THERE ARE, I think, certain clarity moments in the culture. Especially when you make culture (ugh, that sounds pretentious, let's say, if you make "cultural products") you have to try and figure out ahead of time, where people's heads are going to be at. There's a lag between when you make something and when it gets exposed to the audience. An artist creating a painting or sculpture, a playwright preparing a theatre piece, or a writer crafting a TV show or a film screenplay are obviously on very different timetables.
The lag for screenplays and TV series means you're taking a gamble on what people are going to be in the mood to see when it finally gets made, and ordered and on the air. In the USA, with pilot season, that can mean a matter of months. In Canada more often it can be a year or more. With screenplays it can be years and years.
Below we see one of the effects of the current economic times...suddenly everybody's trying to move toward comedy. That extends to the projects I'm developing and that I see other people developing. It's like no one can bear to come up with the same perilous, down, damaged or downbeat concepts about crime or strife. Everybody wants something escapist or redemptive. And you know what? Trying to write something like that actually lifts your spirits, too.
At the same time, I think we've come to a sort of ending, or a pause, at least, in our TMZeedy consumption of celebutardism. The Bale/Joaquin/BillyBob stuff comes down the pike so often these days that we're fully desensitized. A year ago, I could still summon up some outrage toward Kim Kardashian and wonder why on earth anyone expected me to care about her. Now, the UK, who always was better at this kind of weird celebrity just for celebrity's sake thing than we in North America were (I mean, Page 3 girl is a career there. The Girl in the WonderBra ad got to have her own press agent!) have gone through their first reality show burial. We are, in essence, at the end of the snark, I think.
It's not to say that the snark will stop, or even that it should. But really, Billy Bob Thornton can go beep beep beep and fireman carry one of Angelina's 11 babies down the field and spike it in the endzone, and...uh.... nope. Don't really care anymore. I mean, O.J.'s finally in jail. It's a whole new world.
So I look for the redemptive message or story in life, and in art. I hope that despite the current government's determination to hobble the CBC, there will be a way found to preserve that which needs preserving. Yeah, the dice is stacked against creatives getting anything made in Canada. But yet people get stuff made. And some of it is actually quite delightful.
A final aside. Probably the only time you'll ever see a link back to this site from Sticksville. There's this blog about the CBC that was started in the wake of the 2005 CBC Lockout by a Manager inside the building. It chugged along for a couple years as a quixotic but occasionally informative organ of dissent and tough love for the vagaries of the CBC. Awhile ago, that manager stepped back and handed over the reins of the place to a group of dyspeptic, antisocial wingnuts. They claim to be the "loyal opposition" and to be doing all they do from a position of "love for the CBC," but whenever I see a link back to something I've written here, or other media sites, it's an inevitable gainsaying criticism of CBC. The Corp, to these guys, can do nothing right. At a time when the place is fractious, bleeding, and in real trouble, there is nothing weirder than a bunch of idiot contrarians claiming to know better, showing with every post that they don't understand anything about a) broadcasting b) management c) dealing with people d) business e) ratings f) journalism g) ...and so on and so on.
So why talk about them here? Because I am weeeak, chickens. Heh heh. Nah. Because every once in a while you get the perfect example, the absolute embodiment of what is wrong with something. And here it is. From the self-appointed "loyal opposition" to the CBC:
In the case of Jian Ghomeshi and Q vs. Billy Bob Thornton....the Teamakers sides with Billy Bob.
It is, as they say, to laugh.
Blue skies coming my way. Kardashians, NetNuts, YellyYellers, the Jaloux and the Paranoid, your time's up.
Enjoy your weekend everybody.
EDIT: but just in case you didn't hear the Q Bob dustup -- Jeremy Fisher nails it and offers context in this video. Brill.
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