I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big consumer of television. I own a TV just so I can watch sports. This time of year I’m pretty much just watching baseball. I have the MLB subscription so I can watch the Red Sox. I don’t have anything against TV, but I never developed the love for it as a kid like most people. I might watch a show in syndication if it was popular and I will download movies, but these days it is done in batches. Binge watching is pretty much the only way I can watch a series from start to finish.
Anyway, someone recommended a program to me called Justified. I’d never heard of it, but the internet tells me it was very popular. That’s the thing about the modern mass media culture. You can be a huge star, even though most people have never heard of you. A TV show can be a hit, by attracting 2% of the audience. The culture is so balkanized, we’re all just ships passing in the night and TV reflects that reality. My guess is Justified was popular with normals, but unwatched by the folks in Yankeedom.
Anyway, the show itself is fine. It sort of reminds me of the fad in the 70’s of the cowboy detective. I forget the names of the shows, but the twist on the traditional cop show was to have the hero as a sort of an updated western sheriff with the hat, boots and pithy country expressions. The show is based on an Elmore Leonard novel so it has lots of catchy dialogue. That was a Leonard trademark, the banter between characters that was simple, but packed with meaning. I suspect that’s the attraction of the show for fans. There’s a lyrical quality to the writing.
I’ve only watched the one season, but what strikes me is that the male lead is pretty much a normal male lead. In fact, all the men are the sort of men you see on earth or at least you used to see on earth. The beta male hipster thing is a sad reality of our age. The women are also normal women. We hear lots of complaints about the feminization of men, but the presentation of women in pop culture is equally bizarre. I can see why this show would be popular with the gals, as it has lots of relatable female characters in it.
I’ve often wondered just how popular the modern female heroine is with real women. There’s endless hype for Hunger Games types of gals, but I never hear real women talk up these types of films. I suspect it’s a lot like the homo movies. We’re buried in hype about them, but there’s little to no demand for gay cowboys or the life story of Liberace. Then again, I’m just a broken down old hate thinker so I could be all wrong. Maybe the young gals of today all dream of wearing Lycra jumpsuits and beating up men.
The other thing that struck me is the fair treatment of downscale whites. It still has lots of stereotypes about toothless hillbillies banging their sisters, but it’s much more nuanced than you typically see. The war on bad whites has been raging for so long now it’s easy to forget that bad whites are people too. They are just presented as people. It is a sad statement on our age when it is unusual for our betters to present normal people as genuine people, rather than as bad guys and monsters in their morality plays.
Anyway, the other indulgence on the TV front was the movie Martian. Once I could download it free (I’m very cheap) I watched it as I heard it was a really good sci-fi movie. Maybe my standards are out of whack or I lack the proper frame of reference, but it seems rather mediocre to me. Matt Damon was good being Matt Damon on Mars. The other actors are unknown to me but they seemed like they were doing a good job. The visuals were great, but it just seemed sort of blah.
The thing is, I expect the visuals in modern movies to be great. We’re long past the point where CGI is new and cutting edge. Every movie now has outlandish special effects. The days of model spaceships hanging from fishing line against black paper are long gone. I had the same reaction to the movie Gravity. Yeah, it’s neat how they make it look real, but they are supposed to make it look real. That’s the point. Not making it look real would be unusual. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie where the effects were not realistic.
I have this debate with friends. Modern sci-fil is lacking because they invest everything in the visuals, and scrimp on the writing and character development. They care more about getting tight shots of the actresses ass in the Lycra jumpsuit than telling the story. The Martian turned out to be Castaway on Mars, except Matt Damon was vastly less introspective and interesting than Tom Hanks. Hanks came back a better man. Damon comes back and we’re led to believe he was turned into a self-absorbed douche by his experience, which was what he was before his adventure.
At the risk of sounding like an old coot, the stories were better when they had none of the modern visual aids. A show like Star Trek had to be carried by the story and characters. Watch an old Western and they are basically stage plays put on film. They were more respectful of the audience, because the audience had to fill in the blanks with their imagination. The writers and actors had no choice but to invest in the writing and character development. That’s all there was, for the most part.
Of course, that sort of brings me back to the beginning. These long form serial dramas we see on cable like Justified, work because they do invest in the writing. These shows have plenty of costume and setting work. Game of Thrones is set in adventure land with magical midgets and dragons. But, that’s not what these shows are about or why people watch them. They are well designed and executed dramas with good writing and acting. They are traditional western entertainment, which is people entertaining other people by telling their tale.
I’ve been watching Last Man Standing, which stars Tim Allen as a father of three teenaged daughters. He works at a Cabela’s type place and his weird interest in guns and his daughters’ lives is clearly supposed to be funny to the audience. But it’s nice to have a show where the dad isn’t the butt of all the jobs for a change.