fbpx

Archive for Writing

Fallon channels Steve Irwin

March 4, 2014 People, Videogames, Writing Comments Off on Fallon channels Steve Irwin

He was a bit of a phenomenon, Steve Irwin.  Back when Crocodile Hunter was a big thing on Discovery Channel, there was a slew of other “animal capture” shows that cropped up around the same time, but none of them quite managed to hit the same tone as the crazy and brilliant Irwin and none of them achieved quite the same level of virality.

Jump forward a few years and we have two similar shows airing on Discovery Channel at the same time (Survivorman and Man vs Wild).  Both shows loosely based around the idea of “drop some well-trained b*stard into the wilderness in his underpants and see what he does”.  Both were good shows, but one became very popular, and the other was arguably a “better” show content-wise, but still never quite took off.

So what was it about the main figure in the shows that went viral?  They weren’t “better” shows, but they managed to strike some chord that made audiences come back over and over again.

In both (and many cases since) the answer seems to be enjoyment.  This “fun” factor, in fact, is changing the way that creatives of *all* stripes interact with their audiences. Because the thing we want to see most (even more than make-ups and break-ups and relationship trainwrecks and bad dye-jobs or busted lips) is that the content creators *love* their job.  It’s been leaking into the internet more and more these days, Chuck used to produces a whole series of behind the scenes livestreams of the actors mucking about behind the scenes.  Tom Hiddleston and Zachari Levy had an impromptu dance-off that made it to You Tube (both of whom grok their fanbase, as has been shown by the types of personal content they put out there), Adam Baldwin is either running a right-wing trollbot to handle his twitter feed or he’s genuinely having fun pissing off the internet.  Maureen Johnson has the most delightful twitter exchanges with her fanbase.  Ellen passed the HAT and made good on her promise for pizza (though truthfully, LADIES, we need more of this stuff from you all) as well as posting the selfie-seen-round-the-world.  And this goes for ALL content creators, not just actors, it applies to writers and you-tubers and painters and VFX artists and that guy who makes dragons out of old car-parts.

And now we have Jimmy Fallon taking over the Tonight Show and giving us this:

How can you not be an adoring fan of someone what is having the TIME OF THEIR LIFE doing some wacky send-up of their own (now Academy award winning) work?  I think the younger generation of actors has now picked up on this and are making it work.  As a bonus, a bunch of the more “old-school” pros like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen (Kevin Spacey is an up and coming example, just you watch) are starting to give us a glimpse behind the curtain as well.

Can these things be faked?  Yes, but people are perceptive.  We can tell when that glimpse through the keyhole is staged (we may choose to ignore it, but we still know it and it will color our perceptions going forward) and the ones who fake it don’t seem to be able to maintain it as long as those who are just having a ball.

 

 

 

 

Now about the Ladies….

February 4, 2014 People, Writing Comments Off on Now about the Ladies….

I hear a lot of flack online about strong female or minority leads, in particular, most of the postings seem to be about how this IP or that IP should have had a female, or a lead with darker skin (or why DIDN’T it have this kind of lead when it COULD HAVE).

But I don’t hear much about the current examples of these kinds of characters.  Maybe because it turns into cherry-picking (a show might have one good example, but fail dramatically in other areas).  Maybe it’s just a genre thing (it seems to happen more in genre shows than “mainstream”), but when I review the TV shows I am watching right now, I am seeing some remarkable things.  The kinds of things that ought be thrown out as counter examples.  The kinds of things that, in my personal opinion, ought to be shown as examples of what brings in the money every time someone brings up the line that “strong women don’t sell” or “but our target audience isn’t Latino”.

Sleepy Hollow:

Lets take Sleepy Hollow as a recent example.  We have a hit genre show.  A show that, by all accounts should have failed out of the starting gate because “Zombie Washington” is just too far out there.

This show started with only one white lead in it.  Our entire core cast, the female lead (who has become the focus of the story at this point) and the two primary supporting characters are all black (I can’t speak to the actor’s personal ethnicities, I’m trying to speak to the the characters they portray).  Drill down to the next rank and we have the two unrequited love interests, one of whom presents as Latino/Hispanic the other of whom presents as Chinese.  We have John Noble who has become a regular now (and apparently the new Big Bad) to tip the balance back again, but that is a recent development and I’d argue you can’t really call him a “lead” just yet.

Is it perfect?  No, but it is probably the most mixed-race/gender cast for a show that I have ever seen in primetime.  And it is working.  It is working REALLY WELL for the moment.

White Collar:

Yes, heavily whitewashed, no arguments there, but DIANA.  1. A strong, competent female.  2. Openly lesbian AND working for the FBI 3. Single mother AND 4. NOT WHITE.  All of these things come into play for her character without them turning into “Hi we’re so progressive” showcase pieces for a single episode and then dropping them.  She is an awesome, complete character, not just a token “insert minority of choice here”.  Is her character’s life as hard as it would probably be IRL?  No, but if you’re going to call the show on that bit, you can turn that lens on *every* character and show that to be the case.

Elementary:

I’ll be honest, I’m an old-school Sherlock Holmes fan, and I wasn’t AT ALL down with the idea of a female Watson. Then I watched through the first season.  What they’ve done with Joan Watson is fascinating because they have created a strong, female character, but managed to keep some of the foibles many women face, rather than making her a man in a dress.  She was previously a surgeon, but outside of things that require her medical expertise, she shows clear signs of “impostor syndrome” which is a reveal that we don’t see as much when someone is trying to paint a woman as “strong”.

 

 

 

 

 

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »