brave [little] meme

The Daily Fail’s Misdirected Quest for Morality

At the best of times, the UK’s Daily Mail is hardly known for its objectivity, but its latest rant against the immorality of television reminds me of something from the Victorian era.

In her verbosely titled rant ‘True Blood, Vampires and the Explicity TV sucking the innocence out of Our Children’, the Daily Mail’s own Olivia Lichtenstein attempts to make a case linking the popular TV show ‘True Blood’ to the decline of society’s moral values. In this, the author manages to unleash a torrent of incoherent outrage that could best be described as channeling Mary Whitehouse.

Maude Flanders herself, may she rest in peace, would have been proud of Olivia’s “Somebody Please think of the Children” approach. Criticising the TV show’s graphic representations of sex, gore and drug taking, Mz. Lichtenstein does a great job of injecting her subjective alarmism into every paragraph of her poorly written review, while reminding us that any form of entertainment not directly aimed at toddlers is inherently evil.

This is where I have to disagree. While it is true that True Blood is not the sort of entertainment I’d recommend as a learning aid for the Teletubby demographic, it is worth pointing out that its prominent parental advisory warnings, late time slot and inherent theme go a long way towards highlighting what the show is: entertainment for adults.

Maybe Mz. Lichtenstein should spend a little less time blaming mass media for stealing our childrens’ innocence and a little more time actually parenting. Like many of her morally outraged predecessors, she fails to realise that letting the big black box in the living room take over her parenting responsibilities may incur some risk of her children being exposed to unsuitable material.

I’m sure it’s a lot easier to blame the harsh, dirty and immoral world for all that ails our society’s young ones, but it’s this very same blame-shifting attutude to parenting that has landed us in this mess in the first place: taking responsibility for one’s own spawn, it would seem, requires more moral fiber than Mz. Lichtenstein and her ilk seems to possess.

What we have here is another perfectly glaring example of a society heading down the path to idiocracy, our collective failure to own up for our own lack of interest in making sure today’s sugar-fed, TV-raised children grow up with some concept of personal responsibility.

Then again, Mz. Lichtenstein should pay more attention to her own rag’s position on society’s moral compass. With this article on its front page, the Daily Mail’s own position as the UK’s beacon of moral rectitude is on shaky ground at best.

You can read Mz. Lichtenstein’s amusing piece here. Curiously, comments have been disabled for the article.

[Thanks @GenuineEntropy for the heads up]

So long, Sarah Connor. We hardly knew ye.

For anyone even remotely interested in television, today’s kind of a big deal. What today marks is the US TV Networks’ fall lineup announcements, by which many of our favourite shows will live or die.

So far, the news is mixed: Chuck is alive, albeit with a reduced budget (really?!) and episode count, and Sarah Connor: The Terminator Chronicles is, regrettably, dead as a doornail. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what other vehicle Summer Glau will be able to snag to showcase her ass-kicking prowess.

Keep an eye on this page if you really can’t wait to find out what’s what.

‘By your command’ - Caprica’s pilot shines

I just experienced a fangasm.

If you are a Battlestar Galactica fan still reeling from the show’s recent ending you will surely have heard about Caprica, BSG’s upcoming spin-off. For me it was three simple words, uttered by the synthetic voice of the colony’s first ever Cylon, which marked the high point of what i can only describe as a brilliant start to a very promising new show.

In a rather unusual move, Universal Studios has released the Caprica’s pilot episode in an unrated, uncut format exclusively on DVD, well ahead of the show’s TV debut in 2010. Mild spoilers ahead.

Having just watched the pilot, I can see plenty of reasons for Universal’s unusual move: right from the outset, Caprica hits us with scenes of sex, violence and brutality, following closely in the footsteps of its predecessor’s own explosive pilot episode.

There is reason for all this. Caprica’s beginning does a great job of establishing a believable setting where a technological society analogous to our own near future is beset by the same issues of religious zealotry, terrorism, racism and corruption as the world we ourselves live in.

This is definitely not ‘The Jetsons.’ Much like its predecessor, Caprica’s overt technological elements only serve as background to what is essentially a character-driven drama, where the interactions between conflicted, morally ambiguous protagonists are key. Ethics, or rather the consequences of their absence, play as prominent a role in Caprica’s first episode as they ever did in Galactica’s darkest moments.

If this beginning is anything to go by it would seem that, against all hope, Galactica may have have actually spawned a worthy successor. Indeed, Caprica may prove to be another example that well-written science fiction television can go beyond mere shiny gadgets and special effects, providing instead an effective vehicle for introspection into our increasingly technological existence.

Joss Whedon vs. Fox: The Final Straw?

For any avid science fiction aficionado, Fox Television represents a bit of a dichotomy: on the one hand, they have brought to the table some truly memorable shows like Firefly, Dollhouse, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. On the other hand, they have established a track record for systematically canceling said shows just when the going gets good.

It’s happening again. According to some pretty convincing rumors, Dollhouse and T:TSCC are already over. While both shows had what could be considered a shaky start, they have over time grown to almost Battlestar-esque levels of entertainment. Sadly however, no amount of clever storytelling and intriguing character arcs can make up for poor scheduling, declining ratings, and ongoing competition from lowest-common-denominator programming.

Which brings us to the big question: why would a talented guy like Joss Whedon want to work with Fox again after the whipping they delivered Firefly a few years ago? If Dollhouse was partially the brainchild of protagonist Eliza Dushku, who is locked into a two year contract with Fox, should Whedon have waited for the opportunity to go with another studio?

Fox’s involvement with Dollhouse, beyond seemingly signing its death sentence, also changed its essence. At his recent lifetime award acceptance ceremony at MIT, Whedon described his vision for Dollhouse before Fox’s inevitable meddling: dolls of all ages, shapes and sizes, and story lines painted from a much darker, grittier palette. 

Alas, Fox only has room for the young and the beautiful, resulting in the audience being presented with a somewhat bland version of Whedon’s vision. Strike two for Fox, whose scheduling snafus and and demands for rewrites resulted in Whedon’s past masterpiece, FireFly, meeting its demise after only one series.

Is Dollhouse the final straw for Whedon? With his relationship with Fox described as ‘poisoned,’ the repercussions of a Dollhouse cancellation could go beyond his involvement with the studio. Whedon’s exellent Dr. Horrible was a demonstration that great things can be done without studio involvement, and may have represented a glimpse of Whedon’s future outlook beyond television.

Will a whedonesque web series be next? If Sanctuary is any indication, the potential for producing a high quality live action series exclusively on the web certainly exists. The online medium also seems like natural fit for someone like Whedon, whose humanist themes, morally ambiguous characters and unusual settings may find a more appreciative audience beyond the mainstream of television.

Whedon’s move to the web would also serve as a categorical statement of the medium’s maturity as an alternative to mainstream TV, lessening the studios’ grip on our entertainment. A nice prospect to be sure, but one whose outcome only time will tell.

While studios such as Fox would be unlikely to welcome a move to the web, talents like Whedon’s spearheading the transition may leave said studios without much of a choice. Like the music industry before them, the likes of Fox may once again be forced to make the ultimate choice: adapt, or die.

The Death of TV Storytelling

Last Friday’s TV ratings confirmed something I had been fearing for a long time: TV storytelling is dying an ugly, lonely death.

Over the last few years we have seen a veritable rebirth of television, with great series like 24, The West Wing, Lost and many others bringing a level of quality and depth to television that was previously deemed the sole province of the Big Screen. It’s not unusual these days to see big-screen superstars starring in well-written, engaging television productions, the budgets of which often rival last decade’s cinematic blockbusters.

And yet, this golden age of television may be succumbing to an insidious cancer: cheap, mass-produced reality shows and the idiots who watch them. Which brings me back to last Friday’s ratings. 

Last Friday saw the release of the pilot episode of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s (of Buffy and Firefly fame) sci-fi tale of brainwashing and human slavery. Sadly, the pilot screened in the 9pm slot against Supernanny on ABC, which beat it by a good 1.4 million viewers. And thus, almost before having a chance to begin, Dollhose has already been labelled a flop.

The return of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, suffered a similar fate at the hands of Ghost Whisperer, a series so irredeemably inane that its very presence on TV screens could be considered a testament to our cultural decline. Ghost Whisperer beat Sarah Connor’s ratings by a staggering 6.6 million viewers.

Now, I will be the first to admit, sci-fi is not for everyone. As a genre it’s long been considered niche, a stigma from which only a few shows have managed to break free. LOST and Battlestar Galactica made great strides in bringing the genre to a mass audience, but the struggle has been an uphill one.

So long as our culture bias leans towards the voyeuristic likes of the X factors, Supernannys and Extreme Makeovers, the incentive to invest money on big-budget, well cast and well written shows will just not be there. In a world where cheesy Knight Rider has more appeal than Heroes, where Pushing Daisies hovers on the brink, Firefly gets cancelled, and where America’s Next Top Model reigns supreme, what place is left for a challenging story line? 

I find it somewhat Ironic that, in a medium dedicated largely to fantasy and escapism, we seem to have settled en masse with simply watching other people’s mundane lives. At least some of us can take solace in the fact that there will always be a good book to escape to.