Watched Saturday Night Live (SNL) last night. Melissa McCarthy was guest host and her opening theme was Mothers Day and she even brought a middle-aged Mom out of the audience, probably planted there, as part of her opening routine. She provided a backstage tour for the Mom and offered a glimpse of the inner workings SNL, Lorne Michael's amazingly durable comedy show. That was fun, and reminded the viewers that the show really is theater, somewhat reminiscent of any other kind of live theater but with the addition of TV cameras and a national audience.
Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump has become a regular feature of the opening minutes of the show and last night was no exception. Trump's interview with Lester Holt about the firing of James Comey was recreated-- an event that happened only a day or two earlier. Things move faster. The real Donald Trump felt the need to get quickly to the airwaves when he saw the country meltdown in reaction to the Comey decision. The Trump/Holt interview went out to the entire country, maybe the world, and was rapidly absorbed into the nation's collective conscious. The news volley, much like a tennis match, flies quickly and comedy must follow suit. Anything too old in the 24/7 news cycle would not work well for the SNL parody.
Michael Che playing Lester Holt did an awesome job capturing the even-keeled television newsman. The comic summoned up Holt so accurately-- big forehead, cool, friendly, but always professional, the expressionless expression, had a certain hysterical quality. The real Lester Holt must be about as far as you can get from a SNL skit. And Michael Che actually does the "Weekend Update" segment for SNL so has some of the news anchor instincts already built in.
Baldwin was good as always and made the point that Trump is kind of a mini-Nixon, not exactly my position on the issue. But having Speaker Paul Ryan show up as an overly solicitous, ass-kissing soda fountain jerk with two scoops of ice-cream for Donald Trump was ingenious. Donald insists on two scoops of ice-cream because Richard Nixon only got one scoop of ice-cream. Baldwin and the writers had captured the Donald Trump narcissism and the Republicans fear of offending Trump with great comic efficiency.
So this skit earned an A grade-- but made me wonder about the hurry up nature of our existence-- even comedy must reflect events from only a day or two ago... or it becomes old news.
Showing posts with label Melissa McCarthy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Melissa McCarthy. Show all posts
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Stop Making Sense: politics as theater
Stop Making Sense... for the game has changed.
It may be worth mentioning ... with the computer there has risen the possibility of extending consciousness itself as a technological environment. If this is to be done, it cannot be done on the basis of any existing notion of rationality.-- 1971 (Marshall McLuhan)
Marshall McLuhan died in 1980 but remains the only man who understands the computer/ internet age, an age he predicted with absolute accuracy. McLuhan knew that computer technology would shift the individual's "central nervous system into the electro-magnetic technology, it is but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well."-- 1964.
That means your brain and central nervous system are right there in the cellphone you are grasping. You have uploaded your thoughts and emotions into Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. You are vibrating with the universe. The world is one big city. The global village... as McLuhan so aptly named this world we now inhabit. You, and all of us, and Trump, our tribal leader, are family.
So this new world has you scared. We are all sitting around the electronic campfire and people are shouting weird things into the air. These thoughts, the fake news, the insane fears, the terrorism, the 11 year old boy in the Bronx using a knife to protect his mother from an intruder to their apartment... all of that, along with the Kardashians, Sean Spicer, Melissa McCarthy, etc., all spinning around your brain and spinal chord thanks to that powerful computer in your hand. You are the right, you are the left, you are all of it.
And most prevalent of all images is the image of Donald Trump, that orange-haired image has been burned into your consciousness. His name is on everybody's lips. The cable news follows his every exhalation and exultation. You wince-- how did he work himself into your consciousness? You and I are Trump.
I notice that Trump remains ahead of the men and women of the news. They are stuck in the print era like newsmen out of the screwball classic His Girl Friday. All they lack are Cary Grant's fedora and the clever lines of dialogue. The television newspeople-- still called "the press"-- struggle to find rationality in Donald Trump's ravings and whine about fake news and alternative versions of reality. The game has changed and Trump rubs it in with references to "the failing New York Times."
The New York Times worldview, the serious, sober reporting from the Gray Lady, falls to pieces in the lightning war of electrons-- the all spin, all the time world in which we presently live. If you are waiting for Truth... fuhgeddaboutit.
Truth has given way to theater and image-making. Trump knows it and discovered it from his experience with the New York City tabloid newspapers-- not the New York Times.
Every day another drama-- just like the tabloid covers of the New York Post (conservative) and the New York Daily News (liberal).
The difference between now and just a few years back is the depth of our involvement. The Social Network has us all involved. And it moves at the speed of light. Just ask Bill O'Reilly. The master of the "No Spin Zone" got spun like a top and left by the curb by Fox News. I don't think O'Reilly got fired because Rupert Murdoch and his sons found new moral convictions about the rights of women. The global village decided to shun O'Reilly. Twenty-first Century Fox quickly jumped aboard.
The Fox News empire knows that the electronic network electrocutes quickly. They didn't have time to take a poll-- they stuck their fingers in the air and felt the electronic wind blowing hard against O'Reilly's bullying, sexist tendencies. They didn't want to piss off a whole gender-- and O'Reilly hit the road, $25 million in his pocket to ease the pain. And, in some strange way, we feel Bill's pain. After all, we got to know him so well.
An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness.-- 1964 (Marshall McLuhan)
references:
The Talking Heads album-- Stop Making Sense (1977)--
McLuhan quotes from Essential McLuhan (1995)-- p. 296.
"Piss off a whole gender..."-- this line taken from Aziz Anasari's monologue on SNL
It may be worth mentioning ... with the computer there has risen the possibility of extending consciousness itself as a technological environment. If this is to be done, it cannot be done on the basis of any existing notion of rationality.-- 1971 (Marshall McLuhan)
Marshall McLuhan died in 1980 but remains the only man who understands the computer/ internet age, an age he predicted with absolute accuracy. McLuhan knew that computer technology would shift the individual's "central nervous system into the electro-magnetic technology, it is but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well."-- 1964.
That means your brain and central nervous system are right there in the cellphone you are grasping. You have uploaded your thoughts and emotions into Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. You are vibrating with the universe. The world is one big city. The global village... as McLuhan so aptly named this world we now inhabit. You, and all of us, and Trump, our tribal leader, are family.
So this new world has you scared. We are all sitting around the electronic campfire and people are shouting weird things into the air. These thoughts, the fake news, the insane fears, the terrorism, the 11 year old boy in the Bronx using a knife to protect his mother from an intruder to their apartment... all of that, along with the Kardashians, Sean Spicer, Melissa McCarthy, etc., all spinning around your brain and spinal chord thanks to that powerful computer in your hand. You are the right, you are the left, you are all of it.
And most prevalent of all images is the image of Donald Trump, that orange-haired image has been burned into your consciousness. His name is on everybody's lips. The cable news follows his every exhalation and exultation. You wince-- how did he work himself into your consciousness? You and I are Trump.
I notice that Trump remains ahead of the men and women of the news. They are stuck in the print era like newsmen out of the screwball classic His Girl Friday. All they lack are Cary Grant's fedora and the clever lines of dialogue. The television newspeople-- still called "the press"-- struggle to find rationality in Donald Trump's ravings and whine about fake news and alternative versions of reality. The game has changed and Trump rubs it in with references to "the failing New York Times."
The New York Times worldview, the serious, sober reporting from the Gray Lady, falls to pieces in the lightning war of electrons-- the all spin, all the time world in which we presently live. If you are waiting for Truth... fuhgeddaboutit.
Truth has given way to theater and image-making. Trump knows it and discovered it from his experience with the New York City tabloid newspapers-- not the New York Times.
Every day another drama-- just like the tabloid covers of the New York Post (conservative) and the New York Daily News (liberal).
The difference between now and just a few years back is the depth of our involvement. The Social Network has us all involved. And it moves at the speed of light. Just ask Bill O'Reilly. The master of the "No Spin Zone" got spun like a top and left by the curb by Fox News. I don't think O'Reilly got fired because Rupert Murdoch and his sons found new moral convictions about the rights of women. The global village decided to shun O'Reilly. Twenty-first Century Fox quickly jumped aboard.
The Fox News empire knows that the electronic network electrocutes quickly. They didn't have time to take a poll-- they stuck their fingers in the air and felt the electronic wind blowing hard against O'Reilly's bullying, sexist tendencies. They didn't want to piss off a whole gender-- and O'Reilly hit the road, $25 million in his pocket to ease the pain. And, in some strange way, we feel Bill's pain. After all, we got to know him so well.
An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness.-- 1964 (Marshall McLuhan)
references:
The Talking Heads album-- Stop Making Sense (1977)--
McLuhan quotes from Essential McLuhan (1995)-- p. 296.
"Piss off a whole gender..."-- this line taken from Aziz Anasari's monologue on SNL
Monday, February 6, 2017
Commander Chaos: Trump moves faster
Marshall McLuhan, the great Canadian media guru, explains that a faster system destroys a slower system. The faster medium circles around the slower medium, surrounds it, consumes it and destroys it. Television moves faster than film. The Internet surrounded newspapers and destroyed them. The Internet destroyed bookstores; digital music did away with record stores; bookstores, likewise, fell out of sight. The cellphone moves around the desktop computer and personal computers decrease in number.
Donald Trump learned the television world as an insider with his own show. Cable TV moves faster than the networks. Twitter moves faster than cable TV and Trump keeps several steps ahead of the "mainstream media" through his Twitter account.
I laugh to hear people, including cables news media pundits, exclaim "can't somebody take that cellphone out of Trump's hand." That's like saying Robin Hood should put down his bow and arrow. What-- and pick up a spear and shield. Robin moved lightly and stayed ahead of the king's men.
Trump has a tool, his Twitter account, for getting to people faster than any of the cable outlets allows. He has a knack for moving quickly. He tries a strategy. If it fails, he never admits failure, just steps to the side, tweaks it, spins the story long enough for the story to get muddled and moves to the next thing. The man is a master of movement. His campaign struggled. He changed campaign managers. The next crew, including Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway did better and stayed. He found his audience, responded to the narrative they liked and moved ahead like a bull in a china shop.
Trump runs roughshod. His casino business didn't work. He went bankrupt and kept moving. We all wonder if this modus operandi works for running the free world. The story goes that his White House staff is in a state of constant turmoil. To quote a book of a few years back, he doesn't sweat the small stuff.
Presidents usually reassure us. President Franklin Roosevelt had his fireside chats and reassured the nation across the radio waves. That soothed anxieties through a Depression and a World War. How does the Trump method of stirring the hornet's nest compare to the peacefulness of a Barack Obama? A chorus of angry people, from the Tea Party rabble rousers to the Republican congressmen, hurled a constant chant of invectives at Obama. The right wing radio crowd led by Rush Limbaugh gnawed on Obama like he was a kind of satanic, malevolent force and never relented. Steve Bannon falls into that category. Be careful what you wish for--
Now Commander Chaos is in power. Trump sleeps 4 hours a night and wakes each morning stirring for a fight. Remember "speak softly and carry a big stick" came from Teddy Roosevelt, another master of imagery.
Trump insulted a Judge who rejected his Muslim ban. He called the man a "so-called judge." That move upset me. He spit in the face of the American system, the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Trump knows no boundaries-- hence the Commander Chaos moniker.
He continues to move at warp speed and exhausts everybody, even in the media hounds who thrive on the campaign trail. They love the jab and parry of electoral politics. That election season, the horse race of politics, was supposed to slow down with the election of a new president. Not for Trump, he enjoys King Lear's blasted heath. He refuses to slow down. We all suck wind to keep up and long for quieter days.
Melissa McCarthy's parody of Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, on Saturday Night Live, captured the insane, fever pitch of the present situation better than just about any rational analysis presented these last few weeks. She captured the Alice in Wonderland aspect of Mr. Trump's White House with brilliance and Trump-like intensity. Alec Baldwin has done a great job as Trump. SNL
seems like a voice of sanity in this whirlwind. Is this the new normal? That's the question we all must ask ourselves. Just look at that cellphone in your hand.
Donald Trump learned the television world as an insider with his own show. Cable TV moves faster than the networks. Twitter moves faster than cable TV and Trump keeps several steps ahead of the "mainstream media" through his Twitter account.
I laugh to hear people, including cables news media pundits, exclaim "can't somebody take that cellphone out of Trump's hand." That's like saying Robin Hood should put down his bow and arrow. What-- and pick up a spear and shield. Robin moved lightly and stayed ahead of the king's men.
Trump has a tool, his Twitter account, for getting to people faster than any of the cable outlets allows. He has a knack for moving quickly. He tries a strategy. If it fails, he never admits failure, just steps to the side, tweaks it, spins the story long enough for the story to get muddled and moves to the next thing. The man is a master of movement. His campaign struggled. He changed campaign managers. The next crew, including Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway did better and stayed. He found his audience, responded to the narrative they liked and moved ahead like a bull in a china shop.
Trump runs roughshod. His casino business didn't work. He went bankrupt and kept moving. We all wonder if this modus operandi works for running the free world. The story goes that his White House staff is in a state of constant turmoil. To quote a book of a few years back, he doesn't sweat the small stuff.
Presidents usually reassure us. President Franklin Roosevelt had his fireside chats and reassured the nation across the radio waves. That soothed anxieties through a Depression and a World War. How does the Trump method of stirring the hornet's nest compare to the peacefulness of a Barack Obama? A chorus of angry people, from the Tea Party rabble rousers to the Republican congressmen, hurled a constant chant of invectives at Obama. The right wing radio crowd led by Rush Limbaugh gnawed on Obama like he was a kind of satanic, malevolent force and never relented. Steve Bannon falls into that category. Be careful what you wish for--
Now Commander Chaos is in power. Trump sleeps 4 hours a night and wakes each morning stirring for a fight. Remember "speak softly and carry a big stick" came from Teddy Roosevelt, another master of imagery.
Trump insulted a Judge who rejected his Muslim ban. He called the man a "so-called judge." That move upset me. He spit in the face of the American system, the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Trump knows no boundaries-- hence the Commander Chaos moniker.
He continues to move at warp speed and exhausts everybody, even in the media hounds who thrive on the campaign trail. They love the jab and parry of electoral politics. That election season, the horse race of politics, was supposed to slow down with the election of a new president. Not for Trump, he enjoys King Lear's blasted heath. He refuses to slow down. We all suck wind to keep up and long for quieter days.
Melissa McCarthy's parody of Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, on Saturday Night Live, captured the insane, fever pitch of the present situation better than just about any rational analysis presented these last few weeks. She captured the Alice in Wonderland aspect of Mr. Trump's White House with brilliance and Trump-like intensity. Alec Baldwin has done a great job as Trump. SNL
seems like a voice of sanity in this whirlwind. Is this the new normal? That's the question we all must ask ourselves. Just look at that cellphone in your hand.
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