Random + News + Returns

January 16, 2007 on 9:26 pm | In TV/Film/DVD, Worldview/Life, Politics, News |

With all of the entertainment discussion, I thought I’d follow up on some real world stories that caught my attention today. If you’re wondering who is in the above picture, it’s Sylvan, the WWE’s “Ambassador-At-Large To Quebec” and it does tie in with out first story. Still, you knew I couldn’t keep this all serious, eh? You can read all about him, as well as watch his video about Quebec, right here.

• `Quebecers aren’t racist,’ Charest says: This is an interesting story to me, not only because of my Canadian heritage, but because of the way the poll was conducted. When I was in Canada, Quebec had a bad rep for a number of reasons, due in part to trying to split from the country (which never goes over well, y’know) and the perception of xenophobia in Quebec. I’ve only been in “La Belle Province” once and never felt it was any more racist than the rest of country, nor did any of my Quebecois friends seem more/less racist than anyone else I knew. Moreover, I’m curious what kinds of questions were asked. I don’t know how you poll racism and frankly, most racists I meet never refer to themselves as racists. They’re not like comic book super villains who call themselves villains– even though few real life “bad” people ever see themselves that way– and I doubt that you can dismiss 60% of the Quebec population based on one poll. It’s times like this I wish I had CBC News to see their coverage of this story. It seems like you need to define racism in a very specific way. We all have biases in our behavior and in our actions– we have to because we’re informed by past events. Racism, to my understanding, is a step further where that bias is far more extreme and aggressive, if not a consciously nurtured state of mind. If you’re walking down a street late at night and see some people– of any race– dressed like “thugs,” you’re bound to tense up or cross the road. Is that racism or stereotyping? Or perhaps a different word? So while this poll may be good for headlines, I’d caution non-Canadians to pay it no real attention.
• Afghan civilians stop terror attack at U.S. base: Now this is the kind of story I like to see in the news. I know that a lot of people like to forget about Afghanistan and the war over there, but it is great to see people joining in the good fight. I feel like I should say more, but it’s one of those stories where I regret the loss of life, but I’m also in awe of the bravery and heroism of those fighting the terrorists.
• ‘Lost’ creators: We know where we’re going: Did anyone ever doubt that? Really? To me, the question was always if they had enough material to fill up the time it would take to get there, which brings me to why this story is important to me: art vs commerce. As much as I’ve grown disinterested in Lost, it’s hard to blame the creators who are at the mercy of the network execs and probably can’t pace the story in the manner they’d like. On one hand, it’s easy to villify the network and feel bad for the creators, because as noted in the article, it’s hard to know your story beats when you don’t know how long the story is going to be. If you climax too soon, well, you’ve got a mess on your hands you’re trying to clean up. And yes, I know how that sounds. On the other hand, the networks are desperate for hits these days and with something like Lost, which has been so profitable, it makes sense that the network would like it around for at least 5 seasons, so it can be syndicated (gotta hit 100 episodes) and so that they can continue to profit from DVDs, merchandise, etc. In a perfect world, this show should end when the creators want it to end, but the American television audience is hard to please and hard to convince to stay with a show as it grows (hell, look how early I myself dismissed Heroes). It’s one of those struggles to keep in mind when we criticize entertainment and disrespect the creators– it’s not always in their hands.