Oprah's Farewell

I just finished watching the second of the Oprah’s Surprise Spectacular. I’m not a big Oprah fan, but given the insane hype and my devotion to keeping up to date with pop-cultural goings on, I figured I should at least take a peek.

Image from today.msnbc.com

I’m not sure what to make of it exactly. Given that the three final episodes of the show were completely produced by her producers and not by her, it can’t really be considered self-congratulatory (as I think a lot of her shows lean towards). Rather, this feels more like This is Your Life on some major steroids. It’s no question that Oprah has had a huge impact on television and what a daytime show can be. She also has proven to be an immense philanthropist, giving millions of dollars to educate those who otherwise would not have had the opportunity, as well as making great strides to impact the lives of others in different facets. Despite that, and maybe this is due to my upbringing where I was always told that the highest form of charity is where the receiver and the giver don’t know the other’s identity, but I always feel like her generosity was done through the lens of “Look at me, I’m Oprah and I’m amazing.” And while yes, she wants to do good for the world, she also doesn’t do anything that doesn’t promote her own personal brand. So there’s a sense that it’s not entirely selfless.

My second observation is a more meta one. Her producers have brought out the big guns for her. Today’s show alone features Aretha Franklin, Tom Hanks, Jerry Seinfeld, Kristen Chenowith, Michael Jordan, Maya Angelou, Will Smith, Jada PInkett-Smith and countless others. They are all there paying tribute to Oprah for her 25 years on television. Right? They acknowledge the good that she’s done, but ultimately this is because she’s going off the air and this is a tribute to her many years in front of the camera. It seems a little incongruous. This might be somewhat cynical, but given what I know about the television industry, and the importance of the relationships people have with others, this plays more like people trying to promote themselves through aligning themselves with Oprah and her brand. It doesn’t feel like a pure celebration of a person who does good, but a very public kissing-up. I don’t think this theory fits with all of the guests. Ms. Franklin and Ms. Angelou’s appearances are probably a little more honest, why would they need to promote themselves through Oprah? Then again, why would any of them? All of the stars who appeared are big names in their own right, but there’s just something about it that feels so manufactured. They might be there to say goodbye to a friend, but it’s also clear that they are probably there to help themselves as well.

The other thing that struck me so odd is that, as mentioned, this is a farewell spectacular. This is celebrities saying goodbye to Oprah. I wonder how many of these people that are saying how much they’ll miss her presence on TV actually tune in to her on a daily basis. My guess is pretty low. And, she’s not going away. She has an entire cable network now devoted to her (not to mention her ongoing magazine). Also, lets put this into perspective. This is a television show. TV. She’s not, God forbid, dying or dead. She’s not even really going anywhere. Oprah has established herself s one of the strongest entertainment brands and just because her show is going off the air doesn’t mean she’s gonna stop doing what she does best, self-promotion.

Oprah isn’t really a polarizing figure, I don’t know many people who share my feelings towards her. I can’t even really articulate completely why I’m not a fan of hers. She was on in my house on a daily basis as my mom watched her every day while preparing dinner for us as kids. Her voice, to this day, brings me back to those days sitting in our kitchen while the smell of spaghetti and meatballs filled the room. That should invoke positive memories, which it does, but they don’t transfer onto her. I think my distain towards her is partly due to her constant self-aggrandizement, which you would think would be offset by the good she does, but it doesn’t.

She’s not the first person who’s had a show go off the air, yet since it’s Oprah, it’s gotta be big. It reminds me of Boorstin’s idea of pseudo-events. It’s big because it’s gotta make a splash and it has to make a splash because it’s Oprah, and Oprah only does things if they’re big and promote her own brand and image. Something about the whole thing just doesn’t sit right to me.

Dissenters welcome (and expected).

I Love the 90s!

I recently came across this video thanks to the wonders of social media.  I of course am immediately drawn to any 80s or 90s pop-culture references so of course, once posted to my news feed on Facebook I had no other choice but to click the link.  It did not disappoint.  This video features so many of the most iconic TV shows and commercials from when I was a kid and would park myself in front of the television for as many hours as my parents would allow (which was eventually limited to 1 hour a week of regular TV and unlimited PBS.  I know. Not cool mom and dad!).  I was happy to see such a great cross section of content, from commercials to live action tv shows for young kids and teenagers with a smattering of the "important" commercials thrown in for good measure.  It really was like reliving my childhood!

Enjoy!  It definitely made me smile and brought back many memories!





























The 1990s seemed to be a boom time for commercialism geared towards children.  This was an era where games and toys were turned into TV shows and all TV shows, especially cartoons, had an almost inherent commercial value to them.  One example, featured here, is Rescue Rangers.  Not only was there the original movie based on Chip and Dale, but then it spawned the cartoon show and a whole slew of must-have toys.  I, for one, as a small child of the 80s, but a really a consumer of 90s culture, ate it all up.  Watching this clip I realized that the commercials are just as iconic and memorable as the shows themselves.  I watch the Cheetos and Chuck E. Cheese commercials with the same familiarity that I can sing along with The Animaniacs theme song.

Something else that this got me thinking about is the shared experience of media that we kids-of-the-90s experienced.  Whoever posted this to youtube (whoever KyleKingTV is) had a relatively finite amount of material to choose from.  Cable TV existed, but was not nearly as pervasive as it is today.  The entertainment available to us was pretty much TV (primarily broadcast, PBS and limited basic cable stations), some video games and books.  We all pretty much watched the same stuff which was so concentrated that nearly 20 years later we still remember these as the iconic images of our day.  Today there are so many options for entertainment that the pool gets diluted.  It will be interesting to see what a kids' montage will look like in 20 years from now and if it has the same recognizability for the target demographic.  Maybe in the future rather than TV shows kids will look back fondly on Youtube videos, iPhone apps and Facebook statuses.  Only time will tell...

I'd love to hear what you're favorites are/were.  Feel free to post them in the comments section!

Water for Elephants

Image from WaterforElephantsfilm.com

It’s a rarity that I find a movie to be better than the book upon which it’s based. However, that is how I felt after watching the screen adaptation of Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I read the book following an enormous amount of hype from friends and relatives, but was pretty underwhelmed by the lack of plot or character development. The movie stepped in and fulfilled some of the book’s lacking in those elements.. The film also adds a whole other dimension by creating the circus as an entirely new character in the book.

Told as an extended flashback, a la Titanic, the story centers on Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson), who, despondent upon learning of his parents death in a gruesome car accident, abandons his final exams at Cornell veterinarian school and quite literally runs away with the circus. Feeling like he has no where in the world to turn, he hops a train which turns out to belong to the Benzini Brothers, a traveling circus. This introduces him to a new and foreign world filled with poor and hungry men who resort to violence as a means to an end. To pay his way, he is assigned some of the lowliest demeaning work. However, one night while shoveling horse manure he encounters Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), the mesmerizing horse trainer, with whom he is immediately entranced. Unbeknownst to him, however, she is married to August (Christoph Waltz), the tormenting and abusive ringleader.

August’s temper is fueled when he purchases what is supposed to be a new star attraction: a 52 year-old elephant named Rosie. Jacob is immediately charged as her caretaker, but August becomes enraged when Rosie doesn’t heed his orders. As Jacob continues to train Rosie and Marlena learns how to perform with her new animal the three form a tight bond. Eventually Marlena and Jacob fall in love and decide to run away from August and The Benzini Brothers once and for all.

This film does a good job at immediately bringing the viewer into the narrative world it inhabits. From the first frame of older Jacob (Hal Holbrook) standing in the rain in front of the Big Top I felt like a kid again, excited about the wonders that are about to unfold. When the movie flashes back to 1931, the aesthetic goes from a rich color palate to a muted sepia-inspired visual landscape. That enhances the viewers’ connection to the narrative and it’s an option available to a visual medium alone which director, Francis Lawrence takes full advantage of. The circus itself and the mystique which surrounds it, and has surrounded it for decades, is made palpable by seeing it in front of you in high definition. The spectacle of the animals and the men hoisting up the tent brought me back to when I used to visit the circus myself and reminded me of watching Dumbo and Toby Tyler on repeat as a child.

I also appreciated the filmmaker’s ability to introduce us to the periphery characters of the story and yet still managed to keep it moving along, whereas the book often felt bogged down by superfluous details.  Whereas often the book felt stalled because of this, the movie kept the narrative moving forward.  The supporting cast added a colorful menagerie of personalities which enhanced the feeling of what life in the circus might have been like.

The biggest problem I had with this movie, however, was the lack of chemistry between the leading characters. Rather than believing that Jacob and Marlena were truly and madly in love with one another, it seemed more that she needed an out and he was just there and was nice to her, unlike her abusive husband.  As opposed to believing that they were soul-mates, it seemed more that Marlena just needed to get away and Jacob was willing to care for her so she took him up on his offer.  The love story was more believable as one between Jacob and “The Circus.” That lifestyle was where he reclaimed his life and found a way to make sense of the world. His relationship with Rosie was also deeper and more sympathetic than the one shared between Marlena and Jacob, furthering his sense of attachment with the circus. That’s a pretty big one, considering the film has been marketed as a romantic love story, but it doesn’t detract from the film on a whole.

Ultimately, there is not much of a real story in Water for Elephants:  it's more of a snapshot of time spent with the circus.  However by using certain visual techniques and introducing the information in particular ways Lawrence makes the story his own and creates a whole new visual and ultimately satisfying experience.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Image from IMDB.com

On my way up to Boston to celebrate the first days of Passover with my family I finally got around to watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a movie I had received from Netflix a few months earlier. It had taken me a while to get around to watching it because I’m not often in the mood to curl up with a sad Holocaust movie. However, I thought as I traveled home to celebrate redemption from one of the darkest times in ancient Jewish History, a time which we are commanded to remember and relive to a certain extent each year, I thought it would be an appropriate time to remember a similar experience from modern times.

The film centers on Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the precocious young son of a German commandant whose family moves to the countryside so, as he is told, his father can be close to the front lines and continue to fight to keep their country safe. Bruno hates his new home. He’s bored and feels isolated from his friends and even alienated from his sister as she becomes more and more enthralled with the young Nazi soldier who guards her compound. The naturally curious Bruno sees what he calls a “farm” from his bedroom window and the budding explorer seeks out to meet the farmers who work there. He doesn’t understand why these farmers, whom he sees in person when they work in his house, are wearing pajamas. His confusion grows when he learns that one of them used to be a doctor – why would someone give up a career in medicine to be a farmer and peel potatoes, he asks his mother. His mother, played by Vera Farmiga, is also largely caught unawares of what was happening only a short distance from her new home.

One afternoon Bruno sneaks out of his home and ventures out to this farm to see what it’s all about. When he reaches his destination, at the barbed wired fence which borders the “farm” Bruno encounters Shmuel, a boy the same age as Bruno who sits alone, despondent. Bruno strikes up a conversation asking him about himself and why he wears pajamas all day and tells him how lucky he is to be able to play outside as long as he wants. As neither child truly understands what’s going on in their worlds, the naiveté shared between them is so genuine and honest and it shows how hatred is something learned by the older generation. They develop a close friendship and Bruno vows to help Shmuel find his father and Shmuel promises to help escape from his boring isolated new life.

Viewing the atrocities of The Holocaust through the eyes of a child is not a new narrative in this genre. What is interesting, however, is viewing it through the eyes of a non-Jewish child. Bruno asks his parents questions with utter bewilderment and innocence. The truth is, we ask the same questions 60 years later unable to comprehend how humans could do this to each other.

The film also takes a risk of having the viewer sympathize with a Nazi family. This is a risky endeavor – similar to the structure of The Reader – to describe the horrific plight of Jews in Eastern Europe during WWII through the lens of the perpetrator. Whereas The Reader took a defensive and almost apologetic stance against what the main character had done, this film, accomplishes just the opposite. The film does a good job keeping the suspenseful pace, leaving the audience unsure of how things well end. The one certainty is that something bad will happen and ultimately the tragedy that does occur at the end ofThe Boy in the Striped Pajamas uses the terror one family endures to highlight the utter nightmare that tens of millions of Jews endured as they watched their families being senselessly murdered at the hands of the Nazis. The twist, of course, is that the family through which the tragedy is experienced is led by a Nazi commander, the one who has committed so many crimes himself. This upheaval of the expected structure for sympathy is hard to reconcile yet makes a powerful comment as the viewer can hardly comprehend how unimaginable this one family’s pain must be, yet this was the reality for an entire nation. Even more so how much more horrific and long lasting those horrific events were.

I was deeply moved by this film, probably especially so given the context in which I watched it. Every year on Passover Jews around the world are instructed to remember, and never forget, the atrocities they suffered at the hands of the Egyptians and then the ultimate redemption at the hand of G-d. In modern times we realize that this is a pattern the Jewish people have faced time and again throughout history with the Holocaust being the latest iteration of that nightmare. In today’s world, Anti-Semitism has by no means disappeared despite the relative peace and freedom Jews enjoy today. It’s at times like these that we must remember both the ease in which the tides can turn and also how important it is to treat people of other religions and nationalities with the respect they deserve because we know how it feels to be on the other side of that spectrum. Furthermore, it’s important to remember, as we watch films about Nazi atrocities, about all the other atrocities that occur in the world and how people lose sight of the important things in life. The film is for the most part told through the eyes of a child, and in truth, we are all children struggling to understand how we can allow our world to devolve into senseless hatred of others just based on external and superficial differences.