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May. 24th, 2019 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Has anyone else seen the Live Telecast of All in the Family and the Jeffersons, followed by a discussion of both, that aired on ABC this week? They basically did one episode from each, back to back, as a live play in front of a studio audience. With Woody Harrelson as Archie Bunker, Marisa Tomei as Edith, Jamie Fox as George Jefferson, Wanda Sykes as Louise, along with various other.
And it blew me away. It was hilarious, and timely. Sure a few things have changed, they now bleep out some of the racial slurs (although I hear them on the street, black Americans use the "N" word a lot in NY, which is interesting.) They didn't rewrite it, they used the writing by Norman Lear that was used in the episodes that aired in 1971.
I didn't realize how ground-breaking it was. When I saw it in the 70s, I was a kid at the time and the humor went over my head. Watched it now, and I laughed my head off. It's biting no-holds barred satire. We were discussing it at work. The two episodes show how class and racism divides us, and comes from both sides. George Jefferson, a black man, is as bigoted as Archie Bunker, a white man. George, however, has more money and is more successful and educated than Archie. This aired in 1971.
The episodes deal with racism, interracial marriage, classism, sexism, and other issues of the day. Nixon was President when it aired, and the song in All in the Family -- depicts the conservatism of that time, and even now.
If you want to see a comedy that is quintessentially American and depicts American classicism and racism -- go hunt down All in the Family and the Jeffersons.
Also, as an aside, the writer was/is Norman Lear, who based the characters on people he knew and his own family members.
Here's the original episode that featured George Jefferson's farewell that aired in the 1970s. The iconic theme song...is a satire in of itself. And here's The Jeffersons.
2. On the way home, some crazy guy with a man-bun, a beard, and what can best be described as a Drofaki outfit, felt the need to inform me he was "Donald Trump", I just looked at him. And restrained myself from saying, that's not exactly something I'd go around telling folks at the moment -- unless you have a death wish. Maybe he does? Death by Trump? Tee-Hee. (As an aside there was an item on the news, a sort of random one, about a local man being arrested for wanting to kill Trump. For the record, I don't want anyone to kill him -- that would be horrible for everyone. Also, we'd get Pence. I want him and Pence to resign two months before the 2020 election or get impeached, one or the other is fine with me. I'm really not that picky.)
We had train delays again at Carroll Street. Yesterday it was a police investigation of an incident involving various parties on the train stopped at Carroll Street, said parties were forcibly removed from the train. Today, it was a sick passenger at Carroll Street in need of medical attention. And Carroll Street used to be my stop -- granted that was several years back, but I still go past it every morning and afternoon -- so this was just a tad disconcerting.
Theresa May resigned today. (Britain appears to be freaking out over it -- mainly because the other options are apparently worse? This is according to our news media, they don't appear to be freaking out otherwise.) Now if only the Doofus would...but alas, he won't. We're stuck with him for the time being. The folks on FB are convinced he's going to start WWIII and the world is doomed, but I vaguely remember Nixon, and I think he's too stupid to do anything like that. Fighting over tariffs and driving us into inflation and possibly a recession on the other hand..
I've taken the attitude that unless I can personally do anything about any of this -- I'm not going to give a frak.
3. I enjoyed this .. How Game of Thrones Ruined All It's Characters...of course it helps that I sort of agree with the guy. I doubt everyone will.
I was not an Stark fan. I was a Jamie Lannister fan. Jamie was my favorite character. Actually what I liked about the series was how it subverted various fantasy tropes. Setting up one guy as the villain and another as the classical hero, then sort of flipping the two and showing us how taken from another perspective our views aren't quite correct. The books and first four-five seasons did a great job of this -- then well the adapters ran out of books to adapt and...things went downhill from there, for anyone who liked the complexity, the details of the world, the political machinations and subversiveness of the text.
The fandom is rather split on this. And I've seen multiple perspectives. At work and online. I've been discussing it with people at work for the past ten years now.
And I was discussing it with folks online long before the television series was adapted.
Although, I'm not sure I'd categorize myself as a fan per se. I had issues with it -- I did not unconditionally love it -- but then I don't unconditionally or uncritically love any work of art. I tend to be very critical of what I love. I mean part of the fun is figuring out what works and what doesn't and why. Otherwise why bother with it? (Sorry, if you are looking for an un-critical fan, look elsewhere. I think we can blame my under-graduate education for this -- they basically drilled it into me -- be critical of all things or get smacked upside the head with a D.)
But I did obviously get somewhat invested -- since I read and bought all the books.
And bought the first season's DVDs. Have long since gotten rid of them. (I got annoyed at some point.) Also read fanfic, and wrote about it. So, I guess I was a fan.
It's not worth fighting with people on. There's more important crap to fight about (not that I do, but just saying). This is just fun stuff. Sort of like fighting over Doctor Who, Star Trek, Buffy, etc -- which I have. But one would have hoped I'd have learned from doing such things and stopped...right? Sigh. No. Truth is? I like discussing this stuff. (Apparently to infinity and beyond (aka to death or until someone wants to wack me upside the head.) If I didn't, I wouldn't have a journal on DW. What would be the point?
So with all that in mind, this article Game of Thrones Asks What Kinds of Stories Ultimately Matter has been making the rounds.
It borders on cliché that writers tend to metadiscursively tout the importance of storytelling at critical moments. Tyrion’s speech about the importance of a good story in choosing a king in the final episode of Game of Thrones may as well be Benioff and Weiss’ winking plea that the audience trust their judgement. Many are disinclined to do so after a season that was poorly paced and often gave viewers whiplash with the rapid introduction and dissolution of major plots within the course of an episode.
But I will cut to the chase and say that in the end, I loved the finale of Game of Thrones. It took its time and did its best to pull out of the nosedive that many viewers assumed it was in, and—whether or not you feel that Benioff and Weiss earned the trust they solicited in Tyrion’s speech (I myself am very skeptical)—the point they make about the importance of storytelling stands, not just as a pat on the back that privileges writers as the ultimate power-brokers of the human experience, but within the actual narrative: what kind of stories matter and what kind of stories ought to matter in a world like Westeros where power structures are built on the post-hoc justification of conquest? As it turns out, Game of Thrones values, as it always has, stories about the futility of justification.
My difficulty is that I've seen this executed better elsewhere -- such as Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond Series, or Farscape, or Breaking Bad, or The Wire (in particular the Wire...and in other fantasy series such as His Dark Materials, or
even Tolkien's The Hobbit (which I still think was in some respects a better story than Lord of the Rings.) Or in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. OR Marvel's recently completed Avenger's franchise, which subtly discusses the futility of war and collateral damage from it. Leaving many questions unanswered, and never once jumping up on a soap box to sermonize to an unsuspecting and somewhat captive audience, although if a movie or television audience is ever truly captive is debatable.
I don't know. I just watched the live presentation of two classic episodes of All in the Family and the Jeffersons this week -- and was struck by how Norman Lear was able to drive home topical issues about racism, sexism and classicism, without once jumping up on a soap box or speechifying, and keeping it hilarious and real throughout.
Game of Thrones, I'm sorry did not accomplish that. Tyrion gives one long speech after another, all he does in season 8 is give speeches. The characters seem to be pawns to theme and the sermon that the writers chose to tell -- but it wasn't earned, and therefore, the story didn't matter. It doesn't resonate or haunt, what haunts are the flaws, the distractions, not the actual message. Also the message itself gets a bit garbled in the execution. Execution is important. How you get there matters as much as the message you wish to impart. If your audience or listener isn't with you...or if only a few are, and those few don't see the message at all...
I saw this happen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in S7. A good portion of the audience did not buy it. It wasn't quite as poorly executed as Game of Thrones S8, but it did have major flaws. You always know there's a problem when you spend half the season with a key character giving lots and lots of speeches.
I see this happening a lot in television series. Where the writers suddenly lose the thread of their story, and focus too much on the theme. It happened in Buffy, and in West Wing, and in BattleStar Galatica, and in Lost...and in various seasons of Doctor Who. And I watch the fandom get, well annoyed is probably an understatement.
We don't want to be preached to. If we did we'd be in church, and crafty ministers and sermon givers -- know how to entertain with jokes and slight of hand. Otherwise, you lose the audience and are merely preaching to the choir.
4. Where'd You Go, Bernadette is becoming more interesting. Go figure. Anyhow I've decided to stick with it. It has an intriguing narrative style -- the story is told through a bunch of random letters, and written papers that the narrator, a teenage girl, is riffling through to understand what happened to her mother, Bernadette.
It's also rather snarky, so it works for me.
5. Me: Well, I figured out my problem with our boss.
Co-worker: Oh?
Me: Our boss was once a high ranking member of the military. And requires deferential treatment and for people to take orders without question. And well..
Co-worker: that doesn't work for you?
Me: No. You tell me to do something, my first response is "why"? And whether it makes logical sense. If it doesn't? I won't do it -- I will fight you on it.
(I'll also repeat it back to you to see if I got it right. Me and authority -- unmixy things. I tend to question them, don't trust them, and think they are idiots by default. In short I'm the exact opposite of deferential, and have serious issues with authority.)
Co-worker: Well, at least you know that about yourself.
Me: True.
And it blew me away. It was hilarious, and timely. Sure a few things have changed, they now bleep out some of the racial slurs (although I hear them on the street, black Americans use the "N" word a lot in NY, which is interesting.) They didn't rewrite it, they used the writing by Norman Lear that was used in the episodes that aired in 1971.
I didn't realize how ground-breaking it was. When I saw it in the 70s, I was a kid at the time and the humor went over my head. Watched it now, and I laughed my head off. It's biting no-holds barred satire. We were discussing it at work. The two episodes show how class and racism divides us, and comes from both sides. George Jefferson, a black man, is as bigoted as Archie Bunker, a white man. George, however, has more money and is more successful and educated than Archie. This aired in 1971.
The episodes deal with racism, interracial marriage, classism, sexism, and other issues of the day. Nixon was President when it aired, and the song in All in the Family -- depicts the conservatism of that time, and even now.
If you want to see a comedy that is quintessentially American and depicts American classicism and racism -- go hunt down All in the Family and the Jeffersons.
Also, as an aside, the writer was/is Norman Lear, who based the characters on people he knew and his own family members.
Here's the original episode that featured George Jefferson's farewell that aired in the 1970s. The iconic theme song...is a satire in of itself. And here's The Jeffersons.
2. On the way home, some crazy guy with a man-bun, a beard, and what can best be described as a Drofaki outfit, felt the need to inform me he was "Donald Trump", I just looked at him. And restrained myself from saying, that's not exactly something I'd go around telling folks at the moment -- unless you have a death wish. Maybe he does? Death by Trump? Tee-Hee. (As an aside there was an item on the news, a sort of random one, about a local man being arrested for wanting to kill Trump. For the record, I don't want anyone to kill him -- that would be horrible for everyone. Also, we'd get Pence. I want him and Pence to resign two months before the 2020 election or get impeached, one or the other is fine with me. I'm really not that picky.)
We had train delays again at Carroll Street. Yesterday it was a police investigation of an incident involving various parties on the train stopped at Carroll Street, said parties were forcibly removed from the train. Today, it was a sick passenger at Carroll Street in need of medical attention. And Carroll Street used to be my stop -- granted that was several years back, but I still go past it every morning and afternoon -- so this was just a tad disconcerting.
Theresa May resigned today. (Britain appears to be freaking out over it -- mainly because the other options are apparently worse? This is according to our news media, they don't appear to be freaking out otherwise.) Now if only the Doofus would...but alas, he won't. We're stuck with him for the time being. The folks on FB are convinced he's going to start WWIII and the world is doomed, but I vaguely remember Nixon, and I think he's too stupid to do anything like that. Fighting over tariffs and driving us into inflation and possibly a recession on the other hand..
I've taken the attitude that unless I can personally do anything about any of this -- I'm not going to give a frak.
3. I enjoyed this .. How Game of Thrones Ruined All It's Characters...of course it helps that I sort of agree with the guy. I doubt everyone will.
I was not an Stark fan. I was a Jamie Lannister fan. Jamie was my favorite character. Actually what I liked about the series was how it subverted various fantasy tropes. Setting up one guy as the villain and another as the classical hero, then sort of flipping the two and showing us how taken from another perspective our views aren't quite correct. The books and first four-five seasons did a great job of this -- then well the adapters ran out of books to adapt and...things went downhill from there, for anyone who liked the complexity, the details of the world, the political machinations and subversiveness of the text.
The fandom is rather split on this. And I've seen multiple perspectives. At work and online. I've been discussing it with people at work for the past ten years now.
And I was discussing it with folks online long before the television series was adapted.
Although, I'm not sure I'd categorize myself as a fan per se. I had issues with it -- I did not unconditionally love it -- but then I don't unconditionally or uncritically love any work of art. I tend to be very critical of what I love. I mean part of the fun is figuring out what works and what doesn't and why. Otherwise why bother with it? (Sorry, if you are looking for an un-critical fan, look elsewhere. I think we can blame my under-graduate education for this -- they basically drilled it into me -- be critical of all things or get smacked upside the head with a D.)
But I did obviously get somewhat invested -- since I read and bought all the books.
And bought the first season's DVDs. Have long since gotten rid of them. (I got annoyed at some point.) Also read fanfic, and wrote about it. So, I guess I was a fan.
It's not worth fighting with people on. There's more important crap to fight about (not that I do, but just saying). This is just fun stuff. Sort of like fighting over Doctor Who, Star Trek, Buffy, etc -- which I have. But one would have hoped I'd have learned from doing such things and stopped...right? Sigh. No. Truth is? I like discussing this stuff. (Apparently to infinity and beyond (aka to death or until someone wants to wack me upside the head.) If I didn't, I wouldn't have a journal on DW. What would be the point?
So with all that in mind, this article Game of Thrones Asks What Kinds of Stories Ultimately Matter has been making the rounds.
It borders on cliché that writers tend to metadiscursively tout the importance of storytelling at critical moments. Tyrion’s speech about the importance of a good story in choosing a king in the final episode of Game of Thrones may as well be Benioff and Weiss’ winking plea that the audience trust their judgement. Many are disinclined to do so after a season that was poorly paced and often gave viewers whiplash with the rapid introduction and dissolution of major plots within the course of an episode.
But I will cut to the chase and say that in the end, I loved the finale of Game of Thrones. It took its time and did its best to pull out of the nosedive that many viewers assumed it was in, and—whether or not you feel that Benioff and Weiss earned the trust they solicited in Tyrion’s speech (I myself am very skeptical)—the point they make about the importance of storytelling stands, not just as a pat on the back that privileges writers as the ultimate power-brokers of the human experience, but within the actual narrative: what kind of stories matter and what kind of stories ought to matter in a world like Westeros where power structures are built on the post-hoc justification of conquest? As it turns out, Game of Thrones values, as it always has, stories about the futility of justification.
My difficulty is that I've seen this executed better elsewhere -- such as Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond Series, or Farscape, or Breaking Bad, or The Wire (in particular the Wire...and in other fantasy series such as His Dark Materials, or
even Tolkien's The Hobbit (which I still think was in some respects a better story than Lord of the Rings.) Or in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. OR Marvel's recently completed Avenger's franchise, which subtly discusses the futility of war and collateral damage from it. Leaving many questions unanswered, and never once jumping up on a soap box to sermonize to an unsuspecting and somewhat captive audience, although if a movie or television audience is ever truly captive is debatable.
I don't know. I just watched the live presentation of two classic episodes of All in the Family and the Jeffersons this week -- and was struck by how Norman Lear was able to drive home topical issues about racism, sexism and classicism, without once jumping up on a soap box or speechifying, and keeping it hilarious and real throughout.
Game of Thrones, I'm sorry did not accomplish that. Tyrion gives one long speech after another, all he does in season 8 is give speeches. The characters seem to be pawns to theme and the sermon that the writers chose to tell -- but it wasn't earned, and therefore, the story didn't matter. It doesn't resonate or haunt, what haunts are the flaws, the distractions, not the actual message. Also the message itself gets a bit garbled in the execution. Execution is important. How you get there matters as much as the message you wish to impart. If your audience or listener isn't with you...or if only a few are, and those few don't see the message at all...
I saw this happen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in S7. A good portion of the audience did not buy it. It wasn't quite as poorly executed as Game of Thrones S8, but it did have major flaws. You always know there's a problem when you spend half the season with a key character giving lots and lots of speeches.
I see this happening a lot in television series. Where the writers suddenly lose the thread of their story, and focus too much on the theme. It happened in Buffy, and in West Wing, and in BattleStar Galatica, and in Lost...and in various seasons of Doctor Who. And I watch the fandom get, well annoyed is probably an understatement.
We don't want to be preached to. If we did we'd be in church, and crafty ministers and sermon givers -- know how to entertain with jokes and slight of hand. Otherwise, you lose the audience and are merely preaching to the choir.
4. Where'd You Go, Bernadette is becoming more interesting. Go figure. Anyhow I've decided to stick with it. It has an intriguing narrative style -- the story is told through a bunch of random letters, and written papers that the narrator, a teenage girl, is riffling through to understand what happened to her mother, Bernadette.
It's also rather snarky, so it works for me.
5. Me: Well, I figured out my problem with our boss.
Co-worker: Oh?
Me: Our boss was once a high ranking member of the military. And requires deferential treatment and for people to take orders without question. And well..
Co-worker: that doesn't work for you?
Me: No. You tell me to do something, my first response is "why"? And whether it makes logical sense. If it doesn't? I won't do it -- I will fight you on it.
(I'll also repeat it back to you to see if I got it right. Me and authority -- unmixy things. I tend to question them, don't trust them, and think they are idiots by default. In short I'm the exact opposite of deferential, and have serious issues with authority.)
Co-worker: Well, at least you know that about yourself.
Me: True.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-25 02:42 pm (UTC)No, I didn't even hear about it! I take it it's not available now since it was a live special. (And we don't get all ABC shows either). I don't remember the shows very well either (my Mom watched AitF but not The Jeffersons) but it doesn't surprise me they hold up well because people haven't really changed, even if some norms have.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-25 04:01 pm (UTC)Tonight, in fact.
ABC says it will rebroadcast its last-night-of-season special, Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons,’ on Saturday, May 25 at 8 PM ET.
So check and see. Also... How to Watch or Stream the broadcast.
Apparently it's available on Hulu.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-25 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-25 03:29 pm (UTC)It happened with The X-Files, for sure. Twice. The problem with Fringe wasn't that they lost the thread of their story but that they had more story mapped out in advance than they could tell in one shortened fifth season, which meant the ending felt rushed. The Americans had a great final season--maybe the best I've ever seen. Its series finale was a masterpiece. I'm trying to think of another series that stuck the ending. Parks and Recreation ended well. Maybe Deep Space Nine? TV endings are especially hard.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-25 04:12 pm (UTC)I thought Farscape did for the most part, and The Wire. I liked how Friday Night Lights ended things, can't remember Hill Street Blues -- but for the most part, it worked.
X-Files, as my cousin who is a huge fan informed me on facebook stated, pretty much did a "choose your own ending approach". It had three attempts at an ending and screwed them all up. LOL!
Everyone I know of who is a fan of or watched The Americans -- loved the ending. That wasn't controversial at all. And for the most part no one was upset about any of the Michael Schur's series finales.
Cheers and Fraiser both ended well for the most part.
The pattern, if there is one, that I see emerging from this is that the more simple or compressed the plot structure is at the outset, the easier it is to end the series. The Americans from what I've read had a compressed and fairly simple plot structure -- focusing on Russian spies during the 1970s/80s Cold War, pretending to be an American Family, without letting their kids in on it. That's easier to resolve, also it didn't go too long.
Parks and Recreation also was more compressed in its plot structure, and focus -- with a smaller cast and story, and didn't go on for too long.
And in both cases the show-runner didn't get too popular or suddenly think wait -- I have a pulpit, let's do a sermon.
Nor were they burned out, nor did they switch writers in mid-stream.
So, I'm wondering if the trick is to stay simple? Not simplistic, just...more contained? A cast of say twenty as opposed to a 100? End it within a reasonable time. And don't feel the need to preach?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 01:39 pm (UTC)See, this is why no one is really trying that hard to get rid of Trump yet, Pence is much worse.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-26 03:08 pm (UTC)