Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks’ Timeless Comedy Sketch: The 2000-Year-Old-Man

in Comedy, Television | July 3rd, 2020

I read the obits. If I’m not in it I’ll have break­fast. —Carl Rein­er

Up until this week week, it seemed as if Mel Brooks and Carl Rein­er could keep their 2000-Year-Old Man rou­tine going for­ev­er.

The premise was sim­ple—Rein­er as the seri­ous mind­ed announc­er, inter­view­ing Brooks as an elder with a Mid­dle Euro­pean Yid­dish accent about some of the his­toric moments, trends, and celebri­ties he’d had per­son­al con­tact with over the years.

The idea orig­i­nat­ed with Rein­er, who, as a young staff writer for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, thought there was com­ic gold to be mined from We the Peo­ple, a week­ly news pro­gram that dra­ma­tized impor­tant cur­rent events—notably a plumber who claimed to have over­heard some toe curl­ing plans while repair­ing a faucet in Stalin’s bath­room.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, or rather for­tu­nate­ly, no one else in the writ­ers room had caught the show, so he draft­ed cowork­er Brooks to play along, inter­view­ing him as if he were the host of We the Peo­ple, and Brooks were an aver­age Joe who’d been at the Cru­ci­fix­ion:

Mel, aging before our eyes, sighed and allowed a sad “Oooooh, boy” to escape from the depths of his soul…

I pres­sured the Old Man and asked, “You knew Jesus?”

“Jesus … yes, yes,” he said, strain­ing to remem­ber, “thin lad … wore san­dals … always walked around with twelve oth­er guys … yes, yes, they used to come into the store a lot … nev­er bought any­thing … they came in for water … I gave it to them … nice boys, well-behaved… .”

For a good part of an hour Mel had us all laugh­ing and appre­ci­at­ing his total recall of life in the year 1 A.D. I called upon Mel that morn­ing because I knew that one of the char­ac­ters in his com­e­dy arse­nal would emerge. The one that did was sim­i­lar to one he did when­ev­er he felt we need­ed a laugh break. It was a Yid­dish pirate cap­tain who had an accent not unlike the 2,000-Year-Old Man.

The durable, always unscript­ed 2000-Year-Old Man made an instant splash with friends and fam­i­ly, but his accent—which came quite nat­u­ral­ly to the Brook­lyn-born Brooks—caused the duo to ques­tion the wis­dom of trot­ting him out before a wider audi­ence.

In the 20’s and 30’s Yid­dish accents had been a com­ic sta­ple on the radio, and in Broad­way, vaude­ville, and bur­lesque hous­es, but that changed when the Nazis came to pow­er, as Rein­er recalled in his 2003 mem­oir, My Anec­do­tal Life:

…when Adolf Hitler came along and decreed that all Jews were dirty, vile, dan­ger­ous, sub­hu­man ani­mals and must be put to death, Jew­ish and non-Jew­ish writ­ers, pro­duc­ers, and per­form­ers start­ed to ques­tion the Yid­dish accent’s accept­abil­i­ty as a tool of com­e­dy. The accent had a self-dep­re­cat­ing and demean­ing qual­i­ty that gave aid and com­fort to the Nazis, who were quite capa­ble of demean­ing and dep­re­cat­ing Jews with­out our help. From 1941 on, the Yid­dish accent was slow­ly, and for the most part, vol­un­tar­i­ly, phased out of show busi­ness.

Even­tu­al­ly, how­ev­er, the char­ac­ter found his way onto their 1961 LP 2000 Years with Carl Rein­er & Mel Brooks.

They but­tressed his 12-minute appear­ance with sketch­es involv­ing astro­nauts, teen heart­throb Fabi­an, and Method actors, hedg­ing their bets lest the accent flop with both ref­er­ence-chal­lenged WASPs and fel­low Jews ner­vous about rein­forc­ing prob­lem­at­ic stereo­types.

One won­ders what the 2000-Year-Old Man—who as a cave­man had trou­ble deter­min­ing “who was a lady”—would have had to say about the move­ments for Trans Equal­i­ty, #MeToo, and Black Lives Mat­ter.

A quote on Brooks’ web­site may pro­vide a hint:

It’s OK not to hurt the feel­ings of var­i­ous tribes and groups, how­ev­er, it’s not good for com­e­dy. Com­e­dy has to walk a thin line, take risks. It’s the lech­er­ous lit­tle elf whis­per­ing in the king’s ear, telling the truth about human behav­ior.

Brooks delight­ed by putting immi­nent­ly quotable, off-the-cuff punch­lines in the mouth of the 2000-Year-Old Man, hook­ing many young lis­ten­ers, like vet­er­an come­di­an and stand up com­e­dy teacher Rick Crom:

The 2000-Year-Old Man was the first com­e­dy album I ever lis­tened to. I was quot­ing it at 10. I told my Sun­day school teacher that before God, peo­ple wor­shipped “a guy…Phil.”

But it was Rein­er—who main­tained a wish list of ques­tions for the 2000-Year-Old Man and who left us ear­li­er this week at the not-too-shab­by age of 98—who steered the act, often by press­ing his sub­ject to sub­stan­ti­ate his wild claims.

As Anne Lib­era, Direc­tor of Com­e­dy Stud­ies at The Sec­ond City and Colum­bia Col­lege Chica­go, notes:

Carl Rein­er was a mas­ter of the under­rat­ed art of the set­up. Most “straight men” are known for their respons­es that release the laugh. Carl did that too, but even more bril­liant­ly, he sub­tly puts all of the pieces into play for Mel Brooks to push off of into the com­e­dy stratos­phere. You see it in the Dick Van Dyke Show as well —he knew how to cre­ate the exact space for a com­ic char­ac­ter to do their best work.

Copies of the Com­plete 2000 Year Old Man can be pur­chased on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear 30 of the Great­est Standup Com­e­dy Albums: A Playlist Cho­sen by Open Cul­ture Read­ers

Judd Apa­tow Teach­es the Craft of Com­e­dy: A New Online Course from Mas­ter­Class

Steve Mar­tin Per­forms Stand-Up Com­e­dy for Dogs (1973)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” and Hero Worship: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#50)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports, Television | July 2nd, 2020

The 10-part ESPN doc­u­men­tary dis­sect­ing Michael Jor­dan and the Bulls’ six cham­pi­onships has pro­vid­ed some much need­ed sports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, rop­ing in even sports haters with a mix of game high­lights and behind-the-scenes dra­ma.

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Seth from The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to inter­ro­gate the event: Was it actu­al­ly worth 10 hours of our time? Did its “time-jump­ing” struc­ture work? Its its treat­ment of Jor­dan real­ly “hagiog­ra­phy” sanc­ti­fy­ing the man, or is the pic­ture of grudge-hold­ing ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness actu­al­ly pret­ty repul­sive? Why was he like that? Why are sports amenable to cre­at­ing cul­tur­al icons out of its heroes in a way that, say, physics isn’t? Are we going to see many more of these long-form treat­ments of sports heroes?

For more dis­cus­sion, here are some arti­cles we looked at:

If you enjoyed this, check out our episode #25 with sports­cast­er Dave Rev­sine.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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A 1947 French Film Accurately Predicted Our 21st-Century Addiction to Smartphones

in Film, Television | July 1st, 2020

When we watch a movie from, say, twen­ty years ago, it strikes us that both noth­ing and every­thing has changed. Apart from their slight­ly bag­gi­er clothes, the peo­ple look the same as us. But where are their phones? Com­pared to the recent past, the look of life today has­n’t changed much, but thanks to the inter­net and even more so to smart­phones, the feel has changed enor­mous­ly. Most lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic pre­dic­tions of the future got this exact­ly wrong, envi­sion­ing flam­boy­ant aes­thet­ic trans­for­ma­tions atop com­plete­ly unchanged forms of human behav­ior and soci­ety.

But more than 70 years ago, J. K. Ray­mond-Mil­let’s film Télévi­sion: Oeil de Demain (“Tele­vi­sion: Eye of Tomor­row”) seems to have scored the bulls­eye few oth­er visions of the world ahead even aimed for.  “This is one extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tion in a work of sci­ence fic­tion,” wrote William Gib­son as he tweet­ed out a four-minute clip of the film that has recent­ly gone viral.

Though long regard­ed as a sci-fi prophet, Gib­son is the first to admit how lit­tle about tech­nol­o­gy he’s accu­rate­ly fore­seen: his break­out nov­el Neu­ro­mancer, for instance, fea­tures 21st-cen­tu­ry hack­ers mak­ing calls from pub­lic tele­phone booths.

Hence the impres­sive­ness, here in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry, of this vision of a future in which peo­ple stare near-con­stant­ly down at the screens of their hand­held devices: on the train, at the café (vis­it­ed, at 0:13, by what appears to be a time-trav­el­ing Gib­son him­self), in the street, on col­li­sion cours­es with fel­low screen-watch­ers on foot and in cars alike. These hand­held tele­vi­sions remind us of our mobile phones in more ways than one, not least in their being scuffed from sheer use. As with every astute pre­dic­tion of the future, all this may at first strike us denizens of the actu­al future as mun­dane — until we remem­ber that the pre­dic­tion was made in 1947.

Pro­duced as an edu­ca­tion­al film, Télévi­sion (view­able in full here) first shows and tells how the epony­mous, still-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy works, then goes on to imag­ine the forms in which it could poten­tial­ly sat­u­rate mod­ern soci­ety. These include not just the afore­men­tioned “minia­ture-tele­vi­sion devices in pub­lic places,” as schol­ar of tele­vi­sion Anne-Katrin Weber puts it, but “pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings con­duct­ed via pic­ture-phones,” “cars equipped with tele­vi­sion screens,” and “shops pro­mot­ing their goods on tele­vi­sion.”

We also see that “the small hand­held portable devices replace news­pa­pers and air ‘the infor­ma­tion broad­cast, or the polit­i­cal com­ment, the fash­ion show, or the sports bul­letin’, while the tele­vi­sion set at the trav­el agency replaces the paper cat­a­logues and invites poten­tial clients to ‘tele­vi­su­al­ly’ vis­it vaca­tion des­ti­na­tions.” Such tech­nol­o­gy will also offer more “inti­mate sights,” as when “the young woman, step­ping out of the show­er, has for­got­ten to turn off her tele­phone-cam­era and reveals her­self naked to the caller.” Yes, of course, “for­got­ten” — but then, this approach­es aspects of the future in which we live that even the bold­est tech­no­log­i­cal prophets nev­er dared con­sid­er.

via Kot­tke/William Gib­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopranos with the Talking Sopranos Podcast, Hosted by Michael Imperioli & Steve Schirripa

in Podcasts, Television | June 30th, 2020

The Sopra­nos pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 10, 1999, and tele­vi­sion did not change for­ev­er — or rather, not right away. Though its treat­ment of the life of mid-lev­el New Jer­sey mob boss Tony Sopra­no drew large num­bers of ded­i­cat­ed view­ers right away, few could have imag­ined dur­ing the show’s eight-year run how com­plete­ly its suc­cess would even­tu­al­ly rewrite the rules of dra­mat­ic TV. More than twen­ty years lat­er, near­ly all of us place the begin­ning of our ongo­ing tele­vi­su­al “gold­en age” at the broad­cast of The Sopra­nos’ first episode. You can hear that epoch-mak­ing 50 min­utes dis­cussed in depth on the first episode of the new pod­cast Talk­ing Sopra­nos (YouTube — Apple — Spo­ti­fy), whose hosts Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa know the series more inti­mate­ly than most — not least because they were on it.

Fans know Impe­ri­oli and Schirri­pa as Tony’s pro­tégé Christo­pher Molti­san­ti and Tony’s broth­er-in-law Bob­by Bac­calieri. On Talk­ing Sopra­nos they “fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside,” announces the pod­cast’s descrip­tion, which also promis­es “inter­views with addi­tion­al cast mem­bers, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, pro­duc­tion crew and spe­cial guests.”

Among these voic­es there is, of course, one siz­able absence: star James Gan­dolfi­ni, Tony Sopra­no him­self, who died in 2013. But it shows promise that, just four­teen episodes in, the pod­cast has already brought on Edie Fal­co, who played Tony’s wife Carmela; Robert Iler, their son A.J. Sopra­no; Jamie-Lynn Sigler, their daugh­ter Mead­ow Sopra­no; and Michael Rispoli, the first sea­son’s short-lived Jack­ie Aprile Sr.

None of these actors would have made their mark on the show with­out the work of cast­ing direc­tors Geor­gianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, who also make an appear­ance on the pod­cast, as does co-exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and some­time direc­tor Hen­ry Bronchtein. You can down­load Talk­ing Sopra­nos on its web site, sub­scribe to it on Apple Pod­casts and else­where, or even watch it on Youtube. If you’d like to sup­ple­ment all this with an even greater wealth of detail, pick up a copy of Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wal­l’s book The Sopra­nos Ses­sions, an episode-by-episode analy­sis fea­tur­ing inter­views with fig­ures includ­ing series cre­ator David Chase. Nev­er has there been a bet­ter time to do a Sopra­nos re-watch of your own — and if you nev­er watched it in the first place, well, bet­ter a cou­ple of decades late than nev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Mau­rice Sendak Ani­mat­ed; James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Sendak’s Sto­ry “In The Night Kitchen”

James Gan­dolfi­ni Shows Kinder, Soft­er, Gen­tler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Get a First Glimpse of Foundation, the New TV Series Being Adapted from Isaac Asimov’s Iconic Series of Novels

in Sci Fi, Television | June 25th, 2020

Five years ago we told you about the plans to cre­ate a mini-series out of Isaac Asimov’s clas­sic sci-fi series Foun­da­tion, while also point­ing you in the direc­tion of the 1973 BBC radio drama­ti­za­tion. Back in 2015, Jonathan Nolan, broth­er of Christo­pher, was attached and HBO was set to pro­duce. And then we all for­got about it. (Well I did, any­way.)

Fast for­ward into the COVID tsuna­mi of this week and AppleTV just dropped the first trail­er for the series. Nolan is out and David Goy­er is in as showrun­ner. Goy­er loves his pulp, and wrote or co-wrote the Blade tril­o­gy, the Dark Knight tril­o­gy, Dark City, and a lot of the recent DC Uni­verse films. Also on board as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er is Robyn Asi­mov, Isaac’s daugh­ter.

Pro­duc­tion had start­ed in Ire­land on the series, but it closed up shop in March due to COVID-19. We have no idea how much of the 10-episode first sea­son was shot, which might explain a pre­pon­der­ance of footage in the above trail­er of peo­ple walk­ing down cor­ri­dors, walk­ing into rooms, and star­ing out of win­dows, along with pure­ly CGI estab­lish­ing shots of space­ships and a black hole straight out of Inter­stel­lar.

On the oth­er hand, we get a glimpse of Jared Har­ris (Mad Men, Cher­nobyl) as Hari Sel­don, a math­e­mati­cian who has devel­oped a the­o­ry called “psy­chohis­to­ry” that allows him to see the future. And he does not like what he sees–empires col­laps­ing, and a long dark age of 30,000 years. There’s also his pro­tege called Gaal, played here by new­com­er Lou Llo­bell; Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) plays Broth­er Day, the emper­or; and Leah Har­vey plays Salvor, the war­den of Ter­mi­nus, where Sel­don and Gaal are exiled. (Spoil­er alert…we think.)

Two large ques­tions to ask right now: will this ever get fin­ished? And do we real­ly need Foun­da­tion, or has its time passed?

For the first, AppleTV has put a date of 2021 for the hope­ful pre­miere, but all the arts are on hold now. We might be look­ing at films that are even more CGI than they are now, shot total­ly on green­screen in large social­ly dis­tant stu­dios, and assem­bled by a gigan­tic crew of remote ani­ma­tors. (Ire­land is down to less than 10 cas­es of COVID-19 per day, so who knows.)

The sec­ond is more a mat­ter of taste and a case of who’s adapt­ing the books. Goyer’s fil­mog­ra­phy shows he’s much more of an action guy, and Asi­mov was more of an intel­lec­tu­al. We might see some­thing between the inter­na­tion­al trade tar­iff skull­dug­gery of The Phan­tom Men­ace and some Game of Thrones court intrigue.

The dis­cus­sion on Metafil­ter cer­tain­ly deserves a look, as it brings up issues like Asimov’s his­to­ry of sex­u­al harass­ment, the idea of Grand Old White Men of Sci-Fi, and a need to keep pres­tige tele­vi­sion churn­ing out prod­uct. And, of course, there’s a dis­cus­sion of how much we might need some of Asimov’s opti­mism.

Asimov’s Foun­da­tion series was influ­enced by Edward Gib­bon’s His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and we are cer­tain­ly think­ing about empires falling right now, espe­cial­ly as we can hear Nero’s fid­dle off in the dis­tance, get­ting loud­er every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future of Civilization–and Rec­om­mends Ways to Ensure That It Sur­vives (1978)

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Isaac Asi­mov Laments the “Cult of Igno­rance” in the Unit­ed States: A Short, Scathing Essay from 1980

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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John Cleese’s Comedically Explains the Psychological Advantages of Extremism: “It Makes You Feel Good Because It Provides You with Enemies”

in History, Politics, Television | June 17th, 2020

Extrem­ist: in any polit­i­cal squab­ble, and espe­cial­ly any online polit­i­cal squab­ble, the label is sure to get slapped on some­one soon­er or lat­er. Of course, we nev­er con­sid­er our­selves extrem­ists: it’s the para­me­ters of accept­able polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion that wrong­ly frame our entire­ly rea­son­able, truth-informed views. But what if we were to embrace the extreme? “What we nev­er hear about extrem­ism is its advan­tages,” says Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese in the tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ment above. “The biggest advan­tage of extrem­ism is that it makes you feel good because it pro­vides you with ene­mies.” When you have ene­mies, “you can pre­tend that all the bad­ness in the whole world is in your ene­mies and all the good­ness in the whole world is in you.”

If you “have a lot of anger and resent­ment in you any­way,” you can jus­ti­fy your own unciv­i­lized behav­ior “because these ene­mies of yours are such very bad per­sons, and that if it was­n’t for them, you’d actu­al­ly be good-natured and cour­te­ous and ratio­nal all the time.” Sign on with the “hard left,” Cleese says, and you’ll receive “their list of autho­rized ene­mies: almost all kinds of author­i­ty, espe­cial­ly the police, the City, Amer­i­cans, judges, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, pub­lic schools, fur­ri­ers, news­pa­per own­ers, fox hunters, gen­er­als, class trai­tors — and of course, mod­er­ates.” If you pre­fer the “hard right,” they have a list of their own, one includ­ing “noisy minor­i­ty groups, unions, Rus­sia, weirdos, demon­stra­tors, wel­fare sponges, med­dle­some cler­gy, peaceniks, the BBC, strik­ers, social work­ers, com­mu­nists — and of course, mod­er­ates.”

As Cleese tweet­ed this past week­end, “Hard to tell if I record­ed this 30 years or 10 min­utes ago.” In fact he record­ed it more than 30 years ago, as an endorse­ment of the cen­trist SDP-Lib­er­al Alliance between the Unit­ed King­dom’s Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Lib­er­al Par­ty. Hav­ing formed in 1981 and gone defunct by 1988 (when it became the par­ty now known as the Lib­er­al Democ­rats), the SDP-Lib­er­al Alliance leaves lit­tle in the way of a lega­cy, but this clip has only grown more rel­e­vant with time. As an extrem­ist, Cleese reminds us “you can strut around abus­ing peo­ple and telling them you could eat them for break­fast and still think of your­self as a cham­pi­on of the truth, a fight­er for the greater good, and not the rather sad, para­noid schizoid that you real­ly are” — a state­ment that, uttered in our inter­net era, would sure­ly make more than a few ene­mies.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Wor­ries That Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness Will Lead Us into a Humor­less World, Rem­i­nis­cent of Orwell’s 1984

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Cre­ates Ads for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

The Psy­chol­o­gy That Leads Peo­ple to Vote for Extrem­ists & Auto­crats: The The­o­ry of Cog­ni­tive Clo­sure

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Can Reality TV Save the Fine Arts? Body Painter Robin Slonina (Skin Wars) on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #47

in Art, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | June 17th, 2020

Fine art and real­i­ty TV are typ­i­cal­ly rat­ed our high­est and low­est forms of enter­tain­ment, yet cre­ative com­pe­ti­tion shows com­bine the two. Robin Sloni­na grad­u­at­ed from Chicago’s Art Insti­tute and lived in the gallery world doing sculp­tures, paint­ings and instal­la­tions for sev­er­al years before dis­cov­er­ing body paint­ing and open­ing Skin City Body Paint­ing in Las Vegas, per­haps the fore­most insti­tu­tion of its type in the world. Robin then served as a judge (along with RuPaul!) on the show Skin Wars for its three sea­sons (2014–2017) before The Game Show Net­work decid­ed that the whole thing was too expen­sive to pro­duce. She joins Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an to  fig­ure out the degree to which the com­pe­ti­tion real­i­ty show for­mat lets the art shine through. To learn more, scan these rel­e­vant arti­cles: Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion with Robin about pub­lic art and the protests that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Revisiting The Wire During 2020’s Black Lives Matter Movement

in Current Affairs, Television | June 12th, 2020

George Floyd’s mur­der while under arrest for alleged­ly pass­ing a coun­ter­feit bill of small denom­i­na­tion sparked mas­sive world­wide demon­stra­tions against police bru­tal­i­ty and in sup­port of Black Lives Mat­ter.

It also led to the abrupt can­cel­la­tion of television’s recent hit, Live PD, and its longest-run­ning real­i­ty show, Cops.

As Aman­da Hess recent­ly observed in The New York Times, pub­lic opin­ion has turned on any show that pro­motes an image of police offi­cers as uni­ver­sal­ly decent forces for good, “lov­able goof­balls,” or anti-heroes whose rough edges make a play for view­ers’ alle­giance by sug­gest­ing the char­ac­ters are real­is­ti­cal­ly flawed and thus, relat­able:

The “good cop” trope is a stan­dard of both police pro­ce­du­rals and real-life police tac­tics, and now crowd­sourced video of the protests has giv­en cops a new stage for per­form­ing the role. In recent days, sup­pos­ed­ly uplift­ing images of the police have spread wild­ly across the inter­net, com­pet­ing for views with evi­dence of cops beat­ing, gassing and arrest­ing pro­test­ers. In Hous­ton, an offi­cer con­soled a young black girl at a ral­ly: “We’re here to pro­tect you, OK?” he told her, envelop­ing her in a hug. “You can protest, you can par­ty, you can do what­ev­er you want. Just don’t break noth­ing.” In Nashville, the police tweet­ed a pho­to of cops kneel­ing next to a black boy with a “Black Lives Mat­ter” sign, smil­ing from behind their riot hel­mets. And in Atlanta, a line of Nation­al Guard sol­diers did the Macare­na. On the final rump shake, a black rifle slung over one soldier’s back swung to the beat.

These images show cops engag­ing in a kind of pan­tomime of protest, mim­ic­k­ing the ges­tures of the demon­stra­tors until their mes­sages are dilut­ed beyond recog­ni­tion. They reframe protests against racist police vio­lence into a bland, non­spe­cif­ic goal of sol­i­dar­i­ty. These moments are meant to rep­re­sent the shared human­i­ty between offi­cers and pro­test­ers, but cops already rank among the most human­ized groups in Amer­i­ca; the same can­not be said for the black Amer­i­cans who live in fear of them. Cops can dance, they can hug, they can kneel on the ground, but their indi­vid­ual acts of kind­ness can no longer obscure the vio­lence of a sys­tem. The good-cop act is wear­ing thin.

Accord­ing to Hol­ly­wood Reporter crit­ic Inkoo Kang, almost any por­tray­al of cops on TV right now ran­kles, even one that was laud­ed for its real­is­tic por­tray­al of cor­rup­tion and abuse on the force, HBO’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed The Wire—Barack Obama’s avowed favorite.

Kang writes:

In the first sea­son of The Wire, just about every on-the-ground cop par­tic­i­pates in police bru­tal­i­ty — often as a kind of pro­fes­sion­al pre­rog­a­tive. Their vio­lence is meant to add dark­er streaks to the char­ac­ters’ oth­er­wise hero­ic gloss, but it also has the effect of nor­mal­iz­ing police bru­tal­i­ty as a part, even a perk, of the job.

Her com­ments touched a nerve with actor Wen­dell Pierce, whose char­ac­ter was based on a Bal­ti­more homi­cide detec­tive, Oscar Requer, who achieved his posi­tion at a time when black offi­cers rou­tine­ly faced racial harass­ment from with­in the force. Pierce pub­lished his response on Twit­ter:

How can any­one watch “The Wire” and the dys­func­tion of the police & the war on drugs and say that we were depict­ed as hero­ic. We demon­strat­ed moral ambi­gu­i­ties and the pathol­o­gy that leads to the abus­es. Maybe you were react­ing to how good peo­ple can be cor­rupt­ed to do bad things.

If The Wire did any­thing right, it depict­ed the human­i­ty of the Black lives so eas­i­ly pro­filed by police and the destruc­tion of them by the so-called war on drugs; a delib­er­ate pol­i­cy of mass incar­cer­a­tion to sus­tain a wealth dis­par­i­ty in Amer­i­ca that thrives keep­ing an under­class.

The Wire, if any­thing, was the canary-in-the-mine that fore­casts the insti­tu­tion­al moral morass of pol­i­tics and polic­ing that lead us to the protests of today. “The big­ger the lie, the more they believe” was a line of mine that is so salient and pro­found in today’s cli­mate.

“The Wire” is a deep dive study of the con­tribut­ing vari­ables that feed the vio­lence in our cul­ture: in the streets and at the hand of police. Clas­sism, racism, destruc­tion of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, and moral ambi­gu­i­ty in our lead­er­ship all feed this par­a­digm of Amer­i­can decline.

I know I sound defen­sive and I prob­a­bly am, The Wire is per­son­al for me. The Wire is also Art. The role of Art is to ignite the pub­lic dis­course. Art is where we come togeth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty to con­front who we are as a soci­ety, decide what our val­ues are, and then act on them.

The cri­tique here is that tele­vi­sion seems to fol­low behind the cur­rent events of the day. I would ask that you con­sid­er that maybe The Wire was a pre­cur­sor to the dis­cus­sion that is manda­to­ry now. It was an indi­ca­tor, a warn­ing light, of the implo­sion we are feel­ing today.

At a time when the world is called upon to lis­ten care­ful­ly to what black peo­ple are say­ing, and much of the world has shown them­selves ready to do so, Pierce’s words car­ry extra weight.

His asser­tion that the show, which ran from 2002 to 2008, accu­rate­ly depict­ed a sys­tem so rot­ten that col­lapse was inevitable, is echoed in inter­view clips with cre­ator and one-time police reporter, David Simon, above.

The video essay was put togeth­er by aspi­rant screen­writer Nehemi­ah T. Jor­dan whose Behind the Cur­tain series aims to pro­vide insights on how cel­e­brat­ed scripts for both the big and small screens—Fight Club, Uncut Gems, The Sopra­nos, Break­ing Bad—come by their aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty.

Simon’s ambi­tion for The Wire was that it truth­ful­ly con­vey what he had observed as a reporter, as well as the lives of the peo­ple he inter­act­ed with—both Bal­ti­more cops and those they most­ly failed to serve.

In a 2015 White House con­ver­sa­tion with then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Simon remarks that an empha­sis on drug-relat­ed offens­es led to an epi­dem­ic of pre­sump­tive police work, and a decline in “com­pe­tent retroac­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of felonies.” A dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of young black and Lati­no men were incar­cer­at­ed dur­ing this time, and upon their release, their felony his­to­ries meant that few of them were able to secure mean­ing­ful employ­ment. America’s prob­lems were com­pound­ed.

Whether or not you are moved to watch, or rewatch The Wire, we hearti­ly rec­om­mend Where We Go from Here, a recent New York Dai­ly News op-ed by actor Michael K. Williams, who played fan favorite Omar Lit­tle, and whose real life coun­ter­part Simon dis­cuss­es with Omar-fan Oba­ma.

New York native Williams, who has worked to end mass juve­nile incar­cer­a­tion, foment col­lab­o­ra­tion between police and at-risk youth and serves as an ambas­sador for The Inno­cent Project, pos­sess­es a deep under­stand­ing of the New York Police Department’s struc­ture, chain of com­mand, and day to day work­ings. Stat­ing that tan­gi­ble action is need­ed to “shift police cul­ture” and “trans­form the rela­tion­ships between law enforce­ment and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or,” he makes a case for six con­crete reforms:

  1. Over­haul Comp­Stat, the NYPD’s crime track­ing mech­a­nism.
  2. Elim­i­nate plain­clothes units.
  3. Cre­ate an inde­pen­dent body to inves­ti­gate “use of force” inci­dents at the time they occur.
  4. Reimag­ine the duties of civil­ians with­in the depart­ment tasked with com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing.
  5. Imple­ment ongo­ing trau­ma-cen­tered train­ing, edu­ca­tion and activ­i­ties for offi­cers, exec­u­tives and the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.
  6. Make racial jus­tice a core com­po­nent of NYPD train­ing and edu­ca­tion.

Read Michael  K. William’s Op-Ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Art­ful, Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to The Wire, Cre­at­ed by a Fan of the Crit­i­cal­ly-Acclaimed TV Series

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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