Life Imitates Art: Reality Revisited
I guess that's my current answer to this age old question. Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Obviously, both. It's a cycle, yin/yang. But I'll put my money on the artist as incipient initiator originator. First God, consciousness, then manifestation. All begins as thought, idea.
First, there were just these poorly acted and recreated versions of reality...early radio, movies, TV... don't they all seem so phony now? We were not ready to demonstrate or view real life on our airwaves, nor could we act as convincingly as we do today. As time went on, cameras & cassettes became more prevalent, people got more and more used to being filmed and at the same time were watching more realistic dramas & early reality TV: game shows, talk shows etc. We were also filming lots of reality, as early as the 50's....only it was called home movies. And the last thing we wanted on there was our arguments (how little we knew), we wanted white glove waves from happy holidays. There was a huge gulf between the home movie "reality" and Hollywood... that is changing, in film/TV... and in music.
Now everyone is media savvy and ready to be filmed. Everyone is ready to be real, at least a fake TV version of real. Over a million people applied to be the next Apprentice. Even these Survivors from Appalachia are smooth, it's unreal, er, real... too real. At the same time more and more of us keep signing up to the big hive brain here and will soon have their very own, free, easy to use, anonymous if they like, site. So, in a sense we're all becoming public actors in this human drama and that comment of Andy Warhol's about each of us having 15 minutes (plus a website) of fame won't seem like such a joke. Mark Burnett commented that his shows are not reality shows but unscripted dramas, and he's right. His shows are not real situations, though more and more reality is going into the home.
I saw one where this British nanny went into this real home, with a real family. The basically loving Dad was getting out of control and getting violent with the kids. Somehow she actually seemed to break through to this guy and it really looked like the situation was turned around. Wife Swap also goes into these real homes. Really, the permutations are endless. I wouldn't want to be a scriptwriter any more than I'd want to be working at a label right now. Even in film, as I discussed in the Super-Size post, it's documentaries on the rise. Next up for scrutiny is the drug industry. Sicko, Moore's next film, due out in two years already has big drug reaching for the meds. They are sending around internal memos telling everyone to watch out.
People now want it real.... and close to home. Virtual reality is in tech too, from our games to our home tours.... more reality, more interest, more interaction (more Intervision.. I had to) more control. We increasingly want to become the director, the actor, the artist, the creator. We each want to direct our own movie, even if it's only a life unfilmed. We want to be in control of our lives, make them happy and more interesting, and seeing it on film helps us do that, as does controlling our music and blogging.
Anyway, I think the more interesting question is; what is the line (intervision) between life and art? Where do they merge and blur? What happens when you can't tell which is which? For example, you have more and more celebrities doing reality shows. First Nick and Jessica, who are omnibranding themselves into the well-overplayed. Next up, you guessed it the Ashlee Simpson lip-synch show. It's already on the air.
There's more rock reality, a step behind American Idol. There is The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliot where Miss Hip Hop Pop, certainly an inspiration herself, will mentor a group of aspiring singers. I'd like to see a little record insider expose but w/ Madonna popping in it could be label propaganda for all I know... after all, Idol is. They bust their fucking butts on that show for the big prize, that glorious record deal. Well yeah, when you have a hit TV show, cross branding, getting these kids familiar with the public, yeah, they'll be successful, only because they sell a few million records if they win a top spot. Then, they've hopefully got some control. You want to guess what those initial record deals with Kelly Clarkson and Rueben Studdard, amazing voices, look like? Let's just say they are looking for hinterland singers for a reason.
Another show in the works, which I bet will be another Burnett hit is Rock Star featuring the surviving members of INXS ( a killer group!) looking for Hutchence's replacement. As I mentioned in my Elton post, the bespectacled one is behind a scripted sit-com roughly imitating his life. So, what's real and what's not? The dramas, dramadies, and comedies mimic real lives while the reality players, like survivors Jerry Manthey and Johnny Fairplay, not to mention Omarosa, feel they are playing roles on these reality shows. They say, "hey, that's not really me, it's a character the producers had me play". Anyway, you can start getting into some pretty deep philosophical stuff here. What's real to me is humanity and all the frailties that not only pervade mankind but all it's great dramas from the Bible to Shakespeare, who said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Feelings are real.
And soon each player will have their own blogspot, then their own fulfilled identity and voice, and then their own audio/visually incredible website and then their own personal Steadman Graham, the guy who branded Oprah into being the first multimedia omnibranded black billionaire. Seriously, the guy wrote a book about branding. Doesn't have to be Pepsi people.... it's you! How did Oprah get that billion? By being Oprah fucking Winfrey, just being herself, with an incredible voice and vision. Very real.
So, what's the next step for reality television? Well, if I wasn't so naive and protected by extremely stringent copyright laws and personally, so forthcoming, I wouldn't put this out there but here it is. We have what Mark Burnett calls unscripted dramas, but each person is at least ostensibly, themselves. We also have dramas, where actors pretend to be other characters and read a script. But what about a blend. A show where you have the "cast" come in and be real to their characters, but there is no script, they are improvising, however, not as real people, as characters. It's almost like a game, and very fun for them, it can be filmed to look as good as any reality show. It's like a soap opera without a script.
And what does the creator do? I mean, there's no director, no writer...just a creator (hope I'm not getting too spiritual here). Well, the creator creates the characters and perhaps a story, or does the story tell itself in the characters? Anyway, when this film comes out, and, believe me, I'll keep you posted...it will be, I guess, a hopefully well-improvised and well-acted, produced and reproduced recreation of a story, of my life, which came before the art, but... not really, because it will be fresh and new and changing and provide even more insight. So, I guess, in the end, the art does come first... unless you're Oprah ...who became her art.
The bigger question... what is real. We can make movies, but we can never make our lives come out like the movies. We can control our music, but not our lives, not reality. We're not gods, even the Googlionnaires. We can't control others, or our own thoughts or passions sometimes. We're not omniscient. We can never really know what others are thinking. Boy did I learn that one the hard way, living with one well-hidden for too long. But, if we're smart and attentive... if we care about being real, then at least we can be in touch with ourselves, and feel what we really feel, and be honest enough to be that, share that and not flinch. Be your authentic self, the good, bad and the ugly. Accept it, forgive it, be it. That, to me, is being real.
We can all handle reality now, we have more exposure, more vocabulary, hell, we've got Dr. Phil. How fucking real is that? The guy goes into these devastated families, teen pregnancies, etc. and actually turns them around as a psychologist, giving all sorts of external high-priced help. His son has a show where he takes a family and literally, with a full team of people, renovates their home and their lives, helping them quit drugs & other bad habits, teaches them to be real and respectful of each other. It's even more amazing than the Nanny.
In my view, when it comes to media. It's not about how realistically it's presented, it's about the message and where it can take us. If, by watching reality on TV in our living rooms, instead of watching each other live in our living rooms, we can learn lessons on how to feel and express our feelings constructively and how to live better and be better, then and only then is it valuable. And I have. I learned a lot of business skills on the Apprentice. I sure as hell wish I'd known to strongly advocate for yourself instead of taking the approach of receptivity toward critique. I've seen more up close how people truly are small and petty and insecure and think primarily of their own stake in any situation. I've seen how much unhappiness that can bring people, and why Buddah taught that ego limits us. In seeing others share our plight, we forgive ourselves, and hopefully do better. Why do we learn it better, when it's once removed.... on TV instead of in our office, or home? We can't see it when it's too close, we're too invested, we're too concerned about losing control.
So, bring on the reality, baby. As was presaged in Network, reality TV is here to stay and is spreading like wildfire throughout the real world.... whatever the hell that is.
First, there were just these poorly acted and recreated versions of reality...early radio, movies, TV... don't they all seem so phony now? We were not ready to demonstrate or view real life on our airwaves, nor could we act as convincingly as we do today. As time went on, cameras & cassettes became more prevalent, people got more and more used to being filmed and at the same time were watching more realistic dramas & early reality TV: game shows, talk shows etc. We were also filming lots of reality, as early as the 50's....only it was called home movies. And the last thing we wanted on there was our arguments (how little we knew), we wanted white glove waves from happy holidays. There was a huge gulf between the home movie "reality" and Hollywood... that is changing, in film/TV... and in music.
Now everyone is media savvy and ready to be filmed. Everyone is ready to be real, at least a fake TV version of real. Over a million people applied to be the next Apprentice. Even these Survivors from Appalachia are smooth, it's unreal, er, real... too real. At the same time more and more of us keep signing up to the big hive brain here and will soon have their very own, free, easy to use, anonymous if they like, site. So, in a sense we're all becoming public actors in this human drama and that comment of Andy Warhol's about each of us having 15 minutes (plus a website) of fame won't seem like such a joke. Mark Burnett commented that his shows are not reality shows but unscripted dramas, and he's right. His shows are not real situations, though more and more reality is going into the home.
I saw one where this British nanny went into this real home, with a real family. The basically loving Dad was getting out of control and getting violent with the kids. Somehow she actually seemed to break through to this guy and it really looked like the situation was turned around. Wife Swap also goes into these real homes. Really, the permutations are endless. I wouldn't want to be a scriptwriter any more than I'd want to be working at a label right now. Even in film, as I discussed in the Super-Size post, it's documentaries on the rise. Next up for scrutiny is the drug industry. Sicko, Moore's next film, due out in two years already has big drug reaching for the meds. They are sending around internal memos telling everyone to watch out.
People now want it real.... and close to home. Virtual reality is in tech too, from our games to our home tours.... more reality, more interest, more interaction (more Intervision.. I had to) more control. We increasingly want to become the director, the actor, the artist, the creator. We each want to direct our own movie, even if it's only a life unfilmed. We want to be in control of our lives, make them happy and more interesting, and seeing it on film helps us do that, as does controlling our music and blogging.
Anyway, I think the more interesting question is; what is the line (intervision) between life and art? Where do they merge and blur? What happens when you can't tell which is which? For example, you have more and more celebrities doing reality shows. First Nick and Jessica, who are omnibranding themselves into the well-overplayed. Next up, you guessed it the Ashlee Simpson lip-synch show. It's already on the air.
There's more rock reality, a step behind American Idol. There is The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliot where Miss Hip Hop Pop, certainly an inspiration herself, will mentor a group of aspiring singers. I'd like to see a little record insider expose but w/ Madonna popping in it could be label propaganda for all I know... after all, Idol is. They bust their fucking butts on that show for the big prize, that glorious record deal. Well yeah, when you have a hit TV show, cross branding, getting these kids familiar with the public, yeah, they'll be successful, only because they sell a few million records if they win a top spot. Then, they've hopefully got some control. You want to guess what those initial record deals with Kelly Clarkson and Rueben Studdard, amazing voices, look like? Let's just say they are looking for hinterland singers for a reason.
Another show in the works, which I bet will be another Burnett hit is Rock Star featuring the surviving members of INXS ( a killer group!) looking for Hutchence's replacement. As I mentioned in my Elton post, the bespectacled one is behind a scripted sit-com roughly imitating his life. So, what's real and what's not? The dramas, dramadies, and comedies mimic real lives while the reality players, like survivors Jerry Manthey and Johnny Fairplay, not to mention Omarosa, feel they are playing roles on these reality shows. They say, "hey, that's not really me, it's a character the producers had me play". Anyway, you can start getting into some pretty deep philosophical stuff here. What's real to me is humanity and all the frailties that not only pervade mankind but all it's great dramas from the Bible to Shakespeare, who said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Feelings are real.
And soon each player will have their own blogspot, then their own fulfilled identity and voice, and then their own audio/visually incredible website and then their own personal Steadman Graham, the guy who branded Oprah into being the first multimedia omnibranded black billionaire. Seriously, the guy wrote a book about branding. Doesn't have to be Pepsi people.... it's you! How did Oprah get that billion? By being Oprah fucking Winfrey, just being herself, with an incredible voice and vision. Very real.
So, what's the next step for reality television? Well, if I wasn't so naive and protected by extremely stringent copyright laws and personally, so forthcoming, I wouldn't put this out there but here it is. We have what Mark Burnett calls unscripted dramas, but each person is at least ostensibly, themselves. We also have dramas, where actors pretend to be other characters and read a script. But what about a blend. A show where you have the "cast" come in and be real to their characters, but there is no script, they are improvising, however, not as real people, as characters. It's almost like a game, and very fun for them, it can be filmed to look as good as any reality show. It's like a soap opera without a script.
And what does the creator do? I mean, there's no director, no writer...just a creator (hope I'm not getting too spiritual here). Well, the creator creates the characters and perhaps a story, or does the story tell itself in the characters? Anyway, when this film comes out, and, believe me, I'll keep you posted...it will be, I guess, a hopefully well-improvised and well-acted, produced and reproduced recreation of a story, of my life, which came before the art, but... not really, because it will be fresh and new and changing and provide even more insight. So, I guess, in the end, the art does come first... unless you're Oprah ...who became her art.
The bigger question... what is real. We can make movies, but we can never make our lives come out like the movies. We can control our music, but not our lives, not reality. We're not gods, even the Googlionnaires. We can't control others, or our own thoughts or passions sometimes. We're not omniscient. We can never really know what others are thinking. Boy did I learn that one the hard way, living with one well-hidden for too long. But, if we're smart and attentive... if we care about being real, then at least we can be in touch with ourselves, and feel what we really feel, and be honest enough to be that, share that and not flinch. Be your authentic self, the good, bad and the ugly. Accept it, forgive it, be it. That, to me, is being real.
We can all handle reality now, we have more exposure, more vocabulary, hell, we've got Dr. Phil. How fucking real is that? The guy goes into these devastated families, teen pregnancies, etc. and actually turns them around as a psychologist, giving all sorts of external high-priced help. His son has a show where he takes a family and literally, with a full team of people, renovates their home and their lives, helping them quit drugs & other bad habits, teaches them to be real and respectful of each other. It's even more amazing than the Nanny.
In my view, when it comes to media. It's not about how realistically it's presented, it's about the message and where it can take us. If, by watching reality on TV in our living rooms, instead of watching each other live in our living rooms, we can learn lessons on how to feel and express our feelings constructively and how to live better and be better, then and only then is it valuable. And I have. I learned a lot of business skills on the Apprentice. I sure as hell wish I'd known to strongly advocate for yourself instead of taking the approach of receptivity toward critique. I've seen more up close how people truly are small and petty and insecure and think primarily of their own stake in any situation. I've seen how much unhappiness that can bring people, and why Buddah taught that ego limits us. In seeing others share our plight, we forgive ourselves, and hopefully do better. Why do we learn it better, when it's once removed.... on TV instead of in our office, or home? We can't see it when it's too close, we're too invested, we're too concerned about losing control.
So, bring on the reality, baby. As was presaged in Network, reality TV is here to stay and is spreading like wildfire throughout the real world.... whatever the hell that is.
posted by Intervision at 6:06 AM
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