This is a response to actor212’s recent post on My Left Wing, Has Hillary Lost Her Fucking Mind?
A criticism of the latest Clinton effort to humanize St. Hill, the one where Clintonspinners spoofed the ending of perhaps the most talked-about show on middle class/upper middle class/working class media over the last couple of weeks.
The blackout Sopranos ending.
I am not picking on actor212 here…I have seen this general meme popping up all OVER the left blogosphere. For that matter…all over the right-wing areas as well. Sub-meme, really. The major meme being:
I disagree.
She does not cater to the extreme left OR right.
Tightrope time.
And she…the whole Clinton machine, really… is VERY good at it.
Why do I continue to say this?
On the evidence.
On the evidence of roughly 30 years of uninterrupted electoral success. That is…uninterrupted except for the unsightly arrival of one unscheduled, largely-manufactured-by-the-opposition blue dress blowjob in an oval teapot.
A type of mistake that Ms. Hilary is UNDOUBTEDLY not going to make.
Read on for more.
This Sopranos spoof is aimed at Hillary’s base.
The people who think that “The Sopranos” is somehow…cute.
Instead of what it really is.
“IS”.
Not “was”.
What, you think it’s OVER? Frankenstein rose from the flames until the money stopped coming in. Please. The Sopranos is an ongoing, VERY successful effort to humanize murderers and thieves.
And of course…make millions in the process.
Riiiiight…
Had they shown what these people are really like? I mean…they might have gotten one season out of it.
But a societal franchise?
No way.
Not today, and not ever.
The Godfather series?
“Good” gangsters and “bad” gangsters.
Bad things happen to good gangsters?
Shoulda STAYED out.
But no.
EVERYBODY’S got an excuse in America.
To get into the money.
Any fucking which way they can.
“I’m Italian.”
“I’m black.”
“I’m gay.”
“I’m a woman.”
“They are out to destroy our way of life.”
Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
And of course…the Clintonspinners access the Celine Dion brigade.
Listeners to Soft Music 101.
Settle down.
It’s all going to get better.
Bet on it.
Soft Music 101.
Listen to Soporifia ALL DAY LONG!!!
See?
Don’t you feel somehow…better, now?
Sure, they were on the Titanic when it sunk.
BUT THEY HAD LOVE!!!
C’mon, people.
This video was a BULLSEYE!!!
The Clintons and their advisors voter-tone deaf!!!???
HELL no.
They may not get you…but they are going to get enough, no matter WHAT it takes.
Bet on THAT.
Watch.
They have already ridden out the first wave.
Obama.
Now they have to watch the second wave.
Bloomberg.
The Republicans?
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
Bloomy knows.
He’s an “Independent” now.
Duh.
Independent of everything but the financial considerations. (And a BIG fuck you to any dog-whistlers in the pack who are working up a howl of some sort. If Obama made his fortune selling financial info instead of influence I’d say EXACTLY the same thing.)
Perfect pitch, the Clintons.
As long as they are listening with their socio-political ears instead of other…less generally accurate in these cases…addenda and/or other more or less swinging organs.
Not until the basic make-up of this society in some way changes…less mass media-driven…will the Clinton machine cease to function well. When the 20-somethings get to be 40-somethings (if of course they remain in a text-message/Youtube/MySpace/whatever-grows-from-that system rather than the current press/network thing that drives their parents) and the non-mainstream English-speaking minorities become something of a majority in the culture (Again w/in 20 years at the current pace)…not until then will the Clintonistas totally lose their chops.
Until then…???
Sung by WHICHEVER recently-mainstream-but-not-exactly-“old” singer most accurately reflects the admittedly rather dull tastes of her (“Remember…be SAFE out there!!!”) real base.
Watch.
Later…
AG
The Sopranos didn’t make them out to be good people. Far from it.
But there was a trick to it. The audience couldn’t hate the characters, not all of them anyway. But that was part of the genius of HBO where all heroes are anti-heroes. It doesn’t matter whether it was the flawed family in Six Feet Under, the scum of Deadwood, the contemptible Larry David, the Baltimore police department and city hall and gangbangers in The Wire, or even the promiscuous and narcissistic bunch on Sex & the City. All HBO heroes are anti-heroes, and the story never turns out well in the end. It’s what makes it great teevee, and also what somewhat limits its appeal.
That’s not the way I see it.
Just another Mommy, Daddy and the kids in Suburbia.
JUST like its audience.
AG
They were trying to be just a regular suburban family. That was one of the main points. Kids in public school, daughter goes to Columbia, Mom tries to be part of the church. In the end, the kids wound up in the business anyway, and daddy got popped.
I didn’t see that. Are we supposed to assume that Tony got offed because of the abrupt ending?
I saw a guy go by on his way to the men’s room and enjoyed the godfather reference.
I loved that they left the audience to it’s own assumptions. Mine was that the ostentation and the glamor is over and it’s put up or shut up time. Thus the end of the series. These people just like us have to find their way in the world the hard way if they want to stay alive. Tony’s going to court, and on and on in the ordinary world.
The bloodthirsty reaction of the audience was very telling. Thank FSM for the mirror of theater.
I liked the Sopranos, but my main entertainment is watching you and Arthur get into these discussions.
There is plenty of stuff there to show Tony got killed. Try this out for size.
Cool – thanks. I didn’t believe Paul was dead either, but in 1969 I had more time to worry about such things. Now, I’ve gotta worry about Hillary.
AAAAaaaayyyy…FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
Ain’t no “discussion”.
Just two mob guy on the outs, havin’ a little…
Disagreement.
Pretty soon one of ’em will have a NEW mob to join. For a while. Until they fuck up.
Then he can come back an’ have ANOTHER coupla beers or three wid me.
(I’m a freelancer, myself. They hire me when th’other guys can’t cut it.)
Later…
AG
Yup.
Just like the kids that get popped in Iraq.
The Mommies and Daddies who work for The United States of Enron.
Same same, Booman.
Same same.
And the message?
The REAL message?
Sociopaths are just like us.
Give ’em a break.
That’s the way things work.
Sociopaths R Us, Inc.
Nice.
The whole system is built around this idea, Booman.
Put the title “President” on a foolish front man and he and his handlers get almost 8 years to fuck up before the soldiers even BEGIN to get wise. (Not the soldiers in Iraq, etc> I mean the OTHER members of the gang. The good Omerticans of the U. S. of A.)
Can’t whack a BOSS, right!!!???
Except in extremis, of course.
And even then…y’gotta have a new boss who will continue the family business.
Economic imperialism.
Simply the mob writ large.
But THAT’S OK.
They’re human, too.
Just lke Tony Soprano.
As clomp clomp clomp into the nuclear ovens we go.
The Nova gang has its shit together.
Read some Burroughs, Booman.
Read some William Burroughs.
He saw all of this 60 years ago.
Bet on it.
AG
that’s your strange read on it. It’s as if you are watching it and putting yourself in the shoes of some imaginary every-American blotted out on their couch after a happy meal, totally clueless about the deeper messages being conveyed. It’s like reading Hamlet and trying to envision how a six-grader perceives it.
Watch the show for yourself. It’s high level art and it is a scathing critique of the mob, of the police, of the psychiatric community, of complacent bourgeois morals, of zombie electronic youth, of the FBI, of the global war on terror, of us all.
It’s not about giving us a break at all, it’s about showing how we’re all like the Sopranos, in our own way.
But you want to see it how a complacent lazy viewer sees it.
Plus, James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano is the most complete long-term character ever played. Simply stunning how he became that character and developed it. It’s a Mona Lisa level performance, in my book.
I have no criticism of how The Sopranos was written, produced OR played. And I watched quite a bit of it, too. In dribs and drabs. As long as I could watch it and not surrender my disbelief. (I’ve gotten pretty good at that. Taking notes helps. So does the channel changer. GO METS!!!)
But I did not see what you saw.
You saw a scathing critique.
I saw:
And up to the “It ain’t gonna change” part…I agree completely.
But these shows PRECLUDE change.
Blackout…
Fade to same old same old.
You write:
Oh.
So then…you agree with me?
I wrote a diary here recently that rapidly sunk beneath its own weight of truth in my opinion, Booman.
White self-flagellation. OOOooo, it hurts SO GOOD!!!
Didja read it?
It really wasn’t ABOUT “white” self-flagellation per se.
It was about the attitude that you just expressed.
Say it ain’t so, Joe!!!
Say it ain’t true, Boo!!!
No?
OK.
I will.
IT AIN”T SO!!!
Further, you write:
Two points:
1-Dassit.
Precisely.
Round up the American public that watched The Sopranos and I would venture a guess that about 90% of them are exactly that.
Complacent and lazy. Only motivated to effort or thought of ANY kind by the pressure that is put upon them to survive in the style in which they have become accustomed while surrounded by an increasingly hostile (and thus expensive…it costs MONEY to keep them servants in their place) and well-armed world.
and
2-It would not have made it to HBO if it did not promote situational morality of this sort.
HBO is just another cog in the hypno-machine.
Bet on it.
I simply cannot wait for the one that excuses Hitler.
His EXTENDED fambly.
YOU know…the Aryans?
Dey has it rough back in the day.
Give ‘im a fuckin’ BREAK!!!
AYYYyyyy!!!
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
I’ve even got a title.
Dese, Dem an’ Dose Fuckin’ Nazis
Whaddaya think?
Know anybody at HBO?
We could make a bundle…
More than Kos, even.
Later…
AG
What surprised me is your take on it as art.
If I come watch you play I’m going to listen with my own ears, and not try to listen with the ears of some 13 year old that is used to listening to death metal. I know he’d probably be too restless to enjoy jazz. But I’m too laid back to enjoy death metal.
I don’t really care how some imaginary every-American sees the Sopranos. It’s art, not politics. Those with eyes to see can see.
I disagree.
“Art” does not exist in a vacuum.
Not my art, not ANY art.
If someone writes an anti-Semitic opera…and writes their ASSES off…is it any different than one that is not antiSemitic?
Is “Birth Of A Nation”…FAMOUSLY pro-segregationist…”art”?
It’s brilliantly done, for its time and place…but it supported a noxiously ugly paradigm.
Real art…and I call Shakespeare and Duke Ellington to the fore here, just for starters…simply does not do that.
Now…back to “Birth Of A Nation”.
It REFLECTED ITS SOCIETY. It did NOT try to change it.
It was not “new”. Not in content. It was not visionary, it was reactionary.
And thus, to my mind it was not art.
The Sopranos?
Ditto.
100 years from now, people will sit and examine it. And they will say “Too bad. It coulda been a contendah. But it had no moral backbone.”
The way say “On the Waterfront” or “Citizen Kane” had backbones.
Would Charles Mingus’s music have received more attention…and thus been better realized because it would not have been generally so badly produced on shoestring budgets…had he not been so in your face political?
But it WILL last.
Because it was art, and if you didn’t think so too loudly he would beat the shit out of you. One way or another. At least until you shut up.
Is the ENTIRE SYSTEM in the U.S….and yes, this is MY take on the matter…now so controlled by corporate interests that almost NOTHING can be produced big-time unless it takes an acceptable tack in terms of its message? Acceptable to some fairly large and thus fairly powerful self-interest bloc?
And do not throw Michael Moore and Al Gore at me, por favor. The day that I hear Moore criticize Israel’s actions in his films OR in his other communications is the day that I will begin to take him seriously (Please google “Lions Gate Films” for all you need to know about THAT matter. A whole film about Iraq and not a word about israel. Hmmmm. One smart fat guy, eh?) ), and Gore’s supporters are mostly from an academic system that is wrong even when it is right, as far as I can see.
Beware the orthodoxy is my motto, because it is ALWAYS wrong. Even when it is the supposed ANTI-orthdoxy.
Disagree?
That’s what makes horses race.
Or…something like that.
This society is thoroughly broken.
That which merely REFLECTS that breakage is not “art”.
It’s just…it’s just more shit hitting the fan.
And I prefer to duck.
Have it your way.
Here in Burger King America.
We’re all so…free.
Right?
Have it your way.
You can be SURE that I will have it mine.
When the splatter clears…we’ll see then who needs a shower and who doesn’t.
Later…
AG
If this society is broken and a large part of the reason is a combination of message consolidation and mass self-induced hypnosis (on this we agree) then true art is that which punctures the bubble and shows people their true condition.
This is what The Wire does, this is what The Sopranos did. Even Deadwood did this, although we could excuse ourselves that they were 19th century American predators.
But your argument is precisely that these shows do not do this.
We disagree. The Sopranos was a successful commercial enterprise precisely because it could speak to two audiences at once. One audience was simply diverted, waiting for the next hit or the next sex scene. That core group sustained the ratings. But right on top of that it was working its way all the way to the literature or bible studies doctorates, playing on deep themes. Even the cinematography was a pleasure for a student of those things. No detail went without careful consideration. It all meant something.
And that is why it can be enjoyed and revisited and discussed and interpreted. This was not Friends or According to Jim. This was definitely art.
We differ.
Now…The Wire…that’s a whole ‘nother story.
SOME people actualy DID something about the situation in that series. Tried to, anyway.
Was it as well produced as The Sopranos?
As well received?
Overall, even as well acted? (Except for many of the corner kids. Who were acting what they knew.)
Nope.
But it had MORALITY.
It was the one exception to my general “DO NOT ALLOW TV TO PENETRATE YOUR DEFENSES” stance. Of EVERYTHING else on TV except the occasional indisputably real athletic event and once in a while, great musicians. Also real.
Meritocracy in action.
The rest…bullshit.
Utter bullshit.
Left, right and center.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
Well…we agree on one thing. The Wire is the most authentic show on television.
YOU know…
AG
Word has it that Mitt Romney will be releasing a spoof of The Six Million Dollar Man.
He’s got the hair down already.
AG
Very good diary Mr. Gilroy,
I like your take on things, & I do agree with you. The names in the diary could be changed, to make the argument, & it would still hold true.
I was watching an incredible [to me] video tonite that pitted a pride of lions attacking a group of water buffalo who unintentionally happened upon them. The lions spang up & within seconds, had snagged a calf & were halfway in & out of the water & were struggling at the waters` edge. This was being seen through the eyes of the tourists who filmed the whole thing & we can hear the gasps & moans of the observers intermingled with the screams of the calf. The rest of the herd had scattered, & as the lions were trying to drag the calf up on the shore, a crocodile lunged out of the water, & grabbed the calf by the leg. While the calf is thrashing about, bleating piteously, the lions are using group strength to try & retain control over their future meal, by pulling against the strength of the large “croc”. During all this time the emotional utterances of the observers, interrupted by a running commentary by the “great white hunter”, go from pity to surprise & seemingly to amazement, that they were witnessing “raw” nature. The pity changed to cheers as the lions won the tug of war, so to speak, then to elation, as the buffalo herd had regrouped & returned, to try & save a young member of the herd. A large bull [I heard “great white hunter” say so] hooked one of the lions with his horns & flung him in the air, while the remainder of the herd, started charging the rest of the lions & rescued the calf, which, minutes before, had been in death`s hands, it seemed. Great footage of nature`s indifference, right?
Now all through this, from the vantage position of the person filming,
I started seeing things that were not supposed to be there, naturally, but were there in reality. I saw chain link fencing. I saw humans in jeeps. Uh, no, I only saw parts of the jeep, accidently included in the footage, & the voices of people. I also saw, maybe 500 feet past the attack, an Aeromotor windmill to pump water. By the end of this eight min. piece of footage, I had gone from a shudder, to being pissed that this wasn`t nature, but a prefabbed financial endeavor to excite the monied gentry, who could afford to buy a little piece of “Nature. I saw the “trompe l`oiel” for the reality it was. So too, even though the marketing by HBO, of a good story with “the good, the bad & the ugly” in it, The Sopranos, was another canned hunt.
The fact that the jungle battle would be an amazing thing, in & of itself, it was viewed & created by another version of HBO. The story of the Sopranos is also one that goes on everyday, in real life, in & unto itself, & that is wherein art lies.