Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the second installment in a two-part post, and resumes with the third point in a five-point diatribe. Part One of this two-part post appears here.

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with a battle scene that recalls a comic-book splash page. But don’t be fooled.

3. As a magnet for fandom, superhero movies violate the implicit contract between producers and consumers. At the risk of bowing to nostalgia, I point to the letters pages of 1970s Marvel comics for their evidence of fan engagement and for editors’ own discursive efforts at artistic legitimation.

A Thongor fan weighs in on Creatures on the Loose‘s letters page.

On one side, consider the hair-splitting response of one 1973 letter-writer to Marvel’s horror-fantasy series Creatures on the Loose, a fan distressed with the company’s depiction of obscure pulp-lit creation Thongor of Lemuria. (You know, THAT Thongor of Lemuria.) “Thongor just does not sound like the Thongor I know and love,” writes the aggrieved reader, Brian Earl Brown, before lavishing praise on the (soon-to-be-cancelled) series.

Fandom is of course about returns on investments of time in the form of (sub)cultural capital. Brown’s implied engagements with neo-pulp novelist Lin Carter‘s 1960s Thongor stories licenses him to judge the adaptation’s fidelity, and to weigh in subtly on transmedia style considerations (by noting the difficulty of adapting Carter’s “deceptively simple and lucid style”). Still, as purveyors of fantasy adventure, pulp fiction and comic books appear complementary textual forms, and both in the realm of low culture, hence the letter-writer’s concern with fidelity rather than legitimation.

Soon enough, though, readers and editors did take to the front lines (or at least comics’ letters pages) to argue for comics’ place in the landscape of art. Consider in this respect Marvel editors’ own sympathetic response (also in Creatures on the Loose, in early 1974) to another reader’s losing battle to legitimate his favored leisure form.

More dispatches from the id on the Creatures on the Loose letters page.

Addressing the letter-writer’s experiences of being “ridiculed, scorned, pitied” and more, Marvel’s editors note not only that “college courses in the literature of comics are springing up all over the country” but also, prophetically, that “filmmakers are studying the techniques” of then-prominent comics artists. Uh-oh.

Fast-forward 40 years, to the present. With the question of artistic legitimacy either resolved or simply abandoned—either way, think pieces about the merits of “graphic novels” appear less commonplace in the current climate than in the 1980s and 1990s heyday of Art Spiegelman‘s Maus (1991) and Joe Sacco‘s initial dispatches from war-ravaged Central Europe—mainstream comic books and their cinematic offshoots may now lack the fundamental transgressiveness that lent them vitality in the 1960s and beyond. Thanks to longstanding distribution practices, comics remain a fundamentally niche product. Recent digital-distribution initiatives notwithstanding, for the past thirty years in the U.S., serial comics have been sold only in specialty comic-book stores, limiting their readership to those people who set foot in such stores. Yet by serving up this niche commodity in adapted form to all four key quadrants of the filmgoing population, rights-holders Disney and Time Warner deplete the subcultural capital of their properties and their readerships.

4. Superhero movies relocate film-industry resources from more original material and siphon talent from richer projects. Many people involved in superhero films’ production are doing the best work they ever will, which is a compliment or insult depending on one’s judgment of the finished product.[2] Others—particularly actors given the visible evidence of their work—appear to be squandering their considerable talents. Mark Ruffalo may use his Avengers paychecks to bankroll his political activism and to appear in films that make greater demands of his craft, but his normally prolific output slows to a trickle in the Avengers films release years of 2012 and 2015.

Elizabeth Olsen shows off her casting-a-spell pose on The Daily Show.

Elizabeth Olsen delivered an impressive debut performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) but as the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch spends much of Age of Ultron frozen in a “I am casting a spell” pose (as she memorably demonstrated on a Daily Show appearance preceding the film’s release).

Scarlett Johansson has enjoyed a succession of compelling roles, but any bipedal runway model could just as well play her Black Widow character in the Iron Man and Avengers series given the role’s limited requirements. (#1: Look good in body-hugging outfit. #2: Talk sassy.) Is the sprawling Avengers franchise the price we pay to get Under the Skin (2013)? I hope not (but note to studios: please do give us another Under the Skin, even if you wouldn’t fund the first one).

Some actors—Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the X-Men films (2000-2014), and Robert Redford in last year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier—have benefitted from scripting that allows them to, in a word, act. Perhaps no one loses if Jessica Alba’s work in the 2000s Fantastic Four films (2005, 2007) prevented her from making Into the Blue 2, but certainly many people with talents in front of and behind the camera turn down other film projects in favor of the high visibility (and possible residuals) of tentpole superhero films. (Sure, I know too the scientists who could be developing the next Internet are instead hard at work on iPhone fart-simulation apps, but still.) Even those whose performance styles suit the material well can be ill-served. The Iron Man role, for example, limits Robert Downey Jr. to vocal and facial performance in support of his body double or CGI avatar’s screen image. He’s skilled at both but is capable of much more.

Age of Ultron literally gives Robert Downey Jr. little space to act.

5. Superhero movies pollute film discourse. Like Donald Trump’s Presidential candidacy, superhero movies appear a harmless diversion but actually refocus the cultural conversation in unproductive ways. As dreadful acronyms such as “MCU” and “Phase 3” (the latter meaning, “we’re determined to run this thing into the ground”) infiltrate entertainment discourse and popular consciousness, one might reasonably assume that superhero films represent some kind of high-water mark of contemporary cinema.

Many other high-calorie multiplex products occupy comparatively less intellectual real estate—the Transformers series (2007-2014), for example, does not excite viewers and commentators in the way recent superhero adaptations have done. To me, more than anything, a film such as The Avengers looks expensive. As a vehicle for directorial artistry, or acting talent, or narrative complexity—or for more expressly technical categories such as impressive cinematography, sound design and visual effects—it’s pretty unmemorable. Like most other Hollywood superhero films, its contribution to film economics is substantial, its contribution to film art is negligible, and its contribution to film culture is dare I say dispiriting.[3]

Make what you will of this lament from an aging white male who finds his cherished Rosebud replaced with a 160-horsepower Ski-Doo. And credit superhero films with managing to make even fare such as this summer’s Jurassic World—the “why not another one?” sequel to a calculated-blockbuster franchise that sprang to movie life in full bloat over two decades ago—appear fresh and original. But perhaps the violation I feel is instead resentment at receiving studio superhero behemoths at the wrong moment. After all, I thought Watchmen (2009) was one of the year’s best films—if the year was 1989. And Quentin Tarantino’s remarks in a New York magazine interview last month ring at least partly true for me:

The Black Panther’s first appearance, in a 1966 Fantastic Four issue.

I wish I didn’t have to wait until my 50s for this to be the dominant genre. Back in the ’80s, when movies sucked—I saw more movies then than I’d ever seen in my life, and the Hollywood bottom-line product was the worst it had been since the ’50s—that would have been a great time.

Still, this year, even de facto industry cheerleaders show signs of unrest. Media outlets trumpeting spotty opening-weekend performances for recent releases such as Ant-Man and Fantastic Four (both 2015) appear to exhibit exhaustion with the superhero phenomenon, and perhaps for oversized tentpole releases generally. As for me, I’ll start looking elsewhere for costumed characters onscreen, whether it’s the pleasingly ridiculous tussling models of Taylor Swift videos (de facto superheroines all, but sullying no previous creations), or better yet, the delirious art mutants who parade through Ryan Trecartin’s outlandish chamber dramas. Just keep me thousands of miles away from that Black Panther movie, because I like that character just fine in two dimensions, on yellowing newsprint.

[1] Preview of corrective coming attractions: for an international, and more level-headed, take on this trend in contemporary cinema, join us on September 24, when Nandana Bose contributes to this column with her analysis of recent Bollywood superhero films. For other recent, thoughtful takes on superhero films, head over to Deletion for its current “episode” on sci-fi blockbusters, and particularly to the entries from Liam Burke and Sean Cubitt.

[2] In this respect, I have only praise for the giant canvas afforded Sam Raimi for three Spider-Man films (2002-2007) and for Anthony and Joe Russo’s helming of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) as a 70s-style conspiracy thriller.

[3] Consult the comments section of this link for raves about The Avengers‘ rumored $260 million budget, which for many fans translates into sure-fire “epic” quality.

Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the first in a two-part post, with the conclusion appearing tomorrow.

As the 2015 summer movie season winds down, let this modest scholar now go on record as saying I hate superhero movies.[2] Clearly this is a headline-worthy news flash: another snobbish egghead rails against consumerist popular culture. Beyond trying to prove that such a view is at all novel or should matter to anyone, I have worked to develop some kind of empirically sound hypothesis, or at least a not totally argumentatively unsound one. What follows is a five-point screed (prevented by blogging convention from being a 500-point screed, though even this condensed rant may test the limits of readers’ patience). It’s no Defence of Poesy, but read on anyway.

1. Superhero movies repackage subcultural esoterica and sell it back to us in bloated, unrecognizable form. Or, speaking personally, movies such as 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, the 2013 superhero sequel Thor: The Dark World, and this year’s repackaged Fantastic Four cynically monetize my childhood objects of wonder. Did the baby boomers, I wonder, feel this way when the 1960s were endlessly repurposed for later generations’ consumption? Maybe they found themselves in a warm cocoon of familiar pop cult as the world around them evolved, both in and not in their own image. As for me, when confronted with entertainment spaces and referents repurposing youth-centric popular culture from deep in the past century, I feel I’m inhabiting an adolescent dystopia far more disturbing than anything presaged in Lord of the Flies (1954) or Wild in the Streets (1968). Message to Paramount, Columbia, Fox, Universal, Warners and Disney (and of course, Marvel Studios): please stop.

Or if not, let the rest of us submit, with or without protest. Earlier this year, Ta-Nehisi Coates, award-winning journalist and student of systemic power imbalances, gave an interview to New York magazine published in print as “The Superheroes Won.” Coates flags up comics’ familiar selling points for progressives—Marvel has long had more than zero black characters, and even a Native American X-Man for five minutes in the 1970s—but says little about the grindingly market-centric logic now animating corporate rights-holders, or the fairly small slice of the population that actually reads comic books. (Sources indicate that comic-book sales have risen in recent years though still speak chiefly for and to white men.)

On superhero comics and films, Coates does make a plea for the unmoving image, arguing that “superheroes are best imagined in comic books.” He continues:

The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much. I always feel like when I see movies, I’m a little let down by the [digital] animation. […] Avengers movies will always disappoint me. X-Men [movies] will always disappoint me. […] I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.

All the glitz of comic conventions in 1973.

I share Coates’ sentiments and would go further to address the ways this production trend infects larger constituencies, including film journalists and reviewers who labor to accommodate it. A popular coping (read: denial) strategy in this regard is to tune out corporatism in favor of ostensibly utopian fandoms. Reporting on this year’s consumer showcase Comic-Con (which not that long ago was a glamour-free used-collectibles bazaar), the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott remarks of comics and superhero culture that “What were once subcultural pursuits have conquered the mainstream.” He continues: “What was once a body of esoteric lore is now a core curriculum, and what was once a despised cult is now a church universal and triumphant.”

Would that I could join in Scott’s even-handed, or mostly celebratory, appraisal. Corporate product has undoubtedly spawned legitimate fan cultures that allow for myriad forms of self-expression and contingent identity formation. In moving comics materials from dispersed subculture to the center of a globalized monoculture, though, studios and their corporate parents dilute the artistic and political qualities that accompany subcultural production and circulation. The 2000s and 2010s wave of comic-book adaptations, particularly the as-yet inexhaustible roster of Marvel films both before and after the company’s 1999 acquisition by media giant Disney, sharply limits opportunities for creativity and imagination on the part of both producers and receivers. Ironically or not, superhero films’ outsize scales foster an inverse degree of imagination (though Dumb Drum‘s sweded trailers are pretty wonderful). Which leads into my second point…

2. Superhero movies distort the scale of their modest origins. At the time of Disney’s purchase of Marvel, Disney chief Robert Iger claimed that “Marvel’s brand and its treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach.” I don’t know if he then let out a maniacal laugh, or spoke those words in an ominous Darth Vader voice, but it sounded portentous to me. Five years later, the gifted, and highly opinionated comics writer-creator Alan Moore observed that “I found something worrying about the fact that the superhero film audience was now almost entirely composed of adults, men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties who were eagerly lining up to watch characters and situations that had been expressly created to entertain the twelve year-old boys of fifty years ago.” Moore muses further that “this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.” (An odd claim, perhaps, coming from a professed black-magic practitioner, but a notable point nonetheless.)

Moore’s charge could be leveled too at any film since the 1890s adapted from children’s stories, fairy tales, newspaper cartoons and more. Moore in this instance ignores comic books’ expanding audiences—comics were of course popular among soldiers in the 1940s and 1950s, and beginning in the second half of the 1960s, increasingly among university students and eventually graduates, to name just a few groups beyond preteen boys.

Still, his remarks indicate the degree to which a decidedly low-budget cultural form with discrete readerships became, in glossier cinematic form, not just legitimate but omnipresent. The Onion tweaked this emerging sensibility, and the increasingly recognizable figure of the Gen-X comic-book nerd, in the still-novel headline “Area Man Has Far Greater Knowledge Of Marvel Universe Than Own Family Tree” (a cautionary tale for those of us who also, like the article’s Area Man, can better gloss comics chronology than our family medical history).

Area Man’s pop-cultural literacy may now pay modest dividends in the form of semi-useless knowledge deployable in film consumption, though he may have to divest himself of any emotional attachments to familiar characters and storylines. Or for maximum outrage, he could curl up with Iron Man 3 (2013), which not only offered up the dismal cliché of a precocious orphan boy who helps our super-inventor hero get his mojo back after a first-act crisis but also tramples on the legacy of the armored character’s longest-running adversary, the Mandarin.

The Mandarin in his first appearance, in 1964.

Apparently not seeking to offend Chinese audiences with the Cold War Orientalism of the comic-book Mandarin—instead, it was superfluous scenes only appearing in the mainland-Chinese release that roiled audiences there—the filmmakers reimagine the character as a connotative Arab terrorist.

The film does not explain why this nowhere-near-Chinese foe would be called “the Mandarin,” but it matters little, as this Mandarin turns out to be nothing but a for-hire actor with no integrity. Perhaps Ben Kingsley—excuse me, Sir Ben—appreciated the meta-joke here. So much for the fiendish Mandarin as comics readers had known him, though.

Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3, styled as an Arab terrorist.

I don’t mean to suggest that textual fidelity is an essential criterion of judgment. In any case, film adaptations of comic books are not really comparable to serial comics anyway. Abundant film sequels aside, the recent wave of superhero television adaptations, such as Netflix’s atmospheric, psychologically-minded Daredevil (2015–) or the CW’s vigilante family melodrama Arrow (2013–), more closely match comics’ serial narrative form. As preconceived event movies, superhero films mirror the event comics Marvel and DC began publishing extensively in the 1960s—miniseries, giant-size issues, annuals that culminated epic serial storylines, and the like. Reviewing this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron in Sight and Sound, Kim Newman reminds us that “these get-togethers feel like comic-book annuals or crossover events,” packing the screen (or page) with minor characters and subplots (most of which take us to other films or television series for completion, or help fill out toy-store shelves with expanded merchandise lines).

Why is Age of Ultron 141 minutes long? Not only because of its closing credits (clocking in at a mere 7 ½ minutes), but also because of its padding with character subplots that will continue in later films and TV series. Why does Thor depart mid-film for a bath in mystical waters? We may never know (or need to), though the film’s editing by committee and focus group apparently played some part. Even shortened from director Joss Whedon’s over-three-hour pre-release cut, the film’s surfeit of story compels viewers to search for explanations in other Marvel franchise film and TV output, if not diverting us back to the characters’ comic-book sources.

Comics fans have tended to read annuals more out of duty than enthusiasm, hoping for resolution of protracted storylines rather than nuance and narrative depth. Multiplex patrons may approach superhero movies with the same attitude, but lacking any extended-chronology alternative aside from derivative minor-character tie-ins such as ABC’s brand-named Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–). Even this might be less objectionable than the parallel permanent-first-issue trend, with characters’ origins retold in slightly altered form with each successive reboot. (With the Fantastic Four’s 1961 first issue filmed three times since 1990 with ever-younger casts, I await 2022’s Fantastic Four Infants, with uniforms to match.)

The fundamental distortion of superhero films is one of scale. The superhero comic books of the late 1930s to early 1980s that form the basis for contemporary films (in the most recent vintage, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past adapts a 1980 storyline, and the Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in comics in 1969, though last year’s film adaptation derives from a 2008 miniseries version of the group) were produced by small groups of men (and a handful of women) laboring over drafting tables in low-rent offices or spare bedrooms.

Action scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron in comic-book splash-page style.

The comic-book Avengers in battle, as rendered by Don Heck in 1967.

Despite films’ occasional nods to comic-book compositions in action set pieces, a good deal more than the Benjaminian aura is lost when this artisanal work becomes the province of thousands of software technicians working in discrete teams on modular tasks. And back in comic-book world, Marvel now milks the long-ignored Guardians of the Galaxy characters for all they’re worth, with at least eight different spinoff comics series under way or announced. It’s hard to feel anything but cynical about this short-sighted franchise stewardship.

Return tomorrow for the gripping Part Two of this two-part post.

[1] For the record, I have given a lot of time to superheroes so can claim more than passing knowledge of the subject. If any value lies in asserting the depths of my interest, let me note that I am the proud owner of somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 comic books, including nearly all of Marvel’s 1970s output and beyond, and enough DC, Archie and indie comics to dampen my marriage prospects forever.

[2] This is not to say that certain forms of popular entertainment do not merit critical attention. I remain a proud contributor to the upcoming anthology The Many More Lives of the Batman (ed. Roberta Pearson, William Uricchio and Will Brooker, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Stimulation and repulsion apparently are not mutually exclusive.

1. Low-budget horror film The Purge is expected to come away with a $35 million opening weekend, more than ten times the film’s production budget of $3 million. The Purge grossed $17 million on Friday and was #1 at the box office this weekend. Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing opened strong as well, grossing more than any limited release since The Place Beyond the Pines.  Much Ado About Nothing is one of several recent films, including Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha and Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, shot in black-and-white.

2. News reports this week have revealed that the U.S.’s National Security Agency has been data mining from major internet and social media companies, in addition to monitoring Verizon phone records of U.S. citizens. So far, nine media companies are alleged to have cooperated in the PRISM program: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. Many have denied having any knowledge of PRISM .

3. AT&T joins DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo and a handful of other entities as potential bidders for ownership of Hulu. Reports suggest that AT&T may join with former News Corp. head Peter Chernin’s Chernin Group to purchase the company together. Bids for Hulu have reportedly ranged from $500 million to $1 billion depending on stipulations regarding content deals with the present owners of the company, Disney/ABC and News Corp.

4. A company named MiKandi produced the first pornographic app designed for Google Glass. Google responded by banning pornographic apps, defined by the company as “Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts or sexually explicit material.” On a related note, fearing that the head-mounted display technology would enable cheating and card-counting, New Jersey casinos have banned the use of Google Glass. Somewhat ironically, use of Google Glass was also restricted from a recent Google shareholders meeting.

5. A new study by the Council for Research Excellence and financed by Nielsen reveals that online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu provide the majority of mobile television consumption on smartphones and tablets. Netflix and Hulu accounted for 64% of TV watched on smartphones and 54% on tablets, while broadcast and cable network’s websites or online applications accounted for only 26% of mobile TV watching.

6. On June 6^th, American film actress Esther Williams passed away at the age of 91 in Beverly Hills. Williams was a competitive swimmer who became a MGM contract star in the 1940s. According to The New York Times, Williams was one of the top 10 box-office Hollywood stars in 1949 and 1950. Her films at MGM often involved spectacular swimming sequences, many choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

7. At Cannes, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adele – chapitre 1 & 2) won the Palme D’Or by a unanimous vote from a jury headed by Steven Spielberg. Though critics have generally responded favorably to the film, some prominent voices have criticized the film’s graphic sex scenes for reproducing, or being constructed according to, a hetero-normative male gaze. Manohla Dargis and Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, have both voiced opposition to the film’s sexual representation of the lesbian couple.

8. The penultimate episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Rains of Castamere,” shocked fans and resulted in a flurry of press about the episode’s graphic violence. Popular news outlets weighed in on the episode as one of the most violent in TV history. Author George Martin explained his reasoning behind writing the “Red Wedding” chapter in interviews.

9. Amazon Studios announced that they would produce five original series available exclusively on Amazon Prime. These include, ‘Alpha House,’ a political satire created by Garry Trudeau, starring John Goodman, and ‘Betas,’ a comedy about “young entrepreneurs attempting to make it big in techland.”

10. In Netflix-related news, the trailer for Netflix’s newest original series, ‘Orange is the New Black,’ is now available online. The series, which is about a bourgeois Brooklyn woman’s stint in a female prison, will debut on July 11 with all 13 episodes available to stream. Netflix also recently did not renew their licensing agreement with Viacom, leaving Netflix subscribers bereft of kid-friendly programs like ‘Dora the Explorer’ and ‘Spongebob Squarepants.’  In response, Amazon struck a licensing deal with Viacom for Prime Instant Video. In addition to the kid-friendly fare, Amazon also plans to make available other Viacom titles like ‘Workaholics’ and MTV’s ‘Awkward’ on Instant.

1) The Supreme Court has been busy (and not just with DOMA). The High Court handed down multiple rulings with major impact for the entertainment industries. First, the Court extended the “first sale” doctrine to content purchased overseas but resold in the US, in a case brought by Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai-born student sued for copyright infringement by Wiley & Sons when he resold textbooks purchased in Taiwan. The ruling has already spurred some in Congress to call for revisions to copyright law, with testimony from the U.S. Register of Copyrights calling for the “next great copyright act” involving clarifications and revisions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act enacted 15 years ago.

2) While the industry may have lost that case, they did come out ahead in another, as the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Comcast in an antitrust suit filed by Philadelphia-area subscribers claiming they were being overcharged. This could extend beyond the realm of television/cable providers, as the ruling impacts the ways cases can be pursued by a class group.

3) As regular WAYM readers might recall, last week News Corp and Disney were both considering buying the other out for control of Hulu. Now, reports show both sides are considering selling to a third party. Potential buyers being tossed around are investment firm Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo, and Amazon, tough no official comments have been made. So at this point, anything (or nothing) could happen.

4) In other streaming news, HBO GO, the online streaming service from HBO that is currently only available to those with a cable subscription (with the extra HBO fee), may ‘go’ broader, with HBO CEO Richard Plepler mentioning interest in teaming up directly through broadband providers. This would make HBO the “first premium cable network to bypass cable” and go directly to its Internet-based audience. This could be a big step, and a tacit admission of new competition in the form streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon.

5) This past week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report detailing the results of an “undercover shopper survey” on the enforcement of entertainment industry ratings. In an age where video games are often singled out for their impact on children, the FTC found the ESRB’s rating system and video game retailers the best, noting an 87% success rate of underage children being denied buying M-rated games. All areas found marked success, however, as box office, DVD sales, and CDs all showed improvement over the past years (See graph/report for more details).

6) The Game Developers Conference (GDC), the “world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event,” took place this past week, featuring booths, panels, and demos of the latest and greatest out of the video game industry. Although events like PAX and E3 draw larger audiences and media coverage, GDC has become another site for industry outsiders, like Disney and Warner Bros., to become more involved. Highlights include Activision’s uncanny valley-crossing graphics demo and independent game Journey taking home several awards including being the first independent to win Game of the Year.

7) Upfront season is really heating up, starting with News Corps cable network FX announcing the launch of a new sister channel, FXX (The extra X is for… I don’t know). FXX (launching in September) will specifically target a younger demographic, 18-34, and will be bolstered by moving current FX comedies It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League, as well as new comedy programming and reruns of popular shows like Sports Night and Arrested Development. Back on the FX front, network president John Landgraf also announced the acquisition of a 10-episode adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, a bid they hope puts them in competition with more premiere cable fare like HBO and AMC.

8) More from the upfront front, Participant Media announced the creation of ‘pivot’ (stylized in lower-case), a new cable network formed from their purchase of the Documentary Channel. The new channel will mostly be filled with non-fiction programming aimed at Millenials, with shows from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Meghan McCain already lined up. Participant Media is exploring options for offering the channel via broadband, trying to hook this young generation with both relevant technology and content.

9) A new report out this week from UCLA and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) revealed women and minorities are still underrepresented on television writing staffs as well as in producer roles. UCLA sociologist and the report’s author Darnell Hunt revealed that while some progress was made, it was at such a slow rate, the effects are marginal or nearly nonexistent.

10) Variety isn’t gone, but it won’t be the same. The 80-year-old Hollywood daily trade magazine published its last print edition on March 19. Variety will live on, both online in its revamped (paywall-free) website and in a new weekly magazine that debuted March 26.

And we return to The Silly Side, looking at the inherent weirdness that comes from entertainment industries:

• Montie, the cat understudy of the new Breakfast at Tiffany’s Broadway production, has been fired.
• Ashley Judd has officially announced (on Twitter) she will not be running for Senate. In related news, I, Andrew Zolides, will also not be running for Senate.
• In Jon Hamm’s penis news, Jon Hamm has spoken out (in a Rolling Stone interview) about the Internet’s obsession with his penis, calling out various blogs and tumblers devoted to… him. At any rate, Mad Men returns April 7.

From Oz the Great and Powerful – Kansas once again represented monochromatically

A small Kansas carnival, 1905: From the four corners of the earth, acts to delight, to thrill, and to mystify. There’s a fire breather, a strong man, a stilt walker. A mammoth hot-air balloon looms in the distance and beyond that clouds promise a wicked storm. A magician cowers in his wagon after a young paralyzed girl begs him to walk again. She naively believed in his powers, as did her parents and all the good, simple-minded Kansans in attendance.

A knock on the door reveals the magician’s sometimes-love, Annie, who has come to tell him of her engagement–to see if he wants her back.

“You could do a lot worse than John Gale, he’s a good man,” Oz explains. “I’m not. I’m many things, but a good man is not one of them. See, Kansas is full of good men: church-going men that get married and raise families. Men like John Gale; men like my father, who spent his whole life tilling the dirt, just to die face down in it. I don’t want that Annie; I don’t want to be a good man. I want to be a great one.”

So begins the story of Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, but its tale isn’t new. Everyone is trying to get out of Kansas, to get the heck out of Dodge [City, Kansas]; to get over the rainbow. And it’s no wonder, really, given what the pictures show.

Hollywood is baffled by Kansas and represents it as a simultaneously old-timey homeland as well as a sideshow of rural curiosities. Audiences watch their screens with wonder as Kansans willingly endure the plight of their harsh geography. These voyeurs know their visit to the prairie will be brief, and they’ll delight in retelling its banal but bewildering splendor: men tilling dirt just to die face down in it.

Kansas has become a carnival unto itself.

All black and white photography is abstract. Likewise, when Kansas is represented, monochromatic or not, it’s always an abstraction from an urban reality, and one saddled with disaster:

It could be something like a tornado (The Wizard of Oz, Oz the Great and Powerful, Greensburg), or a meteor shower (Superman, Man of Steel [upcoming]) that destroys your town and leaves you battling an unending parade of hybrid alien “supers”(Smallville). Maybe you’re attacked by nomadic American vampires (Near Dark), renegade Indians (Custer, Four Feather Falls), or just good old-fashioned aliens (Mars Attacks!).

If you’re lucky, you might only have to face down the occasional bandit (Gunsmoke, Winchester ’73, Dodge City, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, etc.), or mobster (Prime Cut, The Ice Harvest), or time traveler (Looper), or errant supernatural being (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog).

If you’re not so lucky, you’ll be confronted with domestic homicide (In Cold Blood, Murder Ordained) the American Civil War (Dark Command, Touched by Fire: Bleeding Kansas), the Great Depression (Paper Moon), racial segregation (The Learning Tree; Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff), nuclear catastrophe (The Day After), or the subsequent post-apocalyptic world (Jericho).

But more often than not, yours will be a crisis of identity. Dorothy, Superman, Oz: As queer figures unable to assimilate, they struggled through the exceedingly mechanical, zombie-esque homogeneity of Hollywood’s Great Plains, where idle-minded Kansans are born and die without living–a spectacle so unspectacular, it’s a kind of curious queer rurality. But Hollywood’s representations of Kansas go far beyond the mere trope of the rural vs. the urban. Kansas is at once more sinister as it is more sympathetic.

In the pictures, Kansas’ story is one of Bildungsroman, where a character completes a coming-of-age moment, a transition from naiveté to maturity that often involves leaving the state in one capacity or another.

It is only in so doing that they too will learn of Kansas’ banal allure. Superman doesn’t become the Man of Steel until he leaves his small farming community to help those who really need him in Metropolis. Oz doesn’t understand the power of goodness and the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio until he crash lands in his future kingdom. And, sure, Dorothy heads back to Kansas, but does so knowing that on the other side of the rainbow is a splendid world of technicolor with yellow brick roads, giant lollipops, and a wicked witch who skywrites.

Dorothy’s unyielding pursuit to return to banality only proves Hollywood’s rule: Something’s the matter with Kansas. Its bearded ladies and conjoined twins, its dog boys and elephant men, all dressed over to appear as paeans to normativity. But their queer particularity shows at the seams, and queerer still is that they’re all willing participants in their own spectacularization. They all want to be in Kansas where they could be meteored, bombed, abducted, or tornadoed at any moment, and “isn’t that queer?!”

Wax figures at the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, home of the creepiest Glinda ever made. Wamego also hosts Kansas’ annual Oztober Fest with special guests: the remaining munchkins.

As a gay Kansan (and I’m talkin’ tumbleweed Kansas) with a weakness for Judy Garland, few people can identify with Dorothy’s journey more than me. Given the nature of the film, I should think it would surprise some of you to hear that The Wizard of Oz is a highly cherished icon-cum-commodity for the Sunflower State. We have regarded it as a great love story to Kansas. But it’s not really, is it?

It isn’t Oz, the munchkins, the witches, or even the eccentric Emerald City dwellers that are queer to the “mass audience” of the film. Not really. The world they know is in color; it’s filled with good and evil, and often draws those lines based on appearance. The world of wonder, then–the queerness of The Wizard of Oz–was always in the telling of Kansas–it was always on this side of the rainbow. There really is no place like home!

Ten (or more) media industry news items you might have missed recently:

1) Surprisingly, the biggest news items of the past two weeks come from the ‘dying’ world of publishing. The ‘Time’ in Time Warner is officially breaking off as Time Warner has announced a split with its magazine division, Time Inc. The spin-off will make Time Inc. an independent, publicly traded company, currently the number-one magazine publisher in the U.S, featuring People, Sports Illustrated, Forbes and of course, Time. But Time Warner isn’t the only conglomerate making bold publishing moves, as News Corp. is creating a new publishing-focused company, still named News Corporation, granting it a healthy starting-allowance of $2.6 billion. This has led to multiple reactions from the industry with fears of possible layoffs at Time.

2) Staying in the world of magazines, Next Issue Media has expanded beyond Apple to launch on Windows 8 and Microsoft products like the Surface. Following a subscription model for unlimited access to over 80 magazines, Next Issue has been called both ‘Hulu’ and ‘Netflix’ for magazines. (The jury is still out on which one we are all going to call it. Post your suggestions in the comments below!) CEO Morgan Guenther is aiming for 1 million subscribers in the next 18 months.

3) Back to battling conglomerates, new information in the legal battle between Cablevision and Viacom has come to light. To catch you up, at the end of February, Cablevision filed an antitrust suit against Viacom, arguing against the mass media giant’s method of bundling its less performing cable networks with must-watch ones claiming, “The manner in which Viacom sells its programming is illegal, anti-consumer, and wrong,” in what may very well be the least self-aware statement ever made by a corporation. Now, Cablevision is claiming Viacom was threatening a $1 billion penalty if Cablevision refused the lower-tier networks. More on this irony as it develops.

4) The release of EA’s highly anticipated reboot of the SimCity video game franchise may go down as one of the biggest disasters in the industry’s history (though nothing touches the unforgettable landfills of Atari E.T. cartridges). Utilizing EA’s already highly controversial always-online DRM protection, SimCity became unplayable for thousands of players due to server issues and shut-downs. An alleged EA employee blasted the company on Reddit, expressing frustration and disappointment over the launch. EA responded by increasing server capacity and offering a free game, but many have not been assuaged, especially after computer modders/hackers revealed the game can function offline, but EA refused to allow that capability despite the massive amount of server failure.

5) In more video game news, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have announced a new campaign to educate parents on the industry’s ratings system and parental controls. This comes as a response to increased media scrutiny, particularly in the possible connection between video games and violence in teens and young adults. In a related move, the ESRB has changed its policy on game marketing, following a model similar to Hollywood in that publishers may show trailers for Mature (M) rated games to a wide audience, as long as a green slate (a la movie trailers) precedes the footage.

6) Hulu’s future is in question, as Disney and News Corp. are discussing strategy for the online streaming service, with the implication begin one may buy out the other’s stake (which would be another third. The final third is primarily owned by Comcast, who is barred from management decisions to a federal regulatory agreement). The talks appear to be centered around the companies’ divergent views on Hulu’s primary operation, with News Corp. favoring the paid subscription model of Hulu Plus while Disney wants to focus on advertising-based revenue from free streaming.

7) News from the ‘upfront-line’: upfront season has begun! Cable and smaller broadcasting divisions have already begun the annual process of selling airtime to advertisers. Two of the more newsworthy reports come from NBC News Group, where Matt Lauer joked about recent negative reports on his image and Today’s slipping ratings, and Disney Kids, pushing the use of multi-screen viewing patterns and, much more importantly, the upcoming summer spin-off “Girl Meets World.” We demand Mr. Feeny!

8) At the box office, the past two weekends played Jekyll and Hyde for Hollywood, providing them their first flop and first mega-success of 2013. Two weeks ago, Jack the Giant Slayer brought in an estimated $28 million domestically, just 14% of its nearly $200 million budget, though it shows promise in Asia. Last weekend, however, Oz: The Great and Powerful proved to be just that, bringing in over $80 million domestically and $150 million globally. While this is good news for a Disney, who started planning for a sequel before Oz‘s release, it is better news for the entire domestic box office, as current year totals are 17% behind 2012.

9) Unionized healthcare workers at the Motion Picture Television Fund hospital stated their intention to strike for three days starting this Monday, March 18. MPTF responded with intentions to hire replacement workers for the strike. Talks fell through this past Wednesday, and the union plans on following through with their strike.

10) A new study from Carnegie Mellon‘s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, published on March 6, draws the conclusion that since the shutdown of piracy-giant Megaupload, legal digital movie sales and rentals have increased, drawing a distinct correlation. Their findings show, “a positive and statistically significant relationship between a country’s sales growth and its pre-shutdown Megaupload penetration.”

And finally, The Silly Side, the news stories too inane not to share:

• A countersuit has been filed over the Fifty Shades of Grey porn parody (Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation). Smash Pictures (really) is claiming Universal’s lawsuit is unjustified on the grounds that due to its being originally published online as part of a fan fiction series, it is technically in the public domain.
• Please don’t turn off your smartphones. App, a new horror film from the Dutch studio 2CFilm, involves utilizing a free interactive app movie-goers can use during the screening, that adds complimentary information and scenes that are activated by audio cues in the film.
• Russell Crowe saw a UFO and posted a video of it. That’s really all I have to say about that.

1) Over 6 years after their last console release, Sony announced their latest gaming console, the PlayStation 4. While they did not reveal what it would look like, they did detail its functioning, new controller, hardware specs, and user interface. The system will include iOS and android apps to enhance the gaming experience.

2) The Academy Awards, or rather the Oscars, took place on February 24th. Six of the films nominated for Best Picture had earned over $100 million at the box office, making it the most commercially successful group of nominees to date. In the documentary short category, Inocente became the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar. The big news of the night became Seth MacFarlane’s hosting, which elicited a lot of criticism and sparked discussions about Hollywood’s potential sexism and racism. The Academy stood behind MacFarlane’s performance, and in fact this year’s Oscar ceremony showed increased viewership, especially in key younger audiences (which had been a concern for the producers). MacFarlane was not the only one in trouble on Oscar night, as The Onion faced an intense reaction towards a tweet, for which they offered a rare apology (And for anyone who is wondering how Ted came to life at the Oscars, here’s how!). The Independent Spirit Awards, which honor independent films, also took place last weekend.  Silver Linings Playbook came away the big winner, irking some people because the film’s $21-million budget technically put it outside of the classification for “indie film.”

3) Although they won an Oscar for visual effects for their work on Life of Pi, Rhythm & Hues filed for bankruptcy last week. They were cut off from discussing the plight of the industry in their acceptance speech, which upset many visual effects workers. Visual effects artists are protesting the layoffs and bankruptcies their industry is facing using any outlet they can, including social media and open letters (including a second one to Ang Lee).

4) New copyright alert system is launched by the film, TV, and music industries. The warning system gives people six strikes before they begin enforcing consequences. Sony has also developed a patent that would be able to distinguish between piracy activities and legal downloads. Internationally, France is also looking at increasing their (already very strict) anti-piracy laws. Thinking of piracy, how much does “free” music actually cost to artists involved?

5) For the first time in 12 years, music sales grow a small but symbolically important amount. In other music news, Billboard is beginning to include YouTube plays of a song in their formulation of their “Hot 100 List.” This change will allow YouTube hits like “Harlem Shake” to boost their stats. Most of YouTube’s top channels are music-based, suggesting the importance of this connection. Google is considering getting into the streaming music business. Pandora has put a limit on free listening, citing increased royalty fees as the reason, and Spotify is meeting with the record industry to ask for price breaks on royalties.

6) The 2013 box office totals are off to a slow start, 13% behind last year, and Jack the Giant Slayer opened to a disappointing $20-30 million. After taking a big loss on Rise of the Guardians, DreamWorks is forced to lay off 350 employees. The news is not all bad though, as Oz the Great and Powerful debuted with $75 million and The Hobbit closes in on $1 billion worldwide. In other movie news, Hollywood plans to cut back on sex and violence? And Regal Entertainment gets even bigger by buying Hollywood theaters.

7) In the publishing world, New York Times plans to sell Boston Globe. Variety announced they are making big changes–dropping their daily print editions, eliminating their paywall, and adding three new editors in chief.  Tim O’Brien, The Huffington Post‘s executive editor, has decided to leave.  Reader’s Digest files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And are digital book signings the way of the future?

8) Numerous companies are reporting hackers entering their systems, including Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, NBC.com, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook (no user data was taken; but if it is compromised in the future, how would Facebook recover?).

9) In TV news, it’s pilot season! ABC is developing a miniseries How to Survive a Plague, based on the Academy Award-nominated documentary about the continuing AIDS crisis. A&E hit a record number of viewers for their reality series Duck Dynasty. Nielsen ratings are changing to reflect the new ways that people access television. Kaley Cuoco of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory tweets positively about Dish Network’s Hopper, though CBS is in the process of suing them. AMC fought with Dish about licensing fees, and AMC’s fourth quarter profits took a hit as a result. The FCC is being pushed to modify the current standards of TV product disclosure to create more transparency with regard to show sponsorship. Cablevision, with the support of Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Viacom, claiming that they practice illegal block booking of stations (an accusation that Viacom leveled at John Malone 20 years ago).  The lawsuit could lead to people being able to more selectively sign up for channels, only paying for the ones they want.

10) In other miscellaneous news: Clive Davis comes out as bisexual. Girls Gone Wild files for bankruptcy. And future technologies–the iWatch? Transparent Smartphones? A computer that never crashes? Or what about touchscreen T-shirts?

Entourage is based upon actor Mark Wahlberg’s experiences as an up-and-coming actor transplanted to Hollywood from modest beginnings in Boston, Massachusetts. Wahlberg and his manager, Stephen Levinson, worked with writer-director Doug Ellin to create Entourage, and developed the comedy’s main character, Vincent “Vince” Chase (Adrian Grenier) in Wahlberg’s image. Central to the story, as its name suggests, Vince brings his friends from back home (Queens, New York) to share his experiences in Hollywood as an A-list actor.

Like the four female friends in SatC, Entourage is built upon the close relationships among Vince and his three lifelong friends: Eric “E” Murphy (Kevin Connolly), Vince’s best friend and manager; Salvatore “Turtle” Assante (Jerry Ferrara), Vince’s driver/assistant; and Vince’s half-brother, Johnny “Drama” Chase (Kevin Dillon), a comically unsuccessful actor. Vince shares his wealth and success with his friends so selflessly that at times it seems that Eric, Turtle, and Johnny benefit unduly from Vince’s generosity, living in his houses, driving his cars, accompanying him to exotic locations, and wooing women by capitalizing on their long history with Vince. But having his childhood friends around him gives Vince a sense of security and keeps him grounded. The friends are reliant on Vince’s offensive, sharp-tongued, and larger-than-life agent, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) for money, advice, and his connections with the Hollywood elite.

Although the series did not amass critical acclaim, it was frequently applauded for its seemingly authentic portrayal of men and male friendships. This realistic portrayal of men’s relationships with each other, often credited for the series’ success, was Executive Producer Doug Ellin’s goal; however, Entourage’s location in the surreal world of Hollywood threatens its realism. To ground the fantasy elements of the Hollywood setting, Entourage shoots scenes at “real locations,” for example, the Sundance Film Festival, a live U2 concert, and a Lakers game, with “real” celebrity appearances where stars “play” themselves. Praising the series’ realistic portrayal of L.A. life, The Washington Post suggested, “No series had ever so accurately made use of the feel of doing business in Hollywood and West L.A.”

Given this, you can likely see why the series has been called “a West Coast version of ‘Sex and the City.’” Warner Brothers’ recent announcement about the upcoming Entourage movie suggests that Time Warner is betting that the similarities between the two shows are deeper than plot structure (please, no Entourage prequel on the CW!). But making a movie of Entourage, with its relatively low viewership and its overall lackluster performance, may not be the best move for Entourage’s legacy (or HBO’s). Time Warner is clearly chasing the incredible success of Sex and the City’s first movie, but because Entourage is not typical HBO fare, I, like others, fear that if the Entourage movie isn’t done well, it will end up more like SatC’s second movie than its first (or worse: Vince’s failed film Medellin!). I’ll likely see the movie out of curiosity, but I’d rather that Warner Brothers let Entourage keep its modest reputation as the unlikely HBO series that drew followers and helped HBO continue to make “quality” television.

1. The big news in Hollywood last week that caught many by surprise: Kevin Tsujihara was named CEO of Warner Bros. The studio is hopeful he’ll bring stability, but especially digital distribution savvy. Also shooting for stability is MGM, which is reworking its credit line to free up more money, while 20th Century Fox also cut a new financing deal. Unrelated bonus link: a Nielsen demographic study of movie audiences.

2. Fruitvale was a big winner at Sundance, which Variety critics thought was a successful, if commercially inclined, festival this year. Also of note was the equal gender balance of directors in competition, a first for the festival. This is representative of a higher percentage of female directors active in independent cinema than Hollywood studio filmmaking, according to research shared at Sundance by USC researchers.

3. There are still some Blockbuster stores left to shutter, and sadly, 3,000 jobs will be lost in this latest round of closings. Stores are also closing in the UK. Dish is still backing the Blockbuster brand, though, with a new On Demand redesign coming. But iTunes rules the online On Demand world right now, while discs fight to maintain home video sale prominence.

4. The music industry is having trouble making streaming royalties worth it to musicians. Too bad they can’t all enjoy a Super Bowl sales bump from being a halftime performer or make $8 million in ad deals like “Gangham Style” (though you have to watch out for sound-alikes) or have fans who are big pirates.

5. The company that supplied my very first video game console one lovely Christmas morning way back when has filed for bankruptcy, though apparently Atari hasn’t been what it used to be for awhile now, and it will even sell the iconic logo. Some other gaming bummers: THQ is being dissolved, Disney is closing a game studio and laying off fifty people while shifting to a focus on mobile and social gaming, and weak Wii U sales and 3DS piracy are hurting Nintendo.

6. Despite those bummers, the video game industry’s many challenges, and EA posting a recent loss, EA executives are optimistic about the future of console gaming. There’s a new Xbox coming with more processing power, and we’ll soon hear more about a new Playstation, though some think Sony should just move on from that platform’s legacy.

7. Samsung is warning that major smartphone growth is over, but maybe the company’s just bitter that Apple has surpassed it as top US phone vendor. The iPhone is declining in Asia, though, and Apple is losing tablet ground globally to Samsung and others. Apple’s still doing good work with tax loopholes, though. And at least it’s not BlackBerry.

8. France is having none of your English-language “hashtag” business on Twitter. For the French, “mot-dièse” will be the word for # on Twitter. (Mot-dièse means “sharp word,” though a sharp symbol leans the other way than the hashtag symbol, but hey, quoi que). France is also demanding that Twitter identify users who tweet with racist and anti-Semitic hasht…er, mots-dièse. Back in the US, Twitter’s dealing with a porn problem on the new Vine platform and is trying to censor porny hashtags. I doubt the French would respect that. #prudes 

9. GIFs are on the decline?!

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: Soap Contract Conflicts, Glee’s Song Theft, Super Bowl Ad Issue, Netflix Strategies, More on Netflix, 30 Rock Reflections, Spoiling Super Bowl Ads, CNN Changes, TWC & Dodgers, Aereo Update, The Following Criticism, Pilots Updates.

Programming note: Because I recently took on some new time-consuming duties, like Associate Online Editor for Cinema Journal, I’ve regretfully had to step away from WAYM for the time being. But don’t fear: WAYM will still be here! Eric Hoyt’s media industries course will be taking over for the rest of the semester on the regular bi-weekly schedule, and I can’t wait to see what they can do with it. (Sage advice: When in need of a good link, Lionsgate and porn are always there for you.) See you later!

As with any sketch comedy program, Kroll Show – a vehicle for comedian and The League star Nick Kroll – is heterogeneous. But it privileges certain sketches through multiple segments and narrative progression. One sketch in particular produced a spinoff in this week’s second episode (“Soaked in Success”), suggesting particular importance within the series’ overall text. Last week’s premiere episode (“San Diego Diet”) parodied the “overprivileged, incompetent young women go to work” reality genre (think Kourtney and Kim Take Miami) in a sketch that spins off to a “successful at serving the overprivileged” reality parody (think Dr. 90210) in the second. The first, PubLIZity, centers on a pair of women, both named Liz, who run a publicity company. In response to a client’s request for “something tasteful,” they organize a branded party, “Pirate Girl Rum Presents a Rockin’ Beach Bash to Benefit Cupcakes for Canine Cancer.” The client, a rare straight man for Kroll Show, summarizes, “The event cost $20,000 and it brought in $4,000 and I feel foolish.”

Conflict arises in this sketch as the industrious Liz butts heads with the more easygoing one. The work of organizing overwhelms hardworking Liz who is left to manage alone as the other’s superficiality distracts from the party. Deciding that her dog is too ugly, second Liz visits an animal plastic surgeon, Dr. Armand. Addressing the doctor, Liz explains, “I don’t want something in my house that’s, like, ugly… you wouldn’t talk to an ugly person.” Dr. Armand reassures her, “No, I don’t. I only hire very attractive people and my third wife is one of the most beautiful people I know.” The second episode elaborates on Dr. Armand in a sketch posing as a spinoff of PubLIZity. Armand of the House, as it is called, follows the doctor’s exploits dealing with his bratty son and distant wife. His dysfunctional family life is due in large part to his image obsession. As suggested in the first episode, Dr. Armand chose his spouse based on looks and in return she cannot even bother to hide that her interest in Dr. Armand is purely material. In demonstration, the doctor purchases his wife’s intimacy with jewelry. When the moment comes, she fakes an Ambien coma while he awkwardly dry humps her in the least erotic sex scene ever. The younger Armand and, in another sketch, “Gerry” Bruckheimer’s son represent the offspring of the image-obsessed. They are, for lack of space to elaborate, the worst.

In the 1991 Steve Martin film L.A. Story, a character praises the city because, “No one is looking to the outside for verification that what they’re doing is alright.” These sketches criticize L.A.’s insular culture, but are simultaneously a participant in its navel-gazing. As a parody of reality television’s focus on the parasitic industries that groom the images of the people and things that in turn run Hollywood’s mass media image production, these sketches play a game of infinite regression. The meta-meta-meta-discourse brings out the mutant traits of its too-small cultural gene pool.

Straight men often function as an audience surrogate, offering an orthodox logic against which the humorous twisted logic can contrast. The one significant straight man in these sketches, who should infuse some level of logic into the situation, has no effect on the goings-on. In another, similar sketch titled “Rich Dicks,” L.A.’s idle rich completely ignore the warnings of a put-upon maid, reminiscent of Zoila from Flipping Out. In this way, these voiceless “straight men” represent more particularly in this the viewer of these fictional shows. Ignoring the techno-democratic promise that a showrunner might read our tweets, on this side of the screen from a unidirectional mass media, reasonability seems to have very little voice in that world.

Kroll Show thus reflects an implicit viewing strategy with regards to much reality television: we laugh with a sense of superiority at that insular, overprivileged world. The only difference is that most of the shows on E! and Bravo pretend to not be in on the joke except that once a week, Joel McHale shows up to paratextually snark on our behalf. With programs like the ones Kroll Show critiques, distinctions between dominant and oppositional approaches break down to the point where the categories cease to mean anything. So while part of a critical discourse of class and image, Kroll Show is not critically outside of the programming it critiques. Instead it recreates, albeit more explicitly, a dominant reading position that masquerades as oppositional.