Apr 10, 2016 07:37 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 11, 2016 04:29 PM by C C.)
TV shows are going way too far to attract viewers
http://nypost.com/2016/04/10/in-a-race-t...e-immoral/
EXCERPT: For nearly two decades, we’ve been told that this is the Golden Age of Television: The smartest, deepest storytelling, the most nuanced and morally complex characters, are found here. Perhaps it’s time for a reconsideration.
Thursday night, on ABC’s “Scandal,” Olivia Pope, the protagonist — long established in the show’s vernacular as a “white hat,” or good guy — beat a wheelchair-bound stroke victim to death by pulping his face with an aluminum chair.
[...] Today, the Golden Age is in the throes of an arms race, with show runners attempting to out-shock their audiences week to week, churning out melodrama without consequence.
Last week, on HBO’s “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s Hannah, teaching at a junior high school, responded to her principal’s warnings about unprofessional behavior by exposing her vagina — to him and the audience. Outlandishly, it saved her job.
On “Mr. Robot,” a highly acclaimed USA program, one character strangles another to death during a rooftop tryst, for no discernible reason. His pregnant wife then stabs herself in the uterus, with a fondue fork, to induce labor when the cops arrive.
The sophisticated spy thriller “The Americans” features a plotline about a grown man seducing a 15-year-old girl. Carrie Mathison, antiheroine of “Homeland,” fell in love with a terrorist, had his baby, then tried to kill the infant. She kept custody and continued, of course, to work with the US government.
[...] There is no camp here; the scene is played straight, somber, all amber hues and meaningful looks. We are meant to infer guilt and regret, as if that makes everything OK. In a post-“Sopranos” landscape, moral transgression automatically signifies high art. Infanticide, incest, pedophilia, matricide, torture, rape, castration, cannibalism, mass murder — all are now commonly employed tropes meant to signify quality.
“It’s almost hard to fathom how far we’ve come in such a short time,” says Brett Martin, author of “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution.”
Martin agrees that “The Sopranos,” which premiered on HBO in 1999, is responsible for the programming we see today. Before Tony Soprano, American TV audiences had never been so consistently exposed to a charming psychopath, one who so nimbly evoked fear, revulsion, sympathy, affection, horror. [...] Each of these shows is peopled with characters that range from sinister to sociopathic. Anyone remotely sympathetic in these worlds is always the stooge, the too-trusting idiot who elicits contempt from the audience.
[...] Until last season, “Game of Thrones,” with its literary pedigree and HBO halo, was unassailable: There was no level of degeneracy or debasement the audience wouldn’t stomach. This was the highest art that premium cable had to offer. Then came two scenes that were not in the books: first, the rape of Sansa Stark, which caused thousands of fans, including a member of Congress, to erupt on Twitter.
“OK, I’m done with ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” tweeted Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Gratuitous rape scene disgusting and unacceptable.”
Then came the burning of a child, alive, at the stake, by her own father.
“A little girl burned alive? Seriously? I honestly didn’t think they’d go there,” tweeted another viewer.
“Game of Thrones: the show that made dragons, rape, and child prostitution fashionable,” wrote another. “You go, HBO.”
"At a certain point, as always happens in Hollywood or culture in general, a set of superficial things come to stand in for quality: sex, violence, moral complication." -- Brett Martin, author of Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution...
The mistake of talking about the internet as a human right
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicatio...et-freedom
EXCERPT: . . . Authoritarians may have reason to fear cyberspace. It is widely believed that the proliferation of Internet access and other communications technologies empowers individuals and promotes democracy and the spread of liberty, usually at the expense of centralized authority. As Walter Wriston optimistically put it in his 1992 book The Twilight of Sovereignty: “As information technology brings the news of how others live and work, the pressures on any repressive government for freedom and human rights will soon grow intolerable because the world spotlight will be turned on abuses and citizens will demand their freedoms.”
Two decades later, the hope that cyberspace will promote international peace and cooperation shines brighter than ever. To this end, the Obama administration has undertaken a project to promote its vision of cyberspace around the world. [...] While well-intentioned, the administration’s efforts to advance the cause of “Internet freedom” as a human right should raise some concerns. First, despite the admirable desire to apply the nation’s enduring principles to the rapidly evolving realm of high technology, framing “Internet freedom” as a human right risks weakening the very concept of human rights. Further, by lending its prestige and credibility to the international cause of Internet freedom, the U.S. government may actually make it more likely that tyrannical regimes will crack down on the Internet....
http://nypost.com/2016/04/10/in-a-race-t...e-immoral/
EXCERPT: For nearly two decades, we’ve been told that this is the Golden Age of Television: The smartest, deepest storytelling, the most nuanced and morally complex characters, are found here. Perhaps it’s time for a reconsideration.
Thursday night, on ABC’s “Scandal,” Olivia Pope, the protagonist — long established in the show’s vernacular as a “white hat,” or good guy — beat a wheelchair-bound stroke victim to death by pulping his face with an aluminum chair.
[...] Today, the Golden Age is in the throes of an arms race, with show runners attempting to out-shock their audiences week to week, churning out melodrama without consequence.
Last week, on HBO’s “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s Hannah, teaching at a junior high school, responded to her principal’s warnings about unprofessional behavior by exposing her vagina — to him and the audience. Outlandishly, it saved her job.
On “Mr. Robot,” a highly acclaimed USA program, one character strangles another to death during a rooftop tryst, for no discernible reason. His pregnant wife then stabs herself in the uterus, with a fondue fork, to induce labor when the cops arrive.
The sophisticated spy thriller “The Americans” features a plotline about a grown man seducing a 15-year-old girl. Carrie Mathison, antiheroine of “Homeland,” fell in love with a terrorist, had his baby, then tried to kill the infant. She kept custody and continued, of course, to work with the US government.
[...] There is no camp here; the scene is played straight, somber, all amber hues and meaningful looks. We are meant to infer guilt and regret, as if that makes everything OK. In a post-“Sopranos” landscape, moral transgression automatically signifies high art. Infanticide, incest, pedophilia, matricide, torture, rape, castration, cannibalism, mass murder — all are now commonly employed tropes meant to signify quality.
“It’s almost hard to fathom how far we’ve come in such a short time,” says Brett Martin, author of “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution.”
Martin agrees that “The Sopranos,” which premiered on HBO in 1999, is responsible for the programming we see today. Before Tony Soprano, American TV audiences had never been so consistently exposed to a charming psychopath, one who so nimbly evoked fear, revulsion, sympathy, affection, horror. [...] Each of these shows is peopled with characters that range from sinister to sociopathic. Anyone remotely sympathetic in these worlds is always the stooge, the too-trusting idiot who elicits contempt from the audience.
[...] Until last season, “Game of Thrones,” with its literary pedigree and HBO halo, was unassailable: There was no level of degeneracy or debasement the audience wouldn’t stomach. This was the highest art that premium cable had to offer. Then came two scenes that were not in the books: first, the rape of Sansa Stark, which caused thousands of fans, including a member of Congress, to erupt on Twitter.
“OK, I’m done with ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” tweeted Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Gratuitous rape scene disgusting and unacceptable.”
Then came the burning of a child, alive, at the stake, by her own father.
“A little girl burned alive? Seriously? I honestly didn’t think they’d go there,” tweeted another viewer.
“Game of Thrones: the show that made dragons, rape, and child prostitution fashionable,” wrote another. “You go, HBO.”
"At a certain point, as always happens in Hollywood or culture in general, a set of superficial things come to stand in for quality: sex, violence, moral complication." -- Brett Martin, author of Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution...
The mistake of talking about the internet as a human right
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicatio...et-freedom
EXCERPT: . . . Authoritarians may have reason to fear cyberspace. It is widely believed that the proliferation of Internet access and other communications technologies empowers individuals and promotes democracy and the spread of liberty, usually at the expense of centralized authority. As Walter Wriston optimistically put it in his 1992 book The Twilight of Sovereignty: “As information technology brings the news of how others live and work, the pressures on any repressive government for freedom and human rights will soon grow intolerable because the world spotlight will be turned on abuses and citizens will demand their freedoms.”
Two decades later, the hope that cyberspace will promote international peace and cooperation shines brighter than ever. To this end, the Obama administration has undertaken a project to promote its vision of cyberspace around the world. [...] While well-intentioned, the administration’s efforts to advance the cause of “Internet freedom” as a human right should raise some concerns. First, despite the admirable desire to apply the nation’s enduring principles to the rapidly evolving realm of high technology, framing “Internet freedom” as a human right risks weakening the very concept of human rights. Further, by lending its prestige and credibility to the international cause of Internet freedom, the U.S. government may actually make it more likely that tyrannical regimes will crack down on the Internet....