YouTube Celebrities

One of the fundamental arguments that I made in my doctoral dissertation is that whenever a new medium is introduced, it in turn leads to the introduction of a new kind of hero who becomes well known through that new medium. This pattern can be traced back to oral culture which gives us the poet or singer of tales as hero, while writing gives us the author, intellectual, and scholar, newspapers give us the reporter and editor as heroes, movies give us movies stars, radio gives us the radio star, television gives us the television personality, etc.

The audiovisual and electronic media of the past two centuries are generally associated with the rise of a new kind of hero often referred to as the celebrity. New media give us the internet star, the blogger as hero, etc. And for anyone whose been paying attention to YouTube, it's impossible to miss the fact that this new social medium has generated its own set of new heroes. Let's call them YouTube celebrities, shall we?

So, not too long ago South Park ran a hilarious episode entitled "Canada on Strike" (Episode 1204, Original Air Date: 2008-04-02). The website episode summary says, "The head of the World Canadian Bureau leads the country into a long and painful strike and the responsibility of brokering a settlement rests with the boys," and apparently you can watch the episode online if you click here.

But I'm going to add a clip from the episode here, one that deals with and provides a humorous critique of YouTube celebrity. This clip was posted on YouTube, and in order to keep it from being removed due to copyright violations, the poster added clips from the actual original YouTube videos that the episode makes reference to into the clip itself, so it's a bit of a mash up.





I should add that I got this clip from our Interactive Rams class blog here at Fordham University, where my student Luke Forand originally posted it.

Now then, another of my students, Brian McNamara (aka Prax Jarvin, his MySpace and Twitter alias), just sent out a tweet over Twitter a little while ago that read:

I really think @LanceStrate will enjoy the new Weezer video. Very interactive media!!! http://tinyurl.com/5qnukg

On Twitter, that's how you refer to people to create a link to their twitter page, with the @ sign in front of their screen name. So anyway, the blurb on YouTube says:

Watch the official video for "Pork and Beans" from Weezer starring some familiar YouTube faces. New Self-Titled "Red Album" out June 3rd, 2008!

And the video itself provides another comment on YouTube celebrity, this one not so biting and ironic, but interestingly pulling the newer YouTube celebs into the orbit of the slightly older music video celebrities (by celebrity logic, both benefit from this juxtaposition). Anyway, here's the video for your viewing pleasure:





By the way, anyone interested in my media ecological perspective on culture heroes, and celebrities, might want to read my latest publication on the subject, which came out just a couple of months ago: "Heroes and/as Communication" in Heroes in a Global World, edited by Susan Drucker and Gary Gumpert (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008, pp. 19-45).

Well, anyway, following South Park, I can't wait to collect my theoretical dollars for this blog post. How do you spend theoretical dollars, anyway?

A Hit, But Not a Homer, Simpsons Movie

So, I took my son and his best friend to see The Simpsons Movie last night. What I had read about it was that it was entertaining, but nothing more than an extended episode. And so, with somewhat lowered expectations, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that the film was definitely more than just another episode. It was thoroughly enjoyable, with a number of laugh-out-loud moments.




I particularly liked the self-reflexive material they used. For example, the movie begins with an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, the inane, violent cartoon that Bart and Lisa watch on TV in their TV show, which serves as a comment on children's cartoons in general, but also a meta-comment on the the fact that we are watching a cartoon on television ourselves. So, it makes perfect sense that the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon turns out to be a motion picture being shown in a movie theater, complete with Homer complaining about paying money to see something he could see for free on TV. Even better was a scene a little later on when they sent a crawl promoting an upcoming Fox network program across the bottom on the screen, and then made a comment about how they even do this in movies, continuing the tradition of The Simpsons criticizing its own network (part of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's conservative empire). Another nice touch came in the middle of the movie when the screen turned to black, and then the words "To Be Continued" came up, followed a few moments later by "Immediately" and then a resumption of the action.





So, just as The Simpsons is a parody of the television sitcom genre, The Simpsons movie becomes a parody of the cinema's adaptation of television sitcom's, at least momentarily. It actually would have been much better if they had gone all out on that theme, and maybe even adapted memorable moments from their 18 season run, making fun of the lame film adaptations of series such as The Brady Bunch, The Adams Family, etc. Just a thought.

Oh, and there were a few good parodies of Disney cartoons. Not the pointed sarcasm of Shrek, mind you, more like a humorous homage.

You see, the problem is that, after 18 seasons, 400 episodes, and that following 3 seasons of animated shorts appearing on the brilliant Tracey Ullman Show, what more is there to say about Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Marge, and Homer? Sure, they've been able to continue to produce quality material and probably could do so indefinitely. Matt Groening is a gifted humorist, and being that this was the series that made Fox a successful fourth network (at a time when few believed that a fourth network could make it in broadcasting), they have the resources to go on and on as the Energizer Bunny of television programs. No problem there.




And it does not seem to have been a great problem for The Simpsons to make their original move from animated shorts to a regular half hour (aka 22 minute) series. But the leap to a full length motion picture? Well, that's more of a stretch, and while there was no question that The Simpsons could pull it off, the potential for disappointment would be enormous.

It's a shame they didn't or couldn't make a movie after the first few seasons, the way that South Park did it (and I'm sorry, but The Simpsons movie is good, but no where near as funny as the South Park movie was). Back then, say the early to mid 90s, they were on the cutting edge of satire, right before original programming on cable really took off. They were incredibly popular, that was when the iron was hot, that was the time to bowl a strike. But they chose the safer, more conservative path, waiting, and much like those of us who don't marry when we are young, they got pickier and pickier as time went on, making it harder and harder to commit to a concept and script.

The problem also is that there are not many surprises left after all this time. My first and biggest surprise came in the early days of the series when I realized that Homer was supposed to be around the same age as me! Silly me, I had somehow been identifying with Bart, but this really drove home the point, and that was about two decades ago, that I was an adult, not a kid (it's hard to tell in American culture, since we have no clearcut rites of passage). But the funny thing is, while the series started out seeming to focus on Bart, it was Homer who soon wound up stealing the show. And it's been all about Homer ever since.




But, after 18 seasons and 400 episodes, most everything has been done as far as the major characters are concerned, there have been deaths involving minor characters, and there really doesn't seem to be any major revelations left. And the movie offers none.

So, by the time they got around to doing the movie, they ended up with something safe. As I indicated in the title of this post, it was a solid base hit, but not a home run. They didn't swing away, they didn't swing for the fences, they didn't take any risks. They opted for the safe route, a story that relies on basic formulas about Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie as a dysfunctional family (which seemed so realistic incredibly enough when it was first introduced), but in the end reaffirming the myth of the nuclear family. That, I believe, is why some reviewers categorized the film as an extended episode, but I will maintain that they went above and beyond that nevertheless.




But just as, in the film, the town of Springfield becomes trapped inside of a dome, The Simpsons has become trapped by its own success, unable to break too far beyond its established boundaries. They're still satire, but they've become mainstream. Again, that's not a bad thing, it's the sort of thing you can take your kids too (not too young, though). Yes, we see Bart's cute little boy genitals briefly in a scene, while he's skateboarding naked through Springfield on a dare from his dad, but that's as risqué as it gets. The Simpsons property has become an institution, and in all reality, too much tampering would result in an audience uprising.

So the result was a good movie that stays within itself, delivers on its promise to show us a good time, will probably enjoy much success on DVD, cable, and television, but does not stand out as a memorable experience (and that's why I haven't said very much about the specific details of the film).

Put another way, The Simpsons series has ceased being content, and has become environmental. We all live in Springfield, USA, bordering on Ohio, Nevada, Maine, and Kentucky according to the film. No wonder the official movie website offers us the opportunity to create an avatar and go wander around the town (and buy merchandise, of course). I haven't done that myself, but I have taken them up on the opportunity to Simpsonize Me, offering up a photo, which yielded this:


Hey, how ya doing? Good, good, well, what do you say I take you on a little tour of my town?


Sounds good to you? Okay, let's go. First, as far as I know, there's no university or college in Springfield--I suppose they go to nearby Capital City for their higher education, so I would probably end up working here:


Unless I chucked education altogether and made media my career, in which case I might wind up in Springfield's version of Hollywood--reminds me of how a number of towns all claim to be the original movie capital prior to the industry's move out west to California, including Ithaca, NY (where I went to college at Cornell University), and Fort Lee, NJ (not far from where I live).



Of course, television is always an option too, although I don't know if I could take working on children's programming:


Well, anything would beat working for Mr. Burns at the nuclear power plant, with Homer as a colleague. Radiation just doesn't agree with me.



Well, whatever. However things worked out, here's where I'd be shopping all the time:


And then it's home to my beautiful kitchen:

And that's about it. Thanks for visiting, hope to see you again soon!

Toodle-oodly-looo!

Computer Animation Wars

Just a couple of videos today, on the subject of computers, cartoons, and conflict. The first one was brought to my attention by son, who told me I should put it on my blog, so here goes. It's a clever combination of the South Park animated television series (which was the focus of a post a while back entitled SOUTH P24K) and those highly creative Mac vs. PC advertisements that Apple's been running. This is from YouTube, and what it says there is the following:

A parody of the Mac vs. PC commercials with South Park characters. Created as the final project for a multimedia production class at California State University Northridge (CSUN).

There's an error in the credits: South Park studio is at www.sp-studio.de .

Software used for animation: Flash 8 Pro
Software used for sound: Cool Edit 2000

Check out my MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/southparkmac

So, kudos to writer and creator Gabriel Schwarzer, along with Thomas Gilbert for his assistance on the project. You have really captured the essence of the computer wars, and identified who the real enemy is. So now, without further ado, here's South Park Mac vs. PC:







And now for something just a little bit different. Now that we have met the enemy, here's one that Beth Cioffoletti recommended on the MCLUHAN listserv run be Peter Montgomery. It's from the deviantART site, created by Alan Becker, and it's called Animator vs. Animation. Here goes:





And may all your wars be virtual.

Audience Abuse

So, the networks have all released their prime time schedules for next fall, and the CBS television series Jericho, the subject of one of my recent posts, has been canceled. How rude! Here I go to all the trouble of writing about the series, and saying some nice things I thought, and they go and cancel it on me.

This is getting to be a problem. I'm getting a little tired of investing my time and mental energy, getting all involved in a series, and seeing it get cut, sometimes without even a full season. This past year, I followed The Nine, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Daybreak, and I know there were one or two others that I've forgotten about, and last season there was Surface, Invasion, and some others, all series that delivered an intriguing mystery, a high degree of complexity, a continuing narrative that required more mental participation than the typical television show, and above all quality. They were promising us programming to rival HBO's achievements, such as the incomparable Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Entourage, Big Love, etc. And they were promising us programs like Lost, and Alias (before those series went off the deep end), and 24.

The problem with these cool (in McLuhan's sense of low definition, high ambiguity), involving shows is that they require viewer commitment and participation. If you're in, you're all in as the Texas Hold 'Em crowd likes to say. This is a fine strategy for attracting loyal and dependable fans, a cult following, but not for reeling in the massive audiences that have been the networks' bread and butter. So, they get some of us hooked, and when it turns out that the sum of us is not enough, they leave us hanging out to dry on an unresolved story line.

Of course, the fact that it's millions of viewers who are left high and dry matters little, or not at all, given the scale on which network television operates. It is odd, indeed, to use the same term, mass media, to refer to television and to forms of printing that may only result in tens of thousands of copies being produced. Television is the massiest (it actually is a word) of the mass media, it's a nuke, in contrast to print media which are nothing more than machine guns and grenades.

And, television is a business, but it is a business that is now abusing and alienating its product. Not its customers, mind you, because viewers do not buy the programs. The programs are nothing more than the bait that lures us in, so that the networks, stations, and channels can deliver the audiences that they've created into the hands of advertisers. We are the product of television, in more ways than one. This is basic media economics, as taught in Mass Media 101 courses, of course.

The advertisers pay for eyeballs, as they put it, but the cost of producing the commercials and advertising campaigns is tacked on to the price we pay for our products and services, at least those that are advertised. That's why it's been said that we don't pay when we watch, we pay when we wash, meaning that we pay extra for the advertising and marketing of the laundry detergent that we use, and everything else that we consumers purchase and consume (everything that's advertised, that is). We have no choice in the matter, it's taxation without representation, media tyranny.

And it's like an addiction for the advertisers, they know that they could stop if they wanted to, but they just don't want to, in part for fear of losing sales if they do. So, they're TV junkies, paying through the nose, or put another way, advertisers are the johns, the TV industry, they're the pimps, and guess what that makes us viewers?

The rates advertisers pay are based on ratings, which are based on a small sample of viewers who are given electronic devices that record what they watch, or are asked to keep track of them by keeping a diary or log. So, a few hundred people in effect decide the fate of our television programming. Here's another analogy, we're the product, like chickens on a farm, and every so often the inspector comes and examines a few of us, and gives us a rating of Grade A, B, or C. There's no guarantee that either rating is necessarily accurate, although the law of large numbers says that it probably is fairly accurate, but the main thing is that it makes everyone feels better and provides data to back up decisions about rates and renewals.

So based on what this small group of people say and do, estimates are made as to how many people are actually watching, and based on that advertising rates are set, and if not enough people are watching this threatens to lower the rates too much and, oops I canceled it again.

It's an unstable, volatile system, and that's fine for a medium whose best programming, as Neil Postman pointed out long ago, is its junk. That's why the quintessential television show is the sitcom. Not much commitment needed, you can pick it up any time without much problem, nothing much changes from episode to episode, there is no real beginning to the story, and no need for much in the way of a conclusion.

I don't mean to imply that sitcoms can't be good, there have been absolutely brilliant comedies aired on the networks over the years, for example, The Burns and Allen Show, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Get Smart, Green Acres, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, MASH, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, South Park, and now The Office. And if the show gets canceled after only one season, like The Honeymooners, it doesn't damage the overall quality of the series, nor is it terribly damaging to stretch out a series, as long as the laughs keep coming, as was the case for Seinfeld and continues to be for The Simpsons.

But trying to turn commercial television into an art form, trying to produce complex, continuous, involving television series while operating in this sort of economic environment has turned into a form of audience abuse. Traditionally, the networks understood that quality television could not co-exist with an open-ended series. Instead, it could take the form of an anthology series such as Playhouse 90 in the 50s, each week presenting a new theatrical production adjusted for the TV set; Rod Serling's innovative Twilight Zone also worked because it was an anthology series. Quality also came in the form of the stand-alone special, the documentary film made by television news crews, such as Harvest of Shame, the made-for-TV movie such as Brian's Song, and the television miniseries such as Roots and The Day After.

It was understood that quality television meant never having to say you're sorry about having a beginning, middle, and end, it meant knowing exactly how long you need to tell the story you want to tell, making sure you have the resources to complete the number of episodes needed to bring the story to completion, and not stretching the story out just because you've attracted a lot of viewers (as Lost has done, and even Battlestar Galactica has suffered from a little padding). Again, none of this applies to comedy, only drama, tragedy and melodrama.

We have only to turn to BBC programming, for many years the staple of PBS stations, to find examples of programs that knew how to stay within their limits, The Prisoner being a prime example. The reason that the BBC was different was because it was public television, like PBS, not commercial television--as Postman has pointed out, public television networks place certain limits on television programming (often based on other forms and media such as print and the fine arts), while commercial broadcasters let their television programming go with the flow, giving carte blanche to the medium's bias towards immediacy and discontinuity (and now, this...).

HBO, being primarily a movie channel, and having dabbled in made-for-TV movies, produces television series that are more or less cinematic, a term that once referred to a certain kind of material and machinery (celluloid, film projectors, etc.), but now mainly means a certain level of quality. Artistically, there are coming from the right place for complex, involving programming.

Also, HBO is in certain respects similar to the BBC and PBS, in not trying to sell its audiences to advertisers. They do try to sell us to cable companies as subscribers, but that's at least a bit more direct. We may not be able to pay only for what we watch, but we can decide whether or not to pay for the package that includes The Sopranos. Their business model must intrinsically include a healthy respect for their audiences. We are, at least in some respects, their customers.

But we will always be nothing more than product for commercial television. Specialty networks like SciFi Channel treat their product with more care, hence programs like Battlestar Galactica, and as the audiences for CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CW continue to shrink, they no doubt will pay more attention to quality control as well, quality of viewers that is. But we'll always be packaged goods to them.

Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with selling ourselves, as long as we know that's what we're doing. And as long as we get a fair price for our goods. If we put in the time and effort needed to watch their programming, then we need a reasonable guarantee that our efforts will be rewarded with the minimum wage of wrapping up a narrative appropriately. If viewers invest in a series like Jericho, and the return is not sufficient to warrant its continuation on network television, then make sure it continues on a cable channel instead, or at least give us a TV movie or miniseries to wrap the story up.

At the same time, I can only imagine that many viewers, having been burned by all of the cancellations, will be reluctant to commit to the next round of complex, continuous narratives that the networks present in an attempt to create the next Lost, or now Heroes. Expect a viewer revolt as a natural response to the networks' audience abuse. With online viewing and on demand services on the rise, commercial TV's days are numbered, and mark my word, the network walls will come a tumblin' down.

SOUTH P24K

April Fools Day is the perfect occasion for a post about South Park, the little program that made the Comedy Central cable network a viable concern. It's true that you have to get past the vulgarity and offensive content in order to appreciate the program, and I can understand how some people just cannot tolerate some of the things they do, but having grown up and gone to college with Mad and National Lampoon, and with the Smothers Brothers, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Monty Python's Flying Circus (still an all-time favorite), and Saturday Night Live, not to mention the amazing audio comedy of Firesign Theatre, I have no problem appreciating the biting humor and irreverent satire of South Park. Of course, The Simpsons blazed the trail for animated series that combine the structure of situation comedies with outrageous comedy, but The Simpsons are comparatively tame, being the older program, not to mention one geared toward network television. And while South Park owes a great debt to The Simpsons, the deliberately crude, cut-out figures of the Comedy Central series clearly draw their inspiration from Terry Gilliam's groundbreaking and achingly clever animations for Monty Python's Flying Circus. I should add that South Park was the subject of an excellent MA thesis I directed for Fordham University's graduate program in Public Communication (which I am presently the director of), researched by Ashley Teitelbaum.

This past Wednesday, the latest new episode of South Park , entitled "The Snuke," was devoted to a hilarious parody of 24, with the endearingly repulsive Cartman taking on the role of Jack Bauer. They really got to the heart of Keifer Sutherland's limitations as an actor with Cartman using a raspy voice, and making reference to how he was indicating the seriousness of the situation because he was whispering very loudly, for dramatic effect. They were able to play with the split screen/multi-screen technique used by 24, with the political jockeying for position by various parties (I'm in charge now, not anymore you're not, now I'm in charge, not anymore you're not, and so on), and with the constant, unpredictable plot twists (Cartman's suspicions about a new Arab boy leads to the discovery of Russian terrorists who we eventually learn are actually working for America's oldest enemy...). Also, there's great play with all the digital technologies that have come to dominate 24 in the past few seasons, notably cell phones and computers, but instead of top secret stuff, Kyle is able to track the terrorists by using Google, checking their blogs and podcasts, not to mention MySpace, ebay, mapquest, and the like.

And they play with 24's signature digital clock, with the ominous, echoing, "bum-bummm, bum-bummm, bum-bummm" that takes the place of the sound of a clock ticking away, conveying a sense of gravity and potential doom. At first just imitating that signature, they eventually bring it into the narrative by attaching it to the digital readout on a timer for a suitcase nuke. With no way for anyone to stop the countdown, the terrorists are foiled when a power outage results in the digital clock doing what all digital clocks do when that happens: it starts to flash 12:00 over and over again, as we hear that signature 24 sound, "bum-bummm, bum-bummm, bum-bummm"! A timely save!

I think 24 is a gripping series, and I see this parody as an affectionate one. The same goes for the frequent parodies of and references to Star Trek and Star Wars--they're obviously the product of fans, not critics.

I don't see Hillary Clinton's people being particularly happy about this episode, however, as her portrayal is not at all flattering, or affectionate (although neither is it overtly hostile). There's a bit of fun about her using a down-home Southern dialect, but that's minor, and it's the gynecological stuff that really undermines any sense of her as Presidential. But if there's one thing that the enormously funny South Park and the ultra-serious 24 have in common, is that women do not fare very well on either series.