It's Saturday night, so I'm taking a break from a mammoth catch up on 12 Books in 12 Months (7661 words written today) to watch River City. Such a party animal has never been seen.
In this episode, Gina wants sour faced daughter Jo to organise a fashion show to keep ovarian cancer in the public eye on Montego Street. This, she confesses, is mainly because she was absent for last week's fundraising spectacular, presumably because she was busy ensuring that her other daughter (Mad Ruth - who I just read is meant to have borderline personality disorder, so now I feel a bit bad for slaggin') was safely under lock and key in a psychiatric unit somewhere. Maybe she's hoping that all the excitement will make Scarlett faint again - her family's misery just isn't getting enough screen time at the moment.
Meanwhile Nicole is having a birthday perty, but her ex best friend Carmen has turned all twelve of her mates against her so nobody turns up... except her deeply annoying boyfriend, who wants to get it awn because they have an empty house. Rather unexpectedly Nicole holds her ground on the fact she says she isn't ready for sexy times yet, but in typical soap style her folks (Dr Brodie and Leyla) get home right at the point she is pushing him and his cheap bottle of cider out the door. To them it looks like she is taking the cider from him and planning to get jiggy - they assume she never invited any other guests at all. That, my friends, is irony.
Elsewhere Gabriel urges Jo to let people help her with the fashion show, but her aversion to Amber means she won't go to her for help... This is relevant because Amber owns the only clothes shop in Shieldinch, although god only knows how she makes a living because all I've ever seen her sell is one shirt. Anyhoo, Gabriel goes to Amber himself and sends her to the pub where the most unrealistic journo in the world is telling Jo that whilst it's a nice idea, they gave cancer loads of coverage last week and her pissy little fashion show will interest NO-ONE. Honestly, who does she think she's kidding? Clearly never read a local paper. They print literally everything.
Upstairs, Jimmy hangs round Rrrraymond's toilet failing to cope with Scarlett's illness, whilst she is back at hame asking her mum and sister to help her end it all if things get too much. That's the cancer, not just life in general. Because Scarlett has ovarian cancer - I don't know if you knew that. But she does. When Jimmy finds out (they always find out, on TV) he's not upset by the prospect of euthanasia, but by the fact she didn't ask him to do it, and romantically promises to be there until the last breath is squeezed out of their relationship. Aww.
Oh, but before that he beats up a kid (Nicole's no good boyfriend, actually) for taking the piss out of Scarlett's wig. Said kid then dumps Nicole on the grounds of her parents giving him a bollocking, telling her "she's not worth this amount of hassle." What a charmer. Rather than notice she's well shot of the spotty prick, Nicole proceeds to the basket ball court where she first saw him to bawl her eyes out against a fence. Adolescence is a complicated time.
I couldn't help noticing, though, that for the second week in a row there was no comic relief. I know cancer is srs bsns, River City, but I have come to expect comedy subplots either from Robbie the Big Gay Hairdresser or Annie the Bubbly Barmaid (who still doesn't have a character profile on the website). Sort it out, guys. This is my Saturday night you're messing with.
Showing posts with label telly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label telly. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Friday, 11 February 2011
The River City Blog #6
It is the day of Scarlett's ovarian cancer fundraiser, so Montego Street pulls together like never before to raise as much cash as possible. This makes for a deathly dull episode which feels Children in Need-like in length, although I am assured it only lasted an hour. Meanwhile, Robbie the big gay hairdresser is getting grief from a nasty loan shark with designer stubble. He has managed to rack up nearly 4 grand in back rent and the nasty man needs it before the end of the day or he will go visit Robbie's estranged parents in Bearsden and very probably stab them up. Surely these two plot lines combined can only end in disaster?
Blissfully unaware of impending crisis, DI Fraser MSP shows his acting talent by perfectly replicating a cringeworthy speech from someone in local government. And dishes out networking advice to teenagers, apparently. Not that Nicole is likely to follow advice from anyone, however varied their acting ability. God, Nicole's annoying. Not to mention cheeky, manipulative, spiteful and stupid. And she doesn't even have an excuse - at least mad Ruth is mad, but Nicole is just a perfect portrayal of a horrible teenager. Comeuppance is surely due.
In the best moment of a very tedious episode, ex-con Theresa lambasts some small children in front of all their parents, telling one her violin playing was "mince". Which it was, but then spoilsport Jo makes her stop MCing the kid's talent show, which is a terrible shame. She takes over the slave auction, leaving Annie with nothing much to do other than flirt with Raymond (ew) but soon gets ousted from that by Scarlett, so she can do a dramatic fainting thing later on. Thing is, nobody in Shieldinch really cares for Theresa, so the fact she has turned over a new, slightly less criminal leaf has passed most of them by.
Perhaps as part of her campaign to get locals on side, Theresa and her slightly squashed face lie to cover for Robbie when the money is found to be missing, then uses some nefarious contacts to get him the rest. So presumably he'll be back to his usual comic relief role next week, complete with both legs, but the mystery remains, why did she help him? And what does she want in return? Maybe she's going to pimp him out. I can see Theresa strutting about in a floor length fur coat. And the beauty of that is, it wouldn't even need to be an especially long one - she's only about four feet tall.
Blissfully unaware of impending crisis, DI Fraser MSP shows his acting talent by perfectly replicating a cringeworthy speech from someone in local government. And dishes out networking advice to teenagers, apparently. Not that Nicole is likely to follow advice from anyone, however varied their acting ability. God, Nicole's annoying. Not to mention cheeky, manipulative, spiteful and stupid. And she doesn't even have an excuse - at least mad Ruth is mad, but Nicole is just a perfect portrayal of a horrible teenager. Comeuppance is surely due.
In the best moment of a very tedious episode, ex-con Theresa lambasts some small children in front of all their parents, telling one her violin playing was "mince". Which it was, but then spoilsport Jo makes her stop MCing the kid's talent show, which is a terrible shame. She takes over the slave auction, leaving Annie with nothing much to do other than flirt with Raymond (ew) but soon gets ousted from that by Scarlett, so she can do a dramatic fainting thing later on. Thing is, nobody in Shieldinch really cares for Theresa, so the fact she has turned over a new, slightly less criminal leaf has passed most of them by.
Perhaps as part of her campaign to get locals on side, Theresa and her slightly squashed face lie to cover for Robbie when the money is found to be missing, then uses some nefarious contacts to get him the rest. So presumably he'll be back to his usual comic relief role next week, complete with both legs, but the mystery remains, why did she help him? And what does she want in return? Maybe she's going to pimp him out. I can see Theresa strutting about in a floor length fur coat. And the beauty of that is, it wouldn't even need to be an especially long one - she's only about four feet tall.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
"The Irony Made Even More Irony-y" - A Close Reading of Giles Coren on the Sky Sexism Row
Once again, Twitter has led me to read a contentious article from the Daily Mail that would probably never have entered my consciousness had it been written a couple of years ago.
This time it's by Giles Coren, a man largely famous for being the son of Alan Coren. This close familial relationship to someone famous for being good at satire, along with his friendship with the likes of the erudite and generally liberal seeming Sue Perkins, leads me hopefully in the direction that he's being ironic, or at the very least got bored and decided to write something deliberately controversial.
The premise of the piece is that it's OK for women to be sexist about men, but not the other way around - a double standard that does exist to a certain extent within the media and indeed life in general. However, his first piece of evidence is the continuing success of Loose Women vs. the sacking of Andy Gray for saying that women don't know the offside rule. I appreciate this is topical, but as arguments go it's a bit weak.
I don't know anyone in the world who likes Loose Women, male or female, alive or dead. According to the show's Wikipedia entry, everyone from Jan Moir to Karl Pilkington (and of course The Guardian) have spoken out against it. It's pointless drivel, much like all other daytime TV.
But lets explore that very point for a moment. Loose Women is only on during the day and is targeted, in a very calculated manner, at stay-at-home mums who want something trashy they don't have to think about whilst they have a break for lunch. The vast majority of people never have to see the thing. Football, on the other hand, tends to get a prime time slot on the tellybox, on account of being the country's national sport. When a big match is on, normal programming is shifted about to accommodate it. Doctor Who and Charlie Brooker would never be moved back a week in favour of Colleen Nolan carping on about her sex life, but the beautiful game is another matter.
Is there not an argument to be made, then, that football coverage ought to be accessible to everyone in the nation, irrespective of gender? Is it not potentially more important for pundits to watch what they say in front of millions, than for Kate Garroway to curb her outrageous man-hating (isn't it annoying when they leave the loo seat up girls? Not really Kate, no. Unless you don't have hands, I guess) in front of an audience of half asleep new parents, and students too hungover to move after Jeremy Kyle?
As I say, part of me hopes that this article was written to stir people up a bit, but certain passages did make me wonder if he's just an idiot. Frinstance, the part where he said:
"Here’s another of Jo Brand’s (excellent) gags. ‘What’s the way to a man’s heart? Straight through the chest with a kitchen knife!’ Again, not unfunny. But predicated on the idea that killing men is hilarious. Whereas killing women, as we all know, is a very serious affair and not to be joked about."
It seems clear that this joke is not at all predicated on the idea that killing men is hilarious, but is in fact a classic example of what Lee and Herring described in their 'lazy comedy slags' bit as "MY EXPECTATIONS WERE CONFOUNDED, AND FROM THENCE THE HUMOUR AROSE."
Jo Brand takes a well-known saying, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (therefore you should cook him yummy food and he will never stray), and inverts it for comic effect. Technically, Coren is right in commenting that if a man tried to do the same joke it wouldn't work in the same way. This is because there's no proverb precedent - the set up in reverse, from a male point of view, would be something of a non sequitur. However, in the hands of Sean Lock or Jimmy Carr, both of whom do ironic sexism quite well, it might actually work OK. Oxford-educated Giles Coren, the son of a FAMOUS HUMORIST, must get that. Mustn't he?
"It’s not just Brand," he continues, "it’s all women." Is he exaggerating for comic effect, or bemoaning genuine male experience? If this were printed anywhere other than the Mail, I'd assume the former, but context plants a seed of doubt...
He goes on to explain that women's neverending sexist jokes ("‘What do you call the useless flap of skin attached to a penis?’ they joke. ‘A man!’") are only OK because our mothers teach us to deride men from birth. Apparently my own mother, who has never taught me any such thing, is a revolutionary. I can't remember any point when she's told me that men are only after one thing, or tried to score points against my dad because she went through childbirth and he didn't. I would hazard a guess that this is because both of my parents are interesting people in their own right, rather than ridiculous gender caricatures of the type perpetuated by Daily Mail journalists and Loose Women presenters. Coren presumably saw something very different in the way his anesthetist mother brought up his poker champion sister.
"There is no question that women today have it all," he trundles on, "and it just isn’t fair that they are allowed to be so vile about us.
"I suppose, in a way, British men are like white people were in Nineties South Africa or young Germans after the Second World War."
Really, though? Sexism has gone so far the other way that it's like some kind of socially acceptable apartheid? Again, in any other context - a gig at The Stand, for example, or a Frankie Boyle style comment on a panel show - I'd automatically consider this exaggeration for effect; or a slightly crude example of shock comedy. But what of the target audience of the paper, generally perceived as people who lean to the right (and outraged Twitter users)? Even if it is a masterstroke of ironic genius, surely the bulk of the readers won't get it?
A few points for those who read the article straight, and perhaps even agree:
Andy Gray should not have been sacked purely on the basis of one worn out old joke made to a colleague when he thought his mic was off. But I don't think that was the reason he was sacked, it was a symptom. For a bit more information, see here.
Loose Women should not get away with how they treat male guests on their show. They tend to be crass and intimidating in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator, severely underestimating the intelligence of the average female viewer and willfully alienating the male viewer. Further to this, deliberately making your interviewee uncomfortable on the grounds of his gender is stupid, and I resent the implication that their approach is indicative of how all women perceive and talk about men. It isn't.
If Jo Brand should be taken to task for anything, it's not sexism, but the point many of her jokes are lazy and not very funny. Which happens with male comedians too.
The idea that "women have it all these days" should not mean that men are somehow losing out, which seems to be the implication of Coren's argument. Double standards in the workplace go both ways, in the media more than any other industry, so surely men and women ought to work as a team to dismantle this rather than fighting each other over who is better?
It is worth reading and debating articles of this kind, rather than dismissing them out of hand because they appear in a paper whose political views are traditionally opposed to mine. Whilst I could go through life reading only the Graun and going "oh yes, I totally agree," occasionally getting riled up by the odd typo or the latest ridiculous thing our PM has come out with, that would get boring very fast. And actually, it's quite interesting to know what other people think, or what other people think their target audience probably think.
Even if they're wrong.
This time it's by Giles Coren, a man largely famous for being the son of Alan Coren. This close familial relationship to someone famous for being good at satire, along with his friendship with the likes of the erudite and generally liberal seeming Sue Perkins, leads me hopefully in the direction that he's being ironic, or at the very least got bored and decided to write something deliberately controversial.
The premise of the piece is that it's OK for women to be sexist about men, but not the other way around - a double standard that does exist to a certain extent within the media and indeed life in general. However, his first piece of evidence is the continuing success of Loose Women vs. the sacking of Andy Gray for saying that women don't know the offside rule. I appreciate this is topical, but as arguments go it's a bit weak.
I don't know anyone in the world who likes Loose Women, male or female, alive or dead. According to the show's Wikipedia entry, everyone from Jan Moir to Karl Pilkington (and of course The Guardian) have spoken out against it. It's pointless drivel, much like all other daytime TV.
But lets explore that very point for a moment. Loose Women is only on during the day and is targeted, in a very calculated manner, at stay-at-home mums who want something trashy they don't have to think about whilst they have a break for lunch. The vast majority of people never have to see the thing. Football, on the other hand, tends to get a prime time slot on the tellybox, on account of being the country's national sport. When a big match is on, normal programming is shifted about to accommodate it. Doctor Who and Charlie Brooker would never be moved back a week in favour of Colleen Nolan carping on about her sex life, but the beautiful game is another matter.
Is there not an argument to be made, then, that football coverage ought to be accessible to everyone in the nation, irrespective of gender? Is it not potentially more important for pundits to watch what they say in front of millions, than for Kate Garroway to curb her outrageous man-hating (isn't it annoying when they leave the loo seat up girls? Not really Kate, no. Unless you don't have hands, I guess) in front of an audience of half asleep new parents, and students too hungover to move after Jeremy Kyle?
As I say, part of me hopes that this article was written to stir people up a bit, but certain passages did make me wonder if he's just an idiot. Frinstance, the part where he said:
"Here’s another of Jo Brand’s (excellent) gags. ‘What’s the way to a man’s heart? Straight through the chest with a kitchen knife!’ Again, not unfunny. But predicated on the idea that killing men is hilarious. Whereas killing women, as we all know, is a very serious affair and not to be joked about."
It seems clear that this joke is not at all predicated on the idea that killing men is hilarious, but is in fact a classic example of what Lee and Herring described in their 'lazy comedy slags' bit as "MY EXPECTATIONS WERE CONFOUNDED, AND FROM THENCE THE HUMOUR AROSE."
Jo Brand takes a well-known saying, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (therefore you should cook him yummy food and he will never stray), and inverts it for comic effect. Technically, Coren is right in commenting that if a man tried to do the same joke it wouldn't work in the same way. This is because there's no proverb precedent - the set up in reverse, from a male point of view, would be something of a non sequitur. However, in the hands of Sean Lock or Jimmy Carr, both of whom do ironic sexism quite well, it might actually work OK. Oxford-educated Giles Coren, the son of a FAMOUS HUMORIST, must get that. Mustn't he?
"It’s not just Brand," he continues, "it’s all women." Is he exaggerating for comic effect, or bemoaning genuine male experience? If this were printed anywhere other than the Mail, I'd assume the former, but context plants a seed of doubt...
He goes on to explain that women's neverending sexist jokes ("‘What do you call the useless flap of skin attached to a penis?’ they joke. ‘A man!’") are only OK because our mothers teach us to deride men from birth. Apparently my own mother, who has never taught me any such thing, is a revolutionary. I can't remember any point when she's told me that men are only after one thing, or tried to score points against my dad because she went through childbirth and he didn't. I would hazard a guess that this is because both of my parents are interesting people in their own right, rather than ridiculous gender caricatures of the type perpetuated by Daily Mail journalists and Loose Women presenters. Coren presumably saw something very different in the way his anesthetist mother brought up his poker champion sister.
"There is no question that women today have it all," he trundles on, "and it just isn’t fair that they are allowed to be so vile about us.
"I suppose, in a way, British men are like white people were in Nineties South Africa or young Germans after the Second World War."
Really, though? Sexism has gone so far the other way that it's like some kind of socially acceptable apartheid? Again, in any other context - a gig at The Stand, for example, or a Frankie Boyle style comment on a panel show - I'd automatically consider this exaggeration for effect; or a slightly crude example of shock comedy. But what of the target audience of the paper, generally perceived as people who lean to the right (and outraged Twitter users)? Even if it is a masterstroke of ironic genius, surely the bulk of the readers won't get it?
A few points for those who read the article straight, and perhaps even agree:
Andy Gray should not have been sacked purely on the basis of one worn out old joke made to a colleague when he thought his mic was off. But I don't think that was the reason he was sacked, it was a symptom. For a bit more information, see here.
Loose Women should not get away with how they treat male guests on their show. They tend to be crass and intimidating in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator, severely underestimating the intelligence of the average female viewer and willfully alienating the male viewer. Further to this, deliberately making your interviewee uncomfortable on the grounds of his gender is stupid, and I resent the implication that their approach is indicative of how all women perceive and talk about men. It isn't.
If Jo Brand should be taken to task for anything, it's not sexism, but the point many of her jokes are lazy and not very funny. Which happens with male comedians too.
The idea that "women have it all these days" should not mean that men are somehow losing out, which seems to be the implication of Coren's argument. Double standards in the workplace go both ways, in the media more than any other industry, so surely men and women ought to work as a team to dismantle this rather than fighting each other over who is better?
It is worth reading and debating articles of this kind, rather than dismissing them out of hand because they appear in a paper whose political views are traditionally opposed to mine. Whilst I could go through life reading only the Graun and going "oh yes, I totally agree," occasionally getting riled up by the odd typo or the latest ridiculous thing our PM has come out with, that would get boring very fast. And actually, it's quite interesting to know what other people think, or what other people think their target audience probably think.
Even if they're wrong.
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