{ 2008 08 12 }
Chinese Democracy?
- Dissent? - Perhaps it’s just that I’m in the heart of the Obama demographic, but when I hear the list of occasions on which John McCain has “fought his party,” I start to think, “Gee, maybe the old man’s just too pig-headed to join the correct party.” Then, I see his record supporting Dubya.
- “Sports” - It hasn’t been very long since I criticized equestrian as being undeserving of Olympic recognition, but I’d like to revisit this topic on a larger scale. There are a whole slew of ludicrous Olympic events; besides, you have to kill a horse before you can kick it.
My basic argument is this: any Olympic event should require more skills than “aiming, taunting, and alcohol tolerance,” the skills listed under the Wikipedia entry for beer pong. Okay, that’s not really my argument, but I had to plug that wikipedia entry.
Nevertheless, someone needs to prune the Olympic tree. For instance, I like to watch athletic women in bikinis as much as the next guy, but I don’t see the need for both regular and beach volleyball. What about swimming? That sport accounts for somewhere around a billion Olympic medals. There are people winning medals for marksmanship with air rifles; yes, that’s a glorified BB gun. “Shuttlecock” is a fun word, but badminton, like equestrian, is an old British game, not a valid Olympic sport.
Conversely, I turned on a women’s field hockey match in the hopes that they’d wear checkered skirts like my high school’s team only to find myself being impressed by the action. Field hockey can stay.
- Mad Men - Is anyone else watching the new season of Mad Men as it happens? Given the ubiquitous Emmy nominations the show received for its first season and the glut of publicity leading into the second, I’ve been meaning for some time to gripe about its status as the most excessively hyped show on television. To my mind, Mad Men is somewhat akin to The Wire - a critically acclaimed show that, despite brief, shining moments, tends to leave me feeling like I’ve missed something. This, however, is not intended to be my main point.
Excepting characters who are compulsively soaked in gin, the acting in Mad Men comes across as stilted. The show’s protagonist is the dapper Don Draper, a square-jawed man who suffers existential crises and generational conflict with the same deep monotone voice he uses to instruct his young daughter on the proper way to mix a Tom Collins, and such [ahem] subtle inflection pervades the cast. Maybe I’m just viewing an accurate portrayal of the early 60’s through Millennial eyes; I’m open to that possibility, particularly given the ends to which AMC has gone to produce a show that’s historically accurate. If such is the case, then I’m gaining a much deeper respect for the transformative power of my parents’ generation.
If it is indeed the case that the flat delivery in Mad Men is an intentional reflection of the time’s speech patterns, then the question of whether such accuracy makes for good television remains. Certainly, there is value in historical accuracy; I believe I’ve recognized some of it in the preceding paragraph. What such strict accuracy fails to recognize, however, is the perspective of the contemporary viewer. Steeped since birth in overwrought acting, my cohort spends its days before perched before sparkly monitors, listening to iPods as we navigate cacophonous streets. We are not attuned to the subtleties of mid-century vocal sensibilities. Thus, what Mad Men gains by historical accuracy it loses by dismissing its audience’s perspective. Perhaps this gets back to my original point. Mad Men is overhyped because it’s damned good, but there’s good reason it’s the best show no one’s watching.
- Combat - You know, I can respect sports of pure exertion like distance running, rowing, and swimming. I can’t jog more than a couple of miles. I’ve been exhausted by an erg. I swim well enough to love a few wacky noodles. Thus, I recognize the nobility of many Olympic endeavors.
That said, there’s a part of me - probably the coarse, rural, red meat-eating, porn-watching, colloquialism-spewing part that’s lent to curse like a sailor on shore leave in Bangkok - that holds gladiatorial sports in higher regard. There are no world records for combat sports (wrestling, judo, boxing, etc.), and I suspect that if there were, those sports wouldn’t be the same. Say what you will about the purity of speed; the simplicity of the ethos “two man enter; one man leave” is inarguable.
Perhaps this is merely a matter of identification. [Editor's note: When writing the remainder of this paragraph, I failed to rein myself in. The upshot is that every sport I've played has been one of dialectic achievement (for someone to succeed, someone else must fail - and vice versa), and I find that model more appealing than sports in which competitors are ranked by the extent to which they reach a common goal (most often, speed). Feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph or bullet point. You've been warned.]Built with short legs and a thick neck, I have a speed which has never drawn a (complimentary) remark. I have, however, stood on the mat and taken the measure of the man across the way. I have trained beyond my motivation to ensure that the blows I delivered were stronger than those received. I have felt visceral Zen focus, felt the exhilaration, fear, and finality of conquest and defeat, comforted by the soft solace of knowing no better could be done, so it comes as no surprise when I now assert gladiatorial sport to be more noble competition than is merely going fast.
Okay, okay - that got a little out of hand. If you’ll take a moment to read the last four sentences aloud (not too loud, if you’re cubicle-bound), I think you’ll find the soliloquy has a nice rhythm. Nice? I’d say “driving” or “powerful,” were I not so astoundingly humble. It may not earn forgiveness for subjecting you to such self-indulgent, overwrought prose, but oratorical transcription can be a virtue, too.
- Gymnastics - Like many Americans, I care so much about gymnastics that I’m transfixed every four years. The storylines in this year’s Olympics are better than usual. It’s the U.S. v. the home team, and the Chinese are downright amazing. Adding to the drama on the women’s side is the fact that the team has been depleted by injury, meaning that when Chellsie Memmel (that appears to be her chosen spelling) fell from the uneven bars in the qualifying round, she was left no redemptive outlet. For his part, Bela Karolyi enacted a mutiny over Bob Costas, using his interview to rant about politics being revealed by the judges’ scores.
For the Chinese women, there’s the small matter of their actual age. This article from the NY Times gives a description of the situation that’s both brief and candid. All I can say is that those tiny, determined Chinese girls, with their hand-chalk and eyeliner, really creep me out. If one of them keeps performing after her head pops off, I won’t be surprised.
- Gymnastics - Watching NBC’s coverage of the men’s finals in gymnastics, I hear a commentator say “If there was gonna be a place where he would have a problem, it was gonna be the dismount.” Disregarding the lack of a “then” to go with that “if,” that sentence would make perfect sense, but for the fact that I’m watching the floor exercise. How does one dismount - or mount, for that matter - a floor? Somehow, I imagine a guy doing gymanstics on one of those floating 8-bit floors from Contra…
“How do you think he’ll do with the dismount?”
“I don’t know. Even if he has the distance to clear the waterfall beneath the platform, he’ll still have to time his jump and execute a tight aerial somersault if he doesn’t want to get shot by the wall turret or tagged by that freaky foreign soldier who just keeps running across the top level.”
“Hunh.”
“You’re gonna frag him, aren’t you?”
“Dude, I just got ’spread;’ it’s like God wants this gymnast to croak.”
- Swimming - Am I the only one with the impression that about half a dozen world swimming records are being broken every day? This phenomenon is like steroids for my already strong general skepticism. Did I say “steroids?” I meant “nutritional supplements.”
- Bias - If you’re like me, you’re watching the Olympics on NBC (mostly, anyway) in these United States of America. When you see Bob Costas give a rundown of the medal count, countries are listed in order of total medals, which reliably puts the U.S. on top. Given that you’re reading this blog, I’ll assume you have internet access and little or no learning disability, so you may have already searched for a medal count online. Like me, you may have found this page, which is updated regularly. Notice that URL ends with a “.cn” extension, denoting its source in China. Notice, also, that though number rankings are given based on total medals earned, the list is displayed in order of the number of gold medals earned, which reliably puts China at the top. Clearly, this is a government that knows more about propaganda than it does about subtlety. Then again, the implication that only gold medals count isn’t without merit.
burnham | 26-Aug-08 at 11:03 pm | Permalink
On the subject of Mad Men and The Wire:
Those are two of my favorite shows. What I will say I think speaks for both of them. I can agree there is a particular slowness or drawl to those shows. But in a time where much of television is highly charged it does not give us time to look past the surface. We watch Real World for screaming and yelling and we watch it again during the slow motion replay. Mad Men is slower paced and I feel just as exciting but over multiple shows. This leaves the story lines open for several episodes or even the whole season. But sometimes when they are wrapped up they can feel underwhelming. More than a few story arcs of The Wire ended with someone getting shot. No crying, no funeral, just everyone going on with their lives. Underwhelming indeed.