obviously didn’t bother to double-check, plain nonsense and furiously-brainstormed wackiness (“How long can we drive before having to pee?”). Even an explicitly stupid show made by a presenter who still thinks of lasers as enticingly novel would surely be unlikely to succeed as entertainment. There are fools all over the world, but the awesome chasm between Heene’s ambitions and his actual abilities — and the sheer disrespect he had for his own limitations — that, I think, could only be found in today’s America.
September 10, 2009
Criminals get creative, use “reality TV” ruse
Apparently, “reality TV” does have a use: it allows criminal gangs to kidnap women and sell their pictures on the net:
Turkish military police said today that they had stormed an Istanbul villa to rescue nine women held captive after being tricked into believing they were reality TV show contestants.
The women were rescued on Monday from the villa in Riva, a summer resort on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to a spokesman for the military police in the region who carried out the raid. He said the women were held captive for around two months, but refused to provide further details.
The women were led to believe they were being filmed for a Big Brother-type television programme, according to the Dogan news agency and other news reports. Instead, their naked images were sold on the internet by their captors.
Given what could have happened, these women seem to have gotten off quite lightly . . . and it raises the question of whether this has been done/is being done in other areas.
