What the . . . ?

File these away in the "You never know what you're going to see next" Department. (I know, I know - the quality stinks. I couldn't avoid the reflections.) I was walking home recently and passed this sculpture studio in the upper 20s, west of Fifth Avenue. There are many shops in this neighborhood that offer similar items, plus a diverse array of antiques, vintage furniture, stuffed large animals . . . You name it! While a few of these establishments announce that they deal only in wholesale purchases made by people in the design trade, many of them advertise that their stock is available for prop rental. With so many TV shows and movies filming in New York these days, this isn't surprising. In fact, nearly every week I have at least one location scout drop by to check out our space. Having a 1906 building makes us attractive to productions seeking vintage interiors. Just this week, for example, a movie location scout stopped to ask if we had any "old, large, ornate ladies' bathrooms." Yes, an unusual request, and the scout laughed as he described walking around town asking that same question all day. Alas, we weren't able to help, but I'm sure he eventually found some "ornate ladies' bathrooms." It's not uncommon to see familiar Manhattan locations in many current TV shows, from the Law and Order franchise to Life on Mars and Gossip Girl. Still, I wonder who would need three flute-playing fauns, whether set director or interior designer!

Bulging Reality?

Ok, by now you realize I'm no fan of "reality" television. I still maintain that it's "lowest common denominator" entertainment, designed to appeal to our myopic, intellectually stagnant society. (My kids watch little TV beyond PBS. But because they do watch lots of sports, they can parrot many of the commercials targeted at the middle-aged male demographic, including those silly Flomax ads showing men dashing for the restroom. And isn't it just sooooo cute to have one's 7- and 9-year-old sons singing "Viva Viagra" in a restaurant? Thankfully, they haven't yet learned what Viagra does!)

Ultimately there's little "reality" in any of these programs. From American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, to The Bachelor and Hell's Kitchen, contestants are dropped into situations far removed from the "reality" experienced by most viewers. So is it possible that we've now descended beyond FCC chairman Newton Minow's Kennedy-era proclamation that television is a "vast wasteland?" His complaint was based on the broadcast of so many westerns, police dramas, and situation comedies. Well, if we had any doubts, attributing the reality show boom to rising production costs, thinning advertising revenues, and the recent writer's strike, think again.

Yesterday I saw this advertisement for a new "reality" program on the WE network. Can this be any more insulting, both to women and the girls who will inculcate the values espoused on this program? It certainly underscores the conclusions made by my friend Naomi Wolf in her seminal work, The Beauty Myth, or Susan Douglas's excellent Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. Women's perceptions of themselves, and our larger society's perceptions of women in general, are largely shaped by an advertising industry dominated by men.

Still, it's important to acknowledge that in the last 20 years the concepts of beauty and body image have been treated with greater sensitivity, particularly as we've become more aware of the damaging effects of bulimia and anorexia, maladies that are fed by the image that a woman must be a size 2 to be considered attractive. We now know that the average dress size for American women is 14, and some advertisers and clothing designers have accepted this reality. But "Bulging Brides" as a "reality" show?? First, none of these women should be considered "bulging" or obese. Indeed, they each look to be healthy and well within that size 14 "average," if not under. But according to the logic of this show, these women are "fat" and can't possibly have a beautiful wedding or live "happily ever after" until they've shed those extra pounds, all to squeeze into a size 2 dress designed by Vera Wang.

(One could also rant about how this show ties into pundits' complaints about how weddings in America have become stage productions worthy of a choreographer and director in an attempt to realize some exalted notion of the "perfect day" - a phrase that's repeated in the ad shown below. That subject I have neither the time nor the energy to tackle. If families want to spend $50,000 or $100,000 on a wedding, so be it. If they're lucky, their sons and daughters can end up on that other wedding-oriented "reality" show: "Bridezillas.") Photo taken on 6th Avenue at 28th St.

American Idol?

So my wife and I have been watching bits and pieces of the first episodes of the new American Idol season. Let me point out that we don't care who wins, don't follow the careers of past contestants, or watch the show after they move to the "Hollywood" phase. We only watch to see how god-awful horrible some of the first contestants can be. Now of course there are always a few clowns who try out with some horrible routine in an effort to have their moment on television. They know up front that the judges will never pick . . . but if they're sufficiently outrageous, maybe, just maybe, they'll end up on the broadcast. Nevertheless, there are those performers who earnestly believe they have talent. They can be tone deaf, or have no sense of rhythm and stage presence, let alone a talent for the difficult exercise of a capella vocals. Yet they step before the judges and the cameras convinced that they deserve a chance to move on to the next round. And when they are rejected they cry and stomp their feet and appear genuinely hurt that they've been sent packing. (Let me add that there are plenty of contestants who have moderately pleasant voices and will do just fine singing in their church choir, performing in community theater performances, or serenading their family in the car. Their voices, however, aren't up to belting out a ballad or sustaining the latest pop hit.)

What always amazes us is how serious the worst of the contestants can be. They often truly believe they possess some rare talent that will be obvious to the judges if they're just given a chance to sing! How did they get this far in life believing they could become professional singers or the next music sensation? Several forces could be at work here. Some of those auditioning have likely never received truthful, constructive criticism of their singing talents - or lack thereof. They've been reassured - falsely - by parents and teachers and friends that their singing is "lovely" or "beautiful" in an effort to avoid hurt feelings and bruised egos.

The more likely cause of such unrealistic aspirations, however, is the cult of celebrity that has mushroomed into a global phenomenon. Thanks to reality television, YouTube, MySpace, and similar media outlets, anyone can put himself or herself out there and, with odds equivalent to the chance of being struck by lightening, become a star and thus enjoy the trappings of life as a celebrity. Indeed, there are just enough examples of success (Lily Allen, for example) to fuel the dreams of a herd of celebrity wannabes who would trade their mortal souls to grace the cover of People or the scores of celeb-obsessed magazines that now crowd grocery store shelves. But in a society in which no-talent "celebutantes" like Paris Hilton can be famous for no logical reason, it's easy to see how ordinary people might want to escape their seemingly mundane lives. There are even those who would trade places with the trainwreck lives of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan just for the chance to be famous. It really is a sad commentary on the direction our society has taken in the last 20 years.

As we move into the third month of a writers strike in Hollywood, "reality" programming, already epidemic on many networks, only strengthens its presence. Sadly, however, there's very little that's "real" in these shows. Indeed, at best they offer only a parody of reality, whether one is watching The Bachelor or American Idol. At times like this, one is reminded of Newton Minow, chair of the FCC during the Kennedy administration, whom I've mentioned before on this blog. In a famous 1961 address, Mr. Minow observed:

"When television is good, nothing -- not the theater, not the magazines or
newspapers -- nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I
invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on
the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss
sheet or rating book to distract you -- and keep your eyes glued to that set
until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast
wasteland."

To our discredit as a society, those words ring true nearly half a century later. Of course, the average person cares nothing about such arguments. And I'm happy to admit that I tend to be a cultural elitist, if not an outright snob. So bring on the off-key singers and celebrity wannabes. If we're lucky, a few gold nuggets will emerge from the dross; the rest will retire to their mundane lives and join the ranks of consumers, rather than the consumed.

Karl Rove: Bush's Hermann Goering

What can one say about the announced departure of Karl Rove as Bush's go-to guy? "It's about time" just doesn't begin to convey the necessity of his long overdue banishment from Washington. Yesterday he made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows and joined the ranks of pontificating politicians and analysts who are already scavenging over the still-kicking body of the bloodied Bush administration. And it was no surprise that the Machiavellian Rove neither admitted to mistakes in the White House nor took responsibility for any of the indiscretions of which he's been accused. Oddly, watching him on TV - a fat, self-satisfied Republican war criminal worthy of prosecution - I had this vague recollection of Hermann Goering, Hitler's second-in-command. (One is compelled to note that Dick Cheney, as vice-president, is also competing for the role of Goering in comparisons between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany.)

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to doubt that we'll ever see Rove paraded in front of the courtroom cameras in the way the monstrous Goering was reduced to human frailty by the flash bulbs of Nuremberg. Even yesterday, Rove continued to misuse the Constitution and misread history in his refusal to appear before Congress to address the firing of federal prosecutors for political reasons. To me, his silence - and his cowardice - are damning. Rove will go to his grave defiantly believing his actions were moral and legal, in the same way Goering continually proclaimed his innocence and defied the will of the court by taking his life just hours before his scheduled execution. At least Goering's influence, however, died with the collapse of Nazi Germany. Our country and our political institutions will likely feel the effects of Rove's immoral actions for many years. Indeed, his cancerous influence on the White House and our system of checks and balances may prove a permanent injury, whatever the party affiliation of future presidents may be. Sadly, this resignation will not resurrect the dead U.S. military personnel or the thousands of innocent Iraqis who died in an illegal war supported by Rove and his associates. If we're lucky, however, he'll be forgotten to all but the yellowing pages of esoteric political treatises, consigned to the dustbin of popular memory, and remembered only marginally for the sickness with which he infected the republic.

Jerry Falwell: American Fascist

Much has been written and said in the last 24 hours celebrating the legacy of Jerry Falwell, a leader of the "Christian Right" who died in Lynchburg, Virginia, yesterday. Certainly he was influential in bringing together the seemingly disparate worlds of politics and religion and proved instrumental in organizing the Moral Majority. Indeed, his activism mobilized conservative voters and likely contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Nevertheless, he also promulgated the divisive doctrines of homophobia, misogyny, thinly-veiled racism, and intolerance for other spiritual creeds. His voice for "creationism," added to the chorus of fundamentalist anti-intellectualism, did incalculable damage to the teaching of legitimate science in the nation's schools. In short, Jerry Falwell was a disciple of America's nascent homegrown fascism. And, as a propagandist in the information market, responsible for the dissemination of ideas to millions through his television and radio broadcasts, Falwell was an agent of evil no less toxic than Nazi Germany's Joseph Goebbels.

"Father Knows Best" - Part 1

Over the last year I've had a chance to talk with several dads, usually at our favorite playground here in Greenwich Village, and between the typical "dad-speak" about our spouses, sports, the weather, schools, and our kids, we began to chat about the difficult job of being a father in a place like 21st-century New York City. Moreover, we realized that our role - from the more general expectations to day-to-day responsibilities - deviated markedly from that played by our own fathers.

Like my father, born in 1930, most of our dads had been born around the onset of the Great Depression and experienced fatherhood - at least in the context of shepherding their children from birth to high school graduation - during the height of the postwar "baby boom." They had been very typical as "boomer" fathers in the sense that they attended college, worked regular "9 to 5" jobs as professionals, and, in realizing the "American Dream" of that heady period, enjoyed unprecedented job security, affordable health care, the widely advertised amenities of middle class life, and the promise of comfortable retirement.

The principal role of the postwar father was as breadwinner. They also maintained the cars - since we were two-car families now - the house, and the yard. They rarely cooked, unless called upon to man the grill at backyard cookouts, never ferried us to doctors, dentists, or after-school activities, and only occasionally accepted the responsibility of "babysitter," particularly if very small children were variables in the family equation. When necessary, they resolved sibling disputes, were consulted as disciplinarians, and offered sage advice and admonitions on myriad topics, including the triumvirate of education, dating, and sports.

Beginning in the 1950s, television gave viewers a steady parade of father figures who fit neatly in this mold: Ward Cleaver in "Leave It to Beaver," Jim Anderson in "Father Knows Best," and a bevy of bumbling dads that included Danny Thomas, Ozzie Nelson, Dick Van Dyke, and Desi Arnez. Even the single fathers - Bill Bixby, Andy Griffith, Fred McMurray and Brian Keith being the most obvious - had female help from housekeepers or wise "aunts" who assumed the mantle of motherhood.

Conservative pundits and trumpeters of "family values" borne of the Reagan-era would have us believe that these family sitcoms mirrored the reality of that "golden age." Moreover, the apotheosis of the American family of the 1950s continues with a deluge of reruns. (One could also argue conversely that these shows constituted a significant portion of FCC Chairman Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" assessment of TV programming.) Yet in her groundbreaking study on families, The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Koontz declares that "Leave It to Beaver" was "not a documentary." And of course the reality of family life in the 1950s and 60s was rarely as simple as depicted in the world of sitcoms. Still, the boundaries within which television fathers operated reflected the general expectations for fathers at that time. Hence my father, and the dads of my playground peers, acted within fairly obviously defined parameters. What many of them likely did not realize at the time - unless their spouse worked full time outside the home - was that those parameters were changing and that succeeding generations of fathers in the U.S. would play a far more active role in the daily routines of parenting.

To be continued . . .

Jane Eyre and early Victorian England

Watched Masterpiece Theatre's production of Jane Eyre last night and it was magnificent . . . definitely worthy of the PBS costume drama tradition. Isn't it amazing that 160+ years later these novels - as well as those by late-Georgian/Regency era Jane Austen - continue to fascinate and garner the attention of film producers? Obviously they form the foundation for the English literary canon . . . altho' I suspect they're likely considered the bane of many high school or college lit students.

It's hard to explain, but this early Victorian period is particularly appealing to me. Sure, as a historian I studied the U.S. experience during this period ad nauseum. And even in an American context, this is an exciting era, punctuated by industrial revolution, intellectual ferment, political maturation, and a growing evangelical/reformist impulse. Yet there's something peculiarly attractive about the world as depicted in the Bronte works.

Although when she wrote Jane Eyre England was already well into its own Industrial Revolution, the world Charlotte Bronte portrays still seems pre-industrial and comfortably agrarian. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, railroads, workhouses, textile mills and the spoils of empire seem hazily distant. It's a literary world obviously borne of the Romantic impulse and relatively free of the appalling conditions detailed by Dickens just a few years later. And like Austen's characters, these are country people, inhabiting a society in which London is a distant, otherworldly place rarely, if ever, glimpsed.

Yes, I'm a fan of the Romantic writers! Yes, I'm ignoring the socio-economic inequities which defined English society during this period. Yes, I find novels of this ilk wonderfully escapist fare. (My wife jokes that one of the reasons I like this period and the projection of its manners and mores in novels is that women were obviously subordinated to the power - economic and political - of men. And absolutely . . . that's the reality of life in Victorian England. But I always remind her that when I read Bronte or Austen and their contemporaries, it's the strong women whom I adore. I'm always a sucker for Elizabeth Bennett, for example. And like Rochester, I would have been far more attracted to Jane than the shallow vessels who inhabit the world of his house party.) As a student of 19th century history I'm well aware of the brutal realities that defined life at every level of society. Even in the world of Bronte and Austen, death is a regular house guest. Sometimes, however, it's nice to step away from that reality and embrace the purely romantic, with all of the angst, family conflict, plot twists and histrionics these authors can throw at us. We can always come back to the Corn Laws, Great Reform Bill and Parliamentary shenanigans later.