Reality TV: Pro and Con

Posted on October 4, 2011 at 8:00 am

“Does Reality Television Do More Harm Than Good?”

Fans and foes of reality television and fans of the art of argument and persuasion of all kinds will want to tune in as the debate teams from Harvard and Columbia rev up that long-time Boston/New York competition when they take on reality television in what is being billed as “a war of words and wit” (and a form of reality television as well). Many of these programs, like shallow voyeurism, mesmerize and inspire shameless curiosity. It is a genre replete with confrontations and the dramatic, ranging from the breakup of friendships to the implosion of marriages.

Some exceptions seem to have risen from the clutter, finding favor with fans and critics alike with uplifting content. Yet the entire genre continues to spark controversy, and generate questions. What is the real impact of reality television? Is it just a passing fad? And what does the fascination reveal about our society, and the people who watch?

Halogen TV, a network dedicated to socially-conscious entertainment, invites you to join the conversation and decide where you stand on the issue during “Does Reality Television Do More Harm Than Good?”– a debate between team members from The Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society and The Parliamentary Debate Society of Columbia University. The event provides an opportunity for some of the finest minds in America to consider all sides of the issue, and, in the process, reflect on television in general, and its potential to shape our worldview.

Those in the New York area can join them tonight. “Cocktails + Conversation” begins at 7:30pm on Tuesday, October 4th at The Crosby Street Hotel in New York City. The debate will be available for viewing on the Halogen website by Friday.

Mindy Kaling on Women in Movies

Posted on September 28, 2011 at 12:38 pm

Producer/writer/actress Mindy Kaling of “The Office” has a great piece in the New Yorker about women characters in movies.

hat I’d really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity. But that has not stopped me from enjoying them.

I like watching people fall in love onscreen so much that I can suspend my disbelief in the contrived situations that occur only in the heightened world of romantic comedies. I have come to enjoy the moment when the male lead, say, slips and falls right on top of the expensive wedding cake. I actually feel robbed when the female lead’s dress doesn’t get torn open at a baseball game while the JumboTron camera is on her. I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world. For me, there is no difference between Ripley from “Alien” and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible. They’re all participating in a similar level of fakey razzle-dazzle, and I enjoy every second of it.

Kaling describes some of the outlandish categories assigned to women characters from the clumsy klutz (“When a beautiful actress is cast in a movie, executives rack their brains to find some kind of flaw in the character she plays that will still allow her to be palatable. She can’t be overweight or not perfect-looking, because who would pay to see that? A female who is not one hundred per cent perfect-looking in every way? You might as well film a dead squid decaying on a beach somewhere for two hours. So they make her a Klutz.”) to the ethereal weirdo, the career-obsessed no-fun girl, the skinny beautiful woman who eats all the time, the “mother” of the young actor who is only a few years older than he is (Jessie Royce Landis was actually the same age as Cary Grant when she played his mother in “North by Northwest”), and the girl who works in an art gallery because “It’s in the same realm as kindergarten teacher or children’s-book illustrator in terms of accessibility: guys don’t really get it, but it is likable and nonthreatening.”

Read the piece to see what the guy-equivalent of art gallery worker is and why it is just as unrealistic.

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Network Television’s Distressing New Word

Posted on September 23, 2011 at 3:51 pm

Years ago, “Saturday Night Live” had a funny “Wayne’s World” sketch with Bruce Willis as the high school cool kid, who appeared on the show to reveal to Wayne and Garth what the new cool insult word of the year would be. I’m not going to reveal that word here, but I am beginning to suspect that somewhere there is a Bruce Willis equivalent who decides what boundary-crossing word will all of a sudden be prevalent on broadcast television. Last year it was an ugly and misogynistic term for an outdated product used for intimate female cleansing. As in the “Wayne’s World” sketch, this year’s word is an anatomical reference, used to insult or provoke. According to the New York Times, all of a sudden the most popular new word is the clinical term for what are sometimes more politely referred to as lady parts. Sadly, in many cases the scripts are written by women who seem to think that it makes them cool enough to be in the TV boys club instead of understanding it makes them look undignified, insecure, and trashy.

Two female writers who are behind three of the shows that use the word commented:

I think our tolerance for what is edgy is changing,” said Cummings, who, besides writing her own comedy for NBC, also wrote “Two Broke Girls” with Michael Patrick King, a longtime producer and writer of “Sex and the City.” “We’re getting a little desensitized, so sometimes you have to be more and more shocking because now you have YouTube and the Internet and all the rest that’s available for us to watch.”

…

“I think it’s great this is all coming from women,” said Liz Meriwether, the creator of another new show, “New Girl.” “This is all part of the human experience”…As for the reasons to use it, she added: “Sometimes you use crudeness just for shock. But sometimes you’re using crudeness because it absolutely is the funniest joke. I think the best comedy is the stuff that does make you a little uncomfortable.”

I think the best comedy does not confuse cheap shocks with what is genuinely provocative.

50th Anniversary of the ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ with Carl Reiner and Dick van Dyke

Posted on September 17, 2011 at 3:59 pm

My all-time favorite television show is “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” The wit, sophistication, and charm of the show and the marvelous performances by its talented cast have made it an enduring classic, with many of its best episodes available to a new generation of fans on Hulu. The Walnut Times is a delightful fan publication.

Carl Reiner created the show based on his own experiences as a writer on the legendary staff of Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” along with Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and his brother Danny (who inspired “The Odd Couple”), and many more who would shape the comedy writing of the next decade. (Woody Allen joined the staff later and worked on Caesar’s comedy specials.) Later, Mel Brooks produced the movie “My Favorite Year” and Neil Simon wrote “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” also inspired by the wild adventures of the young comedy writers in the early days of television.

The show focused on the life of the head writer, Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) at home with his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore, who was just 24 when the show first aired) and son Richie and at the office with his co-writers Sally (Rose Marie) and Buddy (Morey Amsterdam). They worked on a “Your Show of Shows”-style variety hour headed by a temperamental star (Reiner himself, appearing occasionally as Alan Brady) and produced by the star’s brother-in-law, Mel (Richard Deacon). Rob and Laura were a rare married couple on television who were obviously crazy about each other. Van Dyke and Moore had enormous chemistry that some have compared to the glamorous young President and First Lady in the White House and a natural rhythm with each other that made their relationship very relatable. Some of the episodes were directed by “Your Show of Shows” veteran Howard Morris.

On October 1, Reiner and Van Dyke will appear at the Egyptian Theatre for a tribute to the show.

Related Tags:

Television

My Dad at Harvard

Posted on September 15, 2011 at 3:54 pm

My wonderful dad, Newton Minow, was honored at Harvard this week for half a century of public service in working to make the greatest amount of choice and the broadest range of media resources available. He talked about the five decades that have taken us from three networks with 15 minutes a day of national news programming operating under the “fairness doctrine” to the plugged-in, omni-media world we live in now. As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, remember that they occurred before YouTube and Twitter. He reminded the audience that the debates about media have evolved but the issues remain:

“Television had become the dominant form of communication in our country, but there had been very little discussion about what that meant in terms of public responsibility and public interest. I was determined to start that discussion, even though I knew my speech would not be well-received,” he said, adding that his speech prompted Gilligan’s Island executive producer Sherwood Schwartz to name the ship that ran aground “the S.S. Minnow.”

Minow believes that the problems that plagued television and communication 50 years ago are still present today. He said that the discussion of public responsibility that was missing then is still neglected now….

“When President Kennedy gave his Cuban Missile Crisis speech, there were no pundits on after he gave it. They cut back to regular programming, so the public could absorb it,” she said. “I don’t know what we do about the fact that we need the public to push the country to social and political change, and leadership needs that relationship to get the public engaged, but the media has made that difficult.”

A webcast of the event, which featured Jonathan Alter of Bloomberg and Anne Marie Lipinski (formerly editor of the Chicago Tribune) is on Harvard’s site. Now he is in Washington, D.C., where he will go to the White House for the kick-off of one of his most recent and most important projects, the Digital Promise (now called the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies).

Related Tags:

Television