What is Adventure?

My sophomore year in college I saw a show that changed my life. To this day, I consider it to be one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. This show was Adventure Bound with Alby Mangels.

Alby was, and still is I suppose, an Australian with curly blonde hair and a penchant for wearing daisy duke shorts (the show was filmed during the 70s and 80s). The show was basically him and a friend filming themselves on various adventures around the world as they undertook what he called, ‘world safaris’. They started in the Aussie outback and then made it to South America and Africa. His adventures included being gored by a wild boar, flying a helicopter loaded with Rebels in the DRC who fired at enemy targets en route, sailing the high seas, canoeing up to African elephants, a bad car wreck in South America in which his friend suffered terrible injuries, and many other tales of interest. He was completely cavalier when it came to his travels and ended up partnering up with a sundry of locals and travelers of dubious character in friendships and even business deals. Only at the end of his adventures when he purchased a nice catamaran sail boat did he ever have a mode of transportation, be it a car, airplane, helicopter, or boat, that wasn’t inches away from collapsing. Even more impressive than his ability to pilot all those vehicles was his ability to jimmy-rig them every time they broke down. And through all his trials and tribulations he was always jovial and continued his brazen approach toward adventure undaunted. Of course, I was also impressed by how he was typically joined by various hot women on his journeys.

I could go on and on, but the point is I loved every minute of this show and it sort of inspired my own approach to world travel. I enjoyed the show so much that I ignored the instances of, shall we say, oddity. For instance, while he was careening out of control in his truck toward a cliff the camera cut to a shot of his feet slamming on the brakes, then cut back to the car coming to a stop mere feet from the precipice. Now how did this sequence occur? Did they actually almost go off a cliff and then splice in footage of him hitting the brakes afterwards? Or did they manufacture the whole thing? There are other times when a critic could question whether or not the show was merely leaning toward reality or sliding towards a fictionalization of realistic situations.

About a year ago I found a similar show called Man vs Wild, starring Bear Grylls. Basically Bear just drops into some harsh environment and then, followed by a camera crew, shows the viewer how to get out alive with only a flint, some water, and a knife. It’s highly entertaining and my special lady friend and I were always quick to flip to it when it was on. However, after the initially coolness of the show’s premise wore off the awe with which I looked at Bear began to fade. My special lady friend and I ended up openly questioned how legitimate the show was. ‘Does he really need to repel down that waterfall, it looks like he could go around?’

Then the truth came out. Bear admitted to eating five course meals with the crew at their base camp, the crew helped him fish and build shelters, he used local guides to point him the right direction, animals are left by locals or producers for him to give demonstrations with, and he even has slept indoors during filming. Horrifying right? A guy that I put on a pedestal due to his ability to do all the stuff I wish I knew how to do in the wild was faking it.

Ultimately I think this gets to the question: what is adventure? For me this is an important question because if you asked me to sum up in one word was I most wanted in my own life, that word would be ‘adventure.’

Bear Grylls ends up representing a sort of yuppie fascination or flirtation with adventure. Bear did a lot of cool stuff and it undeniably hardcore, but it strikes me as somehow false or unwarranted. To me, it feels like someone who has studied and worked out to be mentally and physically prepared for a wilderness challenge and then they go into the wilderness in order to test what they’ve learned. It is a lot like school in that respect. And just like school, once the person completes the test, they simply go back to their normal everyday lives. It’s advocating a sort of adventure tourism where you purposely create a tough situation and then try to get out of it using the prearranged skill set you’ve developed. That’s why I’d say this Bear Grylls approach to adventure is really just flirting with the idea of adventure.

Conversely, I think Alby fully commits himself to adventure. Alby didn’t plan to have his car break down or for a guy in a bar to challenge his friend to a bare knuckle boxing match; that stuff just happened. Alby didn’t just take an adventure vacation, he lived an adventure. While Bear, who it turns out is an Evangelical Christian which makes the fact that he lied about not getting any help during his trials all the more funny, seems to want to put across the message that each of us should take a break from the day to seek out an adventure, Alby puts across the message that adventure should be our lifestyle. You don’t have to try and hike across the Amazon Rainforest to find adventure, just pack some stuff in a car and start driving and you’re sure to have adventure find you.

This is how I try to look at my life, and when you adopt that mentality you realize that adventure waits around every corner and that you don’t have to be some yuppie with all the latest North Face gear to experience it. This is also why I don’t care if Alby finagled some of the facts about his stories of adventure whereas it does bother me that Bear was misrepresenting himself. Bear made adventure out to be a sort of test that you can put yourself through every once in a while, and not only do I dislike that test-like approach to adventure, but it turns out that he was cheating on the test. Alby, on the other hand, was living adventure so even if nothing ‘extreme’ happened to him, it was an adventure.

In conclusion, my idea of adventure, the idea which I try to live my life in accordance with, is that adventure just means meeting life and all the obstacles it presents head on. You throw caution to the wind constantly, you take your chances every chance you get, you do whatever the hell you want to do (while being respectful to other) however the hell you want to do it and live with the consequences. So if you fail or get stuck or your car breaks down or your boat sinks, you can still smile because that is simply your adventure. You didn’t take orders from others. You lived your own life. That is adventure and that is why Alby Mangels is far better than Bear Grylls.

 

Why Aren’t We Watching 30 Rock?

Listen, you need to be watching 30 Rock. If you already are and it feels like I’m accosting you, I’m sorry, but last week was the season two finale, and if you like watching the TV from time to time, you know there’s nothing networks love doing more than axing smart, clever comedic shows in favor of the next version of Survivor, or American Gladiators, or any other ‘reality’ TV show that strays so far from reality you can only shake your head, grimace like you just ate a bad olive, and think, “God, do I want to bring kids into a world that considers this reality?”.

Consider this an introduction and endorsement for the uninitiated to 30 Rock, one of the funniest damn shows on television. There’s also going to be some musing on how DVD’s have affected television series, and finally some waxing poetic about the zenith of primetime TV, and what that meant to myself a few years back.

For those of you who do watch 30 Rock, you know that it is simply a brilliantly written show, with layer upon layer of jokes that venture into any and all territory. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the lead writer on a once popular show on NBC that is quickly losing steam. Enter Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin in the role he was born to play), a profit driven, demographic obsessed, NBC executive whose chest swells as much due to his role in the development of a new GE convection oven as it does from working in prime time television.* In an effort to revamp the show’s declining ratings, Donaghy suggests, then insists, and ultimately forces Lemon to cast eccentric pop icon Tracy Jordan, (Tracy Morgan). What was once was a team effort essentially morphs into a one-man show, albeit a more popular and successful one. Fey has admitted that the show is a look into her experiences as the head writer for Saturday Night Live. While it’s not clear who Baldwin’s character is based on, Morgan might very well be playing a dramatized version of his real life persona. If that seems unfair, look up ‘Tracy Morgan interviews’ on YouTube, and you’ll find that Morgan is a talented, hilarious, and quite possibly unstable individual.

What causes me to worry about 30 Rock is the type of humor is does so well. Like Arrested Development before it, there is no laugh track, meaning you have to actually pay attention to what’s said, and even then you might not get all the jokes.** Also similar to Arrested Development is the presence of a continuing story throughout the season, which might throw off the casual viewer. As a neophyte myself, I didn’t tune in to last week’s finale, not because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow or understand that week’s plot- each show is a new, tightly woven little package of funny- but because it’s a show that’s best watched in sequential order. The under girding story is easier to pick up, you begin to develop a greater understanding of each character, not to mention you catch all the subtle references to past shows, which gives you that slightly smug feeling of being an insider that no one wants to admit to enjoying. For someone flipping through the channels and landing on the show halfway through, you have no idea who the characters are, and unless you stop to pay attention (who does that when channel surfing?), you might not even figure out it’s a comedy.

This brings me to the role of DVD’s in enjoying a TV series nowadays. Above I mentioned that to best enjoy 30 Rock, you should watch it in order. What I failed to say was that I haven’t seen a one whole episode of either season on TV, because I can’t stand to watch TV shows while they are on TV! DVD collections allow you to knock out a whole season in a single weekend, if you have that sort of couch stamina. While watching the whole first season a few weekends ago, I marveled that I haven’t heard more about this series. Ironically I could be affecting the health of my new favorite distraction. If people don’t watch or become fans of a show until it comes out on DVD, research numbers might lead a network to cancel it. (Some people think this might have been what happened to Family Guy- yet again, we’re talking about Fox, the ultimate champion of scratching smart and funny shows- and that Family Guy was only brought back because the sales of its season DVD’s were so strong.) Bewildered networks are left to deal with hostile fans, mad that their favorite show was cancelled, even though they weren’t watching it when it came on television, only when it hit the shelves in DVD form.

The loss of enjoying a show on a weekly basis brings to my mind the heyday of Seinfeld. When I was in the ninth grade, I was still the awkward new kid, still trying to make friends, bravely (at least in my memory) wedging myself into tables of kids I thought were cool. Jeff and Trey were among the first guys I joked around with on a regular basis, and this was almost exclusively because of Seinfeld. Come Friday at lunchtime, a group of fifteen, 15-year-old boys would lump around a table made for eight, and we’d repeat line for line the previous night’s episode of Seinfeld. If I forgot the bit about Kramer feeding a horse Beef-O-Reeno, Jeff would bring it up. If Jeff forgot the look on Jerry’s face as he ran from the screaming old lady with that marble rye tucked tightly under his arm, Trey did his best impersonation. If Trey failed to remember what Elaine was doing that episode, I was there to tie up loose ends. And after reciting almost every line of the past episode, we’d proceed to break down how genius it was (I remember us mostly saying things like ‘that shit is so funny’ as opposed to analyzing the perfect pitch and syntax of each line; though that’s all we are really saying now when we use slight larger vocabularies, it’s the same thing: “that shit was off the hook!”).

For all of us, our Seinfeld reviews were master classes in comedic timing and writing, even if we didn’t know it. For me, they were instant conversation starters for a shy new kid, and a doorway to some pretty good friendships I maintain to this day. So if for no other reason than the fact that some awkward teenager in some middle school lunchroom needs one opening line of conversation at least once a week, check out 30 Rock.***

*Side note: the show also does a spectacular job parodying NBC, especially the corporate conglomerate side of its existence. There’s one scene in the first season when every character is drinking Snapple and talking about how tasty and delicious it is, and though you know that Snapple most be part of the GE family of brands, and you want to be upset that Tina Fey is in essence pimping its products on the show, they do it in such a funny and likable way you forgive them… And then think about how nice a Kiwi Strawberry would be, right now…

**Hopefully 30 Rock can last longer than Arrested Development, which didn’t stand a change against reruns of ‘When Bears Attack Scrabble Conventions 17’ on Fox. Of course, who’s to say that a show should try to stay on for as long as possible? I’ve always been a huge fan of the British version of The Office, in part because it only lasted two seasons. There are no wasted words or scenes in that series, everything feels fresh, perhaps because the writer’s didn’t feel like they had to hold back, or keep a little something left in the tank. That’s all speculation, I don’t know who decided to make just two seasons of The Office, only that if that was a decision from the get go, maybe it wasn’t a bad one. Part of the beauty of 30 Rock, in my opinion, is that all the dialogue and plot sequences have the feeling of tightness, of ‘just right’.

***Sorry about the footnotes, I recently read some David Foster Wallace, and he rubbed off. I thought I’d use this last note to say that I love Tina Fey like it’s my job, and I have to deny this to my lady friend all the time. Example: Lady Friend [with a slightly mocking smile on her face] “God, you love Tina Fey, don’t you?” Me [trying not to blush]: “No…”

 

Identity and Race in America

What does it mean to be a Southerner? OK, first of all this is painful for me and isn’t going to be one of my best efforts because I hate the topic of identity, but I promised to discuss it in my post about Senator Obama’s race speech. Second, this is completely subjective. Third, structure-wise I’m going to use this post to describe what I think a Southerner is and then in get into how this might relate to race in America circa the Senator’s speech. Alright, here goes:

Southern Identity

I’m old school so I want to immediately cut out the people who claim to be true Southerners but are really just products of the New South. These New South people, as I see it, are typically preps who dress like 5 year olds who were dressed by their mothers and this fashion trend persists until they are old men. The Duck Head shorts with collared shirt tucked in and loafers. These people are typically products of a privileged white collar family who end up working white collar jobs like their parents but for more money (i.e. they become lawyers). That’s the New South, a sort of scaled back version of the upscale, disconnected, money seeking, elitist persona I would associate with Northerners. Have I pissed anyone off yet? Well hang with me as I make my point and then feel free to tell me what a douche I am in the comments.

Now that I’ve established what I think the Southern identity isn’t let me say what I think it is. I think Southern identity could best be summed up as an identity set in a proud struggle that is futile, but nevertheless refuses to change on the basis of principle, for better or worse.

To elaborate on my view of Southern identity I’d point out that it makes sense historically. From the beginning, the South was an agrarian society, constantly struggling to wrest a living out from the ground. This dependence on farming, which I believe was entrenched by the North’s colonizing of the South (we’ll save this for another time), meant that slavery and race would have to be struggled with since it was invariably tied to the agrarian lifestyle. As slaves outnumbered whites and as the North moved to rid the country of slavery, the South, knowing it was grossly overmatched struggled on to defend their way of life. I’m not saying that was a good thing; just that it represents a futile struggle and an instance where they refused to change despite the fact that changing might have saved them from their demise. Once modernization was attempted in the South the wealthy monopolists of the North stood in their way (for example, steel from Alabama was taxed higher than steel from Pennsylvania to preserve the interests of the wealthy Northern steel magnates). Thus, attempts to modernize in a distinctly Southern way were doomed to fail. And now in present day, the South has the worst schools and the lowest per capita income, and yet we still struggle on knowing that not once in our history have we been allowed to succeed. And what separates the New South from the Real South is that if the opportunity to succeed is presented to a Real Southerner; he/she will not take it if it necessitates the compromising of their principles whereas someone of the New South ilk will. There is a sense of pride in the struggle that success would negate. Thus, as I see it, Southern identity is defined by a proud struggle that is ultimately futile, but resistant to change on the basis of principle, for better or worse.

How this Relates to Identity and Race in America

Let me begin restating that I hate this topic of identity. I hate that my Master’s dissertation had a huge chunk of it devoted to Charles Taylor’s book Multiculturalism and Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth. I was reminded of my dislike for ‘identity issues’ the other month when my special lady friend asked me to go to a talk on the subject of race in South Africa. That discussion pretty much broke down to the question: can a black person be racist? I thought to myself, ‘yes, of course.’ Thankfully I didn’t verbalize this thought because just about everyone else in the room thought otherwise. The general consensus was that black people cannot be racist, only white people can. That was so unanimously agreed upon by the bulk of the audience and panel that the only remaining issue was whether or not Jews counted as white people, because the speaker, a Jewish woman, thought that Jews, like black people were incapable of racism.

This has nothing to do with what it means to be a Southerner, but I bring it up to make the point that postmodernism/postcolonialism/poststructuralism/post-etc’s obsession with identity and the privileged position of minority groups is stupid. That gets me to Kwame Appiah.

Kwame Appiah’s dad is from Ghana, (I think his mom is an African America), he is black, and gay. He’s got a lot of minority groups covered. And as a philosopher studying identity his basic point is that group identity is important to an individual in the sense that he wouldn’t be the same person if he didn’t define part of himself as ‘gay’ or ‘black’; but those group identities do not define the individual in a deterministic way. Rather, the individuals inside the group define the group. Appiah points out that group identities too strongly defined squash individual identity and create consternation within the society they exist when they refuse adapt to other group identities and other individuals within a common society.

Think about Canada; Charles Taylor’s home. Taylor is sort of the father of multiculturalism, which just means letting everyone minority group fully express their uniqueness within the larger society. Nice idea, but Taylor’s own home country, and he admits this, presents multiculturalists with a problem. The French Canadians, who are free to celebrate their unique cultural what-have-you with in Canadian society, want to leave Canada. And there in lies the problem, if you get too focused on parochial group identity, you can’t coexist with anyone not in your own group.

In short, if you spend all day thinking about what it means to be black, white, gay, Christian, whatever, you’re not only wasting your time but you also end up impeding social adhesion and therein progress.

So how does this relate to Southern identity? Well remember when I dissed all the people who wear collared shirts and whatnot, they can still fit into how I ultimately defined Southern identity. In fact, I have qualities of both the Southern identity that I advocate and prefer as well as qualities consistent with my negative description of the New South (not in terms of fashion sense, but other ones). One’s idea of identity is not only subjective, but exists as a sort of Platonic form that even the person coming up with the idea can’t really achieve. So to define yourself totally and wholly within such a notion of identity pigeon holes you to the point that your interaction with people subscribing to a different identity can’t speak to you. If you define a group identity too broadly, it cedes its uniqueness. Conversely, if you define it too narrowly, it is so unique that is jibes with the rest of society. This is why postcolonial writers embrace the idea that ‘the subaltern’ can’t speak, which just means that people from one group can’t understand people from another group. Well that may be true to a degree, but if you embrace that unique identity too much there can’t be any cohesion. In my opinion, this is huge roadblock in South Africa because so much attention is paid to identity and protecting that ethereal idea that physically, on the ground, things are much harder to achieve.

The bottom line is that I am never going understand what it is like to be Senator Obama because I am not the same race, not from the same place, didn’t have the same upbringing, nor the same education, and so on and so forth. And while I think each of us should embrace own uniqueness, I wouldn’t advise that we embrace it to the extent that dialogue between us becomes impossible. Hence, I would say that race in America needs to be approached with the understanding that while it is an important part of a person and a part that can’t be fully comprehended by someone of a different race, it must not become an aspect of identity that negates dialogue or racial cohesion.

To me, the beauty of Senator Obama’s race speech is that he simply asked for greater dialogue concerning race and identity in America; and it is that very dialogue that will allow us to recognize the uniqueness of other racial or minority groups while engaging with one another, thereby ensuring that our group identities don’t hamper social cohesion and progress toward an America unified through the embracement of difference.

 

The Global Economy Through the Eyes of A Bike Shop

Taking full advantage of my degree earned over five years I took a job at a bike shop a few months ago. I’m planing on only working here while I work on my MBA, then I’ll upgrade to used car salesman. Trey, Chris, and I spent a large portion of our time in junior high and high school mountain biking. None of us had enough money to buy nice bikes, but we made due. We rode at Southside quite often and had a great time doing it.

The shop that I’m working in now deals mostly with high-end bikes that cost on average $1,500 to $2,000. When I first took the job I figured that maybe one customer would come through daily. I could not imagine that there were a lot of people that were willing to spend that much money on a bicycle. A few weeks after starting my job I was quite surprised to learn that we average $10,000/day in bike sales. This got me feeling good.

If the US economy is so poor, how are people are still able to spend $2,000 on a bicycle? The economy can’t be that bad right? That’s what I thought until yesterday.

Let me backtrack for a moment. Living in Denver puts me 5 hours away from one of, if not the best mountain biking locations in the world. People literally fly from all over the globe to come and ride at Moab, Utah.

So yesterday a young girl, probably around 21-23 came in the shop. She was eying a $500 used road bike that was on the rack outside. She came in and asked to see the bike. As soon as we walked outside and she pointed out the bike it was obvious that the bike was much large for her. After talking for a moment I pointed out how big the bike was in relation to her size. She immediately told me that she didn’t care. She lives in Melbourne, Australia and with the exchange rate and scarcity of bicycles, she would be able to sell the bike for at least double what she paid for it. So in a matter of a minute and a half she purchased a $500 used bicycle.

Then today I’m opening the store at 9:30. About 9:45 two gentlemen with Scottish accents come into the shop. They are on there way from Scotland to Moab and want to buy a bike. After a few minutes of looking, one of the gentlemen settles on a $1600 Trek Fuel Ex 6. While ringing the gentleman up I asked him what kind of bike he rides in Scotland. He said that he rides a similar style bike. I found it odd that this guy would come all the way to Denver to buy the same kind of bike he already has at home. When asking him why he didn’t just bring his bike with him, he told me that he can buy this bike in the US, have it shipped home, sell it, and still make more than double what he paid for the bike and the shipping.

I didn’t think the economy was doing well, but I didn’t know that it was as bad off as it is. Now we all know as soon as we get our $600 check everything will be fine again… thank god for the genius of the Administration. If you’re waiting for a conclusion to this just be patient…

 

The Real World: A Retrospective

It’s time to stop being nice and start getting real.

I just thought of this, but why is it that MTV thinks being nice and being real are polar opposites? I mean I really am a nice guy in reality. So for me, gettin’ real would also mean being nice and if I were to stop being nice, I would also cease being real. Something to think about MTV executives (who I imagine all wear the blazer over the t-shirt with jeans).

Anyway, the real issue is that the Real World just celebrated its 20^th anniversary. I did not get to watch the 20^th anniversary award show, but I did listen to the Bill Simmons (aka the Sports Guy) do a recap of it on his podcast, which was hilarious. Also, it was the first reality show after all and we were in our teens and 20s as it evolved so I figured it is something that deserves to be talked about, remembered fondly, and ridiculed. So here goes.

Bill Simmons mentioned that the paramount moment of the anniversary show was when the black guy from Seattle, I can’t remember his name, came out with his fiancé, who was a dude. That’s a big moment because he was the guy who during the show was feuding with Irene, the crazy bipolar girl, who had decided to leave the show midway through. Her leaving was supposed to be one of those sappy Real World episodes where all the housemates are bummed to lose a ‘friend’, but instead she got into it with the black guy and ended up calling him ‘gay’. He was incredibly offended and proceeded to throw her stuffed animal into the harbor that the house was situated on. Then, after they fished the stuffed animal out of Puget Sound, he ran up to the car she was leaving in and slapped her in the face. But now the guy who was driven to slap a girl in the face because she called him gay is about to become a married gay man.

I think that turn of events summarizes why the Real World was must see TV. Nothing about the show is real, but it is a bunch of crazy people with serious issues trying to cohabitate. The show follows a sort of timeline where it is funny first and foremost, troubling at times (i.e. the guy slaps Irene in the face), and then somehow makes sense. In other words, there is a crazy person you make fun of, then you feel bad for them or they do something over the line, then their craziness makes sense due to some revealed troubled past or mental disorder or they just turn out to be an asshole in which case your initial hatred and laughing at their expense is vindicated and justified. Funny to troubling to making perfect sense somehow; that is the Real World in a nutshell.

But enough of the analysis, I mean this show might have started out as a social experiment but evolved into voyeurism and senseless debaucher (which is why we loved it). So on that note I submit the following remembrances for you and if you disagree or remember something else post a comment about it (please, any discussion of the Real World is bound to be wrought with hilarity).

For my money the best season was Miami. Dan from that show was, and probably still is, the most agitated gay man in the history of the world. Bill Simmons mentioned that the greatest fight in the Real World history was when Dan and Melissa got in an argument that lasted 3 episodes. I agree and what makes that better, which the Sports Guy forgot to mention, was that it started because Melissa accidentally opened Dan’s mail. You’ve gotta love that. She accidentally opens his mail, he screams at her like she killed his family and calls her a bitch, at which point she reacts to being called a bitch as if there is no greater insult in the English vocabulary, and then proceeds to violently argue for 3 episodes.

Also in that season was the famed threesome with Melissa, the guy from the house, and some random chick he brought home. How can you beat that? They all go in the pool house shower room and start to get it on while Dan and the small girl listened in. Then they tried to sneak the small girl through the window into the shower room to get a look and she broke the window. Great TV all around.

Second best season, I’m gonna say was Hawaii because they had Tek, who was both normal and funny, a rare combo in the Real World, the girl with big boobs who magically combined the worst personality possible with a hot body, and Ruthie who was an alcoholic. That whole season was legendary.

Third I’d give to New Orleans because I liked the black guy who wanted to be a musician or songwriter or whatever but clearly had no talent. Then there was the skater guy who was a total douche. Then there was the kind of hot/innocent/awkward, Mormon girl.

Forth would be the New York one with Coral and the Miz and that one really hot, even by Real World standards, girl who was a singer or something.

Fifth I guess would be Chicago only because I met the hot blonde girl from that season while I was in New Orleans.

Ok, Jeff and Lauren Spears I expect your Real World expertise to come up with anything I’ve missed and any great moments that you think should be mentioned. Suggested topics include your favorite Real World cast, favorite Real World cast member, would you rather be on Road Rules or Real World, is it not sad that the Gauntlet is basically the only source of income for most of these people, and anything else you can think of.

 

The Importance of Satire

As an art form, satire has existed since Antiquity.  Several Greek playwrights wrote works mocking the conventions of their time.  It has endured throughout western history as a  form of cultural critique.  Today, thanks to television and the internet, there are endless sources of satirical pleasure.  My question is this:  is satire necessary?  Or beyond that, is it even relevant?

 

The question that must be asked is whether or not satire has an impact.  To what extent does it have the ability to effect change?  Does pointing out the flaws of a particular time and place have any capacity to change that which it examines?  One of the fundamental flaws of satire is that most often the only people who understand its meaning are the ones who already agree with the satire’s criticism.  To the rest it comes across as crude or stupid.   A perfect modern example of this is the show South Park.  South Park is arguably one of the most brilliantly satirical productions in the history of television.  Yet it is frequently criticized and reviled for its content.  To those who don’t understand its message, it is simply a despicable program that’s nothing more than cartoon-ish violence and toilet humor. 

 

Inasmuch as satire raises valid points about society, it is essentially just preaching to the choir.  How can one hope to point out the error of cultural norms when most people are firmly entrenched in that culture?  That task is really all but impossible.  So it would seem that satire is largely irrelevant due to the typically small size of its audience.  Moreover, satire, by necessity, tends to be extremely topical and therefore only pertinent to a particular time and place.  What does it matter to today’s society that Aristophanes made fun of the Sophists?  Thus, it would appear that satire lacks the longevity of other art forms to make it culturally important.

 

Despite these seeming shortcomings, however, satire is one of the most absolutely essential elements of a free society.  It is the satirists who point out when we, as a society, are straying from our moral high ground.  Satirists, often, serve as the harbingers of error in society.  While journalists uncover the horrible events going on in the world, it is the satirist who makes us confront the evils that we ourselves commit.  As people, we tend to take for granted that our convictions are most often in the right, and the satirist stands against that notion to ensure that at least someone knows that we are not always acting in an appropriate way.  Take Jonathan Swift’s “A Model Proposal,” or Mark Twain’s “Huck Finn.”  These two works unrepentantly illuminate the ills of their respective societies.  I cannot imagine a news report more powerful than those finely crafted works of satire.  It is the honesty and humanism of satire that make it so valuable, in that it forces the reader/viewer to reflect upon his own shortcomings.

 

More importantly, regardless of how wide the audience, the mere fact that satire exists is one of the most telling indicators of a free society.  If there were suddenly no satirical productions I would be very afraid.  The importance of being able to criticize and lampoon those in power cannot be understated.  And though satirists very rarely affect any real change in the world, the simple fact that they are allowed to produce their work assures us that we live in a free society. 

 

In conclusion, it is readily apparent that satire has never been, nor will ever become, a major force of change in society.  It is simply too limited by its necessarily esoteric nature.  This is not, however, a weakness.  The satirist’s voice need not be heard by everyone, it merely needs to be heard.  For once the voice of criticism is silent, society has truly gone astray.

 

Top 5 TV Shows of All Time

Before I left the States I had come to the happy realization that there was a spate of new shows on TV that were worth watching after a long drought of subpar viewing entertainment. The top new quality shows were ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and ‘Rules of Engagement’, both of which are now on TV here in South Africa.

Anyway, that got me thinking, what are the top 5 TV shows that you’ve watched and followed in your lifetime?

Rules: you have to have watched it religiously, you have to have seen at least the bulk of its entire library, i.e. most or all of the seasons, and its quality is judged as a whole, i.e. from season 1 to the end.

Here’s my list:

1.      Seinfeld – Easy. Nothing ever was better and even the late seasons where there were some not-so-hot episodes were still good.

2.      West Wing – Could’ve challenged Seinfeld if everything after season 4 wasn’t terrible. Seasons 1-4, however, constitutes the greatest TV ever.

3.      Cheers – My family watched this as family time. It got progressively better through the seasons and was always, always, always funny.

4.      The Cosby Show –I mean the original. Was good from it’s inception, then was great in the middle part of its run, and then took sort of a down turn in the late years when all the random relatives starting showing up and they had like 6 long lost uncles, all of whom were jazz musicians.

5.      M.A.S.H. – We watched this one as a family too. It was great until the cast started shifting around too much and then Alan Alda started directing and got all artsy and ruined the last couple of seasons.

I know I’ve left some out and there are some shows that just need their own category. I mean Real World has to get some sort of mention, but where does that fit in? Likewise, what do you do with miniseries like Band of Brothers? So I think we just have to exclude reality TV and miniseries. Another thought is what if you made a list of top 5 guilty pleasure shows? My guilty pleasure shows would be in this order: Temptation Island (the greatest/worst idea for a reality show ever), Sex in the City, Real World, 90210, and The Hillz.

Anyway, here are some honorable mentions for my top 5 of all time:

The Wonder Years, Murphy Brown, ER (the early years), Scrubs, OZ, Simpsons (geez, how did I forget about that? Maybe that should be number 5 instead of MASH? Yes, consider that amendment made.), South Park, and the list could go on.

So here’s the purpose of this post: 1) what are your top 5 TV shows of all time (I’m sure I’m forgetting some classics), 2) Are there any shows on now that could eventually crack your top 5, 3) what would your top 5 guilty pleasure shows be, and 4) are there any other TV lists that we should make, like best miniseries or best shows you watched as a kid?

 

Movie Review: Lions for Lambs

Two things:

First, never trust a movie review. Every newspaper I picked up hailed Juno as the greatest movie ever, I went and saw it and 90 minutes in I was still waiting for Jason Bateman to say something funny. It wasn’t horrible, but it has that same too smart, too witty, too quick passed dialogue that you find on the Gilmore Girls (which my sister watches and I make fun of her for it). No Country for Old Men was the same story; great reviews but really just 2 hours of sand, slowly developing story lines, and an ambiguous ending posing as something artsy a la the Sopranos. Anyway, the point is don’t trust movie reviews because you end up liking what they hated and hating what they liked.

Second, I am not one for the hyperbole. I avoid saying stuff like, ‘that was the coolest thing I ever saw’. Instead, I like ranking stuff High Fidelity style. So I actually do know what the coolest thing I ever saw is, so I’m not going to just throw that moniker onto something else without thinking about it long and hard.

All that said, Lions for Lambs is a brilliant movie, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Maybe I should add to that, ‘one of the best I’ve ever seen, for what it was trying to do’ because it is a movie sort of unto itself. Unlike a movie along the lines of Shawshank Redemption, which is in my top 5 movies, Lions for Lambs isn’t really telling a singular story that has a fairly clear message or moral that you’re suppose to glean from it. Rather, Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford by the way, is about as close to postmodern (i.e. there is no answer and the point is unclear) as a movie can get without pissing me off to no end.

I didn’t like Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers or any of those other postmodern, artsy fartsy movies that the critics feign over (Bill Murray should just get the band back together and do Ghostbusters 3). Lions for Lambs leans toward that ‘everything is subjective/what’s the point of it all’ idea, but does so in a way that is situated in reality. Life and the world at large is complex and it’s easy to find yourself wondering ‘what’s the point of it all’ and just withdraw from the bits of society that you don’t like. The point the movie brings out is that you should challenge yourself to deal with the complexities rather than run away from those difficult issues because even though you may not change it, at least you did something.

Basically the movie follows three stories each involving two people. There’s a Professor (Robert Redford) in a meeting with a student, a reporter (Meryl Streep) interviewing a Senator (Tom Cruise), and two soldiers in Afghanistan. The professor is challenging the student, who is very promising but hasn’t come to class in a while, to come back to class and to continue striving for answers to political questions even though all he’s learned from the professor’s politics classes is that it’s all pointless because it’s so fouled up that nothing ever changes. The professor tells him about two students he had a while back who didn’t have the gifts, intellectual or economic, that this student has, but they busted their ass to get to college and then forewent graduate school to join the army because they wanted to put their money where their mouth was and make a difference. Meanwhile these two students are in Afghanistan on a new mission that is going horribly wrong. At the same time, this new mission is being described by a Senator to a reporter because the Senator wants the media to report on this new strategy and give people renewed faith that this war can be won.

What ensues is a discussion of politics, the media, and what citizenship means that is high-minded, thoughtful, enlightening, beautiful, and realistic. The professor didn’t approve of what the two kids who joined the army were doing, but respected why they were doing it. The reporter believes the Senator is well intentioned but also knows that the Senator wants her to sell this new strategy even though it resembles a failed strategy from Vietnam. The Senator knows that the media is just as responsible for the wars as the politicians because wars sell papers and gain viewership. And all the while, the two former students are up to their waist in Afghani snow while the enemy closes in and the one student back home just wants to withdraw from the whole twisted thing.

In the end, there is basically no answer. All that one can really take away with certainty is that the two soldiers are heroic. Yet, given the other two story lines in the movie, it has to be wondered if their heroics are in vain. Thus, it’s possible that the kid back home would be right to just give up on the whole thing. It’s also possible that even with all the crap that goes on in the government, we should all just cowboy up and plow ahead. Just do something to try and help.

No matter what you come away thinking, or if your mind is not made up at all, you will be intellectually provoked. And how often can you say that a movie had that effect on you? I highly, highly recommend this movie. It is well made, entertaining, timely, fair to all sides, incredibly thought provoking and, for me at least, incredibly inspiring.

 

Zimbabwe’s Apolitical Elections

You’re probably asking: why is a piece about the Zimbabwe elections in the society section? Well the reason is that there is absolutely nothing political about this election in Zimbabwe. Actually, Zimbabwean elections haven’t really had much to do with politics since 1980 when the black majority of the country was first allowed to vote after a two decade guerrilla war. And before 1980, under white rule, the elections had little to do with politics because the one and only issue was how to maintain white power. My point is that in Zimbabwe, politics is not about politics, it’s about the acquisition and maintaining of power.

A Little History

The 1980 election brought Robert Mugabe into power and he has connived and schemed his way to greater and greater power since then. Initially Mugabe was feared as a Marxist revolutionary, but after his election he put those radical principles aside and hinted to a smooth transition toward a Zimbabwe above the racial fray that had brought the country to war. Things went well initially; schools improved, heath care improved, and blacks were no longer legally enshrined as second class citizens.

But even as these advances were being made, the power grab behind the scenes was carrying on with fanatical fervor and it was Mugabe who was leading that charge. Heading an effectively one party state, he was able to build a patronage network inside the party that lacked any transparency or desire for competence. High power positions were dolled out by the measure of one’s unflinching loyalty rather than ability and as a result machinery of government began to grind to a halt in terms of service delivery as government members looted government finances. Everything that was once promising about Zimbabwe collapsed under the pressure of rampant corruption and ineptitude.

Assigning Blame, Resigning Reason

As dissatisfaction arose in the general public, Mugabe sought to simply blame the country’s woes on his enemies. The Ndebele ethnic group, white farmers, white judges, America, and Brittan were commonly held responsible for everything from rising inflation, a lack of jobs, to drought. There was nothing political about these ridiculous assertions for they have absolutely no bearing to reality. They are just useful scapegoats for problems that had arisen due to Mugabe’s methodology for building and maintaining power.

It would have been one thing if a political ideology had driven Mugabe to centralize power around him, misguided as that would be. It would have been one thing if he had done so because he theorized that development was only possible with a singular power base. But this was not his rationale. He wanted power for power sake. He enriched himself first and foremost, and then enriched the people around him whom he needed to keep on his side in order to maintain his position as chief looter of Zimbabwean treasure.

Therefore, to cover the Zimbabwean elections taking place tomorrow, March 29^th, as if they were just another political race is idiotic. Yet, here in South Africa the news papers and stations wonder aloud about how the rural vote will respond to challengers Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni’s messages? They speculate that Mugabe’s ruling party is on the verge of a split since Makoni used to be part of the ruling party and has since defected to run for President. How will the urban vote be divided between the three parties and who will benefit? Will Makoni’s involvement split the Zanu or MDC vote? Will it be close enough to necessitate a run-off election? What do the polling numbers suggest (ignoring the fact that the state owned media in Zimbabwe is doing the polling)?

Every time I hear these faux political analyses of a faux election premised by faux politics and faux government, I think of a joke Bill Maher did when Raul Castro was ‘elected’ leader of Cuba after his brother stepped down. Bill asked Bob Odenkirk, from Mr Show with Bob and David, to analyze the Cuban election. Bob pointed out (I’m paraphrasing the joke here) that Raul did well with women voters where he received 99% of the vote. He also did well with his core constituency of middle-aged male voters, receiving 99% of their vote, and surprised some people with how well he did among urban voters, where he got 99% of the vote. Bill then said that he’d hear that the Latino vote had also come out strong for Raul and asked Bob why Raul had done so well. Bob replied, it had to do with his slogan; “What are you fucking crazy? Vote for Raul Castro or die.”

Land as a Racial Landmine

So why do people insist on covering the Zimbabwean race like it is real? To answer this lets look at the issue that has made Zimbabwe infamous; the eviction of white farmers. In case you didn’t know, Mugabe blamed the whites for most of the afflictions blighting Zimbabwe. Key among this complaint was the fact that the whites owned pretty much all the good farming land. In fact, everyone (Brittan, Zanu, Zapu, NGOs and development agencies) agreed after Zimbabwe’s independence that land redistribution was going to have to take place. Nothing was done to this end, however, until Mugabe found himself against a wall with mounting pressure from the so-called war vets and the populace at large. Thus, to quell dissent Mugabe started handing out land to people essentially at random. Farms that were productive, farms that had been bought by whites after independence were seized along with unproductive farms run by absentee landlords. This completely disrupted the already faltering economy. Furthermore, these farms were redistributed to members of Mugabe’s cadre to further entrench his patronage network or they were given to war vets who seized the land, violently sometimes, so as to appease their complaints. Regardless of who got the land after it was taken, the fact was that the recipient had no idea how to farm it. Those farms that were seized by squatters who did have some farming knowledge turned into nothing more than subsistence farms. It is no wonder, then, that Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Southern Africa, is now on the brink of starvation and dependent on Western food aid. And guess what, when we Westerners give them food aid, Mugabe’s government withholds it from those who support the opposition parties.

Yet if you bring up this issue of land seizures here in South Africa, whether it be at a bar or in an academic setting, people will talk to you about it in terms of lofty, ethereal ideas like redistributive justice or black consciousness or African identity or whatever fancy new buzzword the politicians and ivory towered academics have come up with lately. People ascribe these theories to this situation because they absolutely, unequivocally do not want to talk about the fact that the reality is that Mugabe, once a hero for ousting white minority rule, is now the quintessential caricature of an African tyrant. It all comes back to that Michael Vick piece I wrote a while back and posted here (scroll down for it), where I argued that people today always look for the simplest answer to avoid having to deal with the inevitable complexities of life.

In Zimbabwe’s case, it’s easier to use the standard old template for electoral coverage than to admit that the whole thing is a farce and talk about why that is and what do to about it. The reporters and editors aren’t stupid, they know, just as everyone else does, that Mugabe is going to win, that there will be violence carried out against opposition supporters, that the vote will be rigged, not free, and unfair, and that Zimbabwe’s political scene is totally devoid of substance, instead composed of an association of the ruling party trying to maintain power at any cost while opponents try to usurp that power, and rightfully so, but are never really forced to come up with a policy platform for how they’d deal with that country’s monumental problems (hyper-hyper inflation, commodity shortages, lack of food, astronomical unemployment, etc; it’s basically a country on the verge of collapse).

Why is this pretence easier? Because they’d rather talk about a fake election as if it were serious than talk about the fact that sometimes alumni of the liberation struggle are not the saints they are made out to be. Sometimes, once independence is won, they want a large slice of the spoils of that struggle. Sometimes the black guy is the bad guy.

But why talk about that sort of thing here in South Africa I suppose. Why worry about the repercussions of a one party ‘democracy’ in South Africa? The ANC has your best interests in mind. They love transparency, never play the race card, never conflate present day politics and the liberation struggle. Most importantly, they’d never allow a power hungry self promoter who’ll do or say anything to gain favor, who takes bribes and funnels money to friends, and who therefore doesn’t respect transparency of government or the court system to come to power here in South Africa. Right?

(For all my fellow Americans reading this, Wikipedia Jacob Zuma and you’ll get that last bit of culturally specific sarcasm. Also, if you want to read a really good book about Mugabe and the recent history of Zimbabwe, which I completely glean over in this post, check out Martin Meredith’s book Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe.)

 

What you believed when you were 5

One of the message boards that I read regularly had a great thread about things that you believed when you were 5.

I always thought that the “est.” on the bottom of a sign or logo meant that the sign was estimated to have been installed in that year. I could never figure out why they couldn’t remember putting the sign up in 1989 and had to estimate it.

I also knew that when I heard the word schedule it meant a list of upcoming events. But when I read the word schedule I pronounced in “she-lude,” and couldn’t figure out why they had two words for the same meaning.

And of course, I thought that girls peed out of their butts

I don’t know that this has to do with society, but I’m just curious to see all the crazy things that everyone else thought.