In advertising, the “creative” department makes the ads. Distinct from agency account executives (who service the client) or agency media buyers (who buy media time and space), the “creatives” are responsible for generating the advertising concept and executing it textually and visually. Through the first half of the twentieth century, copywriting departments produced text (“copy”), often guided by account executives, and art departments illustrated it. Historically, what is now called the creative was regarded as a service supplemental to media buying.

Before the 1960s, hard sell advertising predominated. Hard sell’s repetitive, annoying, grating “reasons why” to buy was the favored strategy when advertisers believed consumers were “stupid” and the market an undifferentiated mass. By the 1960s, however, advertisers realized that consumers could be sophisticated and that markets are varied and segmented. Advertisers turned to the strategies of subtle, humorous, high concept, and emotionally appealing soft sell advertising. Doyle Dane Bernbach’s 1960s Volkswagen ads, a humorous critique of 1950s hard sell automobile advertising, became the iconographic campaign of the “Creative Revolution.” Copywriters such as Bill Bernbach championed the idea that advertising is an art, not a science.

The post-1960s emphasis on creativity solves a problem for the ad industry. Despite the scientistic behaviorism dominating market research, advertisers cannot predict which advertising appeals will resonate with consumers. So if advertising is not a science but an art, creative advertising may succeed where data-driven advertising may not. Hence, since the 1960s the creatives have rhetorically positioned themselves not as instrumentalists pursuing selling goals but as artists expressing authentic meaning because only though artistry will advertising succeed in touching and moving consumers.

As depicted in The Pitch, the advertising industry is a hotbed of artistic romanticism. In each episode, two agencies meet a client, who explains a marketing problem. The agencies retreat to their offices to develop an advertising concept and a pitch to win the account. Scenes of brainstorming follow, intercut with talking heads explaining themselves directly to the camera. Finally, each agency presents its pitch and one wins the account.

Dramatic tension centers on which agency can prove they are the most creative. Their creativity, however, must be rooted in authenticity, as one agency leader explains in episode 102: “It doesn’t need to be clever, it needs to be honest.” In fact, being glib could undermine them: “We don’t want to outsmart ourselves with clever lines.”

Creative success in advertising should reflect a commitment to meaning; referring to a creative director, another explains, “He’s not in it for the power or the ego, he’s in it for the work.” Referring to careers in advertising, one man explains, “If you’re not committed, if you’re not passionate, you’re not going to be here a long time.” Passion, the byword of the creative industries, is something that cannot be learned. As one agency director explains, “You can’t teach passion, you have to hire passion.”

For one creative director, “The creative process is baring your soul.” Describing pitching to potential clients, another explains, “When you get up in front of them to present your ideas, it’s like being naked and hoping they don’t laugh at you.” Hence, whatever instrumental goal they may be working towards, such as improving the public image of a trash company or selling Subway breakfast sandwiches, these advertising makers insist on their artistic integrity, claiming “the work” is an authentic revelation of self.

The cult of romanticism, and its rhetorical strategies of passion and soulfulness, will continue to thrive in advertising because advertisers are not able to predict which ideas resonate with consumers, despite market research data. The Pitch documents the legacy of the Creative Revolution by showing proponents of creativity in advertising insisting on the value of artfulness over scientism.  Whether or not we believe that the advertising creatives featured in The Pitch believe in the authenticity of their creative work, they are certainly selling it. Hard.

1. Happy Mother’s Day! Nielsen reports that among American moms, half have smartphones, and they love Facebook and Pinterest (Twitter, not so much). For the general US population, mobile data access is a big area of growth, while check-in apps are still mostly niche. In India, women use their phones more for talking and texting, whereas men do more web browsing.

2. “More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years,” tweets a YouTube exec, with 60 hours of video uploaded every minute. Now there’s word that YouTube could add a premium subscription service. But with YouTube getting so vast, some are finding smaller competitors offer a better platform, especially for mobile sharing.

3. Ebay and Wal-Mart are looking to develop their own search engines to battle against Google’s dominance, right as a Google report insists that search engines have First Amendment rights, which would mean Google could pick and choose which content and in what order to load up for a search reply. But Google isn’t allowed to violate internet privacy the way it apparently did by hacking into Safari to track users. Microsoft might also be cheating by making Internet Explorer the only browser that will work right on the upcoming Windows RT system.

4. While the documentary has a storied history in Canada, filmmakers are having a hard time finding funding for documentaries today thanks to federal cuts. If they can dig up an extra $20,000 or so from someplace, those filmmakers can get their films into the DocuWeeks program, which will still be a conduit to Oscar nominations, over Michael Moore’s objections.

5. News out of the National Association of Theatre Owners CinemaCon convention included 20^th Century Fox planning to end 35mm film distribution next year, which will have complex consequences. Plus all manner of new theatrical magic is on its way, including lasers. A few theater chains are reporting a surge in attendance right now, while the AMC chain might be looking to sell to China.

6. Overall home entertainment spending is up for the first time in awhile, though that’s mostly thanks to digital streaming and Blu-ray, and not DVDs and rental stores, of course. Blu-ray might decline too once people realize they’ll now have to sit through two government warnings before getting to the movie.

7. Microsoft has invested in the Nook, which is now worth more than Barnes & Noble itself. B&N is trying to find ways to reconcile physical and online book sales without killing off the former, as possibilities for survival and the future design of physical books are up for speculation.

8. April was a bad month for video game sales, and while EA did well last year, investors didn’t like its weak outlook for this year. EA has big development plans, though its big investment in social gaming company Playfish hasn’t paid off yet, as a CityVille competitor has flopped.

9. Rovio had a huge year in 2011, thanks of course to Angry Birds and its one billion downloads, and the company is hoping to replicate that success with the new Amazing Alex. Zynga is also trying to recapture magic with a Farmville sequel. Zynga’s acquisition of Draw Something’s company doesn’t seem to be working out, but its cloud technology is apparently to be envied.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: Renewals/Cancellations/ Pickups, Request for Family Programming, Dish Ad Skipper, Aereo Warning, HBO No, TV Everywhere Trademark Fight, Dish Dropping AMC?, Just Cancel, Kutcher Ad Pulled, Online & TV Ad Buys, Nielsen on Viewing, Bloomberg Wins, Hulu Authentication Coming?, BSkyB Defending Itself, Murdoch Criticism, TV & Diversity.

The Hunger Games

Transmedia storytelling has become a familiar element of film and television promotion, especially for media properties incorporating fantasy and scifi elements (currently, transmedia campaigns are underway for Prometheus, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises). While many fans readily engage with official promotional material, they also create their own media. Transmedia produced for THG shows how multifaceted and sometimes conflicting interests among fans and marketing departments arise out of shared media platforms and a shared storyworld.

With the widespread use of Twitter and Tumblr, official and fan-produced transmedia increasingly share the same media spaces. Both fans and those who address fans through marketing use these spaces because they make sharing media easy. Indeed, sharing images and videos via reblogging is perhaps Tumblr’s core functionality and defining characteristic. Via reblogging and retweeting, fans spread news about the latest part of a marketing campaign faster and wider than a print ad, poster, or traditional preview could. Most importantly, reblogging turns officially produced transmedia into a personalized message: fans feel they receive an update about THG from a fellow fan, not from a studio’s marketing department. Or at least this is the perception that marketing departments try to create.

It is important to recognize that both Lionsgate’s marketing department and fans face constraints when producing transmedia for THG. Official transmedia’s main purpose is twofold: create interest in THG and persuade as many people as possible to purchase a ticket to see the film. In order to create this investment, official transmedia has to offer material about the world of THG that appears new and exciting to fans; at the same time, this material cannot give away too many details about the film itself. This is particularly crucial for a book adaptation because many fans are familiar with the story and are most interested in seeing how this story has been translated to the screen. In addition, official transmedia cannot stray too far from “canon.” It has to remain faithful to the story moviegoers will see. Working within these constraints leads to transmedia elements that focus on exploring places and settings rather than on expanding plot or characterizations.

Capital Couture announces the winner of its stylist contest. Fans reblog and respond.

Two core elements of THG transmedia campaign, namely the Capitol Couture Tumblr and the related virtual tour of the Capitol, focus on the culture of Panem’s premiere city. Both are perfect examples of official transmedia that provide new insights about the world of THG without spoiling the film or diverging from Collins’ canon. While the Capitol is an important location in THG‘s storyworld, neither the film nor the novel spend much time there. Offering a deeper insight into the city expands fans’ understanding of Panem without giving too much away. At the same time, a campaign that centers on the people and culture responsible for the terror of the Hunger Games is also a risky strategy. Fans might not have been willing to engage with this aspect of the book(s) and film. But the Capitol also appears as a decadent and alluring place in Collins’ universe, which makes it an interesting place to see even if one disagrees with its ideology.

Additionally, I would argue, fans can easily find the more sympathetic people and places of THG in fan-produced transmedia. Free from the constraints of avoiding spoilers and adhering to canon, most fanfiction and fanart delve into the lives of central characters, envisioning moments before, during, and after canon events. Fan creations spread across the same platforms as official transmedia: a new interpretation of a character might emerge in a tweet, turn into a story posted on a blog, and generate accompanying fanart on Tumblr.

Screenshot of the original Panem October ARG

Of course fans also face constraints: their creations are not officially sanctioned and often exist in a legal gray area, and they don’t usually have access to the resources that fuel official transmedia such as the Capitol tour. Frequently, these divergent sets of constraints in official and fan-produced transmedia enable new and largely complementary perspectives on the world of THG. This co-existence is less harmonious when fan productions appear too “official,” as was the case with Panem October, a fan-authored ARG that also revolved around a “citizens of Panem” theme. An early iteration, launched in spring 2011, was shut down by Lionsgate. The second version appeared simultaneously with the official ARG last fall. Thanks to fannish word-of-mouth, participation in Panem October grew to 50,000. Despite its popularity, the creator announced last December that he was abandoning the ARG to pursue other projects. It is unclear whether or not increasing pressure by Lionsgate motivated this decision.

Screenshot of Panem October, version two, on the left, and the official ARG on the right.

It is tempting to draw parallels between Panem October and THG trilogy’s overall story (a temptation the pursuit of which I leave to someone else). Regardless, it seems apparent to me that fan enthusiasm is most welcome when it stays within officially endorsed boundaries—as participation in the official THG ARG—and is tolerated as long as its focus does not encroach on commercially significant territory.

“you think it all breaks down into symbolism and structures and hints and clues”

“no, batman, that’s just wikipedia“

This exchange seems to sum up the long-running dynamic between Joker and Batman: between queer comedian and straight man, between raw energy and controlling logic, between chaos and reason. ‘Every single time I try to think outside his toybox,’ Joker complains, ‘he builds a new box around me.’

Control, reason, rationality and logic: these are Batman’s strengths, but also his weaknesses. He tries to make sense of the world, to analyse his adversaries, but as Alfred says of Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, ‘some men just want to watch the world burn’; and Joker’s punning, playful mind, skipping down unpredictable tracks and short circuits, sends a flaming fire truck into Batman’s path – literally, a truck on fire. It’s the kind of twist Batman, constrained by his personal rules, could never have seen coming.

Joker is carnival, anarchy, everywhere and nowhere. When we first see him in The Dark Knight he’s one of a gang of clowns, indistinguishable beneath their masks; but when we, and Batman, search for him later, he’s stripped off his mask and make-up and slipped inconspicuously into a parade of policemen. If Batman represents Wikipedia – the drive for continuity, canon and control – Joker is the internet army of Anonymous. When the cops catch him, they find ‘nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. Clothing is custom, no labels.  No name, no other alias.’

Joker, from his first appearance in 1940, through Frank Miller’s Year One and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, has always been associated with poison. The Dark Knight’s promotional campaign picked up on that toxic theme through viral marketing, spreading Joker’s aesthetic through scribbled graffiti over the official posters, sabotaging, subverting and queering the original images. It was a powerful enough viral to cross from fictional politics – the campaign for DA Harvey Dent – into the real world – the Jokerised pictures of Barack Obama. The approach implied a grassroots, amateur army of vandals, a concept amplified and emphasised through the next phase of the ARG, which sent groups of fans on treasure hunts around real-world locations. Crucially, these fans weren’t being recruited into Batman’s personal army, but enlisted as Joker’s accomplices.  The hivemind, the collective intelligence of the internet – the medium that should, in theory, have been ideally suited to the Dark Knight’s detection and logical speculation – was being harnessed in the name of carnival, clowning, anarchy and play.

In May 2011, a similar campaign kicked in for Nolan’s concluding film, The Dark Knight Rises. Fan voices were compiled into a mob chant, which later became the soundtrack to Batman’s newest antagonist, Bane. The chant, run through an audio analyser – again, a typically Batman device, subverted for different ends – revealed a hashtag which, when tweeted, in turn revealed a piece of a mosaic picture. Collectively, they added up into the first image of Bane.

If Batman is Wikipedia and Joker is Anonymous, Bane is Twitter: the voice of the crowd, the voice of the megaphone and mic check, the voice of the people. Unlike Joker, his voice threatens a new form of organisation rather than destructive anarchy. His is the spirit of the Arab Spring and Occupy; not just disorder and disruption, but the drive for a new system. Bane is, like Joker, not so much a person as a movement. His many-voiced chant is the sound of Batman losing Gotham.

One man cannot fight a crowd, any more than traditional encyclopedia pages can definitively contain internet anarchy and collective digital intelligence.

But Batman is not just a man, and Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia.

Wikipedia seeks to contain, but its definitions are elastic, its edits almost-invisible, its authors collective. Like comic book continuity and canon, it claims to offer authoritative information, but it shifts constantly, always rewriting and hiding the traces of its earlier versions. Batman may present himself as uptight, rule-bound and static, but he is himself dynamic; to keep up with Joker, to keep that anarchic energy controlled, he has to dance, dodge and detour, drawing new boxes around an ever-moving enemy.

And Batman may present himself as the ‘cure’ for crime’s poison, but he’s also a poison. He brought the costumed clowns and grotesque villains to Gotham; in a sense, he created them. He’s an urban legend, a bogeyman, a virus. As Bruce Wayne is constructed through society gossip, Batman is created via street rumour. Batman is discourse. Batman is myth.

That’s what he has to realise, accept and embrace. He defeats Joker only by becoming a form of poison, by fighting fire with fire – by infringing civil liberties, inflicting his own terror on Gotham, and exiling himself as an outcast. In early May 2012, the next stage of the Dark Knight Rises campaign sent fans on another treasure hunt. This time, they weren’t looking for Joker clues, but Bat-symbols: not corporate marques or brand icons, but the kind of quick, roughly-chalked sign a rebel or subversive might scratch up in passing, on the run. This is Batman as graffiti, Batman as people’s champion; Batman as the exile called back to his city by an army of followers.

The Bat-symbols, scattered all over the world, were quickly found and tweeted, and in turn revealed the newest trailer, frame by frame. The collective aesthetic, where thousands of people contribute a single piece that adds up to a complete picture, had finally – after its appropriation by Joker and Bane – been harnessed in Batman’s name.

No movie is ‘about’ one thing, and Nolan’s are no exception. But a clear message, at this stage, rises from the Dark Knight paratexts. Batman cannot survive as a single, fixed figure. Batman is a virus, a folk hero, an icon, an infection. He belongs to the people. He belongs to us. He survives, persists and rises only by remaining flexible and fluid, by embracing his own mosaic complexity, by accepting the fragmentation of his own identity, and allowing himself to split into a multitude of symbols that add up into a complete picture: a man of many parts, a symbol sketched by many hands.

For more on The Dark Knight Rises and ‘Occupy Gotham,’ see my piece on Huffington Post UK here.

In the case of a series like Netflix’s Lilyhammer, the traditional television distribution model is largely absent: while still episodic, therefore taking the form we most commonly associated with television, the Norwegian co-production was released as a complete season on the streaming service, and streams without commercial interruption.

However, in the case of Hulu’s Battleground the similarities with television outweigh the differences. Debuting in February, a new episode of the show has been released each week, with each episode supported by ad breaks built into the program. The show is a half-hour comedy series, working with the mockumentary format commonly associated with series like The Office, and features an extended ensemble cast. In the buildup to the series premiere, Hulu held a panel at the annual Television Critics’ Association Press Tour in January, allowing creator JD Walsh and the cast to speak about the show to gathered panelists. It was also, unlike Lilyhammer, not a co-production, created exclusively to stream on Hulu.

Regardless of these factors, Battleground has languished in relative television obscurity despite delivering what I would categorize as a solid first season (which concludes with the finale, premiering tomorrow on Hulu). The show, which follows a fictional senate race in Wisconsin, has grown from its pilot based on a strong lead performance by Jay Hayden, some compelling work by the supporting cast (including a guest turn from Ray Wise), and a solid use of the emotional swings of political campaigns to drive its narrative. Additionally, the show has shown a willingness to experiment: its tenth episode told a flashback story from the perspective of an MTV Real Life-esque documentary, a bold aesthetic decision that proved inconsistent in its execution but suggested a formal complexity one might not expect from a half-hour comedy. Also, the decision to film on location in Madison is both incredibly entertaining as a resident of the city and intriguing as someone who is studying the strategic use of location shooting to highlight categories of place – the use of the local ABC affiliate (WKOW) for news coverage, in particular, demonstrates a level of verisimilitude someone outside of Madison might not recognize.

However, as Cory Barker, Wes Ambrecht, and Andrew Rabin pointed out in a recent roundtable discussion, no one is talking about any of this. While it’s unclear how many people are watching Battleground (although Hulu’s website shows it ranked in as 78^th most popular series on Hulu over the past month), the absence of any conversation within critical circles has proven particularly damning. Hulu might have held a panel at TCA, but the panel was reportedly poorly attended; while multiple outlets reviewed Battleground when it first premiered (including The New York Times and The A.V. Club), none of the critics or sites which focus on weekly episodic criticism chose to continue reviewing it week-to-week (despite at least The A.V. Club having precedent with their coverage of U.K. import Misfits based on its Hulu distribution cycle), and the New York Times review is focused more on the novelty of Hulu and Netflix creating original content than on the content itself. The show was so low on the radar that it doesn’t even have a Metacritic page, unlike Lilyhammer which at least garnered enough reviews to merit a page and a score.

The reasons for this are not something we could prove scientifically, as most outlets make subjective decisions on what they do and do not cover. On the one hand, the show’s low viewership would create less financial imperative for a site like The A.V. Club to hire a writer to cover the series week-to-week; however, in other instances where staff critics like HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall have greater editorial control, the decision may have simply come down to a lack of time (understandable during a busy midseason dominated by shows such as Justified, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones, and cited by Sepinwall as his reason for skipping the premiere) or a lack of interest (which is, of course, a matter of opinion).

These are the same challenges that face any show classified as a sleeper hit – or the “best show you’re not watching” as the above roundtable refers to it – but in many ways one would expect it to be easier for Battleground to gain traction: with all back episodes available to stream for free, word of mouth should more easily translate into viewers (including critics) catching up. However, streaming also presents barriers: Sepinwall notes he prefers to avoid reviewing streaming material on a laptop, and I’ll admit that my own efforts to catch up would have been far more pleasant if I hadn’t been tied to my computer.

While Hulu has made no official statement about the show’s future, the show’s lack of traction raises a number of challenges for the network’s move into original programming. Does the network need to be more active in reaching out to critics by mailing them DVD screeners to review? Or do they perhaps need to be more bullish in promoting the series, buying airspace during network broadcasts of similar series (like The Office, for example, in the case of Battleground) or actually using their minimal social media presence more strategically? Or is this simply a lesson that shows featuring no stars and limited industrial pedigree are doomed to fail when airing in a marginalized streaming environment against a broad range of broadcast and cable competition, pushing Hulu towards more star-oriented programming like Netflix’s acquisition new episodes of Arrested Development?

I’d hate to see this final lesson be the takeaway here, but original streaming programming, like love, appears to be a battlefield.

Chuck Klosterman is a tricky character for a cultural studies professor such as myself.  On the one hand, it’s fantastic that there is someone out there getting paid really well to make smart observations about popular culture.  On the other, it’s disappointing that it’s not me.  On a third, slightly more serious hand, Chuck brings into sharp relief a difficulty embedded in the academic field of cultural studies.

As a discipline, cultural studies is committed to the breaking down of boundaries between high and low culture.  It is founded on the principle of blurring the binaries that can so easily allow taste preferences to serve as proxies for the politics of privilege.  And yet, at the same time, the structure of the profession of professing requires the maintenance of a variety of sharp borders that seem to stand in direct opposition to these commitments.  A journal is either peer-reviewed or it is not.  A conference, generally, is either properly academic or it is something else.

Klosterman’s work not only blurs things that us cultural studies professors celebrate by taking “low” culture seriously, but also in a way that inevitably makes us nervous.  We are employed to talk about popular culture because an institutional vetting process has branded our thoughts, opinions and research as serious.  Everyone has thoughts about The Hunger Games.  Students pay to hear mine because I’ve persuaded a variety of well-regarded universities and journals that my opinion is worth hearing.  Klosterman subverts that process, going instead to the court of public consumption for approval.  His work is taken relatively seriously because, well, lots of people seem to enjoy taking it relatively seriously.  For some in our field, this may feel like a threat.

Of course, it shouldn’t.  Culture can and should be interrogated from a variety of approaches and methodologies.  And we should be happy to have our categories pushed, prodded and occasionally penetrated by authors like Klosterman, who writes with an honest interest in understanding the workings of popular culture.   His approach to criticism threatens our binaries in just the right way, forcing us to question our goals and limitations as scholars and cultural critics. It offers an object, ideally one among many, against which to compare the work being produced by institutionalized cultural studies.  It’s a chance to reflect on what’s we like about the field and what might bear improving.  For example, we could, perhaps, write a bit more lucidly and, as much as it will hurt, be a bit more considerate with the use of jargon.  We could even try to use a few fewer commas.

The discussion between me, Klosterman and Seth Vannatta posted here addresses some of the issues discussed above and whole bunch of other stuff as well.  It is also, I warn, a bit of a commercial for Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy: The Real and the Cereal, available at all the obvious on and offline places you might think it would be.

Either by good luck or design, Veep hit the airways just as the political discussion was shifting from the Republican primary race to speculation about who Mitt Romney would select as a running mate. A Google news search for the word “veep” leads to a nearly equal selection of stories about the HBO series and Romney’s “veepstakes,” certainly an enviable position for HBO. Far from simply a matter of timeliness, the extent to which the discussions of Romney’s potential running mates focus on optics, personal politics and risk management undermines the claims of the chorus of political pundits declaring Veep unrepresentative of the actual political environment. While on its surface Veep is standard bawdy sitcom fare, with the politics taking backseat to the prat falls, underneath this surface a bitter truth about politics sits quietly.

Much of Veep focuses on exceptionally small things as opposed to the the earth-shattering, life changing politics of  the New Deal or a new tax cut, more interested in crisis management and small-scale political maneuvering. While the politics of photo-ops, for example, lack the gravitas of The West Wing or even the similarly comedic Battleground, it is nonetheless a very real part of politics in the age of 24 hour news. Even as Veep’s first episode, which focuses largely on the fallout of an offensive tweet and subsequent joke, was criticized for being unrealistic and overly cynical, those critics concurrently rehashed the firestorm surrounding a controversial remark from commentator Hillary Rosen. Rosen’s comment about Ann Romney’s lack of work history had no policy effects of any kind and had been retracted by Rosen by the time the Sunday shows devoted significant portions of their program to discussing it. Despite pious claims to the contrary, optics and the trivial are—for better or worse—a significant part of American political life; the discomfort brought about by Veep’s skewering of this portion of American politics has perhaps more relevance than solemn programs which deny this reality.

In fact, Veep could be seen as part of a larger trend on HBO towards more realist, politically or socially relevant programming. Having found success with the fantastic with programs like True Blood and Game of Thrones, made-for-television movie Game Change ushered in a season of politically themed fictional programming on HBO. Game Change, chronicling the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, may have drawn extensive criticism from—largely Republican—commentators, but it also was seen by 3.6 million viewers during its first weekend, making it the highest-rated original movie on HBO in nearly a decade. With Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina dressed all in red in the first episode of Veep and caught in the midst of a Twitter scandal, Game Change may even have served as a stealth roll out for Veep‘s April premiere. Like Veep, Game Change is very much about the behind-the-scenes manipulations that take place in hopes of controlling political optics, and similarly speaks to American fears that behind closed doors our political figures may be bumbling, vain, and feckless.

Meanwhile, HBO is also interested in how these politics are being refracted through the media given the upcoming arrival of Aaron Sorkin’s latest behind-the-scenes drama series, Newsroom. HBO is airing the series’ trailers as bookends for each episode of Veep, suggesting that topicality rather than tone will help move audiences across these programs (and continue their HBO subscriptions through the summer). Newsroom follows a cable news program whose anchor has decided to bring honor back to the news by becoming an Edward R. Murrow-like figure that dispenses with fluff and objectionable politics for hard news. Sorkin’s television programs tend to feature characters who are imperfect but deeply honorable, and he seems to be bringing this redemptive vision not only to the frequently censured genre of cable news, but also to the increasingly invisible figure of the moderate Republican. While it is unlikely that Sorkin’s choice of a Republican for his main character will make it any more palatable to the conservatives that condemned Game Change, it could allow for a deeper and potentially more optimistic view into the divided American political system.

While Veep leaves political party up to the imagination to allow for a more resounding condemnation of American politics, Newsroom seems to deploy it to support its image of passion and redemption, of political figures who are not venal but virtuous. Whether this new crop of politically oriented programming will pay off for HBO is very much an open question, but the mixture of frustration, cynicism, and optimism that characterize this cycle of programs is quite relevant to our political time.

At the 2010 TED Global conference, an annual event that brings together innovators and entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, entertainment and design, Dr. Naif al-Mutawa gave a 20-minute presentation on The 99, his global superhero franchise inspired by Islamic archetypes. Published first as a comic book by al-Mutawa’s Kuwaiti-based Teshkeel Media Group beginning in 2006, by 2010 The 99 was well on its way to becoming a global cross-media brand designed to reach Muslims around world through theme parks, social media, merchandizing and a television series co-produced with Endemol Entertainment.

Toward the end of his talk, al-Mutawa explained his motivations and aspirations for the project while expressing frustration with a popular trend amongst some Muslim families to dress their children up as suicide bombers as a form of protest, which he linked to the absence of positive contemporary Islamic heroes for kids to emulate. Choking up slightly, al-Mutawa argued that by linking enough positive things to the Koran, Muslim children would begin to take pride in a different set of representations and embrace the shared universal values that Islam already advocates, like kindness and generosity, rather than being taught to revere its more fanatical and fringe elements. Or, as al-Mutawa explained, “an entire generation of young Muslims is growing up believing that Islam is a bad thing. They are put in a situation to defend the indefensible. My thinking was, how can I expand the boundaries of what Islam is, talk about stuff that all human beings share together, and not allow people to sabotage and hijack Islam.”

To prove his point, al-Mutawa juxtaposed two photos: one of a young girl dressed up in a white robe, a green headband bearing Hamas’ Shahada emblem, and a mock bomb belt holding a Koran in one hand and gesturing to the sky with the other. The other was photo-shopped image of the same little girl, with her headband now branded with The 99 logo and her bomb belt replaced by a t-shirt featuring a selection of The 99 superheroes. Tellingly, she is still depicted holding the Koran – as opposed to a copy of The 99 comic book – while gesturing skyward.

In al-Mutawa’s vision, The 99 is a transformative brand that normalizes Muslim youth by inaugurating them into the realm of consumer capitalism. As such, it is part of an effort to repair and redefine Islam’s reputation through branding and marketing, but also through the marketization of Islam. Or, to quote Al-Mutawa, “someone had tarnished the name of Islam, and I wanted to go in and help rebrand it.” While The 99 are marketed as new role models for children to emulate, al-Mutawa is repeatedly positioned as the ultimate prototype for the new Muslim superhero, whose entrepreneurial powers inspire new forms of investment in Islamic identity.

In some ways, al-Mutawa’s approach to repackaging and repositioning Islam for Muslims seems very much in the spirit of development paradigms that the West has been promoting for decades. He seems to be a cross between a modern-day version of Daniel Lerner’s (1958) “grocer,” enthralled with consumer capitalism and eager to spread the gospel of Western entrepreneurialism, and a proponent of Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal’s (1999) entertainment-education thesis, which argues that modernity is best taught through popular rather than didactic means. Indeed, al-Mutawa is a self-professed social entrepreneur who wants to build a better world through capitalism. He has gone on record that he believes “Entrepreneurship is based in the United States… in Kuwait, education is free and food is subsidized. The State takes care of the population, but by doing that they don’t force the population to take care of itself. That becomes the biggest impediment to entrepreneurship.” His efforts to rebrand Islam through The 99 have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, including the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Marketplace of Ideas Award and the 2009 Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award. President Obama gave al-Mutawa and The 99 a special shout out at the 2011 Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC for their super heroic work promoting tolerance. Meanwhile, Forbes Magazine recognized The 99 as one of the top twenty hot trends of 2010.

With such positive credentialing, one would think that al-Mutawa’s efforts to build The 99 into a global cross-media franchise would be welcomed as evidence that Western values are being positively inculcated in the Middle East. Yet, attempts to bring The 99 animated TV series to US audiences have been met with accusations that al-Mutawa is attempting to indoctrinate non-Muslims into Shari’a law. In 2010, The Hub acquired the US rights to The 99 animated series, which offered the brand potential access to 60 million households. Almost immediately, conservative organizations began a campaign to have the series removed, accusing it of foisting “sinister Muslim values” on non-Muslim children in an attempt to “Islamify youth.” One critic asked, “Will children learn about democracy, modernity, tolerance, Enlightenment, women’s and gay rights from these ‘Islamic’ figures?” while ignoring how US cartoons rarely offer children much insight into these issues either. Ultimately, al-Mutawa’s efforts to rebrand Islam by emphasizing the positive and pro-Western attributes of the religion were dismissed as forms of “Dawah proselytizing” by critics who insisted that The 99 should have been critical of Islam, rather than celebrating its archetypes. According to this logic, the only good Muslims are the self-hating kind. The pressure critics placed on the Hub was sufficient to cause the cable network to indefinitely postpone the series’ debut.

American resistance to The 99 reveals both the limits of consumer capitalism as a great equalizer and some of the incompatibilities of brand marketing with correcting misconceptions about Islam.

1. The Cannes Film Festival lineup is out, with heavy representation of English-language films, and the jury is also set. Meanwhile, the Tribeca Film Festival has wrapped up, with jury award and audience award winners that include a film whose Cuban actors are now seeking asylum in Miami. But Robert Levin says the big impact from Tribeca will come from its new model of digital distribution via the Tribeca Online Film Festival. And Toronto wonders, can there be too many film festivals?

2. In film production tax credit news, a British tax credit system is credited with offering a big boost to indie films, California has passed a 5-year extension, and we wait to see if Ohio deems its tax credit scheme worth renewing. We’ll also wait to see if there’s anything to the suspicion that Hollywood studios bribed the Chinese to allow them access to the Chinese film market (a deal mentioned in a previous WAYM). The SEC should also investigate to see if Russians were bribed to go see John Carter.

3. More directors are clamoring to get their films on IMAX screens, while Martin Scorsese has fallen hard for 3D, but Peter Jackson is one-upping them all by going to 48 frames per second, and even though it apparently looks crappy, Jackson says there’s no stopping it now. Some think recent indie films haven’t looked crappy enough.

4. Howard Stern’s lawsuit against Sirius XM has been dismissed, but this may not be the last we hear of it. The British will get to hear more live music, thanks to new rules that will streamline the process for small venues to book live acts. And we could soon be hearing Spotify sound just like Pandora.

5. Nintendo is struggling, so much so that they’re making video game sales overall look bad, and it might even be time for Nintendo to sell, but Nintendo thinks the Wii U and especially the 3DS will save it, with a new digital distribution strategy also offering hope for growth.

6. YouTube’s video service has turned seven years old, and for its birthday, Germany wants to give it a massive music royalty bill and demand that it better police copyrighted content, though this could mostly boil down to a negotiating tactic. A group of Hollywood studios failed in their attempt to hold an Australian internet provider responsible for piracy, but Voltage Pictures just won’t quit until they chase down every last Hurt Locker pirate. And it remains to be seen if Hollywood will go after a 92-year-old shipping bootleg DVDs to American soldiers overseas.

7. Facebook has had a drop in ad revenue this year for the first time, but it apparently doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme. After all, Facebook is nearing one billion users, over half of whom visit daily, and makes about $1.21 from each user per quarter. And yet, with 58% of its user base female, Facebook somehow hasn’t found a woman to appoint to its board of directors.

8. Apple is killing it in China with iPhone sales, and, in a fascinating story, apparently iPads can only be made in China, not due to cheap labor but to rare earth elements, which China has almost exclusive control over. Meanwhile, Microsoft is looking like the anti-Apple in the smartphone market and the consumer technology arena, but it hopes it can be all China-like in controlling Windows apps on iPads.

9. Is a Facebook “like” protected free speech? Apparently not. Is a tweet yours to own? Apparently not. Is a Tumblr with ads still a Tumblr? We’ll find out starting May 2. Will we get the internet and be able to tweet about a Tumblr we like once we’re on Mars? Maybe.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: TV & Diversity, Media Use, Political Posting Imposed, Web’s Impact on TV, Hulu Partner Out, NEA Giveth & Taketh Away, David Simon’s Blog, More News Corp Trouble, Future of TV is Broadband, Assessing CNN, The CW Online Impact, Sunday DVR Slam, Girls & Race, Girls Coverage, Hulu’s Growth.

The ultimate in camp masculinity, Eastbound and Down’s primary character is Kenny Powers (Danny McBride), a man who, after being fired from professional baseball for “juicing up,” becomes a substitute gym teacher in North Carolina. As Powers struggles to reenter the Major Leagues, the show follows his daily activities of “cruising in his Denali,” snorting cocaine at a sleazy local bar, and riding his jet-ski, “The Panty Dropper.” The HBO series illustrates this hyper-consumerist lifestyle through the character’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic one-liners, the best of which have been dubbed “powerisms.” While this term nods to the character’s last name, Kenny’s dialogue reeks of white masculine power. As cultural critics, then, we need to ask how this type of supremacist rhetoric functions in America’s “postracial” political climate.

Kenny’s overbearing white masculinity nestles securely into white mainstream media, which made Powers’ season two move to Mexico surprising. The narrative, which situated the burned-out ball player outside of his signature dominance, follows his failing cock-fighting career as his only friends (Powerism: side-kicks) abandon him when his rooster is killed. It turns out that whiteness is not so powerful when personified as an isolated white dude in Mexico. If we didn’t know better, we might think that Powers’ masculine white power had lost its sting. However, Powers soon uses his assumed racial dominance to take what he believes is rightfully his: a pitching job with The Charros. In this role, he is back on top, parading his white masculine bravado as Mexican baseball star “La Flama Blanca” and forcing his way into his girlfriend’s personal and professional life.

Fans shouldn’t have been surprised by his forceful resurgence; this is how whiteness operates in postracial America. In the U.S., the last few years have seen a slew of violently aggressive anti-immigration laws, born primarily of the fear that American white males will be swallowed up in an actual postracial (Powerism: Mexican) culture. When hegemonic masculine whiteness is challenged, it takes by force, in politics just as it does in comedy. While lawmakers like Jan Brewer and Scott Beason recoil at accusations of racism, comic hero Kenny Powers quips, “I transcend race, hombre.” And just as Kenny’s come-back campaign unapologetically entreats, “Mexicans, for once in your life get off your couch and do something,” so too have lawmakers suggested that remarks about shooting Latina/os from helicopters are harmless. In short, masculine white power, personified in Eastbound and Down and postracial America, is only interested in “making the world your bitch.”

Of course HBO does this all in the name of comedy. Kenny shoots his friend, but we laugh when he disinfects the wound with margarita mix; he casually tosses a pistol to a child in the baseball stands, and her cheerful expression is incongruously hilarious; and when Powers violently destroys a Mexican music studio, his oafishness set against a cheesy 1970s soundtrack had me rewinding my DVR to watch the sequence again. But bringing a critical eye to this type of racial and gendered violence is unsettling, especially when we consider the cultural context. Maybe in a postracial society a white dude joking about Mexican poverty, rape, and exploitation would be funny, but this is not a postracial society. The white power movement is thriving in America, and Kenny Powers is a microcosm of this backlash; when white masculine dominance is threatened, it responds violently, militaristically, and without regard to innocents in the line of fire.

Eastbound and Down will be remembered for one of the least likable characters ever written into comedy. Kenny Powers was a misogynist, homophobic white supremacist. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I laughed. I watched old episodes on HBOGo. I even bought the season 1 DVD set. It’s a funny show. And after thirty minutes of powerisms, American really does seem postracial – at least when compared to Kenny Powers’ universe. But I can’t ignore the way that Powers’ extremist white masculinity pushes the boundaries of racism, allowing us to discount everyday examples of bigoted behavior as part of the postracial bubble. There is nothing funny about white supremacy, misogyny, or homophobia, but they are ever present in our media. Maybe we’re not as postracial as we thought – all the more reason to bring a critical eye to our television screens.