It’s been 2012 for a week already and this blog has roundup duties to take care of, but I just gott sneak this in before the Republican presidential freakshow exhibit moves on from New Hampshire and thus renders the results from Iowa even less significant: Is there a better reason to watch election night coverage than to see the elegant and sensible Anderson Cooper make fun of the inanity of his CNN colleagues’ so-called “analysis” (oh, the sanctimoniousness of self-described centrists!), and the network’s grating hangup on slick-looking but ultimately useless digital data-collection tools? Well, no. (Fortunately, Wolf Blitzer doesn’t invoke the phrase the best political team on television nearly as often as he did four years ago. Good on him, since the core of that team still is David Gergen, probably the dullest and most risk-averse pundit in the history of televised punditry.) (more…)
We Sing, We Dance, We Reveal Things
10 OctSometimes, watching a new episode of Glee reminds me of watching The O.C. It’s not because these two shows had anything else in common besides the high school setting, but because both shows, while sharp and well-written at their best, always keep their viewers aware that the episode you’re watching could take a fatal turn at every moment. What Glee and The O.C. doesn’t share in terms of style and sensitivity, they share in unevenness and in their ability to make me love them despite being fairly disinterested in the trials and tribulations facing their central couples. I guess their imperfections made me a more loyal fan in both respects. Would Seth Cohen have been as much of a hero to me if I hadn’t been so thoroughly bored by the Marissa/Ryan drama? Has Kurt, Sue and other Glee characters that work come into sharper relief because neither the Will/Emma relationship nor the ups and downs of Finn/Rachel are particularly interesting? I think so. Sharing a less-than-excellent experience may do more to forge a bond of loyality than a flawless episode could.
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‘The Line of Beauty’, Or The Elephant In The Ballroom
10 AugAmid all the lies, wars, corruption, authoritarianism and disingenuous privatization schemes, it’s easy to forget the things Tony Blair’s New Labour actually got right. In addition to several policy initiatives aimed at improving the state of public health care and education, Labour first and foremost deserves credit for its commitment to social liberalism. The Blair government finally abolished the disgraceful Section 28 law threatening teachers with losing their jobs if they taught about or adviced on homosexuality in school, and the former prime minister himself also was an unrelenting ambassador of modernity and tolerance when it came to LGBT issues. Blair may have been the savior that wasn’t in 1990′s social democracy, but in many ways, Britain still needed him. (more…)
In Third Season Of ‘Skins’, A New Beginning. A Good One, Too
29 JulThere’s a very real risk of alienation associated with introducing a whole new slate of characters to a television universe viewers have already grown familiar with and attached to, no matter how much work you put into making it seem like a plausibly organic development. Recent history has given us two examples, and both gave ample reasons for concern. In the late 1990’s, CBS’ once-successful hospital drama Chicago Hope, already way past its prime (if it ever had one), had to be revamped in order to stay on the air. The solution was to replace practically the entire old and trusted cast with less interesting actors, basically making this Chicago Hope in name only. Predictably, the soapy David E. Kelly-produced drama didn’t last much longer. (more…)
‘Beautiful People’, The Epitome of Fabulosity
26 AprUPDATE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that my answer to Tim Teeman’s nostalgia question (see below) was ‘yes’. The correct answer should have been ‘no’. The error has been corrected. Some minor language editing has been performed.
In his review of Jonathan Harvey’s (the man behind mid-90′s feelgood coming-out movie Beautiful Thing) British sitcom Beautiful People in The Times [of London], Tim Teeman asked whether it was still too early to feel nostalgic about 1997. It could be that you have to be of a certain young age to find reasons for nostalgia in a decade that most responsible adults would agree was not as uniformly peaceful and prosperous – witness the war in Rwanda and Kosovo for instance – as we’ve come to remember it in hindsight, and that slightly younger and less responsible people might not remember at all, because they were too busy exercising horizontal snobbery and otherwise keeping the ironical distance they read about in Douglas Coupland and Brett Easton Ellis novels. But my answer to Teeman’s question is no, for reasons Beautiful People unabashedly touts.
My nostalgic sentiments, however, doesn’t only have to do with a knee-jerk sense of obligation to defend My Decade (and implicitly My Generation). It has just as much to do with my feeling that it’s time to dethrone the 1980′s. Time has come when nostalgic tales of being a youngster in the Reagan era must leave the stage to the Little Clintons and the Tony Blair Toddlers. A successful pushback against the misguided assumption that the nineties, bringing with it grunge rock, a unified Europe and American budget surpluses (!), should continue to sit quietly in the shadow of the eightie’s, represented by Reaganomics, synth pop music and Terms of Endearment, would help clear the way for all the deliciously camp nostalgia of Beautiful People. Not ready, you say? You better be. As Ani DiFranco once said: ‘Move over, Mr. Holiness/let the little people through’.
In Beautiful People, these little people are thirteen year olds Simon and Kyle (or Kylie, as he prefers to be called) the best friends we catch up with in ‘positively glumorous’ Reading in 1997, still years before they’ve grown into the ‘raging homosexualists’ one of their adored diva-teachers correctly assumes they’ll become. Simon and Kylie seem acutely aware that they are different from their peers, but in a move that could be regarded as annoying by some but encouraging by others, Harvey decides to present this as an opportunity more than a life-altering challenge. Without ever feeling messagy or heavy-handed, Harvey wants to tell young people like Simon and Kylie that there is nothing wrong with them. The humor of the show comes from equal amounts of typically outrageous British sitcom characters (the doormat of a father, a part-time alcoholic loud-mouth mother, her blind and bitchy best friend (Simon: ‘1. Never wear nylon. 2. Never wear nylon bought by a blind person‘) and how we are invited to understand Simon’s actions and reactions as signs of something he’s still too young to fathom – that he’s gay. But what more than anything makes Beautiful People funny is how seamlessly it integrates references (Tamagotchi, anyone?) or events (Tony Blair’s election, Princess Diana’s death) we all know, and then turns them on their heads.
Take Victoria Beckham, for instance. Just when I thought I didn’t want to hear her name again for the rest of my life, Beautiful People takes us back to the heyday of Spice Girls and their vaguely anarchic Girl Power slogan. In a funny and somewhat moving twist, Simon takes up soccer because he hears that Posh is dating a footballer, and that determination saves him from getting beaten up in school for his other, less masculine traits. All the episodes are practically littered with such more or less subtle nods to its time, whether it’s people striking Leo’s ‘I’m the king of the world‘ pose from Titanic as a common romantic gesture, doing the Macarena in a line dance, dancing to Barbie Girl in the school’s talent show, taping (by VCR!) the newest Ally McBeal episode for their neighbors or the Chumbawamba, All Saints and Meredith Brooks tunes on the soundtrack. It’s all adding a little bit of flavor, eventually making it absolutely essential to the the genuinely 1997 experience Harvey wants to create.
While (re-)watching it, I was struck be a sense that this way exactly the kind of show I would have loved to watch when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I’m just now in the process of trying to reclaim some of the bands, films and phenomena that I denied any fondness for back then, for fear of the consequences. By never talking about homosexuality directly it avoids coming off as preachy, but its commitment to diversity and respect is nevertheless transparent enough to reach through. Attempting to speak to young people in this way, while at the same time giving nostalgic nods to older viewers could have been a disastrous overreach, but here it works. Sure, one could argue that Harvey’s decision to handle the gay question only indirectly would risk downplaying the challenges young effeminate guys like Simon face in school, or that his parents are understanding to the point of being annoyingly naive, but that seems to never have been Harvey’s ambition anyway.
What’s most impressive however, is the fact that the book this show is based upon, was actually set in the 1960′s. Without having read the book, I have to say Jonathan Harvey must have done an incredible job updating the entire framework for the nineties. To return to Tim Teeman’s generally positive review, there are plenty of reasons to be nostalgic about 1997, one being that back then, Britons could still muster untainted enthusiasm for Tony Blair’s vision of ‘Cool Britannia’. Beautiful People has convinced me that although one-time savior Blair himself soon got sidetracked as Bush’s poodle, the Britain he took to war was already a pretty cool place. That insight has me wondering whether in ten years time, we’ll be asking whether it’s too soon to feel nostalgic about that classic television show Beautiful People.
‘Desperate Housewives’ Marks Return To Spotlight For ‘Heaven’s Scotty Leavenworth
7 NovSince I’ve already come clean about my long history as a loyal Camdenite, it seems only natural that I write briefly about what has become of the stars of 7th Heaven. Barry Watson went on to do failed sophomore drama What About Bryan and then comedy Samantha Who? for ABC; David Gallagher replaced Watson in the Boogeyman sequel and also headlined The Picture Of Dorian Gray; while Jessica Biel has done projects ranging from Blade Trinity to Cameron Crowe’s maddeningly disappointing Elizabethtown. But we of course knew this already. What triggered my interest in revisiting the ranks of Heaven alumni, was the fact that Scotty Leavenworth reportedly was spotted in this week’s episode of ABC’s still blockbustery Desperate Housewives.
I won’t hold it against you if you don’t remember who Scotty Leavenworth is, but even if you didn’t take note of him during his one season run as a Heaven regular, you might, at different times, have seen him in such movies as Simon Birch, My Life As A House or Donnie Darko. If you watch the delightfully quirky Darko, you can’t avoid him. He’s that who talks about Donnie in the immediate aftermath of Gary Jules’ powerful Mad World. He was also a regular on Steven Bocho one-season drama Philly a couple of years ago.
But to me, he still is Peter Petrowski, Ruthie Camden’s first longer-term boyfriend (meaning for more than one episode, and actually talked about as such) on 7th Heaven. Leavenworth was only in his early teens back then, and his acting of course was nothing to make a fuzz about. The reason why I’ve kept an eye on him, is because I like his character on the show, in some weird way. I’ve written previously about how I think the best episodes were those that spelled out its moralistic intentions in broad terms, and Leavenworth had his part in many of these. In Smoking, for example, that socially insecure loser Peter feels compelled to admit to Ruthie that he thinks smoking is cool, which of course warrants a mini-Inquisition to rid Peter of his unhealthy habit and to convince him that coolness is overrated. Though at times painstakingly transparent in its intentions, it’s also a great laugh. Though I generally have an emotional bond to the goings on in Glenoak, such an episode could not be tolerable without a little dose of cynicism. Or take High And Dry, the episode where Leavenworth’s Peter has to declare himself ‘Sorry for all the drinking and the lies‘ to Ruthie, after having committed the obviously unforgivable sin of simply looking at a can of beer in a Glenoak public park, complete with long-absent, previously alcoholic father lecturing him on the peril of under-age drinking. Not exactly subtle, but quite entertaining still.
Seasons seven and eight, during which Leavenworth was part of the show, it received much criticism from fans for giving such peripheral characters as Peter independent storylines, arguing that it stole the focus from show’s backbone, the Camden family. I always enjoyed his storylines, even though some of them were extremely silly, and those that were not, often were mere launching pads for message-heavy moralism, or maybe for just that reason. For many Camdenites, the first four-or-so seasons are seen as the show’s golden years, but to me Simon’s and Ruthie’s struggles with teenagehood in later season were far more interesting. However platonic and non-threatening, Ruthie’s relationship with Peter marked a rite of passage for the youngest Camden female. Underlining the point, Peter pops by in season nine, only to immediately become Ruthie’s make-out buddy.
And now, that make-out buddy’s status seemingly has elevated to one of the most popular shows on broadcast. Was there another point to this post, other than reliving old TV moments? Oh, y’know, he’s cute (Leavenworth, left, same goes for Charles Carver on the right).
’7th Heaven’s Sexy Puritanism
15 OctI wasn’t supposed to love 7th Heaven. First, it’s a generally conservative show, and second, it always ranked high when Parents Television Council named the ten most family-friendly shows on television, alongside snoozers like Dancing With The Stars and Touched By An Angel. Most of my liberal friends loathed it, and more or less openly looked down on me for falling into the conservative trap. At a certain point it stopped bothering me, however. I calculated that the ridicule would wear off more easily if instead I embraced the show, wholeheartedly, publicly and repeatedly. Once I found a decent rationale, it turned out I was right.
Early on I explained my continued viewership by claiming to be fascinated with the conservative mindset of the Camden family. Put simply, I claimed that I watched 7th Heaven for sociological reasons. I’m not sure anybody actually bought that, but I kept insisting so fervently that the questions soon disappeared. This explanation might have held some clout at some point, but by the time I started using it in public, I was in fact already way past that phase of my fandom. What started out as a mix of boredom and curiosity had matured into a real emotional connection to the ups and downs of the Glenoak community. I actually cared what happened with family rebels Mary and Simon. I wanted my daily dose of Lucyness. Heck, I even wanted to see what would come of Sam and David Camden, the less-than-gifted twins that were added to the family tree a couple of seasons in. By the time I admitted this to my friends, they had probably written me off as a lost cause, and possibly even a closeted conservative. They were right about the lost cause part.
When I first realized that I didn’t want to go back to my pre-7th Heaven days, I soon realized the perks that came with being a Camdenite; most notably a steady stream of cute guys. So steady was that stream, that one could suspect showrunner Brenda Hampton of subscribing to what Slate recently dubbed Sexy Puritanism in describing Republican veep nominee Sarah Palin. The moral outlook of the show is no doubt quite conservative – sex before marriage is seen as an outrage, abortion is never discussed as an opportunity for pregnant teens, and there are never ever any mentions of homosexuality or other controversial culture war topics – but that conservatism is brought to the viewers by the best-looking blood boilers the casting company could find. If the storylines went off the tracks at times, at least you could concentrate your attention on smashing regulars like David Gallagher, Tyler Hoechlin and Adam LaVorgna, and the show had a very impressive list of guest-starring hotness as well; whatever your taste, Thomas Dekker, Kyle Searles, Aaron Carter, Andrew Keegan, Will Estes, Erik von Detten, Jeremy Lelliot, Colton James… they’ve all been there.
I don’t know which of these perspectives offer the most compelling reason for you to give it a chance the next time you catch an old rerun on cable, but they all worked for me, at different times. I suspect I’m not done with the show just yet, even though the show itself folded years ago.
‘Camp Rock’ Sorta Sucks, But I’m Still Going 180 On Jonas Brothers
10 OctNow I finally know what all the fuss was about. Disney Channel’s Jonas Brohers promo vehicle Camp Rock premiered here in Norway last week, and is sure to make them a household name in contemporary Norwegian pop culture, just like High School Musical did to the once obscure Zac Efron. The most important thing I took away from it, however, was not the fairly average Camp Rock itself, but rather an actual interest in The Jonas Brothers, with whom I’ve previously confessed deep scepticism. Once the movie ended, I for the first time made a serious effort to look beyond the insanely successful commercial branding of the family trio, and searched out what put them in this position in the first place; their music. If two months ago I would admit to no more than failing to hate them, now I’m gonna do a complete reversal. I love them. Sort of.
So, what happened? First, I don’t really think it’s JB’s fault that Camp Rock is bad even by Disney Channel standards. Nothing wrong with formulaic and predictable HSM rip-offs, but one piece of advice: Then don’t be ashamed about it! In Jonas Brothers, Disney Channel has a trio of band members with obvious screen presence (one of them is even funny, at times), but instead of cashing in on that, they ship two (Kevin and Nick Jonas) of the three people that make up the band Camp Rock is supposed to promote off to supporting roles, and make the final one (Joe) suffer through food fights and endless staring at the sunset for the chance to play one song. I hoped and expected Camp Rock to be a cheerful and goofy musical, or at least a film about music and/or the Jonas Brothers, but instead I got the framework of HSM with crappier songs. With this rant out of the way, now to the reason that I’m still likely to see it again sometime.
The Jonas Brothers number in the movie is, if not exactly groundbreaking, a good, clean piece of punky pop music. After falling in love with much of their music, I realize this should have been at the center of Camp Rock, too. 2007′s The Jonas Brothers, to my surprise, turrned out to be chock full of deliciously straightforward, yet unabashedly lighthearted rock music, in the vein of Green Day, Busted and Blink 182, with a little Hanson and even Westlife thrown in for good measure. The Hanson comparison is as predictable as it is unavoidable (three brothers and all), but as faithful readers of this blog should know, I mean it as a compliment. It basically means their music get stuck in your head, and after a while you stop feeling ashamed about it and start actually enjoying it.
For instance, take That’s Just The Way We Roll. In what seems like a nod to the preceding Tulsa Three – battledance against Hanson - the establish a self-awareness that’s not cocky, so much as it is self-deprecating. All their references to being free and independent spirits can be tiresome, but who the hell care when they’ve coming up with songs like Still In Love With You, the ultimate non-threatening rock song, complete with clapping and foot-stomping insistence? Or Australia, combining their Franz Ferdinand feel with richly ridiculous lyrics (I know she won’t break my heart/’cause I know she’ll be from Australia); the soppy but well-crafted Westlife-y ballad When You Look Me In The Eyes; channeling The Coral on Goodnight and Goodbye; or Kids Of The Future, which would be far more wisely spent as Disney Channel’s official theme song, than in that dreadful animated movie.
Their third album, A Little Bit Longer unfortunately also is a little bit weaker, songs-wise, but it still has some quite decent pop-rock moments. Shelf probably gives the young teen audience a sense of real rock, and surprisingly, taken together with the slightly Hives-ian One Man Show its a perfectly understandable guilty pleasure for all of us whose tastes are supposed to be more refined. Same goes for Sorry, a song that could easily be written off as a intolerably grandiose power ballad. Once you give it a chance, however, you may discover the small synth details and vocal quirks that lifts it above its peers. Also, for a loyal Fanson it’s nice to see that Nick Jonas can do a respectable Taylor Hanson impression, like the title track, A Little Bit Longer.
The best surprises are those that are unexpected. Maybe that’s why right now, love doesn’t seem to be too strong a word for how I feel about Jonas Brothers. Oh, and Joe takes his shirt off in Camp Rock.
Early Gay Crushes: Jonathan Taylor Thomas
21 AugI’ve written previously about how one of the first things I did after I realized I was gay, was to think back at my childhood and early teen years for signs of my apparent homosexuality. And even though I didn’t perceive them as such at the time, no doubt they were there. Most boys don’t know what to make of their sexual feelings yet, and the idea of falling in love with someone is not something you’re expected to share with anyone, and hence I didn’t think it was weird that I thought the boys I saw in the movies were cute. I didn’t know what it meant to be gay, and we all knew that to admit to have a crush on a girl would be something close to social suicide, so I was quite happy with keeping my boy crushes to myself.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas must have been one of the first famous young guys I developed a crush on. I was ten when the awful family comedy Man Of The House was released, and I watched it obsessively. Though not exactly funny, it’s just the kind of sentimental story that works as reassuring for young viewers, and if I wanted to fool myself, I could be convinced that was the main reason why I couldn’t get enough of it. But now I realize it was only part of the explanation. The fact that I couldn’t take my eyes off of JTT counts for the rest. I thank my entire family for their patience in watching this very bad movie with me over and over again. Had they understood the full reason why (even I didn’t, mind you) I did, maybe they wouldn’t have been so patient after all.
My crush on Jonathan Taylor Thomas was just a phase, however, even though my general attraction to guys wasn’t. I followed Home Improvement semi-regularly because of him, but as he drifted out of the public eye, he drifted from mine as well. He was unable to claim a spot on my Sexiest Males Alive list for July, but sheer nostalgia will make sure he’s a contender for the August edition, to be published sometime next week. And though he’s not as swoonworthy (or maybe my taste has changed) as he was when I was younger (there was a time back then when I did much more than swoon over any young male celeb I could catch a glimpse of, but that’s beside the point), any guy who has a physical resemblance to Little Drummer Boy Zac Hanson is still a star in my book. Which reminds me of one possible choice for the next edition of this segment.
In ‘Weeds’, Hunter Parrish’s From Behind Moment
29 JulI can only hope that the average reader of this blog only pops in occasionally, and that he does not take the time to assess the overarching themes it covers. If thoroughgoing readers actually do exist, I’m afraid they would be led to believe that this is mainly a blog about male behinds. And yes, I admit to having heaped praise on the behinds of a number of young cuties: Daniel Radcliffe, Jamie Bell, Mitch Hewer and Nicholas Hoult have all earned themselves a drooling post. But be patient, dear reader. This blog is about much more than that.
Just not today (either). In a recent post touting the obvious hunkiness of Hunter Parrish, I noted that he was set to have a nude scene this season. Turns out that moment was closer than I knew. In this week’s Weeds episode Silas Botwin gets down to business on his MILF crush, and in the process, Hunter’s ass is visible for little more than a second. The first time I saw the short clip, I briefly paused to appreciate the fact that I live in this day and age, when such scoops are immediately posted on the web, and that stills are instantly available, to be consulted endlessly for pleasure.
So, what do I think about the goods on display? I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed. You can’t get a full view of it, and the lighting, too, works to make the scene less pleasurable than it could have been. Still, it seems ungrateful to complain. It’s not everyday one of the world’s sexiest males offers up his ass to the general public, and a muscular and well-tanned one at that. And don’t get my started on his extraordinary back and shoulders. How hot is that!
Nobody’s perfect, but few come as close as Hunter Parrish. And when not even the lasting image of that older woman serves to cool my feelings, I’d consider mission accomplished.
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