Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tim and Eric's Awesome show - "Robin" episode - deconstructed
It would be profoundly obvious and therefore moot to call the Tim and Eric's Awesome show great job! on Adult Swim ([AS]) purile. But deconstructing its message and meaning as an artifact of culture holds great value in understanding the mindsets of the two generations who regularlly view and who have created the show.
The show is the product of comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, both in their early 30's, placing them at the cusp end of Gen X. [AS] viewership is nortoriously aimed at the under 35 demographic, for an audience largly made up of millenials.
There is a sketch at the start of the "Robin", episode cut in two parts, that depicts a relationship between manager and a managee set in an office best described as sado-massochistic. The joke is that Robin loves her boss who humiliates and degrades her. The sketch begins with Robin bent over, showing her disproportiantly lumpy and therefore unfuckable ass, turned towards the camera. Robin stands up to reveal that she has a stomach the size of an airbag with understated breasts. Thus the joke is firstly infused with body fascism. The character is played by Eric Wareheim in over-stated drag, thus amplying the point that Robin is grossly "un-feminine", conflicting with the patriarchal ideal.
Tim and Eric's commentary on Robin's boss, played by Tim Heidecker, is unremarkable in that the comics do not scathingly attack the character, other than to hyperbolize his baldness, comparatively modest (to Robin's) beer gut and the fact that he secretly is sexually attracted to her. This is the boss character's central joke/source of shame. The sceene is presented through the lense of the boss character, and thus the cultural standpoint of biases and assumptions he represents, and is presented as the more relatable character the audience may identify itself with. The sceene is an exercise in blatant bullying, and the boss character serves as a touch point wherein the audience may participate in his bullying of Robin, and thus recieve the pay-off of momentary empowerment at the expense of a degredated party.
And so the misery continues, with Robin patiently and subserviently uttering "yes sir" responses to his oinking at her like a pig and his insults, including that she looks like she's had five breakfasts. The second half of the sketch resumes a few minutes later, with Robin's boss calling a meeting to screen a private sex tape Robin created for him. Joke after joke is just an expansion and deepening of the character's humiliation... and that's about it, lacking further comedic content.
While this sketch is alarming as an exercise in un-mitigated group domination (the audience becoming a complicit party), it's a great example of the verility and tenor of millennial generation sexism. Having rejected the ideals of the boom generation and the positive feminist progress it encloses, while also having been bombarded with right-wing propaganda that stunts intellecutal and moral development, the younger generations of Americans find an added exhiliaration in their irreverent rejection of social expectations. While I'll be the first to call most non-conformist urges rare and wonderful, when the channeling of these are mis-directed towards re-inforcing the dominant paradigm instead of deposing it, it is a fucked-up warping of the evolution of the human spirit. If such a thing exists.
The rest of the episode is less alarming. Yeah, I get the joke about Candy Tails, another expression of the millenial generation's (healthy) distaste for consumer marketing. And then there is a sceene featuring David Liebe Hart, a well-meaning yet obviously mentally ill ventrilloquist. Mr. Hart, self-identified as a memeber of the Screen Actor's Guild, has obviously had his mental illness exploited. In turing the camera on him, he embarasses himself with his natural behavior. Readers will hear the dominant paradigm's rebuttle that this is Mr. Hart's own fault, and that he is responsible for his own actions/decisions, echoing in their minds, and there may be posts to this effect. This is exemplary of an ideaology that enables exploitation to continue, because it does not put the reponsibility for having exploited a person disempowered by mental illness on the exploiters - Tim, Eric, their staff, [AS] and everyone complicitly viewing the show - but on the mental patient, himself. Whether Mr. Hart's claims that Jim Henson was his Sunday school teacher at a Christian Science church is beyond my desire for verification, because his subesequent claims that Mr. Henson "told" him to pursue puppeteering is enough to cause me to bet their accuaintance is a delusion.
So there ya go kids. Garbage in, garbage out. Unquestioned, undisputed and unfathomable.
The show is the product of comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, both in their early 30's, placing them at the cusp end of Gen X. [AS] viewership is nortoriously aimed at the under 35 demographic, for an audience largly made up of millenials.
There is a sketch at the start of the "Robin", episode cut in two parts, that depicts a relationship between manager and a managee set in an office best described as sado-massochistic. The joke is that Robin loves her boss who humiliates and degrades her. The sketch begins with Robin bent over, showing her disproportiantly lumpy and therefore unfuckable ass, turned towards the camera. Robin stands up to reveal that she has a stomach the size of an airbag with understated breasts. Thus the joke is firstly infused with body fascism. The character is played by Eric Wareheim in over-stated drag, thus amplying the point that Robin is grossly "un-feminine", conflicting with the patriarchal ideal.
Tim and Eric's commentary on Robin's boss, played by Tim Heidecker, is unremarkable in that the comics do not scathingly attack the character, other than to hyperbolize his baldness, comparatively modest (to Robin's) beer gut and the fact that he secretly is sexually attracted to her. This is the boss character's central joke/source of shame. The sceene is presented through the lense of the boss character, and thus the cultural standpoint of biases and assumptions he represents, and is presented as the more relatable character the audience may identify itself with. The sceene is an exercise in blatant bullying, and the boss character serves as a touch point wherein the audience may participate in his bullying of Robin, and thus recieve the pay-off of momentary empowerment at the expense of a degredated party.
And so the misery continues, with Robin patiently and subserviently uttering "yes sir" responses to his oinking at her like a pig and his insults, including that she looks like she's had five breakfasts. The second half of the sketch resumes a few minutes later, with Robin's boss calling a meeting to screen a private sex tape Robin created for him. Joke after joke is just an expansion and deepening of the character's humiliation... and that's about it, lacking further comedic content.
While this sketch is alarming as an exercise in un-mitigated group domination (the audience becoming a complicit party), it's a great example of the verility and tenor of millennial generation sexism. Having rejected the ideals of the boom generation and the positive feminist progress it encloses, while also having been bombarded with right-wing propaganda that stunts intellecutal and moral development, the younger generations of Americans find an added exhiliaration in their irreverent rejection of social expectations. While I'll be the first to call most non-conformist urges rare and wonderful, when the channeling of these are mis-directed towards re-inforcing the dominant paradigm instead of deposing it, it is a fucked-up warping of the evolution of the human spirit. If such a thing exists.
The rest of the episode is less alarming. Yeah, I get the joke about Candy Tails, another expression of the millenial generation's (healthy) distaste for consumer marketing. And then there is a sceene featuring David Liebe Hart, a well-meaning yet obviously mentally ill ventrilloquist. Mr. Hart, self-identified as a memeber of the Screen Actor's Guild, has obviously had his mental illness exploited. In turing the camera on him, he embarasses himself with his natural behavior. Readers will hear the dominant paradigm's rebuttle that this is Mr. Hart's own fault, and that he is responsible for his own actions/decisions, echoing in their minds, and there may be posts to this effect. This is exemplary of an ideaology that enables exploitation to continue, because it does not put the reponsibility for having exploited a person disempowered by mental illness on the exploiters - Tim, Eric, their staff, [AS] and everyone complicitly viewing the show - but on the mental patient, himself. Whether Mr. Hart's claims that Jim Henson was his Sunday school teacher at a Christian Science church is beyond my desire for verification, because his subesequent claims that Mr. Henson "told" him to pursue puppeteering is enough to cause me to bet their accuaintance is a delusion.
So there ya go kids. Garbage in, garbage out. Unquestioned, undisputed and unfathomable.
Monday, October 25, 2010
1
If I continue to write this blog, which I probably won't, the reader (if anyone is reading) may soon come to understand my view of humanity. I see humanity as a lot of sadists who inflict pain upon each other for the fleeting, momentary gratification of power - a temporary salve to dull the pain of the sadism previously inflicted upon them by others.
Having worked in a porn store, this is my view. Having been to a Christian church, this is my view. Having been to college, this is my analysis. And having had a sociopathic parent, this is my intuitive understanding.
However, I do belive that one can escape from the constant cycle of oppressor and oppressee by choosing to reject participation in it. Perhaps the outlet is temporary, but I'm not a determinist without hope, either. Our ability to think, to examine and monitor our own behavior, and more importatnly, our desire to do so is our only way out.
Having worked in a porn store, this is my view. Having been to a Christian church, this is my view. Having been to college, this is my analysis. And having had a sociopathic parent, this is my intuitive understanding.
However, I do belive that one can escape from the constant cycle of oppressor and oppressee by choosing to reject participation in it. Perhaps the outlet is temporary, but I'm not a determinist without hope, either. Our ability to think, to examine and monitor our own behavior, and more importatnly, our desire to do so is our only way out.
Virginia Thomas and Anita Hill
It is a sign of the times and an indication of the "critical mass" saturation of right wing ideaology that Virginia Thomas feels justified in asking Anita Hill for an apology. Surely the right wing will understand and support Mrs. Thomas in her grievance, and right-wing women will identify with a "wronged" wife: One who, rather than lay the blame on her husband where it belongs and risk his disapproval and possible abandoment of her, chooses to blame Anita Hill, the recipient of sexual harassment. Mrs. Thomas' identification of herself as the victim of the liberal "persicution" of Ms. Hill's (viewed as a the liberal menace: a black, educated, college professor and feminsit role-model) self-indulgent and and anarchy-ladden is evidence of the "blaming the victem" mentality that self-justifies and reassures the fascist's ideology and emotional self. Only in a fascist America could the public support Mrs. Thomas' demand for subserviant compliance from a woman her husband victimized through psycho-sexual intimidation. And I'm willing to bet the fact that Ms. Hill had the courage and stregnth to resist, to fight back, is an undermining threat and unfulfilled wish that burns at Virginia Thomas with a particular heat.
The muse is an empty bottle of Prozac.
We are all addicted to so very many, many, many drugs.
The low dose of prozac makes life liveable, but it slaughters and degrades the muse. The natural inclination of humans prior to the past 30 years has been to create to release the pain of living. And when this is artificially anestitized the motivation to create is lost. We are so bombarded by drugs, a technology we've evolved to produce more irristable instant gratifiation, that we abandon the long, slow processes of dealing with living that has produced our greatest works (or greatest tragedies). And the drug itself, long associated with the Muse, may be a tool that some have used to attain a "creative" state. But for the rest of it, drugs are just a metaphor for our natural state of mind. We don't need any more, we were born high. And it's a bitch when you're really high and you can never come down. The constant, grinding adjitation. The mental yoga and constant self-reassurance needed to keep yourself together. Maybe running out of prozac is a blessing. Being forced out of soma holiday land forces me back to the work of processing my life the doctors have been so merciful and kind in sparing me.
The low dose of prozac makes life liveable, but it slaughters and degrades the muse. The natural inclination of humans prior to the past 30 years has been to create to release the pain of living. And when this is artificially anestitized the motivation to create is lost. We are so bombarded by drugs, a technology we've evolved to produce more irristable instant gratifiation, that we abandon the long, slow processes of dealing with living that has produced our greatest works (or greatest tragedies). And the drug itself, long associated with the Muse, may be a tool that some have used to attain a "creative" state. But for the rest of it, drugs are just a metaphor for our natural state of mind. We don't need any more, we were born high. And it's a bitch when you're really high and you can never come down. The constant, grinding adjitation. The mental yoga and constant self-reassurance needed to keep yourself together. Maybe running out of prozac is a blessing. Being forced out of soma holiday land forces me back to the work of processing my life the doctors have been so merciful and kind in sparing me.
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