45 years old today. Tigtog has a link rich and interesting post commemorating the anniversary at Hoyden.
Tag Archive for 'Television'
Just a follow up to a previous post.
It appears that no matter what the ABC does it just can’t find enough sympathetic Coalition voters to balance a Q&A studio audience and keep Senator Abetz happy.
Mr Scott said the ABC pursued “a number of different strategies” to bring together a more diverse audience, including contacting law and accounting firms, the Australian Retailers Association, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Family Association, Young Liberal groups and every state Liberal MP within one hour’s drive of the ABC’s Sydney studios.
“We have tried a number of different things to try and ensure that we have all the viewpoints represented in the audience and I think we have,” he said.
“I understand that Liberal MPs were approached asking whether in fact they were aware of people who might like to come and join our audience.”
Of course he forgot to memo the ABC board and I’m surprised the Young Liberals couldn’t find a bus load of guys like this charming young chap within an hours drive of the ABC studios?
Or maybe it’s just that they are all too busy charting the complicated metrics of bias in our cultural institutions and wasting everyone’s time making Senate submissions to attend.
One of the rather egregious questions on last week’s Q&A asked the panel to comment on why there was no contemporary political fiction of the stature of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s. As with a lot of the queries posed on Q&A, it’s a bit of a silly one, but it did remind me that we discussed political fiction here at LP a while back, and to give folks the heads up that American speculative fiction writer and anthologist Jeff VanderMeer is blogging about political fiction at The Huffington Post.
[VanderMeer, along with regular guest bloggers, writes regularly at Ecstatic Days.]
If you’re anything like me, Sunday is quickly becoming notable as being Dr Who Night. So here’s a second open thread.
I wrote a little post about this show previously, but I thought I’d revisit it because I finally got to see it on DVD.
The modern obsession with fame was explored by writers Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in The Office in the form of David Brent, a middle manager who made an idiot of himself on a BBC documentary series and then paid for it by losing his job and spending nights making appearances at nightclubs in front of people who couldn’t care less about him.
In Extras, Gervais and Merchant returned to the celebrity theme as Andy Millman, the character played by Gervais, discovered that the perks attached to starring in the very popular, albeit extremely lowbrow, comedy, When the Whistle Blows, made it difficult for him to commit to his oft-expressed desire for artistic integrity.
Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale starts with Andy sitting alone on a couch in the Celebrity Big Brother house as the other housemates bicker like emotionally illiterate fools behind him.
Russia’s state-run Rossiya TV network is conducting an online poll to decide who is the greatest Russian of all time.
The results thus far are dispiriting. In first place is the last Tsar, Nicholas II, followed closely by Josef Stalin (who wasn’t even Russian) with Vladimir Ilych Lenin (who was largely Tatar, German, Jewish and Swedish rather than Russian) in third place. In fourth place is 20th century popular singer Vladimir Vysotsky with Tsar Peter the Great fifth. No sign of Mikhail Gorbachev or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the poll, but Nikita Khrushchev is in the final 50. Andrei Sakharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky are in but aren’t on the leaderboard, unlike those lovable rogues Boris Yeltsin and Ivan the Terrible.
Are LP readers better judges of Russians than Russians themselves? I’ll put in a plug for Gorby, Jules Martov, Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky and call for your responses. If nothing else, this thread might bring Fyodor out of the woodwork.
Update (28/7/08). Lenin has now jumped to the lead ahead of Vysotsky, with Stalin in third place, and Khrushchev making a late charge into fourth followed by Alexander Nevsky. Tsar Nicholas II is dropping off the pace somewhat in sixth place, followed by Yuri Gagarin, Georgy Zhukov, Peter the Great and Alexander Pushkin.
Latest Update (4/8/08). St Sergy Radonezhsky, Russia’s most popular saint and a folk-hero during the time of Mongol occpuation, has now sprung to the lead. Considering that he is reputed to have performed miracles whilst still in his mother’s womb, winning an online poll should be child’s play for him. Stalin is back to second place, followed by Georgy Zhukov rising to third, Lenin slipping back to fourth and Yuri Gagarin recovering to fifth. Rounding out the top ten are, in order, Prince Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Pushkin, the multi-skilled Mikhail Lomonosov, Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Vysotsky. The various Tsars all seem to be dropping off the pace after being prominent early.
I’m not sure if it’s in the BBC’s charter, but the venerable public broadcaster is allegedly trying to reach out to people with disabilities, and to increase social awareness of disability issues. Through such charming initiatives as their online Paris Hilton like trash celeb persona - “Disability Bitch”:
“Hi, I’m Disability Bitch. I’m disabled and I love it. Everyone should be disabled. Everyone should be like me.
“I own an extensive collection of colour-coordinated wigs and an even more extensive collection of colour-coordinated mobility aids, all of which complement my natural beauty…
Whatevs, darl. But there’s more. She’s not an all purpose disability bitch, but part of a reality tv franchise. In pursuit of its social inclusion agenda, the BBC is running a reality tv show - “Britain’s Missing Top Model” - the premise of which is that chicks missing limbs or in chairs can also be teh hotness and get to be in glossy fashion mags. It’s “Stylish, sassy, chic … disabled?”… The idea, I guess, is supposed to be that disability is no barrier to objectification. Continue reading ‘Disability and body image and reality tv’
Tim Blair has followed the lead of the Insiders - and that astute judge of comedy, Gerard Henderson - in deciding that Working Dog’s new series - The Hollowmen - is all about Kevin Rudd. Despite, as Grodscorp points out, the denials of its creators. I guess the intention of the author is irrelevant in a postmodern world. No doubt Kevin Donnelly and Keith Windschuttle will point out how this hermeneutical laxness potentially threatens all that is great about Western civilisation.
I think it’s reasonably clear that the proximate inspiration of the series - in development before Rudd was elected - is the Blair government, and more broadly, trends in governance and the media across the Western world over the last couple of decades. But its biggest problem is… it’s a one joke show which isn’t actually all that funny. It’s neither West Wing nor Yes, Prime Minister. I think we need a lot more political satire with a cutting edge - I’m thinking about the glory days of the Gillies Report which tore Bob Hawke apart just as much it did Andrew Peacock and Ian Sinclair. But The Hollowmen ain’t it. Pity.
Continue reading ‘Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless’
We’ve been blogging the ABC’s Q&A a bit around here since its debut. One thing worthy of comment is the inclusion of folks who aren’t “subject area experts” (or aren’t recruited for the show as such - I’m thinking of the lamentable Difference of Opinion) but who bring a fresh perspective beyond that of the usual pollies and talking heads. Julia Zemiro, for instance, who as an averagely informed citizen (and one who seemed to wonder what she was doing there on occasion), was able to call some of the insider crud for what it is during her appearance. And smart young acas like the fabulous Kate Crawford… I haven’t watched the thing religiously - last week, for instance, after catching up with the said Kate Crawford among other things I did at the CCi conference, I was out at the Bowery drinking cocktails while Tim Blair enjoyed his moment of televisual fame. But I’ll certainly be watching tonight because my mate Miriam Lyons, policy impresario and CPD Director and all round excellent person, is in the line up. Go Mim!
I gave up on the farce that is Big Brother 2008 almost before it started. But it’s been worth keeping an eye on commentary about the show, because, like it or loathe it, this particular piece of reality tv is a very good barometer of all sorts of cultural and social trends, good and bad. (The actual potential for good not evil of user-led and non platform centric content is something we have never seen leveraged in this country.) Despite all the claims that the housemates are somehow representative of “Australia”, the show has for far too long been far too much an exercise in minute by minute manipulation, and the “characters” reduced to dupes willing to play one-dimensional stereotypes or face the consequences, for it to fulfil a role that’s ritually claimed for it in op/eds published in newspapers which are also complicit in hoovering up revenue from the franchise - broadening the mind of other publics through exposure to a snapshot of youth culture or whatever. What it does reveal - in excruciating detail because the cracks can’t be papered over fast enough - is the attempt to manipulate particular demographics through their media of choice (including all the blogs, fora, “fan sites” and other intertubes spinoffs). The construction of the narrative of the day and the arc of the week always has an eye on public reaction, or better, reaction from particular and identifiable publics - and it is supported and underpinned by semi-detached “independent” “celebrities” who have a key role to play in spinning the story because of a putative relationship of trust they have with segments of the show’s audience (which should be understood to include a huge hinterland of those who don’t even watch - because our “reactions” are also important to shaping and honing the show’s brand).
Discussions of the ethics of what goes on in “the House” are actually solicited and encouraged, though the show doesn’t care tuppence for any actual ethics. The scandal is the story, and what should actually be called into question is the meta-ethics of framing incidents which are almost wholly confected as if they did pose genuine ethical issues (for “Australia”). Continue reading ‘“Lefty” Tim Brunero and the PR-isation of everything’
Here’s another opportunity to be very mise-en-abyme and question the Q&A questioners questioning the Q&A panel while the questioning takes place! How web 3.0!
In other words, will Tony Abbott carry on like a pork chop? Will Louise Adler talk about the Bill Henson controversy? Will Warren Mundine denounce a “new ATSIC”? What sense does it make to have a panel with Bob Brown, Tony Abbott, Tanya Plibersek, Louise Adler anyway? Are they going to talk about the politics of the week, or take questions on anything? Will the questions be sharper and more policy and life-focused than the ones professional interviewers often put? Have at it!
*NO PLOT SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4*
(cryptic allusions amongst the cognoscenti are encouraged, but take care!)
Image Source: BBC
Who else is becoming impatient for Auntie ABC to show us more of the scrumptious David Tennant and his charmingly ruthless ways? They haven’t even shown us the last Christmas special yet!
Continue reading ‘Open Whoverse Thread’
All the standard info is here and here. The country’s official website is here. But I’m still not finding anything that explains Azerbaijan’s entry in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest!
Continue reading ‘Everything you always wanted to know about Azerbaijan but were afraid to ask…’
Sadly, Dustin the Irish Turkey will not be taking the Eurovision Song Contest final stage tonight, after being eliminated in the semi-finals. But there’s still plenty to look forward to - awful Europop, truck-drivers key changes by the bucketload, hosts who can mangle an autocue in two languages, and some fairly bizarre pieces of surrealist theatre to accompany the inane tunes.
After making the sacrifice of sitting through both semi-finals, I can inform you that the only half-decent song amongst them this year is the French entry, “Divine”:
I have no idea whether it will be, but the songs that impressed me last night were the ones from Albania, Georgia and Portugal (and to a lesser degree Malta - good voice, lousy song). I didn’t see Friday night’s so not dissing any of the songs from the first semi (but I would like to diss Mr Denmark, who I hope has a long career in policing as he apparently desires).
Here’s an open Eurovision thread. Please no discussion of winners until 12.45am - because otherwise you’re doing the spoiler thing for our Perthling friends. So unless you want to earn the justified enmnity of Anna Winter, you’ve been warned!
May I also add, if SBS are reading, that next year I think we want to see more Julia Zemiro and less of the Pommie commentary…
Albania
Continue reading ‘Eurovision song contest 2008: Year of the diva!’
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