Tag: contemporary culture

I Never Watched Breaking Bad

badI’m probably the only person on this planet who wasn’t watching TV last Sunday night.  That’s not unusual because I didn’t see the last episode of MASH, Seinfeld, Friends or Dexter either and, to this day, I have no idea who shot JR.  (Maybe Bobby did it in his sleep?)  I don’t do this stuff on purpose.  I have no philosophical grievance against popular culture; after all, I can name all the dead people on Game of Thrones.   It’s just that popular culture mostly eludes me at the time.  There’s so damn much of it, and it’s easy to tangent away from what’s really important.

I have no idea what I was doing back in 2008 when Breaking Bad first hove up on the horizon.  It doesn’t matter, though, because by the time my friends were waxing eloquent about the antics of Walt and Jesse, I was hopelessly behind and the viewing curve just kept getting steeper.  At the end of Season 3, I realized I had to either take a weekend, OD on Season 1 and get formally addicted — or walk away.  I walked away and probably missed what most critics are calling one of the best dramas television has ever had to offer.  Oh, well!  I have the feeling they’re going to say the same thing about Mad Men when it finally folds up its tent in a couple of years — and with good reason.  My point is that, after decades of being aptly named an “idiot box,” television is now producing some of the finest art of this century.  The problem is unless I want to spend half my waking life smoothing out the ass groove I’ve established in my sofa, I have to miss some of it.  Thus, Walt and I were never friends, so, in reality I cannot mourn him.

However, at the risk of pissing off a bunch of Walt’s legitimate mourners, I’m going to say Breaking Bad was not actually the best thing to happen to TV since John Frankenheimer hung out his shingle on Playhouse 90.  It was good, even great, but the fact is Breaking Bad was only one program in a general resurgence of quality television.  Look around.  Ever since Tony Soprano and his crew showed up on HBO in 1999, there’s been a continuous stream of heavy duty drama on television.  Quality is not an issue here.  This stuff is universally terrific.  Led by Showtime, HBO and AMC, viewers like me can wear out their PVRs recording it all or wait and pick and choose it later on YouTube and Netflix (which, btw, has some cool stuff of its own going on, notably Portlandia.)  We live in a wonderful time when we not only have quality entertainment, we have great quantities of it.

It’s a simple case of a rising tide raises all ships.  Breaking Bad was one of those ships.  It had to be good in order to sail with the likes of Dexter, Boardwalk Empire and the aforementioned Mad Men.  Was it better?  It is right now because that’s how popular culture works (the operative word is “popular.”)  However, I remember a time when Twin Peaks was the best thing since cherry pie and, not so long ago, when the critics were lauding Lost as a replacement for cherry pie altogether.

Breaking Bad is now part of our collective culture.  Taken as a whole, it’s certainly one of the best and brightest of this current Golden Age of TV.  Whether it’s a defining moment remains to be seen, and I’m too old a bunny to start stopping the presses to make that announcement.  Culture, like water, has a way of finding its own level, and despite what the critics will tell you, it takes a while for things to even out.  I plan to watch Breaking Bad eventually, but I want to wait for the tumult and the shouting to hype itself out before I do it.

A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Paris fashion updateFor a man (moi) writing about women is never a good idea; invariably, he’s going to piss somebody off.  The problem is, despite what every amateur sociologist with a pen will tell you, women do not speak with one voice.  Therefore, regardless of what you say, somebody is going to get mad at you and point out what an incredible handicap that Y chromosome really is.  However, since women are half the population of this planet, and I’d rather not publically admit my cowardice (again) I’m going to write about women and, more courageously, one of the strangest things they do.

Just as the worm follows the plow, here on earth summer is followed by Fashion Month.  All over the world supermodels are being dressed up like anorexic Barbie dolls in a hip-swinging, heel-to-toe, catwalkathon that dictates what women will be wearing when the snow melts again next year.  These masquerade balls might be centred in New York, London, Paris and Milano, but there isn’t a person alive, male or female, who will not feel their effects.  This kind of power is worthy of comment.

FYI:  Just so you know, I’m a big fan of the fashion industry.  I believe the way we adorn ourselves is central to our species and, more immediately, fashion, like trash, is virtually recession proof.  A good thing in these troubled times.  But I also have to admit I have absolutely no creds when it comes to fashion itself; I’m still wearing the Levis and sweatshirt uniform I wore when I was 20, allbeit in the new roomier, rumpstrung size.  Don’t get me wrong: I’d wear Armani if I could afford it, but the lapels would probably be circa 1975.

However, to continue, one doesn’t have to wear this year’s fashions to notice that they’re godawful hideous — the fashion3culmination of the four decades of godawful hideous that came before it.  In fact, women’s fashions have been off-and-on godawful hideous since Mrs. Grog the cave woman accidently tore her leopard skin and invented décolletage.  Historically speaking, women have dressed in some of the weirdest contraptions imaginable.  You don’t have to go much past panniers and bustles to figure that one out.  Nor have things changed that much.  After all, skinny jeans, a direct assault on the circulatory system, can’t be comfortable, and they must take upwards of an hour to get into.  This kind of time and trouble certainly explains why, centuries ago, fashionable women were sown into their clothes every morning and stitch-picked out of them every night.

It strikes me that, given the evidence, fashion designers may have seen women, even examined them closely, but they have no idea what women are about.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t harness them up like this.  However, the more important question is why do women put up with it?  Obviously, back in the day, they had to, but here we are in the oh-so-enlightened 21st century and the fashion industry still generates billions of dollars telling women what to wear, and most of it looks like crap.

Here’s the deal!  Women don’t dress for men, anymore.  They don’t have to.  If they did, the only retail outlet in the mall besides Starbucks would be Victoria’s Secret.  These days, women dress for other women.  Why else would somebody willingly pay money for a shapeless, strapless gown that straps her in like an L’Oreal cosmetic test bunny?  Respiratory problems?  It’s the female equivalent of the macho man, zero-to-sixty bum-numbing sports car or the bone-shattering mega-bass. I-can’t-hear-you stereo.  Women style and profile for other women mainly because other women style and profile for them.  And it all starts on the runways of Paris et al. 

Gucci Milan Fashion WeekTake a look at any Give-Me-An-Award Red Carpet TV program.  Who’s watching the show?  It ain’t Ben and Gary from lamps and lighting at Home Depot, even though Selma Hayek’s going to be there, falling out of most of her dress.  Nope, it’s Sara from plumbing who wants to know what dress Selma’s wearing, what Joan Rivers and her band of witchy critics are saying about it and where she, Sara, can get the knockoff so the girls back at HD will be green with… you get the idea.

Of course, there are some who would say this has always been the case, but I don’t think so.  In the old days, attracting a man was a necessity for women, and marrying well was an art.  Fashion played a huge part in this game of reveal and conceal.  These days, while sexual attraction is still part of our makeup, nobody really cares what we cover it with.  Witness Miley Cyrus’ recent VMA performance.  Would she have done better in Yves St. Laurent?  I doubt it.

I’m sure that the last thing any woman wants to hear is she’s a slave to the fashion industry.  Or that in the caring, sharing 21st century, she’s in direct competition with every other woman on the planet.  However, as the man said, “It is what it is.”

And let the emails begin.

The Lone Ranger Rides Again … Almost!

rangerI haven’t seen The Lone Ranger and I’m not going to see it any time soon.  Word around the campfire is it sucks.  So rather than waste my time — and pay Disney and Cineplex for the privilege — I’ll wait and let Movie Central do it to me for free.  At the end of the day, I’m not curious enough to rush into two hours of Johnny Depp with a dead bird on his head.  But I digress — and I haven’t even started yet.

Disney thought they had a guaranteed homerun with Lone when Bruckheimer, Verbinski and Depp (late of Pirates of the Caribbean) stepped up to the plate.  They even packed the movie with promises of a sequel (read “franchise.”)  Unfortunately, the dynamic trio hit into a disastrous double play.   (I’m assuming Bob Iger is still torturing people in the dungeons of the Magic Kingdom over the John Carter debacle.)  So instead of laughing all the way to the bank, Mickey Mouse is busy pointing fingers.  (Ironically, he only has three.)  However, the problem is not only Bruckheimer, Verbinski and Depp; the problem is the Lone Ranger himself and his buddy Tonto.

The legend of the Lone Ranger is not a story for the 21st century.  There are simply too many nuances for our unsophisticated tastes.

First of all, it’s a morality tale.  Lone is the good guy.  Those other fellows over there, in the black hats, are the bad guys.  They do nasty things (normally motivated by greed.)  Lone points himself in their direction and tries to thwart their evil schemes — full stop.  He is not an on-the-spot vigilante.  He leaves justice to the proper authorities.  Contemporary audiences don’t appreciate this subtlety.  However, because of it, Lone is not ambivalent about his purpose or his methods.  He knows he’s the good guy.  He’s not consumed with angst.  Our society doesn’t understand this interplay between good and evil.  We want our heroes to question it, mainly because we don’t really think it exists.

Secondly, the relationship between the Lone Ranger and Tonto is impossible for contemporary audiences to comprehend.THE LONE RANGER, Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels  “Sidekick” just doesn’t translate into Oprahspeak.  In our relentless adherence to equality, anything less than a bromance between the two men is unacceptable.  We refuse to believe that Tonto has any dignity being the lower man on the scrotum pole, even though it’s clear he does.  (It’s too complicated to explain, but suffice it to say Tonto can hit the trail any time he wants to, but he doesn’t.)  Plus, our simplistic view is amplified by our aversion to actual ethnic diversity in film.  Minorities may be everywhere in the movies but, remarkably, for the most part, they dress, walk, look and talk stereotypically like the homogenized white guy standing beside them.

Finally, The Lone Ranger is a western.  This isn’t a bad problem until you try and tell the tale to kids.  In our world, there isn’t a Hovermom west, east, north or south of the Pecos who’s going to permit that.  Agrarian Workers and Native Americans (Cowboys and Indians) are personae non grata in today’s playgrounds.  Our children can zap aliens with death rays and mega-fry entire civilizations with video game warheads, but there is no way in hell little Bryce or Morgan will ever be allowed to strap on a toy pistol and go looking for bad guys.  It just isn’t done.  The demographics of The Lone Ranger’s first week in the theatre bear this out: ticket buyers were overwhelmingly white men over twenty-five.  This is not a bad group but clearly not the one Disney was aiming at.  Despite the advertising and the action figures, The Lone Ranger is not actually a kid movie — or at least not one parents are going to let their kids go see.

It’s too bad Disney missed the point and The Lone Ranger is a flop.  I grew up with Lone and Tonto, and I think, with a little creativity, they could have been retrofit into our brave new world.  In fact, their story is good enough that I still believe they should be.  After all, despite his being one of the deadliest pistolaros of the Old West-ern, in all the episodes of The Lone Ranger I saw, I don’t remember that he ever actually killed anybody.  That alone would be a welcome change from the carnage we see in most action/adventure films these days.  Unfortunately, now that Disney has bit the silver bullet, it’s going to be a long time before anyone else will return “to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past came [sic] the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! [and] The Lone Ranger rides again!”