Everybody Is A Raymond

 

Review by Mike Gange

You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom

By Phil Rosenthal

Viking Press, $ 29.95 (U.S.) $32.50 (Can), 243 pages

 

You’re Lucky You’re Funny is a fun look at the making of the Emmy Award winning television sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  And it is funny – sometimes sweetly sentimental, sometimes laugh-out-loud guffaw funny – but underneath the humour and wit, it is a seriously educational and revealing look at the making of a sitcom and some of the nasty business behind the term ‘show business.’  

As the creator and executive producer of the CBS sitcom, Phil Rosenthal was in the best seat in the house to watch “Raymond” develop from a minor, off-the-wall comedy routine by then-little known comic Ray Romano on “Late Night with David Letterman” to a blockbuster television hit that began in 1996 and lasted nine years. Rosenthal’s story is almost stereotypical: the skinny Jewish kid from New York who preferred to spend his childhood free time watching television; when forced outside by his mother, he had to use his wit to keep the neighbourhood bullies at bay; he studied at an acting school but ended up being a writer; when he moved to Hollywood on a whim, taking a chance he would find success in three months, good fortune and opportunities literally meet him on the sidewalk; by the time he is in his mid-thirties, he’d made such a name for himself that he is asked to write a pilot that will feature unknown comic Romano.   

Throughout the book, Rosenthal repeatedly stresses that it is not supposed to happen this way. There are, he says, way more starving actors working as waiters and bartenders than there are jobs in Hollywood. He points out the likelihood of a script being turned into a pilot show, then becoming a hit and lasting a long time is about the same as being struck by lightning – twice. But for Rosenthal it did happen. By mining the stand up comedy of Romano, which concentrated on typical domestic situations, and adding in the personal and family circumstances of his talented writers, Rosenthal managed to develop a show he modestly calls “a well made, traditional, classic type of sitcom.” “Everybody Loves Raymond” just happened to find such heartfelt fondness and familiarity among TV critics and millions of viewers alike that it received 70 Emmy Award nominations.

In a classy move, Rosenthal avoids turning the book into a “tell-all-tattletale” as he changes names to protect those guilty of devious Hollywood office politics – jealousy, backstabbing, double-speak and career climbing. Rosenthal also educates the reader about the steps involved in developing a television series, and he goes into specifics about the cast on “Raymond” to show how casting, table reads, run-throughs and character development all help to sell the premise and deliver the punch line. It’s in his telling of these humorous anecdotes, constantly showing the actors and writing team in a good light, that readers can gain an appreciation of Rosenthal as a wonderful writer and story teller.

Underlying all of this is why Phil Rosenthal is at the convergence of time and place, talented writer meeting up with a modest, slightly neurotic comedian, producing a sitcom that gained a stronger audience with each passing year as “Raymond” became a whole lot more than just “a well made, traditional, classic type of sitcom.” From time to time, Rosenthal had the chutzpah to say no, to the star, to his court jesters, even to head of the CBS network – when it meant to do otherwise would have resulted in a drastic change of direction for the characters or a loss of the most basic of family values. No matter how inept any of the characters might have been at expressing themselves, everything was done out of love.  “Everybody Loves Raymond” says Rosenthal, is a modern day “Honeymooners.”

You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom is worth reading and sharing. Like the television show “Everybody Loves Raymond,” the book will make you laugh and leave you with something to ponder.

 

Mike Gange is a journalist and media studies teacher in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

There’s Gold in Them Hollywood Hills

 

Review by Mike Gange

An Actor’s Guide: Your First Year in Hollywood
by Michael Saint Nicholas
Allworth Press, $18.95, 262 pages

“They” are out there.

“They” are in found in every high school, in every town and city.

“They” are the kids who wipe the soap out of their eyes in the shower, hold the shampoo bottle up as if it was an 8 pound golden statuette, and say “I’d like to thank the Academy….”

They are the ones who dream of hopping on a bus to Hollywood, finding work as a “temp” and being discovered by some “Big Name” Director who launches their career.

They should be required to read Michael Saint Nicholas’ book An Actor’s Guide: Your First Year in Hollywood.

Saint Nicholas is an actor and writer who has experienced the very things he writes about. Along with his own personal advice on how to survive and even succeed in Hollywood, Saint Nicholas provides dozens of interviews with entertainment industry professionals who offer candid remarks about how to get ahead in an acting career. However, it is the personally gained practical advice he offers that makes this book well worth the price, and worth putting in the stacks of every high school library. Saint Nicholas’ helpful pointers range from finding your way around Los Angeles the moment the bus arrives in Hollywood, to finding a place to sleep, to making ends meet with part time work, to getting your feet wet in “Extra Work.”

Saint Nicholas also offers straight talk on the usually cloudy area of union vs non union work in Hollywood. In no nonsense terms, he points out how to become a union member, how many days one can work before being considered for union scale, how to go about getting on the payrolls, and where the decent money really is. A non-union extra, he points out, can earn about $50 a day, while a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member with a speaking part can earn ten times that amount. He then lists several casting agencies that will help actors find work in movies, television and soap operas. As for making contact that leads to getting work, Saint Nicholas says the key is still the 8 X 10 B&W head shot, with an updated, 1 page resume stapled to the flip side. He goes on to tell where in Hollywood to get photos taken, and where to get them reproduced quickly and inexpensively.

And another bit more advice from Saint Nicholas, for those with stars in their eyes: “Of the SAG membership, I think under 5 percent make a living as an actor. And under a quarter of 1 percent become wealthy.”

Like the gifts from the mythical St. Nick, this offering from Saint Nicholas will bring pleasure throughout Your First Year in Hollywood.

Here’s hoping “they” truly get to make a speech to thank the Academy.

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.

More info:

http://www.oscar.com/

http://www.sag.org/

 http://www.filmsite.org/oscars.html

http://www.oscars.org/

Good as Gold

Review by Mike Gange

Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader
edited by Michael Streissguth
Da Capo Press, $39.50, 310 pages

 

As a young Telegraph Journal reporter in the 1970’s, I was assigned to interview Johnny Cash during one of his tours to New Brunswick. I waited outside his hotel for two hours in the hot summer sun. Finally, Mr. Cash drove up in his motor home and I introduced myself. He shook my hand and introduced me graciously to his wife, June Carter, in a tone that suggested she was the real star of the show and he was just along for the ride. Mr. Cash, then the host of an ABC television program and one of the most successful of all country stars, apologized for keeping me waiting. And, in spite of having driven most of the day, Mr. Cash agreed to an interview on the spot, and insisted we sit down on the curb in front of the hotel. I was charmed by his unpretentiousness and his openness.

Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader, edited by Michael Streissguth, shows that same charming side of the perennially popular singer/songwriter. Mr. Cash, who turned 70 this past February, is immortalized in more than 30 articles by a variety of well known music writers whose stories span four decades and show us aspects of Mr. Cash’s character. Mr. Streissguth weaves these stories together to tell a poignant tale of how Johnny Cash went from rural Arkansas farm boy to Sun Records up-and-comer backed up (at first) by “The Tennessee Two” to Nashville’s Grand Ol’ Opry recording and performing star. Mr. Streissguth humbly says he lets the other writers tell their stories because many voices make for a better observation. In this case he is absolutely right.

Ring of Fire contains many powerful stories. Johnny Cash’s own account of realizing how many times he’d been arrested is an eye opener. While playing Las Vegas, Mr. Cash had to complete a Nevada state work permit. The form asked “Have you ever been arrested? When? Where? For what?” He had to turn the page over to complete the list and when he saw it written there in ink, it finally dawned on Mr. Cash he had been arrested seven years in a row for drunkenness and pill abuse. Mr. Cash touchingly and candidly relates in the story how the kindness of strangers and his own belief in God got him through those hard times.

While all of the stories are well written, one in particular is a nugget worth sharing. Writer Dan McCullough takes his two buddies, Bobby and Gordon, both of whom are teenagers with Down’s Syndrome, to see their long time hero, Johnny Cash. He arranges through some media contacts to get Mr. Cash to meet the two backstage at the Boston Garden arena for an autograph, prior to a performance. Mr. Cash and the two boys chat merrily for half an hour until the band calls him to get ready to go on stage. Just at the last minute, the two special boys tell Mr. Cash they pray for him every night.

Mr. McCullough writes: “Cash couldn’t speak. His eyes filled up. He looked at me, reached over, took me by the arm and shook my hand. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much.” I didn’t feel much like talking myself. We turned and walked away. Cash hollered after us, “What song would you boys like to hear?” Bobby and Gordon said at once, “Ring of Fire.” Minutes later, we were in our seats with the other 15 000 fans as Cash strode on stage. I don’t have to tell what his first song was, do I?” writes Mr. McCullough.

Johnny Cash’s perseverance and charisma have taken him a long way from his hard scrabble childhood on a subsistence farm. One of the stories relates how Mr. Cash, while in jail, had to sing all night long to keep a mentally unbalanced but physically powerful cell-mate from going berserk and breaking Mr. Cash’s neck. Michael Streissguth lets stories like this show us that Mr. Cash is no high falutin’ country star, but a singer with personal foibles whose work is a reflection of his life and experiences. Johnny Cash has certainly had his moments when he was a scoundrel and they are mentioned but not dwelled upon here. Most of the stories are about his strength of character and his charm. Unpretentious and honest, the entertaining journalism pieces Mr. Streissguth has chosen are truly as good as gold.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.

 

 

A Taste of Bile

Review by Mike Gange

Don’t Eat This Book
By Morgan Spurlock
Putnam, $31.00, 309 pages

If, in one sitting, you took in everything Morgan Spurlock says in Don’t Eat
This Book, you would get very sick. Even consuming Spurlock’s work in small bites will give you indigestion.  At the very least, it will leave you
feeling queasy, and the reason is more than just ghastly grub.

Spurlock is the New York writer whose 2004 documentary film Super Size Me chronicled the harm he inflicted upon himself, as he ate at various McDonald’s restaurants every day, three times a day, for a month. The title of the film came from Spurlock’s pledge to always accept the employees’ offer to take the larger size, the Super Size, if they suggested it.

The queasiness Spurlock induces in his book is not just the story of his month long McDiet. To be sure, Spurlock both enlightens and disgusts us by showing through charts and statistics how very little real nutrition there is in any of McDonald’s food products (even the salads). Spurlock’s
description of his changing physical condition is also educational and
shocking: his weight ballooned up about a pound per day on his month long
McDonald’s diet; he damaged his liver to the verge of cirrhosis; and, while
on the diet he developed symptoms of diabetes and painful headaches. 

The most stomach churning part of the book, however,  has to be the massive efforts put forth by the big corporations and lobbyists who wanted to silence Spurlock or discredit his attempts to show how bad fast-food can be. As his film gained notoriety, playing in an increasing number of cinemas, and generating lots of negative publicity for the McDonald’s corporation, McDonald’s spokespeople would appear at the cinemas and hand out pamphlets containing counter intelligence to movie patrons as they left the building. In Australia, McDonald’s people called radio and television stations to demand equal time after Spurlock was on the air. In Japan, the corporation managed to keep him off the air, by threatening to withdraw their advertising.

Also unsettling is when Spurlock shows the U.S. National Schools Lunch
Program (NSLP), which serves some 26 million school children every school day, to be an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ensuring that farmers are paid for their surpluses which would ordinarily be called
spoilage. Spurlock then lists the honchos who work for the USDA and who are supposedly seeing that students don’t go to school hungry: former Secretary Ann Veneman served on the board of biotech firm Calgene; her chief of staff had been an executive with the powerful Cattleman’s Beef Association, the corporate lobby for meatpackers; her deputy chief of staff was vice president of the milk and cheese lobby; another was a consultant with an agri-business, and another worked for Campbell Soup. All of them worked for businesses where the profit margin was the most important; not one was an expert in nutrition.

Throughout the book, Spurlock’s tone is light-hearted and sometimes this
overshadows his serious intentions. As he did in the movie, he certainly
takes aim at McDonald’s, and while the nutritional information is gruesome,
it is also a bit tiresome. Spurlock’s bigger message, however, is left
unsaid and allows for a conclusion that comes out right between Huxley’s
Brave New World and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: not only are we supposed to unquestionably consume what’s available, but we dare not complain or even discuss our own observations for fear of consequences. Don’t Eat This Book, then, is much more than just a tale of bad food and what it does to us. This is a look at a state sanctioned drug. And no wonder it leaves us with more than a bad aftertaste.

Mike Gange is a Fredericton teacher and writer.

 

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

 

Review by Mike Gange

 

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

by Eric Schlosser

Harper-Perennial, $14.95 (US) $22.95(CAN), 416 pages

 

 

What Eric Schlosser writes about the fast food outlets might make you ill. What he says about the supporting industries such as the meatpackers might even put you off processed food. But what Schlosser writes about the consequences of the food industry’s actions and attitudes will definitely leave you nauseous and upset.

 

Every day, one out of every four adults will visit a fast food outlet. As a result, North Americans spend more money on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and music – combined. In 1970, North Americans spent $6 billion per year on fast food. By 2001, that amount had jumped to $110 billion. If only those people read Eric Schlosser’s book, they would change their eating habits.   

 

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is investigative journalism at its finest. Schlosser’s research is first rate, and he details alarming facts and figures such as those above that illuminate the problem with the reliance on fast food. Then he shows the impact on the diets of consumers globally, and how the arrival of fast food outlets transforms not just towns and villages, but a whole nation. For example, he points out how Great Britain has changed since the arrival of fast food outlets. “Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled – and so did the obesity rate among adults,” he writes. “The British now eat more fast food than any other nationality in Western Europe. They also have the highest obesity rate.”

 

While Schlosser ably describes the working conditions and problems in restaurants such as McDonald’s, Jack-in-the Box, Carl Jr.’s and Burger King, they are only the visible tip of the iceberg. Schlosser’s best work – and the most horrifying aspect – of  Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is his description of the corporate exploitation and profit-driven greed that keeps working wages suppressed, and tolerates (and in some cases even promotes) such poor working conditions that workers become “disposable.” Workers in meatpacking plants are forced to work so fast that severed fingers and limbs are considered as the cost of doing business. When workers drown after falling into huge vats of bovine blood and meat processing waste, the corporations consider these instances as business as usual. As soon as the vats are cleared of the coagulating blood and the body of the dead worker, the company is up and running as soon as possible, sometimes the very next day.

 

Corporations have spent years at union busting, by either closing the packing plants, moving to another location or by hiring low wage scab workers to replace strikers who are legitimately asking for realistic wages.  The typical meatpacking worker is not unionized, has no medical benefits and is treated no better than feudal serfs. Many of these workers entered the U.S. as illegal immigrants, (sometimes brought by the busload into the U.S. by these meatpacking companies), can hardly speak English, and have no literacy skills. They either cannot complain or dare not, for fear of losing their jobs and being deported.

 

Medical professionals who are in the employ of these corporations routinely misdiagnose and underreport serious injuries, so that corporations’ health records and industrial accidents appear to be less serious than they are. One worker had several vertebrae broken but was told he was suffering from a muscle strain. Another, a meat packing plant cleaner, was blasted with chlorine gas and steam, and although his lungs were nearly destroyed, was told he needed a few days off work to rest and recover. Schlosser writes that the meatpacking plant workers are treated not much better than the animals they slaughter.

 

Schlosser calls the meat-processing company IBP “one of the most irresponsible and reckless corporations in America.” Such companies have used their political pull, he writes, to ensure favorable legislation, lower state taxes and special treatment from health inspectors who turn a blind eye to dangerous industry practices. One meat packing company managed to convince the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the industry, that it had a mere oversight in company policy. That “oversight” resulted in more than 35 tons of ground beef poisoned with the deadly E coli bacteria O157:H7, being delivered to restaurants and grocery stories in more than 15 states.

 

Schlosser’s work took over three years to research and write, but his storytelling is gripping and fascinating. Although the details are unsettling, unnerving and at times horrifying, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is hard to put down. It is a scathing indictment of the industries that provide food “from farm to fork.” It is also a warning that all of us need to speak up on the issues of greedy corporations, workers’ rights, and compliant governments willing to overlook corporate culpability.  If we don’t, it is sure to make us a sicker society. After reading Schlosser’s work, an order of burgers, fries, or chicken nuggets will be hard to keep down.  

 

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism courses in Fredericton.

 

Saturday Night Enlivened

Review by Mike Gange

Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live
As told by its Stars, Writers and Guests.
Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
Little Brown, $36.95, 594 pages

When I was in second year university, in 1975, I was invited to a house party by some of the coolest kids on campus. The place was really hoppin’, with talkative campus athletes and academics, loud music and a fridge full of beer. But at 12:30, everything suddenly stopped. Someone snapped on the TV and we dragged chairs around or sat on the spartan linoleum floor to watch. There was a little opening skit, no credits, no theme music, then somebody on the cast said “Live from New York, its Saturday Night.”

My first experience with NBC’s TV show Saturday Night Live mirrors the experience of a whole generation of viewers. We heard about it by word of mouth, and we were blown away by its power, its speed and timing, its comic genius and the way it thumbed its nose at our elders. We had to watch it live, because there were no VCR’s, no replays, and no sneak previews giving us a glimpse of what was to come that week. Part of the attraction of the TV show was how outrageous it was and yet, how cool it was.

In Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live veteran reporters Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller become editors, letting the cast, crew and guest stars who have been involved in the show over its 25 year history candidly tell their stories about how the show came about, how they worked through many all-nighters to finish a comedy sketch, and how the writers and actors collaborated and competed to get their sketches on the air. Their comments illuminate the pressures the performers and writers felt in trying to relentlessly re-invent fresh comedy sketches week after week.

Tom Shales, who has written for a number of news outlets, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Washington Post, and James Andrew Miller, who has also written for various publications and is the author of Running in Place: Inside the Senate, have included thousands of interviews that truly show the successes and creative differences that permeated through the TV show’s history. Shales and Miller have wisely left the musical side of the show to another book and another time. But they don’t shy away from letting those involved with the show share their uncensored feelings. And what tales they tell on each other, including: Chevy Chase was an insufferable egomaniac; John Belushi went from sweet and inventive to bombastic and out of control as his drug use got worse; Chris Farley idolized Belushi so much he taped his eyebrows up to look more like him.

Over the years, the TV show Saturday Night Live had its high and low moments. At its best, it recorded a 36 share, meaning 36 % of the viewers who were watching TV at that moment, were watching Saturday Night Live. It has won nearly 20 Emmy Awards and some of its skits have become comedy classics. But in some years, as ratings plunged and that once irreverent humor gave way to immature stunts and gross out gags, NBC programming executives considered cancelling the show, although they had nothing else to replace it with.

This book, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live has its high and low moments too, and they mostly parallel the times the show was at its best and worst. That unevenness of story telling is something one expects award winning writers, like Shales and Miller, to be able to fix. On the whole, it’s entertaining gossip, but a comedy TV show that redefined the word “cool” deserves more serious analysis.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.

 for more info:

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/

 

From Kansas to Kokomo, Pop Culture is Ubiquitous

 

Review by Mike Gange

 

From Abba to Zoom: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia of the Late 20th Century

By David Mansour

Andrews McMeel Publishers,  $18.95, 544 pages

 

Question: What do Alfred Bellows, Adam Bricker and Doogie Howser all have in common?

 

Answer: They were all doctors on television sitcoms, in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, respectively. Further still, they all get brief mentions in the eclectic encyclopaedia of pop culture, From Abba to Zoom by David Mansour.

 

Mansour, from Kansas City, Kansas, is an unlikely ‘expert.’ His first connection with pop culture paraphernalia came about when one of his friends gave him a Barbie doll as a gag-gift. The joke turned out to be on his friend because the gift launched Mansour into gathering tidbits and treats relating to three decades of popular culture. A hairdresser by training, Mansour began his collection with suggestions and help from his customers and companions, often scribbling the details on the smallest of scraps of paper or matchbooks. 

 

As the title of the book suggests, the entries range from the Swedish recording group ABBA, who were popular in the mid-70’s, to ZOOM, a programme that aired on PBS during the 1970’s, and which had a brief resurgence beginning in 1999.

 

Many of the literally thousands of entries are fun to read and would make great answers to the Trivial Pursuit board game, which also gets mentioned: “introduced in 1981 by Canadians Scott Abbott and Chris Haney, and credited with re-launching the adult board game industry.” And although we are talking about pop culture, one of the critiques of this book has to be that the answers are just too shallow, even by pop culture standards. The topics deserve more than the one or two lines afforded here, and details such as the television networks or creators of the product would help to make the answers more complete.

 

Because the vast majority of the entries in this collection come from television programmes and characters, From Abba to Zoom proves to be a great lesson in how all-encompassing television has become in shaping our popular culture and educating our young people. It is also interesting to note that pop culture has become increasingly homogenized and is the same blend, no matter if in Kansas or Kokomo. 

 

As for Bellows, Bricker and Howser: Alfred Bellows was the NASA shrink who thought Major Tony Nelson suffered from constant delusions on the 60’s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, while Adam Bricker was the doc on 70’s TV hit The Love Boat who was more interested in bedding the beautiful women passengers than in practicing medicine, and Doogie Howser was name of the late 80’s programme about the same named boy genius who whizzed through med school to become a 16 year old physician living a teen aged existence while solving medical mysteries in an adult world.

 

If you were able to identify the three of them, you have probably spent as much time in front of the TV as David Mansour.

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism courses at Fredericton High.  

 

 

 

1001 Ad Tips Don’t Add Up

By Mike Gange

 

1001 Advertising Tips: Ideas and Strategies from the World’s Greatest Campaigns (2006)

by Luc Dupont

Transcontinental Books, $27.95 (US) $36.95(CAN), 290 pages

 

Sometimes numbers in titles just sound right: Number 1 with a Bullet; Number 2 and Trying Harder; Lucky 7; Behind the 8-Ball; 57 Varieties; 101 Dalmatians, 1001 whatever. But a thousand and one of anything can be a little bit too much. Getting to the end can be a lot of work and by the time you have reached the last one, you can’t remember the first one. Such is the case with Luc Dupont’s 1001 Advertising Tips: Ideas and Strategies from the World’s Greatest Campaigns.

 

University of Ottawa professor of communications Luc Dupont has written four books on advertising, and often takes his role as professor of communications & marketing to the field, where he advises groups such as Re/Max, Bell and Sun Media Corp on how to design their advertising to make it more effective. This work is written for someone planning an ad campaign, perhaps a director of sales & marketing at one of Dupont’s premium clients.

 

Obviously, with the number 1001 in the title, you are going to get lots of info on ads and ad campaigns. Frequently, Dupont makes use of tables and charts from Advertising Age to supplement what he is saying. Many colour or B&W photos also complement his 1001 ideas. However, Dupont is overly long on his marketing suggestions and too short on advertising analysis. Chapter Two is called “55 Ways of Positioning Your Product” and he really has to stretch to get all 55 into his work. Some of his suggestions are the same old idea, just turned upside down.

 

In fewer than 300 pages, Dupont attempts to make 1001 ideas on advertising glamorous, invigorating and applicable. As a result, he does not go into enough to detail to explain the rationale of why things work in the advertising world. And because the discussion of advertising ideas in this book is so curtailed, Dupont’s tone tends to be too much preaching and not enough teaching. And also unfortunately, there are very few ideas discussed here that are new work; most of these advertising ideas could just as easily be found in books by Advertising gurus such as Al Reis and Jack Trout or others.

 

Sometimes the fun of advertising is touched upon here by Dupont, but is often done in a better way by practitioners in the advertising world. For example, Michael Newman’s 2003 book, Creative Leaps: 10 Lessons in Effective Advertising Inspired at Saatchi & Saatchi, and Mary Wells Lawrence’s 2002 book A Big Life in Advertising often tell better stories about the world of advertisers. If you are an advertising buff, then this book will make a nice supplement to your library. However, if you are a newcomer to understanding advertising, then 1001 stretches the topic too thin and too far.

 

I would like to suggest a title that does not contain a number. Maybe Less is More.

 

 

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.

 

 

 

A Rose is a Rose: Unless we are talking about a woman or a colour

Is NASCAR a form of mass communication?

What’s in a name?

 

Editorial by Mike Gange 

In the midst of teaching my students about understanding the power of images, I have been party to an interesting debate.  Should it be called Media Studies or Media Literacy?

So, I turned to the great source on line.

The grand poobah of modern answers.

The people who have all the definitive answers.

Right. I went to Wikipedia.

Media literacy, says Wikipedia, is the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. It uses an inquiry-based instructional model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see and read.

Media literacy education is one means of developing media literacy. It provides tools to help people critically analyze messages to detect propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming (and the reasons for such), and to understand how structural features — such as media ownership, or its funding model- affect the information presented.

Media literacy aims to enable people to be skillful creators and producers of media messages, both to facilitate an understanding as to the strengths and limitations of each medium, as well as to create independent media. Media literacy is an expanded conceptualization of literacy. By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and manipulation (especially through commercials and public relations techniques), and understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of reality.

Uh huh. Got that?  

Media studies, it says in Wikipedia, is a collection of academic programs regarding the content, history, meaning and effects of various media. Media studies scholars vary in the theoretical and methodological focus they bring to mass media topics, including the media’s political, social, economic and cultural roles and impact.

Media studies draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, and overlap in interests with related disciplines mass communications fields and communication studies. Researchers develop and employ theories and methods from disciplines including cultural studies political economy, economics, sociology film and video studies, etc..

Ok, that’s clear as mud, right?

 

Well, let’s look at my classroom example. And you will have to forgive me if I can’t tell you my sources. Some tiny tid-bit of information, long ago forgotten.

 

I teach the students about fonts. For example, fonts are recognizable as masculine and feminine. A masculine font is block lettering. That means no serif. So, no little tails on the letters in the selected font. Meanwhile, a feminine font is curvy, with serifs (tails, curly-ques, whatever you choose to call them.)  And it works the same way as a voice over on television. The masculine font is often used in places where a voice of authority is required. The fonts with serifs are often used in places where a maternal voice is needed or at least a more gentle approach then the masculine, sans serif would supply. (Of course, there are endless interpretation and variations here, ranging from the benevolent big brother to the sob sister.)  

 

When the US Army uses an ad that says we need more women in the army, but the message is written in a masculine font, what really is the message? So this kind of analysis is needed to get the kids to think about what they encounter in the world of print ads.

 

 

Here is another example. Look at a package of TIDE laundry soap. It is written in a masculine font. It is as if a male voice is saying “use TIDE.” Then look at Downy’s packaging, which is with a feminine font. It is as if a woman is saying, counteract the roughness and toughness of TIDE with a feminine touch. In each case you should hear a different voice and thus a different perspective and level of persuasion inherent in each.  

 

 

 

Here are some more ideas. Go into the bathroom and find the body wash your wife, your girlfriend or your daughter uses. Softsoap: full of serifs. Now look at your own body wash. AXE: no serifs, boldly written. Then look at the packaging on the shampoo you use as compared to hers. It is the same thing. Fructus has a slight serif. TREsemme does not.

 

Want to take this one step farther? Look at the fonts used on the race cars. BOLD letters, no serif. Often the lettering on cars is in RED which is THE hot colour, and means speed, passion, and aggressiveness. Green is THE environmental colour, but is often used on tobacco product, to help get beyond the poisonous ideas people have about cigarettes.  

 

My teaching of this lesson in class takes about an hour.  At the end, the students recognize the implicit messages in posters and ads they once took for granted. They start to see the messages inherent in magazine covers and text books. They walk away saying, “wow, I see now.” That is a form of literacy, right?

 

Once the kids get thinking about the power of the messages in a font in any print message, they also start to ask about power. Who is sending this message? Who decided upon this message? How is this message received in my culture or other cultures?  And as such, then the power shifts back to the consumer.

 

So with this, they have moved into the realm of media studies.

 

Now, is it Media Studies or Media Literacy?

 

Sometimes I feel like I am just off stage, watching a version of “Who’s on first?”

 

 

Tempest in a “B” Cup

 

Review By Mike Gange 

The Swimsuit Issue and Sport:
          Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated

By Laurel R. Davis

State University of New York Press, $19.95, 168 pages

 Ya gotta just love Sports Illustrated magazine: great photos of sports events, often showing athletic determination or terrific physical exertion; stories about tough contests, and athletes overcoming adversity to get to success, and those lengthy investigative journalism reports into the darker side of sports. And then there’s the fluffy, meaningless swimsuit edition filled with eye-candy for males, that arrives in the mid-winter.

 

Obviously not everybody looks at the swimsuit issue from the same viewpoint. Laurel Davis’s academic work The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated, sheds light on some of the concerns that such an edition can raise in an enlightened society. Davis is a Professor of Sociology at Springfield College and for her study she looked closely at SI swimsuit editions from 1964 to 1996. Her work examines the history of the immensely popular swimsuit issue, the reasons for its popularity and its profitability. The average issue of SI , she writes, sells about 3 million copies, while the swimsuit edition sells about 5 million copies. And ad revenue, writes Davis, jumps about 18% for the annual swimsuit issue over regular weekly editions. This kind of revenue places SI’s swimsuit edition in the highest of all magazine revenues.  

Davis’ criticism of the annual edition of the magazine is that it continues to promote stereotypes. The female models are hardly athletic, at least not in the sense of the well-trained, muscular and conditioned athletes that are usually pictured in SI. Further, these models are often posed in a way that would be viewed by sports fans as either amateurish or unskilled athletically, she writes. And, writes Davis, if the models are not posed athletically, they are posed in a sexual way — with a come-hither look, their heads canted in a provocative manner or their bodies placed in a way that plays up their sexuality. It is ironic, she says, that the magazine does not cover the sport of swimming in any depth through the rest of the year.

 

 

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2008

 

 

Another of her concerns is that the magazine continues to promote a view that males need to be macho. As a result, she says, males feel comfortable and sometimes compelled to read the swimsuit issue in public to show their sexual orientation, whereas some females might not care to be exposed to the magazine because of its contents. Because of this, and the male vision of idealised female beauty, the swimsuit edition continues to promote a hegemonic masculinity. In other words, the swimsuit edition exerts an influence that promotes a domination of one group in society over another. In this case, that would be male domination over females. The SI swimsuit edition is second only to Playboy magazine in terms of male readers, Davis points out. She leaves it to the reader to draw any further conclusions in this regard.  

In helping to support her argument, Davis interviewed 39 people on their views about the magazine. That is one of the shortcomings of this work. Such a small sample size could have been obtained at any college dorm, and depending on the gender of the occupants, would have given similar or opposite results.

 For the most part, Davis’ work is enlightening and makes several valid points. Unlike some feminist writings, Davis work here is filled with more well-grounded facts than vitriolic. Readers can interpret the text of SI swimsuit edition any way they might, but the magazine is about a profit, not a political agenda. And it takes Davis a long time to get to the point where she admits that profit is the motive. Despite the valid arguments, don’t expect an easy flowing narrative; her writing is academic and plodding, and sometimes difficult to get through.

 

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism courses at Fredericton High.