Upper East Side of Culture

Television dramas will do anything to get your attention. Jack Bauer saves the world in 24 hours without stopping to pee, a load of polar-bear-fearing amnesiacs run around an island in Lost and Dr House can misdiagnose any mystery illness, have a pill-popping crisis and then solve it all in the space of an episode.
If there’s a genre and formula to be exploited, television is where you’ll find it. And it’s no surprise as the battle for ratings is a fierce one. When networks find a winning recipe, they stick to it; if you don’t believe me try watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as it comes in a variety of flavours so similar that watching CSI: NY then CSI: Miami feels like a traumatic déjà vu, or another Bush family presidency.
So don’t go telling me that you can’t get snobby about TV. The majority of programming- from Oprah to American Idol- is just a slop-load of generic content designed to buffer the airtime between adverts. The producers of the CSI shows are not worried about artistic expression nor are they motivated by a sense of social conscience: they’re just laughing all the way to the bank.
But that doesn’t mean that all TV is rubbish. If you’ve seen The Wire, you’ll know it’s one cop show that shuns the CSI formula: a bleakly realistic, morally-conflicted yet socially aware exploration of the crime underworld of modern Baltimore. Corrupt politics, crumbling industries and a failing education system all provide the landscape of a ground-breaking drama where the good guys don’t always get their man. For once, it’s art and not content that we find on our screens.
The Wire is a rare achievement in television and it’s right that we recognise its significance. Its array of awards is testament to that belief. So to compare the artistic achievements of The Wire to something like Gossip Girl seems cheap and distasteful. People like the exaggerated, pinballing relationships of the Upper East Side glitterati but that doesn’t mean the programme is anything more than a banal reworking of Dynasty for teenagers.
And that’s my point really: some programmes are better than others.
From do-gooder liberal types will insist that free choice is important and nobody can tell you what to like. And I suppose that’s true to an extent. If you get off on watching Jack Bauer wield a handgun, or Dr House quip sarcastically through a diagnosis, who’s to stop you?
All I ask is that you acknowledge that some of the things we watch or hear are better than others. Miley Cyrus is no Mozart and Steven Spielberg isn’t a patch on Scorsese. Don’t be so easily fooled. In such a saturated media, it’s a rare occurrence that something transcends the generic mire to stand on its own, especially when it comes to television.
People might be uncomfortable with acknowledging the existence of highbrow culture or be reluctant to determine what is highbrow and what isn’t. Taste does come into it and really, it’s for you to decide. But don’t try and tell me it’s all the same.
That would be depressing.

Verbal Difficulties: 110%

The world is changing. Sea levels are rising while financial empires fall. Earthquakes roar and all we seem to be worried about is Lady Gaga’s latest outfit. How much of her midriff is on show? Did you hear about it on Twitter? The mind boggles. And that’s not the end of it...
Numbers are changing too. Not too long ago, Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap marvelled at amplifiers ‘that go up to eleven’. Apparently, as most amps would only go to ten, it was important to take that extra step, to reach beyond the norm. After all, ‘it's one louder, isn't it?’
And it seems in our globalised, gossip-ridden, retweeted world, going that extra step is the most important thing. To get anywhere in the music business these days, you are subjected to public exploitation on a show like X-Factor or Ídolos, its Portuguese equivalent. After the deliciously cruel and gruelling auditions where hundreds of desperate hopefuls are held up for ridicule, the few of them granted a place in the next stage of the programme earnestly promise to give their captors ‘110 percent.’
110 percent? What is that? If you look at it mathematically, it’s more than the whole. Those hundred-and-ten-percenters promise to do everything the next guy or gal can and more. Not only will they sing you a song, but they’ll play it to you on a guitar carved from a rare redwood that they felled with a single karate chop. And who cares about protected species? These guys would harpoon dolphins to get a place in the next round of the show.
The worst are the contestants of American Idol: bulging, scary-eyed fanatics desperate for their fifteen minutes. In typical American style, these ardent hundred-and-tenners come and sing random acapellas all over the metric system. Why not reinvent whole numbers? They’ve been using the imperial system for years which is a about as useful as the judging panel of the show. Join the yankee hundred-and-tenners and share that same wanton abandon that presumes you can march on any stage and spontaneously start singing a dodgy version of Beyonce with bottom-shaking dance moves to match.
And what do those wobbles tell you? If you give 110 percent, you’ll never regret it.
Or will you? Should we really have to flog ourselves in public for the pleasure of others to fulfil our dreams? If it’s fame you want, well maybe you do. After all, the audiences you are subjecting yourself to are the very people you are seeking to win over. But what worries me is how keen people are to make fools of themselves, the implication being that the only way to be happy is to be exceptionally shameless.
And what about us regular, down-to-earth hundred-percenters? The normal, run-of-the-mill, finish-what-you-started people like you and me- where does that leave us? The trouble with all this superlative effort is that it encourages us to worship extremes. It makes you think that being normal isn’t okay, that if you’re not suffering from bulging muscles or extreme anorexia somehow you don’t fit in. Monstrous obesity is fine as long as you’re on a diet or a reality TV show.
Yet all these extremes are used to grab our attention by television programming that just isn’t representing a healthy majority of adjusted people. What happened to all those other contestants who sang well enough but didn’t make it past the first round of the show or weren’t freaky enough to be featured anyway? And what about the rest of us at home? A lot of people don’t want to be famous, and everyone should know that’s it’s alright to just be yourself.
And if that doesn’t convince you, think of a world run by these tree-chopping, dolphin-murdering fanatical idiots, wobbling and crooning on every street corner, each one clamouring for your attention like buskers with a messiah complex.
You’d hardly get anything done.

Pirates Should Pay

Piracy adverts make me laugh. You know what I’m talking about: the ones with the blaring rock music that say buying a pirate DVD is like stealing a handbag, or where you see that the man who sold you the dodgy DVD is actually the hired stooge of a London mobster who coincidentally looks a lot like Jason Statham and has a stash of Russian assault rifles for sale from his car boot.
It’s just not like that.
The nearest I came to such a character was in my old local pub in Manchester. A withered oriental gentleman would go from table to table saying: “Widgee-wee... widgee-wee?” It was only after peering inside the stuffed black dustbin bag he was carrying and seeing a gross number of cellophane-wrapped discs did we realise that he was saying ‘DVD’. It seemed more ridiculous than threatening; if anything, he looked like some strange intercontinental tramp wandering the drinking establishments of Great Britain begging for bar snacks.
So don’t believe everything you’re told: buying a pirate DVD does not mean you are keeping your local mafiamen in shades and shiny suits. But do let me tell you this: piracy is a bad idea.
Have you been to the cinemas recently? Have you noticed the kinds of films that are being brought out? If it’s not a sequel, it’s some rehashing of an old story as a prequel, an animated adventure or perhaps even a musical: Star Trek has been resuscitated, James Bond revived and Batman begun again. Fame was botoxed and performing split-legged jumps across our screens once more, while we were being sold spin-offs like Wolverine or sequels like Transformers 2, Toy Story 3 and The Fast & The Furious (number four, but this time just called the same thing... again).
Why is this? I’m sure it’s something to do with merchandising; James Bond dolls that turn into remote-controlled robot Aston Martins probably make as much money as the ticket sales of the film itself. And that’s exactly why the film companies are making these films: they’re a safe bet.
Since downloading has appeared, DVD sales have plummeted with everyone choosing to get their home video entertainment online for free. The film companies have responded to this. Instead of putting out regular movies, they now come in eight different visual dimensions with surround sound that reverberates like you’re sat inside a drum. And the films that are coming out are ones that they know will definitely make money; well worn and proven franchises, only now with even crazier special effects. Avatar might be new, but it’s also all of these things. And a lot like Pocahontas in space.
These films still have massive budgets and in most instances, they earn this money back. But the effect of this has been felt further down the cinematic food chain. Small independent productions are struggling to get funding unless they include Johnny Depp dressed up as a witty pale-faced freak. Even Sherlock Holmes has been reinvented with an American actor in the lead and a convenient number of explosions alongside some polite Victorian bare-knuckle boxing.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a transitional period for film. Until the industry has worked out how to pay creative people to produce real art for the big screen, we will continue to wallow in the absurd, steroid-injected CGI revisions of well known movies that are on our screens right now. But if you’re not prepared to pay for the good stuff, then get ready for more rehashing: High School Musical 7: Robots Attack and Pirates of the Caribbean 9: Singalong with Captain Jack could well be gracing our screens soon. They might even dust off Police Academy for another run.
Now there’s a worrying thought.