The Final Countdown

First Published: 17 January 2006

The public outcry following November's cancellation of Fox's Emmy-winning sitcom Arrested Development was certainly more than muted. Still, unlike the furor of tens of millions of voices that followed the end of Seinfeld, a show about nothing, the passing of Arrested, a show that's really something, seems to have made only critics and the dozens of fanatics irate. Strangely, Fox's move comes at a time when our present protagonist program is the top-rated comedy on TV.com, while the aforementioned immaterial show holds the seventh spot.

So why did FOX decide to scrap a program that garnered them six Emmys and has the unabashed admiration of America's top critics? According to some commentators, the show's self-referential humour and its upper-class characters make it difficult for audiences to relate. And the absence of a laugh track has been claimed to alienate viewers who are unable to make the decision to laugh on their own. But, it's precisely the show's quick pace and innumerable in-jokes that make it simultaneously ill-suited for a laugh track as well as brilliant.

The simple reason Fox is dropping the show is that while Arrested captured an average of only five-million viewers this season, another Fox show set in Orange County, The O.C., brought in more than double that amount. Considering that Fox is preeminently advertising-oriented, it is perhaps understandable that the network would desire to dissociate itself from any programming that would endanger its cash flow. But this decision leaves its programming a veritable Aztec tomb of weak plots, romantic melodramas and reality caricatures.

So Fox's motivations are economic, but that still begs the question: Why, if AD is so brilliant, did it fail in the ratings game? Therein lies the rub. According to Alia Shawkat, who plays Maeby Fünke, the show is too brilliant. In an interview, she relates an instance in which the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, fumed after a meeting during which he was told to make the show "simpler." Indeed, she says, Fox was so sure that their audience would not watch the show that they didn't even advertise it, effectively rendering it dead as a dove. While L.A. is littered with billboards for The O.C. and Prison Break, there are none for Arrested. Even the Fox lot bears no marker of this magic show.

Perhaps Fox is underestimating its audience. But, then again, perhaps it isn't. Considering the popularity of shows with unashamedly unrealistic plot lines, like CSI and sitcoms that thrive on strategically timed laughs and plotlines centred around misunderstood situations, maybe there is little space on network television for a program whose genius is its multi-layered complexity.

What this really speaks of is a society with a generally low level of tolerance for intelligence and a generally high level of physical and intellectual laziness. This malaise is perpetuated by a media that, instead of raising the proverbial bar, stifles room for intellectual growth by pandering to an unthinking couch culture. The upshot here is a society that becomes increasingly satisfied with uninspired thought and rehashed ideas, the result of which is stagnation. By cancelling programming that promotes the movement of neurons, the networks, and indeed, society at large, will find inevitably that they've made a huge mistake.

Obviously, television programming is not the prime mover of society's advancement, but considering the pervasiveness of television culture, its influence cannot be understated. Certainly, the motor of today's world is economics. But without the socially responsible investment in education by all sectors of society, including television networks, we as a society will find quickly that we don't have a banana to stand on.

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Pirates of the Academy

First Published: 4 April 2006

The end of the year marks the time to set sail and move to greener pastures. However, for many this time is marred and scarred by exams, papers, and other inconveniences. They will ponder - is the proverbial juice worth the squeeze?

When push comes to shove, many will answer in the negative and, in order to get done what needs to get done, they will consider "piracy," the act of copying someone else's work. Beyond its recent glorification by Natalie Portman on SNL ("When I was in Harvard…I cheated every test"), piracy is a mainstay of our world: In fact, it's "tradition" - the habit of doing what people before us have done.

Piracy is in our blood. From the first, we are taught sternly not to go against the grain or go out on a limb, lest the bough break. We are bred from birth, in the tradition of the gingerbread man, to be cookie-cutter conformists. We are taught to repeat blindly the teachings of Plato or Madonna.

Famously, our papers and exams are not required to display any original thinking. Indeed, it is preferred that submitted work be mundane, repetitive and imitate the ideas in the source material, so that markers will not have a tough time doing their jobs. Well, if it's control they want, give it to them: "CTRL+C" and "CTRL+V."

Let’s beat around this bush for a moment: Today's most popular form of television, "reality TV," is a rip-off of real life. Even our legal system, based on precedents, has us copy what people before us have decided to do. And people who consider themselves different by wearing clothes that are either "funky" or "grungy" are, just like everyone else, copying an already well-established look. Yes, of course, these arguments have been made before, but I'm not ashamed of using them myself.

Stealing isn't wrong; it's a right. Everything we are comes from elsewhere: We don't conceive of our own values, perceptions or notions, but we still call them our own. And why not re-use ideas - that would be environmentally friendly, after all. Let's be honest and call this spade exactly what it is: We are all pirates.

We're all on the same ship, so instead of acting as sour as green apples, let's revel in what we really are. Don't be a closet pirate: celebrate. Wear it on your sleeve; if you don't have one, take someone else's. Let's have a Pirate Pride Parade. Sure, the outfits would look almost exactly like those worn in the gay pride parade, but that sort of imitation only punctuates the core message of Pirate Pride. Montreal may very well be the perfect place for this sort of celebration-in addition to having loads of parade paraphernalia ripe for stealing, Quebeckers sound like pirates, anyway.

In the final analysis, piracy, as the act of imitating others, is not only acceptable; it is the norm. Originality is not considered to be that grand nowadays: For example, being anti-establishment (like the fare of most of my columns) is cool not because it's subversive, but because everybody's doing it. There is safety in copying the ways of our predecessors, says traditional wisdom: After all, if one does not change horses in midstream, then one is not forced to make the choice to sink or swim. So let's not waste time with originality - close your eyes, put on two eye-patches, do what you're told and go seek your treasure.

Speaking of booty - enjoy your summer. Arrrr.

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Clubber's Guide to ... Human Rights

First Published: 31 January 2006

Despite the many options available to contemporary music listeners, the popular palette is sated most often by the likes of Eminem’s bizarre invectives or Mariah’s tintinnabular pleadings. Hip-hop’s overwhelming dominance of contemporary popular culture is evinced by the monolithic play-lists of radio conglomerates like Standard Radio, as well as the billion-dollar hip-hop clothing industry, which a Statistics Canada study hails as retail clothing’s champion. It is that intense consumerism, coupled with the tangible egoism of hip-hop entertainers, which typifies modern hip-hop music and its attendant culture.

What sustains such vigorous consumerism, though, is the rigorous pursuit of indulgence. Perhaps the most iniquitous aspect of that pursuit, which exemplifies well the hip-hop industry, is the exploitative objectification of women. Considering that both the producers and consumers of the hip-hop industry deliberately promote and stoke the denigration of women, what is underscored here is a general unpreparedness in society for real social and human equality.

This was not always the case. 50 Cent, along with his characteristic supplications to expensive and excessive jewelry, vehicles, and women, was not always hip-hop’s ambassador. Indeed, that genre, now considered popular, was once a radical social movement that aimed to advance human causes through a lyrical art form that expressed vividly the absence of and need for social justice in impoverished societal ghettos.

Is it possible that recent times have seen the marginalised’s plight sufficiently ameliorated so as to outmode the importance of social messages in contemporary hip-hop? Does the marginalization of the social tirades of Mos Def and Common Sense in favour of the egoistic entreaties of Nelly and Fiddy gesture to a victory for capitalism? Even more perilously, has society become increasingly enchanted with the pursuit of indulgence so as to nourish its expression? Considering modern hip-hop’s pervasiveness, the answer to this most critical question seems to be in the affirmative.

What is perhaps the most damaging consequence of modern hip-hop’s celebration of indulgence is its depiction of women. Typically under-clad and over-sexed, women are paralleled with icons of materialist culture and thus are objectified alongside Maybachs and Pumas. Although many musical forms have displayed misogynistic and exploitative tendencies, such as rock, it is the commercial strength of hip-hop’s contemporary modishness that propels its perceptions of women to the fore. Modern hip-hop’s much-touted hyper-masculinity inspires in the popular consciousness a normative that effectively reduces half the human population to little more than currency.

Just consider the generally accepted practise of nightclub promoters and doormen who openly solicit women as marketing tools by offering them free liquor or admission in order to entice male patrons. (Imagine the uproar if men were treated preferentially!) What such practises expose is the implicit endorsement and active sustenance of blatant violations of equality rights and gender discrimination laws. One recalls here, amidst the indignant assertions of women claiming sexual independence, Wollstonecraft’s championing of women’s rationality versus subjugation justified by the ‘arbitrary power of beauty’, in which women themselves are complicit. Evincing this is Destiny Child’s callipygous panegyric, ‘Bootylicious’.

What all this speaks of is a society willfully excited by indulgence, composed of compliant victims of a consumerist culture supported by a vicious capitalism that thrives on an ethic of individualism. This is illustrated by a popular culture (and a marketing machine) that fosters the irresponsible addiction to a hedonistic consumerism in which women are the most prized commodity. Of what use, then, are civic appeals to common citizenship when the popular consciousness is permeated with a perception that effectively dehumanises half the population? As long as such perceptions persist, the civic dream of human equality will remain a distant Eden.

Oscars, Identity, Crisis.

First Published: 7 March 2006

There is a striking commonality in the subject matter of the films that were nominated for best picture at Sunday night's Oscars. All the films tackle issues of tangible contemporary relevance, and are designed to inspire thought and insight, not to escape from it. These films eschew placidity and instead challenge society. Many have said that Hollywood seems now to be 'out of touch' with the normative audience, the common man and his emotions. Indeed, that is a tradition from which these films seem to stray. Instead of pandering to the whims and gusts of an indifferent audience, these films aim to inspire debate and change, which recalls Schiller's directive that the artist's duty is to guide the moral intentions of the people.

Perhaps, this is reflective of a general mood in the current consciousness, one that questions accepted value structures as well as the nature and validity of authority. This is expressed poignantly in Good Night, and Good Luck, which highlights the repression of civic freedoms during the McCarthy 'witch-hunts'. The film showcases the responsibility of the press to report on the liberties taken by an intrusive government, which has implications for contemporary political issues, such as the cooperative role played by the media and the government in manufacturing public consent for the Iraq war.

That consent was found and manipulated easily in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which inspired a palpable atmosphere of public fear. Munich draws on this vivid experience of terrorism and its continuing prominence in the public consciousness. It is a psychological examination of murder and vengeance, the humans that undertake such actions, and the politics that underpin it all. As well, it discusses the contemporary issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations from a stirringly human angle.

It is, again, the human condition that is examined in Crash, which brings to the fore the very modern problem of civic alienation and its impact on human psyche and behaviour. It questions the effectiveness of public policies that seek to integrate diversity as well as gestures to their inability to inspire an ethic of tolerance in individuals. It draws attention to the civic problem of exclusion and questions definitions of identity.

Identity is an issue that is central in Brokeback Mountain. Of course, same-sex issues have received increasing attention in recent years due to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in a number of Western countries. The film examines the nature of love as well as its accepted notions. It questions traditional beliefs in love as universally accepting and tests society's willingness to attend to those convictions.

The final nominee, Capote, is a film that also investigates individual identity. The film explores the psyche of one of the most influential writers of the modern age and, in an interesting interpretation, suggests that his last and final novel is a reflection of his own self-image.

This quest for identity speaks of a movement towards the renegotiation of society's values and ethics, as well as the political, ethnic, religious, and social affiliations that continue to obtain. That this year's Oscar nominees are all films that deal with relevant, critical, and contemporary issues is indicative of a widening desire to consider alternative viewpoints in the search for a deeper understanding of our selves and our beliefs. This trend cannot be brushed aside as mere liberal elitism. Rather, it represents a desire to see art influence life, and not the passive opposite. The intellectual courage of these films gestures to the desire to stifle the loud cries of argument in favour of the spirited din of debate, in the hope that concerted reform will triumph over reactive chauvinism.

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Lexical Lament

First Published: 2 February 2006

One of the most horrifying aspects of modern life, some people agree, is the egregious and oftentimes macabre misuse of language. The commonness of lexical slips in popular parlance is indicative of a subversive, general perversion of the language. This is exemplified by the pervasiveness of sub par sub-species like Ebonics and Albertan. Too many conversationalists, with their lazy, wide-eyed tongues, get entangled in webs of dangling modifiers and split infinitives, leading them down a dangerous slippy-slope to certain embarrassment, if not suicide (social, not actual). Beyond these considerations, however, is the hard reality that speaking well isn’t really considered well in our times. Plebian parlance has infected the popular consciousness.

How baneful are the trills of Valleyspeakers, verbifying nouns and ‘like, omigod’-ing willy-nilly! All too frequently can we recount screechy, elongated monologues by speakers chronicling how they ‘were like totally making out on every lamppost on St Cat’s!’ With much shock and awe do we witness dialogue that substitutes pronouns for verbs, ignores standard conjugations, and eliminates subject-verb agreement: ‘My mother she bigger than you. She always do crazy things. She going to knock you out.’ It’s not only English that suffers this proverbial deflowering, though. Every vernacular perpetrates on its mother tongue such oedipal crimes.

The seminal issue here is that language is tied intimately to humanity. It is our larynxes and uvulas that make possible the transmission of ideas that distinguish human intercourse. Without proper parlance, attempts at communication would be as useful as a blind man looking out a window. Just imagine if people who spoke the same language (ostensibly) didn’t understand each other!

Consider the following actual conversation I experienced. In response to a query regarding her occupation, She says to He: ‘I just passed the bar exam.’ ‘Oh,’ replies He, ‘I didn’t realise becoming a barmaid required such rigour.’ She looks at him askance, and offers a corrective: ‘No, I just completed an actuarial-related law degree.’ He says, surprised, ‘Wow, the laws of bird-keeping. That’s really, um, interesting.’ What a nitwit, She thinks to herself! ‘No,’ She squawks, ‘my degree is in insurance and tax law!’ ‘Ah, taxonomy,’ He nods, with a wink and a smile.

How absurd. Where has gone our understanding of the language? Do we have such impoverished linguistic ability that we can no longer understand each other? Have our language skills degenerated so well that (not so) simple conversation is thrust into the realm of the imbecilic? In our quest for the bottom line and the bottom dollar, have we settled for bargain basement parlance as well? Has our standard been lowered so high that the most acceptable communications are typified by unwitting abuses at best and somewhat-syllables at worst? Has the paramountcy of the plebian become so thorough that turning a phrase is now as verboten as turning a trick (though, perhaps not in Montreal)?

What all this speaks of is our submission to an increasingly rapid pace of life, which supports a worldview that indulges, and even pampers, inability: allowing people to get away with avoidable mistakes speaks to the acceptance of improper or incomplete education. Of course, education is a scarce commodity, which is lamentable. But, when moderately educated individuals subvert the language, either through active or passive support, then we run the risk of becoming the victims of a diluted social intelligence. This, in turn, inhibits the sophisticated understanding of our lives and times that is so important in our small, small world. After all, without the use of proper subjects and predicates, attempts to come to know one another would be like a broken pencil: pointless.

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Superheroes in Action

First Published: 21 March 2006

Heroes – from Arjuna to Rustam to Gilgamesh to Dirty Harry – have always been important to human societies. In the wake of the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, though, our society’s conception of heroism has come into question. With all our disillusionment, can we still expect our heroes to be perfect or infallible? After all, especially in regard to the Iraq situation, those whom we were meant to look up to seem to have failed us. Established authority structures, having manipulated the public trust, are no longer the heroic bastions of ethical and physical protection they once were.

Superheroes, distinguished by their immortality, represented the ideal of a messianic figure who resolved for society its problems and traumas. This was the ideal that birthed Superman in the 1930s, the era leading up to World War II, with its own, real, super-villains. However, by the 1960s, which saw the advent of Spiderman, the validity of this idea had begun to crack. The emotional and intellectual freedom of that era allowed individuals to question their established authority structures – like a government that enforced conscription – and whether they really needed someone else to solve their problems.

Contrasting the messianism of Superman, Spiderman represented the need to take responsibility for one’s own traumas and failures, which, just as Spiderman came to understand, are a result of one’s own actions. This conceptualization was and is indicative of a burgeoning, yet eternal, hope that we can overcome our own traumas, not through the intervention of a mighty and perfect Superman but rather with the inner, agonized strength of an imperfectly human Peter Parker.

Superman was a model of perfection for an unquestioning society who sought solace in the notion of a savior who would not only restore the balance of the physical world, but also the ethical balance that seemed to have tipped askew. For that generation, the Allies represented the forces of Good, who, like Superman, had to prevail against the Evil that seemed about to overrun the world.

Though the rhetoric seems not to have changed in our times, the innocence that buttressed it has gone. Disenchanted, we shun the manteau of the distressed damsel and no longer look to Uncle Sam to save us or our ideals. Rather, we are more certain of our own power to effect change.

In a society like this, there seems little room for an omnipotent Superman who swoops down to save the day. The essential appeal of that ideal was its vicarious empowerment. The essence of our present times, on the other hand, is actual empowerment: we have it, we know it, and we don’t want others to fight our battles. This is the spirit that Spiderman embodies: recognizing his own hand in his trauma, he sets out alone to restore himself to the ethical pantheon that is the province of the innocent.

Spiderman represents, thus, our own fallibility and, more importantly, our perseverance in spite of it. We have, as a society, been through the trauma of a proverbial adolescence and no longer pine virginally for Prince Charming to rescue us, but rather accept responsibility for our actions and seek rectitude on our own merits. Like Peter Parker donning the mask of Spiderman, we transform ourselves into powerful and capable beings in charge of our own destinies. Assuming that mask, then, is not an escape into a false reality, but is rather a recognition of the true, inner nobility that inheres in us all and inspires our greatest actions.

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Luxury Jeans and Fiscal Irresponsibility

While contemporary designer denim is known for its deconstructed washes, high-quality fabrics, funky logos, and flattering cuts, it is also famously expensive, with jeans ranging from $150-$10,000. But, why are people paying so much for a fabric that used to be considered a complement to workmen’s Caterpillars and never ever as fodder for catwalks? For many, the answer is simple: they’re wicked cool, they fit oh-so-perfectly, and they’re unspeakably sexy. Indeed, didn’t Fergie warble: ‘they say they love my ass in Seven jeans, True Religion’? However, the growth of the designer denim industry gestures to a wider issue: the willingness of people to overspend on overpriced items, which one zealous observer has called an ‘epidemic of extravagance’.

Today, jeans are considered so staple that the average wardrobe has seven of them. Interestingly, the revival of fashion denim is widely considered to have begun with the founding in 2000 of the now famous California company, Seven For All Mankind. In spite of their current luxury status, jeans were designed in the 16^th-century as a specialised item for the Genoese navy, whose sailors required trousers that could be worn either wet or dry. The dye used to make the fabric came to be called ‘bleu de Gênes’, which is the etymological root for ‘jeans’. It would be over five hundred years before denim was to become ‘fashionable’, though, largely due to Jordache, founded in 1978.

Twenty years later, Gucci premiered its ‘genius jeans’, which were priced at US$3,134 each, gaining them a Guinness World Record for the world’s most expensive jeans. That was then. Today, Escada’s couture line jeans start at $8,000, but their masterpiece is a Swarovski crystal-studded $10,000 pair. The going-rate for popular designer jeans, though, such as Seven, True Religion, or Rock N’ Republic is in the $300 range.

Still, in the US, jeans that cost more than $100 make up only 1% of the $14 billion industry. Furthermore, it has become increasingly easier to find the popular brands online at much cheaper prices. It’s statistics like these at lead some analysts to conclude that the designer jeans market has peaked and is on its way down.

However, such predictions may be overlooking a central issue – people like paying a lot of money for things. People enjoy the signature label and shopping at Cours Mont-Royal or Holts. According to Robert H. Frank, author of Luxury Fever, ‘When you acquire high status [items], your serotonin level goes up. It feels good to have high status. It feels bad to have low status.’

Certainly, people have always spent outside their means to acquire high status goods, but this propensity has escalated in modern times. Whereas in the past people compared themselves with people who were close to their own financial situation, people now compare themselves with the top few percent. According to Juliet Schor, a Harvard University economist, this is because the lifestyles of the rich and famous have become so visible that they have come to be perceived as the norm. Indeed, what is believed to have jumpstarted the designer jeans ‘revolution’ of the 2000s is the product’s popularity among celebrities such as Jessica Simpson and Angelina Jolie.

What all this underscores is the fiscal irresponsibility of buyers, which really speaks of a lack of self-discipline. ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ says traditional wisdom. But, desperately seeking serotonin, we compete with those above us in an arduous race that has no end. If this is the case, then it is difficult to contend that the quest for luxury, including designer jeans, will decline any time soon: as long as we desire things, there will be things to sate those desires. Arguably, such behaviour is good for the economy: luxury fever, stoked by upwardly mobile aspirations, keeps capitalism thriving. However, indulgence in such behaviour keeps us at the margins of life, constantly scrambling for something beyond our reach and, at the same time, never satisfied with what we’ve achieved. This is, perhaps, the nature of the beast, but it’s not the nature of the intellectual being.

Love, Individually.

Doubtlessly, the advent of 14 February will find many minds turned to thoughts of romantic relationships. But, is this really a departure from the quotidian? Though V-day may see the increased propagation of chocolate delectables and horticultural offerings, romantic relationships occupy a central spot in everyday experience. That the popular consciousness is preoccupied with thoughts of relationships is evident not only from casual eavesdropping, but also from the plenitude of shows or songs that wax tirelessly about this seemingly most vital preoccupation.

Less prevalent, though, are more mystical notions of Love, with their appeals to a metaphysical union with an Ultimate Reality through which Subject is subsumed into Object – at which point there is no ‘Me’ and there is no ‘You’. Such negation of egocentricity is not a consideration for the modern mind, whose goal is the satisfaction of individual caprices. The Self is paramount, beyond it lies little.

This individualistic ethic is representative of the democratization of emotion which paralleled the rise of society’s democratization. Still, the prime place afforded to romantic relationships in today’s popular consciousness is indicative, perhaps, of a desire by individuals to ‘connect’ with something greater than their Selfs. Of course, in this post-industrialist, post-Enlightenment age, we would naturally be looking for links to ultimate principles. After all, the upshot of capitalism was individualism, while the removal of Religion from the public sphere witnessed a move away from the communitarian towards isolationism.

This is what McGill’s (not Liberia’s) Charles Taylor calls the malaise of modernity: ‘People no longer have a sense of higher purpose.… The dark side of individualism is a centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.’ The rise of such solipsistic tendencies is attested by Robert Putnam’s seminal studies on the decline of private and public inter-human relationships in Western society.

What this sort of individualism speaks of is a society cut off from ultimate guiding principles. With Religion’s removal seemed to go its ethical upshot as well; the duties-based ethic of old is outmoded in the modern rights-based society. The very basic human sensibilities that are at the core of religious ethics seem to hold no candle to the importance of individual rights. When the touting of liberal values, such as human rights or free speech, seems to trump appeals to civic responsibility, what we have is extremist Liberalism. It was precisely to secure the public sphere from this sort of oppression from ideology that inspired Religion’s removal in the first place.

From whence, then, are we to inspire in ourselves the necessary recognition of humanity in each other in order to occasion the type of kind, just, and responsible society that was the spur of liberalism? Conceptualizations of the Other predicated on common humanity are the province of metaphysical understandings of Love, through which one comes to perceive the multiplicity of things as a reflection of the unicity of things. In perceiving the essential connectedness of things, one comes to appreciate humanity’s commonality, and thus, that to hurt one is to hurt oneself.

However, what seems to prevail in modern society is the individual’s reality and concerns. There is little space thus for the type of Love that forces one outside oneself. If, indeed, we are to create the type of society that is civil and responsible, and which safeguards sensibilities in addition to rights, then we must extend ourselves beyond ourselves and come to know one another on the basis of our common humanity, rather than what so often occurs, our common enmity.