Bookbyte Blog

Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category

Your Ultimate College Finals Playlist

2325769

Whether it’s still the calm before the storm or you’re in full-force finals mode, you’ve probably found yourself in that awful position where you simultaneously have tons of free time and also no free time whatsoever. All the normal responsibilities of your schedule are cleared, replaced by the much more intimidating responsibilities of studying or finishing that final paper. We’ve put together a soundtrack to get you through it. It’s not exactly studying music; it’s a soundtrack to reflect the rollercoaster of emotions that finals inevitably bring about.

  • Paul Engemann – Scarface (Push It To The Limit) — That moment when you need the power of ’80s montages to get you through a long stretch of studying
  • Daft Punk – Harder Better Faster Strong — That moment when you’re working hard, well, fast, and strong, but need a little bit more of each.
  • Coldplay – Don’t Panic — That moment when you’re in desperate need for the advice in the title of this song.
  • They Might Be Giants – Why Does the Sun Shine? — That moment you realize you need a cheat sheet for Astronomy 101.
  • Miike Snow – Animal — That moment when you realize that no matter how much you have to do, your basic needs come first… you know, like eating, sleeping, and urinating.
  • Eagles of Death Metal - Now I’m a Fool — That moment you’re looking over your notes and don’t remember even writing half this stuff.
  • She & Him – This Is Not a Test — That moment when you freak out from oversleeping, then realize that it’s not even exam day.
  • Muse – Hysteria — That moment when you freak out from oversleeping, then realize that, yes, it IS exam day.
  • Wavves – Idiot — That moment you need to feel better after an impossible test makes you feel stupid. (Some NSFW lyrics.)
  • The Broken West – The Smartest Man Alive — That moment you need to celebrate after an easy test makes you feel brilliant.
  • Wu-Tang Clan – I Can’t Go To Sleep — That moment when you’re pulling an all-nighter and you need a song just as restless as you’re feeling. (Some NSFW lyrics.)
  • TV on the Radio – Caffeinated Consciousness — That moment you pop open your second Red Bull for the night.
  • The Roots (feat. John Legend) – The Fire — That moment you’ve realized too many of these suggestions are tongue-in-cheek and you really need to hear something genuinely inspiring.
  • Europe – The Final Countdown — That moment right before the final when you need a shot of transcendent cheesiness.
  • Zircon – Warhead — Post final rave!

Category:

College Life, Entertainment

Tagged with:

How the Web Has Turned Us All Into Mini-Eberts

Roger Ebert passed away yesterday at the age of 70. I’m not sure if there’s ever been a more influential or well-known critic, and I mean critic of anything, not just film. He was the first person to receive a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism, back in 1975, and only 4 other people have received that reward since. He had fought with cancer for 11 years prior to his death, losing a large portion of his jaw and his ability to speak due to surgery complications in 2006.

Photo of Roger Ebert from this 2010 Esquire profile.

Photo of Roger Ebert from this 2010 Esquire profile.

I’m probably a bit older that most of the readership of this blog, so I’m sorry if I sound too much like an old fart in this post. For people college age and younger, I don’t know if there’s much of a sense of who he was or why so many people are eulogizing him.

I watched his show At the Movies only a few times as a kid. I probably knew him better from parody than from reality. (Animaniacs and The Critic come to mind. What can I say? I really like cartoons.) The parodies always depicted Ebert (or Ebert-like characters) as an impossible-to-please curmudgeon who enjoyed tearing things down more than appreciating them.

If you’ve read any of his writings, you know that’s pretty far from reality. More than any other critic I’m aware of, he tended to evaluate movies as emotional experiences. Sure, he could tear something down, and did so with some brutally hilarious put-downs, but it always came from an honest place. A bit of dialogue from the movie Ratatouille, between a young chef and a food critic, comes to mind:

LINGUINI: You’re thin for someone who likes food.

ANTON EGO: I don’t “like” food… I LOVE it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.

Analyzing something with a critical eye doesn’t mean you don’t like it. Rather, it means you care enough about it that you want to pick it apart.

That’s a good part of Ebert’s legacy. He became synonymous with the word “critic” in the popular conception by writing conversationally and intelligently. He was an easy person to disagree with, in that I could read a review of his, completely disagree with every conclusion, but still find it full of smart, intelligent, and valid points. Now that the web has given each of us a potential audience of strangers, we should all aspire to that same level of discourse.

That potential audience really a fantastic thing. It’s allowed criticism to become more of a two-way street, not confined to late-night TV or an article buried in the Style section of the newspaper. There are hundreds of great websites where like-minded people can find each other to intelligently and analytically discuss whatever form of art they care about. Just remember, while you and all the other aspiring Eberts are going back and forth over the merits and demerits of a particular movie, that the people who disagree with you have just as much right to be in the conversation as those who agree.

Category:

Entertainment, Movies, People

Tagged with:

Was This ‘Sweatshop’ Simulation Game Too Offensive for Your iPad?

Screenshot from "Sweatshop HD" game

One of the “perks” of getting apps through the App Store is that, unlike downloading desktop software from a random website, Apple screens and approves each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of available apps. For better or worse, that means Apple gets to decide what’s fit for consumption and what’s not.

Most of the time that means blocking copyright violations and pornography, but every once in awhile something will get flagged for reasons that are a bit more unclear.

A bitingly satirical iPad game called Sweatshop HD was recently yanked out of the App store because, according to LittleCloud, the studio that built the game, Apple was uncomfortable with the game’s themes. LittleCloud resubmitted the game with an added disclaimer that the game’s intent was primarily to educate people on social justice issues, and that it was designed with input from the Labour Behind the Label campaign. Apple still wouldn’t lift the ban.

I checked out the game myself (still available as a flash-based browser game) to see just how offensive, beyond the title and premise, this game could be. The game opens with a brightly animated and stylized opening, where customers swarm to grab “Le Shoes” designer sneakers. The camera then pans rights to the shoe warehouse, right again to a fleet of shipping freighters, and finally back to a sweatshop conveyor belt, manned by tired, dehydrated, injured, and underage workers.

You play as a member of middle management, who needs to hire and position workers to handle the flow of materials down the conveyor belt. You’ll routinely get yelled at by your boss to maximize profits and approached by a wide-eyed Dickensian child worker asking for basic things like water. Naturally, since it’s a game, your competitive side will encourage you to cut corners in any way necessary to get the highest possible ranking, usually to the detriment of your workers.

It’s all fairly tongue-in-cheek until you start completing levels. Each time one ends, you’ll be presented with two paragraphs or so or real-life information and statistics about life as a sweatshop worker. These jar you out of the fantasy of the game every few minutes, and set the project pretty firmly on the side of satire, not just gallows humor.

While developed by an independent studio, the game was produced in part by Channel 4, a British commercially funded, but publicly owned, broadcasting network. That fact lends a lot of credence to LittleCloud’s claim that this game was intended primarily to be educational. As a piece of publicly funded entertainment, this is basically Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

So why was Sweatshop‘s brand of educational satire considered inappropriate, but the casual, maniacal violence of, say, Grand Theft Auto III acceptable?

LittleCloud points out that Apple’s developer guidelines are somewhat vague, and grant Apple a fair amount of leeway on what it will and won’t allow. LittleCloud highlighted one line in particular from the weirdly casual guidelines:

“We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store.”

I understand Apple’s need to give themselves carte blanche in making judgment calls, but personally, I find this statement more dismissive and offensive than anything in Sweatshop. The patronizing tone of “If you want to criticize a religion, write a book” is pretty bold insult to the countless game designers who’ve tried to make games with goals loftier than killing time.

Having games criticize real-world themes isn’t exactly a revolutionary concept. Bioshock was a retro-futuristic sci-fi that doubled as a criticism of Objectivism. Spec Ops: The Line criticized the fetishistic way most games idolize modern warfare. Another browser-based flash game, Darfur is Dying, intended to spread awareness of atrocities committed in Sudan by letting you manage a virtual refugee camp.

The developer guidelines’ blanket condescension of games’ ability to address serious issues is entirely unfair to both the people who want to make, and to play, games about something more than, let’s say, throwing birds at pigs.

You can play the game and make your own call here.

Category:

Entertainment, Games, Politics

Tagged with:

10 Things to Do on St. Patrick’s Day That Don’t (Necessarily) Involve Beer

By and large, college students have turned St. Patrick’s Day into a holiday celebrating the sanctity of large quantities of alcohol. Problem is, the day’s plans often begin and end with “drink beer.” That’s especially problematic for the people who don’t drink. How are they supposed to spend the hours as their classmates focus on becoming less and less coherent?

You might want to consider adding one of these activities to the day’s schedules. Of course, there’s no rule saying you can’t add a glass of Guinness to any of items on the list below, we’re just providing options for those who’d rather not. These will either keep you from being bored or, if you don’t intend to abstain from drinking, keep you from falling asleep on your friend’s couch by 4 pm.Saint_Patrick_(window)

  1. Read up on St. Patrick himself. Aside from the legends (banishing snakes and whatnot), he was a pretty fascinating guy. Here are a few facts worth knowing:
    • He was a born to a Roman family living in Britain.
    • When he first came to Ireland, he was a slave.
    • He’s also the patron saint of Nigeria.
  2. Bake some Irish soda bread. It’s actually quicker and easier than many kinds of bread (as long as you have access to an oven). Nowadays people have mostly tried to dessert-ify this ultra-practical dish, so as long as you’re not too worried about being super traditional, you can play pretty loose with the ingredients, adding fruit, honey, or whatever else you want to the mix.
  3. Cook up some corned beef and colcannon. What you normally hear is “corned beef and cabbage,” but if a big plate of steamed cabbage leaves doesn’t sound too appetizing, colcannon (buttery mashed potatoes with a bunch of leafy greens mixed in) might be a tastier compromise.
  4. Irish rock karaoke. There’s something about Irish rock bands that works perfectly with horribly awesome karaoke renditions.  I’m pretty sure the only way to sing “Zombie” by the Cranberries and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2 is belting it out with a bunch of other people who don’t know all the words.
  5. If you’re living in a city, there’s probably a parade. The odds are even higher if you’re in an east coast town.
  6. Dress some poor dog, cat, or baby up like a leprechaun. I’m by no means condoning this kind of behavior, I’m just saying it’s technically an option.
  7. Irish movie marathon. Not just movies that touch on some Irish themes. I’m talking about legitimately Irish movies, with Irish actors or by Irish creators. Movies like Michael Collins, My Left Foot, Once, Waking Ned Devine, or The Commitments.
  8. …Or just movies set in Ireland. Classic films like The Quiet Man or Ryan’s Daughter might not be as authentic as the above movies, but they should still count for the purposes of your marathon.
  9. …Or movies about Irish-Americans. Of course, The Departed is a great gangster flick, but Gangs of New York is probably a better fit for the day, since it focuses on the immigrant experience. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t have the bloodshed of those two, there’s always the more low-key In America.
  10. …Or maybe just movies with Liam Neeson. If you really just want an excuse to watch Darkman again.

Category:

College Life, Entertainment

Tagged with:

Five Books We Want To See As Movies

oryx-and-crakeOryx and Crake — Margaret Atwood

The premise: In a post-apocalyptic world, one of the only remaining survivors reflects on how his best friend brought about the end of civilization.

Why film it? Look at The Hunger Games. Dystopian sci-fi is in. Look at The Walking Dead. Apocalyptic sci-fi is also in. With Oryx & Crake, you get it both ways: a frighteningly believable and self-destructive future society and a planet after a disaster rapidly being reclaimed by animal and plant life. Plus, while the book can stand on its own just fine, there is a sequel (The Year of the Flood) and a third book due out later this year. And movie studios love franchises.

Who’d make it? It would be great if somebody like Terry Gilliam could make it. Despite the bleak material, the books are pretty funny at times and it would need a director who would be comfortable with some of the more unhinged parts. But there’s no chance a studio looking to make a franchise would let someone that out of control near it, so my guess would be Alfonso Cuaron, who brought a lot of visual flair to another more down-to-earth sci-fi movie, Children of Men.

What are the odds it’ll happen? 5/10 — There’s a chance nobody wants to touch this series until they see how it wraps up when the last book comes out this year. There’s just as good of a chance that nobody wants to touch this series at all since the last film adaptation of a Margaret Atwood book, The Handmaid’s Tale, was pretty poorly received.

YiddishpolThe Yiddish Policeman’s Union — Michael Chabon

The premise: A noir detective tale set in an alternate history where, instead of Israel, a Jewish state was established on the island of Sitka, Alaska.

Why film it? The plot more or less follows the expected template of a detective story like The Big Sleep or Chinatown, but the setting is wildly imaginative and begging to be put on screen by someone with a knack for atmosphere. The book’s definitely out there, but it’s out there is in a very approachable way.

Who’d make it? For awhile there was a rumor that the Coen brothers wanted to make this movie, and really, I can’t think of a more perfect match.

What are the odds it’ll happen? 4/10 — The film rights were purchased over a decade ago, before the book was even written. Yet nobody’s touched it. If it ever gets made, it would have to be a passion project by the creators. And those creators would have to be someone like the Coens, who have enough pull as creators that they can get away with weird and ambitious projects.

WhatisthewhatbookWhat Is The What — Dave Eggers

The premise: Story created from the memories of real-life Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of genocide who fled on foot from Southern Sudan to Ethiopia, eventually making his way to the United States.

Why film it? It’s topical, it’s based on a true story, and it’s about atrocities most people are shamefully unaware of. The hero of the story is put through hell, yet remains incredibly likeable, relatable, optimisitic, and human throughout.

Who’d make it? Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, half of Cloud Atlas) has already expressed interest in making this into a movie. He probably wouldn’t have been the first name to jump to mind, but I liked Cloud Atlas a lot better than everyone else did, so I’m going to say that this is a good thing. Also, I guess the hero runs a lot, so there’s your Run Lola Run connection.

What are the odds it’ll happen? 9/10 — For whatever reason, I find it easier to not dismiss this as a rumor because, unlike the Coens with Yiddish Policemen’s Union, that doesn’t sound like the first idea a fan trying to start a rumor would come up with. The fact that South Sudan has now become an independent nation would put a nice coda on a story that otherwise has a fairly open-ended conclusion.

HSBHillHeart-Shaped Box — Joe Hill

The premise: An aging rock star, fascinated with macabre collectibles, buys a ghost in an online auction.

Why film it? It’s an original idea for a horror film. If there’s one genre of movies that’s desperate for original ideas, it’s horror. Plus, Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, and as filmmakers eventually inevitably adapt all of King’s books, they’ll need to expand to new sources.

Who’d make it? Someone who understands horror and hard rock, which naturally makes me think Rob Zombie, but the book redeems its hero too much for a Rob Zombie movie. So instead I’ll suggest David Cronenberg. If nothing else, he’d effectively render the festering infections each major character gets as the haunting gets worse.

What are the odds it’ll happen? 7/10 — Joe Hill’s second book, Horns, will get a film treatment later this year, directed by Alexandre Aja and starring Daniel Radcliffe. There’s a reason Horns was adapted first: It’s a better book. No doubt Heart-Shaped Box‘s fate as a film is directly tied to how well Horns does.

174598_178829328821235_7853221_nSuper Sad True Love Story — Gary Shteyngart

The premise: In a hyper materialistic future, a romance between a middle-aged Russian-American man and a young Korean-American woman is told through his journal entries and her text messages.

Why film it? Because, unless you count The Social Network, there are no good movies focused on social media. For something that takes up such a large portion of our modern culture (and such a huge portion of our time every day), there aren’t too many writers out there really trying to get a handle on it.

Who’d make it? My dream pick would be Edgar Wright. He’s funny, he’s hyper-kinetic, he gets the current generation, and he’s capable of finding a way to replicate the feeling of something without directly copying it.

What are the odds it’ll happen? 2/10 — Trying to adapt a book that’s half told in text messages is a hard sell.

Category:

Books and Publishing, Entertainment

Tagged with:

We All Own Gangnam Style

Copyright protection is not Gangnam Style.

The most liked video in YouTube’s history, “Gangnam Style” by South Korean pop star Psy, has been given away to the masses.*

First of all, yes, that is officially the most liked video on YouTube. What’s not to like? It’s catchy, funny, and weird, with an easy-to-do signature dance. It’s also endlessly remixable, which is exactly what Psy (real name Park Jae-Sang) was banking on when he waived his copyright on the song. It’s one thing to have a viral video. It’s another thing to give the Internet free reign to do whatever they want with it.

Let’s face it. This is the Internet we’re talking about. People were going to do whatever they want anyways. It just means that EMI or Warner Bros. or whoever won’t be scouring YouTube trying to stamp out offending videos. So no one needs to worry about this familiar sight:

The warning notice when a video's been removed by YouTube for a copyright violation: "This video contains contest from ___ and ___ , one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that."

I don’t know if we’ve had a better example of “musician gets the Internet” since Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails tried out the “pay what you feel like” model. (NIN’s Trent Reznor also released the album The Slip under a Creative Commons license. That’s the same license as most of the content on Wikipedia. There are different forms, but in short, it’s permission to use the songs freely as long as you give an attribution to the original source.)

Psy’s decision takes it to the next level. Not because his waived copyright is radically different from NIN’s embrace of Creative Commons, but because this is a different sort of song. Both Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails proved that a band with a deeply ingrained, deeply loyal fanbase would pay because they valued the music. Psy proved that a one-hit wonder (as far as people in the U.S. are concerned that is; this is actually off his sixth album) can hit it big by giving it away for free.

At this point, it should become increasingly clear to people in the entertainment industry that clutching your song, movie, TV show, or whatever tightly to your chest and screaming “IT’S MINE! IT’S MINE!” isn’t going to get you anywhere. If people are enjoying the stuff you’re making, let them enjoy it any which way they want.

___

*The Guardian seems to be the only source reporting that the copyright has been waived. Even if this is slightly exaggerated, it is clear that Psy is actively encouraging the type of user-generated remixes and tributes that most record labels would try to stamp out.

Category:

Entertainment

Tagged with:

The Remake of Red Dawn Is the Opposite of a Zombie Movie

A still image from the upcoming film Red Dawn (2012)

Here’s a guaranteed recipe for angry comments: I’m going to review a movie that hasn’t been released yet. On your marks, enraged fans!

This fall, we’ll see a remake of the 1984 action movie Red Dawn, about a Soviet occupation of the U.S. Obviously, the Cold War is long over and nobody’s scared of ze Russians anymore, so the update will be recasting the invading force as North Koreans. Please see the chart below:

USSR population circa 1984: approximately 275 million

North Korean population 2012: approximately 24.5 million

You know, typically you want to make a sequel or remake more dramatic. This is a bigger letdown than following The Mighty Ducks 2, where the titular hockey team competes in the Junior Olympics, with The Mighty Ducks 3, where the team plays junior varsity for a prep school.

So why remake this movie in the first place? Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth explains:

“The tone is going to be very intense, very much keeping in mind the post-9/11 world that we’re in. As ‘Red Dawn’ scared the heck out of people in 1984, we feel that the world is kind of already filled with a lot of paranoia and unease, so why not scare the hell out of people again?”

So it’s a horror movie? Huh. I guess I can see the reasoning there. The original combined the fears of a Cold War U.S. with the power fantasy of average people standing up to an outside threat. So the remake taps into the post-9/11 fears of… uh… parachuting enemies troops clearly marked in military fatigues.

Mr. Ellsworth, you can’t just assume something is “post-9/11″ because you wrote it after 2001. And similarly, you can’t assume that something will be scary just because it was scary once. Context is everything. The fears of 2012 are not the same as the fears of 1984. You want this movie to work, you need to update it more than just changing the nationality of the bad dudes.

Consider how popular zombies are at the moment (to steal my list from an earlier post:  The Walking Dead, World War Z, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). Why are zombies so appealing, especially right now? As with all things zombie related, it’s best to ask Night of the Living Dead creator George Romero:

I also have always liked the “monster within” idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.

Every single zombie story has two defining features:

  1. The horde. A single zombie is rarely much of a threat. They’re (usually) slow and dumb. The typical threat comes from an incredible number of zombies. The heroes are always outnumbered. It’s them against the world.
  2. The transformation. At least one of the heroes will always be turned into a zombie. The only thing more important to the heroes than surviving is not becoming one of the zombies. And anyone can become a zombie.

Take a look at these two defining features. Then take a look at the sudden explosion of popularity of zombie movies. Then you can start to understand how well Romero’s “monster within” fits in with modern day fears. We’re not in a Cold War anymore. Our fears are no longer about a powerful, heavily armed “other.” Our “post-9/11″ fears are rooted in insidious threats. We’re afraid of the things we take for granted being turned against us. Jet planes were transformed into missiles: that’s the essence of post-9/11 fear. Being invaded isn’t in the national consciousness. Being corrupted is.

That’s what Red Dawn is: the anti-zombie movie. That and a surefire flop.

Category:

Entertainment, Movies

Tagged with:

It’s Time To Stop Pretending Dumb Twitter Reactions Are News Stories

Olympic gymnastic Gabby Douglas holding her gold medal.

There was a very, very, very pointless news story last week regarding Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas’ hair. A handful of idiots took to Twitter to complain that her hair looked unkempt. Now any reasonable person reacts to this “story” by not reacting at all, because what an athlete’s hair looks like is about as important as what shoes a surgeon wears. In this case, a high and tight bun is standard operating procedure for gymnasts, so I really don’t know where the conversation came from in the first place.

Oh that’s right, it came from a handful of idiots. Turns out when you give everybody a voice through social media, idiots will say idiotic things.

What I don’t see is how that handful of easily ignored idiots got to dictate headlines. Tell me what’s wrong with the following real headlines:

“Controversy”? “Debate”? “Outrage”?

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

You all do realize that for a debate, you need a point and a counter-point. All we’ve got here is a counter-point. Nobody is actively arguing that Douglas’ overly practical hairstyle is unacceptable. But the press, blogs, and other commenters are keeping this one-sided conversation going anyways. It’s blossomed into a full-on “debate” but the only people having the debate are the ones still acting like there’s something that needs refuting.

Check out this lead from NBC’s Today Show website (the first link above):

Just before the scoreboard showed that Gabby Douglas had won the gold in individual gymnastics last week, her mom Natalie Hawkins had only one reaction: relief. It was relief that came after ten years of training, after her daughter said she dreamt of being an Olympian, and after she let her daughter move away from home at 14 to chase her dreams.

The relief didn’t last long, as Hawkins soon found herself defending her daughter’s hair, which had been swiftly criticized for being both “unkempt” and “embarrassing” very soon after Douglas made Olympic history.

“The relief didn’t last long”? Give me a break, Today Show. I seriously doubt Gabby or her family give any thought whatsoever to this “controversy” beyond when you and other media outlets bring it up. This all grew out of a handful of Twitter posts. Don’t you all know how easy it is to ignore a dumb Twitter post?

Creating a news story from Twitter stupidity is incredibly easy. You can do it yourself. Next time any sort of news or sports event happens, just search for keywords that could be linked to the most offensive possible interpretation. You are bound to be hit with big pile of ignorance and failed wit. That’s what one story did after the women’s soccer match between Japan and the U.S. I’m sure you can imagine what the keywords were for that.

Now, admittedly, we ran a story back in the spring about Twitter reactions, regarding The Hunger Games and the casting of actress Amandla Stenberg as the character Rue. Actually, it’s remained one of our most popular articles on the blog. But, as the writer of that article, I’d argue there’s a difference between stories that ask broader cultural questions — in that article’s case, people judging a film based on how it matches up to their own imagination, not to the descriptions in the book — and stories that simply point out dumb people saying dumb things.

We’ll always have idiots. Let’s try to limit how often we give them a stage.

 

 

 

Category:

Entertainment, People, Science/Technology

Tagged with:

My Losing Battle Against Spoilers, Olympic Edition

North Korea faces South Korea in ping pong.

Source: Korea Herald

Airing the Olympics should be a no-brainer. It’s like having the Super Bowl. Film the game, air the game. Make sure not to show exposed breasts during your halftime show. As long as you remember these three things, you’ll get millions upon millions of viewers and no real backlash.

But NBC has decided to complicate step 2 by airing the Olympics on a tape delay for American audiences. While the world watches live, the US has to wait until the network-calculated peak viewing hours to watch their favorite sports. And when those hours come along, well, I hope you like swimming and gymnastics, because other than a tiny bit of volleyball, those are the only sports I’ve ever stumbled across just by turning on the TV.

There’s only one problem: the Internet exists. Which means people are used to getting information pretty much immediately. There’s a good reason that, even in an era of video on-demand and DVR, sports are one of the few things I make a point to watch live, whenever possible. When something real is going on, when the rest of the world is feeling the same tension you do, watching TV becomes a more social experience. That’s true even if you’re alone. Mid-game phone calls, posts, and tweets are routine, and a good way to get through tedious commercials.

This isn’t just true for sports. Well I’ve never really felt the same way about reality shows (because I don’t watch them) or pre-recorded comedy/drama shows (because those rarely feel “social” in the same way sports do), I can understand the appeal of taking the time to watch premieres live.

NBC has apparently completely lost sight of that basic appeal to the social nature of sports. And weirdly, I’m pretty sure they think they’ve done the opposite. No doubt the decision to not air things live went down like this:

NBC EXEC #1: “London is 5 hours away from the East coast, 8 hours away from the West. All the events are going to be happening while people are at work!”

NBC EXEC #2: “What if we just wait until everybody’s home from work, then air the games?”

NBC EXEC #3: “Brilliant! That way we can cherry-pick the events with huge audience potential that we already know have dramatic outcomes! Nothing but swimnastics from 5 to 11 pm!”

INTERN: “Why don’t we just air the events live during the day and then re-air the cherry-picked versions during primetime?”

NBC EXEC #1: “You’re fired.”

Rather than relying on the inherent appeal of live games, which naturally create the sort of “event” TV networks always want for their programming, NBC thought it could recreate the “event” in a more commercially viable time slot.

But, all criticism aside, the approach is bizarrely actually working. The opening ceremonies set a record-breaking 40.7 million viewers. While many are bristling at NBC’s hyping of pre-determined events, many more are willing to go along for the ride with the tightly controlled presentation. I myself have probably watched as much of the games as ever and watched a lot more of the “big” matches than I would otherwise.

Still, I miss randomly stumbling across some weird outlier game because that just happens to be on when I turn on TV.  That’s always been the greatest appeal of the Olympics for me: finding myself surprisingly engrossed by hammer throwing or race walking or badminton.

Apparently North and South Korea faced off in table tennis this past Monday. I had no idea. I would’ve loved to watch that. But by the time I found out that this match had happened, I also found out who won. That takes away a lot of the incentive to seek it out after the fact.

Category:

Entertainment, People

Tagged with:

Are Our Fictional Futures Too Bleak?

Screen shot of Fallout 3

Author Neal Stephenson has decided that we all need to stop being so negative. He complains that modern science fiction — books, movies, etc. — is overstuffed with the apocalyptic and the dystopian. He thinks that what the world really needs is an optimistic vision of the future, one that can give the world’s inventors a little inspiration.

And, well, he’s not wrong. The Hunger Games made dystopian novels a hit among the young adult audience. Thanks to games like Fallout and movies like The Book of Eli (or even The Road Warrior, if you want to go further back), pop culture now has an established visual shorthand for a post-nuclear apocalypse. (See the picture above.) The most recent novels from Cormac McCarthy and Kazuo Ishiguro, The Road and Never Let Me Go,  took a more “literary” approach to apocalyptic and distopian fiction, respectively. And how many recent sci-fi stories involve the world falling apart because of  zombies (The Walking Dead, World War Z, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, just to name a few)?

In fact, there are only two major science fiction universes I can think of that are as positive as Stephenson wants. The first is Star Trek, which has already helped imagine the creation of things like cellphones, flat screens, and bluetooth headsets. The second is Mass Effect, a series of games that are basically the spiritual successor to Star Trek, in that they also imagine a future of more-or-less peaceful interaction between alien races, a UN-like central alliance between powers, and major technological leaps forward (not just in terms of warfare).

If there is a tendency for writers to always lean towards the bleak, I can understand it. After all, everybody loves a scrappy underdog hero. Since science fiction gives its writers the freedom to imagine any universe they want, why not imagine one where the odds are impossibly stacked against the hero? Make the hero face off against an oppressive autocratic government, overpowered alien invaders, swarms of the living dead, or a dying planet. You’ve immediately established the high stakes of this life-or-death universe. You can fill an entire movie or book just following the hero’s fight to survive. Then you can save toppling the government, driving back the aliens, curing the living dead, or rescuing the planet for the sequels.

But I do want to slightly qualify Stephenson’s complaint. I don’t think you necessarily need a bright and shiny vision of the future to help inspire. Inspiration can come from the darkness as well. While McCarthy’s The Road details the day-to-day struggles of a man and his son after an unnamed event has spoiled the planet forever, I actually found the whole thing much less of a downer than, say, Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s surreal and gory tale about bounty hunters on the Mexican border. That’s because The Road was primarily focused on the father-son relationship. That sliver of gentleness and hope, however slight, softened the rest of the story. It’s inspiring in its own way, even if it’s not imagining a bright future.

I think Stephenson’s real complaint isn’t so much the lack of optimism, but the lack of imagination. The problem with a glut of zombie stories isn’t that it’s depressing, it’s that it gets to be tiresome. The story can still be worthwhile if it tries to do something different. World War Z works because it takes a worldwide view, seeing how society (rather than a handful of survivors) responds, adjusts, and contains the outbreak. The book uses the idea of a specific genre as a springboard for bigger ideas. It creates a thought experiment and tries to reason out how society would work through it. Even if the book isn’t imagining futuristic advancements per se, it’s still imagining progress of a kind, theorizing how the world would react to a giant-scale viral outbreak.

That’s probably the most important role of science fiction — asking questions and imagining big. H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds had the “big” idea of a powerful and advanced army being wholly unprepared for Earth’s microbial invaders. Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot had the “big” idea of establishing a moral code for artificial intelligence. Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale imagines technology that can implant memories, then, with a few clever plot twists, illustrates how impossible it could be to tell fiction from reality. I don’t know if I’d call any of these stories “optimistic,” but I think they still accomplish what Stephenson is asking for.

If that’s what he’s saying, then I’m on board 100%. I fully support allowing science fiction to be as open-ended and freely imaginative as it can be.

Category:

Books and Publishing, Entertainment, Games, Movies

Tagged with:

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: