RIP Bergman and Walsh

In atonement for the picture of that idiot Ward Churchill that has been disgracing the page for the past few days, today we bring you a tribute to two truly brilliant men who have left us in the last 24 hours: Ingmar Bergman and Bill Walsh. These are two guys who made it cool to be a nerd before Rivers Cuomo was born. Both were unabashedly intellectual men working in mediums not know for rewarding intellectualism. They redefined their jobs and influenced all that came after them, raising the collective IQ of their chosen professions.

Bergman, of course, was one of the last surviving members of the great generation of post-war international art film directors who created the idea of cinema as a means of personal expression. Bergman was the most cerebral of the bunch, typically not going for the genre film action of Kurosowa or the decadent carnivals of Fellini. But that doesn't mean his films were boring. His major works, such as The Seventh Seal and Persona, grabbed you with their compelling visuals and intense acting, leaving you enthralled even if 90% of the Big Ideas were going over your head. He was more daring than Kurosawa and more consistent than Fellini, and he opened up narrative cinema in the second half of the 20th-century and the early 21st to experimental new directions. All of the most important films of the last decade, from The Matrix to Fight Club, would be impossible without the marriage of philosophy and experimental filmmaking with conventional narrative storytelling that Bergman pioneered.

Walsh did something similar for the sport of football. Until Walsh came along, football coaches from Knute Rockne to Vince Lombardi to Tom Landry fashioned themselves at Patton-esque generals whose power derived from their ability to discipline and inspire large groups of men. Walsh was passed over for NFL head coaching jobs for more than a decade because it was thought he lacked the toughness to be a coach. But when he finally got the chance to take over the lowly San Francisco 49ers, he unveiled the wild experiment he had been tinkering with in his years as an assistant and college coach. His West Coast Offense was built on strategy and precision, with the players as interchangeable moving parts. The personal mythology Walsh built around himself fashioned him as more Bobby Fisher than Patton, winning with innovative strategy rather than brute force. He didn't believe in inspiring "Win one for the Gipper"-style speeches, but instead spent practice and locker room time drilling his playbook into his players' heads. Like Bergman, Walsh's influence has spread everywhere in football. His pass-heavy style has entirely changed the way the game is played, and his quiet cerebral persona is aped by current coaches such as Bill Belicheck and Tony Dungy.

So, in a world where it seems like we are getting dumber and dumber everyday, especially when reading the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed, let's take a minute to remember two people who made it cool to be smart.

I Come to Bury Ward Churchill . . .

The fraud that is Ward Churchill, university professor, is no more. For those of you late to the party, Churchill was a University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor who turned into David Horowitz's wet dream after being invited to speak at Hamilton College two years ago. A Hamilton conservative group began circulating an essay Churchill wrote after 9/11, in which he famously called the 9/11 victims "little Eichmans". In the media shitstorm that followed, it was discovered that Churchill:

A) Had somehow become a tenured professor and chairman of the Ethnic Studies department with a six-figure salary despite only holding an M.A. in communications from from a hippie-dippy experimental college that did not assign grades.

B) Could not prove any of his claims to membership in three different Native American tribes. His claimed Indian heritage had been part of the reason he had got his job as a diversity hire, but the closest he came was an honorary membership from the Keetowah Band, which has since publicly disavowed him.

C) Had plagiarized his work and falsified and misrepresented his sources on multiple occasions.

It is this last point that finally got Churchill fired after two years of committee hearings and faculties reviews. But the first two points make it clear that he never should have had a job to begin with.

But that is neither here nor there. Because, as his well-intentioned but misguided supporters have frequently pointed out, this is "not about Ward Churchill". No, it is about the assault on academic freedom that it represents. According to his supporters, Churchill was not being fired because of his shoddy scholarship, but because of his political views. If he had not written his essay about 9/11, the investigation would have never began. If he is fired because of the investigation that his controversial statements started, it will discourage other professors from speaking truths that make people uncomfortable. . .

You know what, screw this. I was seriously trying to present the pro-Churchill camp's views in a serious manner before refuting them, but I can't do it. I really want to understand the pro-Churchill people, I really do. They include many people that I know personally and deeply respect, and I have spent the past two years trying to see what they see that I don't. But I simply can't do it. What is the lesson of Ward Churchill, what is his legacy in academia? Simply this: if you are lucky enough to hustle your way into a cushy, well-paying job you clearly are not qualified for and get by for fifteen years doing terrible work, keep your mouth shut. This is not about a scholar being punished for his controversial views. This is about a charlatan's idiotic statements finally drawing attention to his lack of credentials and bad scholarship and a University Board of Regents finally doing a job it should have done a long time ago.

Academics should be outraged about this story, but about its beginning, not its end. It should anger every honest, hardworking professor and graduate student that, in world where tenured jobs are increasingly hard to come by, this con man was able to steal a job from someone who was actually deserving of it. We should be on the case of the Colorado Board of Regents and the university administration, but instead of accusing them of being puppets for the vast right-wing conspiracy, we should be accusing them of incompetence in ever letting this idiot get by with his scam for so long.

And one final comment about that essay the essay that started all of this. All of the anti-Churchill people have frequently repeated that the firing was not about his political views, but about his shoddy and unethical work. However, it should be, at least in part, about that essay. Not about the position that it ostensibly represents: that U.S citizens should take a long hard look at the things our country has done to create the dangerous climate we live in today. That is an important and potentially unpopular position that should be explored. But it should be done by real scholars, and "Roosting Chickens" proves that Churchill is not a real scholar.

Anyone who has waded through the tortured prose of "Roosting Chickens" can see Churchill's lack of intellectual honesty. That essay proves that he is not about opening minds, but closing them inside of his ideologically-driven agenda. He is not a martyr to academic freedom, which is about protecting open and honest inquiry, but instead he is just the left-wing version of the anti-intellectual Bush administration neocons, who let no amount of reality interfere with their ideology.

Academia has too many problems facing it today for scholars to waste their time on idiots like Ward Churchill. He, as an American, of course has the right to say any idiotic thing he wants to, and his notoriety from this needlessly-prolonged nonsense guarantees that he will make a good living doing so, preaching to the far-left choir and being hailed as free-speech hero at Campus Green Party events and Rage Against the Machine concerts around the country. Good for him. But the rest of us, who aspire to be real scholars, need to work to protect our institution, from the likes of both David Horowitz and Ward Churchill.

Simpsons Top 10

So, I have let my summer relaxation get out of hand and not been by here for awhile. But, I was stirred back into action by my outrage over this Simpsons Top 10 list over at Vanity Fair. While I highly recommend their excellent oral history of the show, timed to coincide with the release of the movie on July 27, the accompanying Top 10 needs correcting. While I agree with several of their choices, they inexplicably left many other classics off and included several duds. So, here is my Top 10. Thanks to The Simpsons Archive for the episode details.

10) Behind the Laughter (Season 11, May 21, 2000)
The token late-seasons entry. I include this episode because it shows how the show, even in its declining years, could still be daring and experimental. Styled as a Behind the Music episode detailing the off-stage life of the Simpson family, it combines two of the shows great strengths: pop genre parody and self-deprecating meta-humor.

9) Treehouse of Horror V (Season 6, October 30, 1994)
The crown jewel of the famous Halloween specials, featuring the Shining parody that gave Homer one of his greatest lines of all time ("No TV and no beer make Homer something something" Marge: "Go crazy?" Homer: "Don't mind if I do.") You also get Homer's time machine toaster and Principal Skinner going all Soylent Green.

8) I Love Lisa (Season 4, February 11, 1993)
Lisa gives a pity Valentine's Day card to dim-witted Ralph Wiggum and then must figure out how to let him down gently. The show's inspired silliness and ear for comedy can be heard in Ralph's reading of the card ("You choo-choo choose me?").

7) You Only Move Twice (Season 8, November 3, 1996)
Homer gets a new job working for a boss who is a cross between Steve Jobs and Dr. No. He moves the family to a prefab community that is stultifying in its cutting-edge appeal. This episode is even funnier in today's post-iPod, Starbucks-besotted world than it was ten years ago.

6) Cape Feare (Season 5, October 7, 1993)
The first one VF actually got right, and it's easy to see why. It is hands down the best Sideshow Bob episode, and that is saying something, as several others could easily make the shortlist (especially Sideshow Bob Roberts and Brother From Another Series). But this one takes the cake with its Cape Fear parody, Homer trying to learn his new name, Bob performing H.M.S Pinafore and, of course, the reinvention of the rake gag.

5) 22 Short Films About Springfield (Season 7, April 14, 1996)
The show's phenomenal success and animated medium have given it the creative freedom to attempt things no other show would do, such as do an entire episode with no narrative. A collection of vignettes about various Springfield denizens, this episode gets points for creativity and daring, but it makes the top 5 because it gives so many of the characters some of their funniest and most memorable moments. What puts it over the top is Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers, with Skinner trying to pass off Krusty Burgers as homemade "steamed hams".

4) Marge vs. the Monorail (Season 3, January 14, 1994)
The late Phil Hartman created two of my favorite characters, Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz, but this was his tour-de-force, as the Music Man-esque monorail salesman Lyle Lanley. The monorail song remains the best of the show's many showstopping musical numbers and Leonard Nimoy is wonderfully strange in his cameo. Of the show's many satirical jabs at the cornerstones of American society, the most persistent and irreverent is the idea that democracy doesn't work, and this episode makes that point in the guise of that most American of art forms: the musical comedy.

3) Homer Phobia (Season 8, February 16, 1997)
One of the signs of the show's late-season decline has been the increasing preachiness of its topical episodes. When the show was at its peak, they could take an issue like homophobia and make you feel bad for the homophobe. Added to that is John Waters, in what is possibly the best celebrity cameo ever. Where else can you visit a gay steel mill and see John Waters chasing away killer reindeer with a mechanical Santa Claus? All that and my favorite Homer quote of all time: "You know me Marge, I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming."

2) The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show (Season 8, February 9, 1997)
Speaking of the show's decline, at least they declined in style. This episode, which marked the show surpassing The Flintstones as the longest-running animated sitcom, is, naturally, about long-running shows in decline. To reinvent Itchy & Scratchy, the network creates a new, desperately "cool" character voiced by Homer, while a new, desperately "cool" character named Roy moves in with the Simpsons. Poochie speaks not only to artists forced to take orders from no-nothing suits, but also to every young person who has ever been condescended to by Hollywood and corporate America.

1) Much Apu About Nothing (Season 7, May 5, 1996)
Another episode that is even funnier and more relevant than when it first aired. The opening "Bear Patrol" sequence is the show's funniest and most true-to-life representation of the Springfield mob mentality. It is probably the height of the show's satiric brilliance. Amazingly, the rest of the episode keeps up this pace. Whenever I read about the current immigration debate, I always hear Chief Wiggum, preparing to enforce the town's tough new immigration policy: "First we round up your tired, then your poor, then your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".

Book Recommendation: Reduced Shakespeare by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor

It is summer and I finally get a chance to read for pleasure. So what do I do? Buy another book about Shakespeare, of course. But not just any Shakespeare book, but Reduced Shakespeare, by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, heads of the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Everyone knows and loves the Reduced Shakespeare Company, creators of the The Compleat Wrks of Wlm Shkspr (abridged). Having skewered Shakespearean performance, they now set their sights on Shakespearean scholarship with this. The book's thesis is explained in this quote from the book jacket:

So what do you need to know about Shakespeare? Just this: The entire Shakespeare industry consists of people simply guessing about who Shakespeare was and what he wrote. Not knowing much about Shakespeare’s life hasn’t stopped everyone from cashing in, filling in the blanks with scholarly supposition when they can, and simply making it up when they can’t. It’s a shocking record, and we’re proud to be part of it.

While they destroy the Greenblattian school of Shakespearean biography and criticism with their typical style, they also cut through the bardolatry to provide a good deal of information, both on the plays and the biography (having hashed through the biographical details, they sum up Shakespeare's three primary preoccupations as "money, social standing, and money"). They also skewer bardolatry in their criticism of the plays. Explaining that some critics interpret Kate's speech at the end of the extremely misogynistic Taming of the Shrew as ironic, they ask, in an "Essay Question", "How much in denial are they?"

For all of their humor, anyone who has seen an RSC production know that they are seriously in love with the theatre, and the chapters on Shakespeare in performance are more serious (relatively speaking). The book's best chapter is the overview of Shakespearean films. It is in fact one of the best run-downs of Shakespearean film available for the casual viewer. Going play by play, they review and rate all of the classics, and also give serious consideration to offshoots ranging from 10 Things I Hate About You to Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood. If you are a Shakespeare fan looking for a rental, it's the best guide you can buy.

How the Media and Corporate America's Class Prejudice Gave Us Chris Benoit

I know I'm a few days late on the Chris Benoit story, but there are some important things that have still not been said in the ridiculous media coverage. First, a little backstory. I was a wrestling fan when I was a kid, culminating in my high school years, which coincided with late-90s wrestling boom when it suddenly became sorta-cool to watch it.

Wrestling's decline coincided with my going to college, and I quit watching, though I still kept up with the business through the websites of pro wrestling's two major legitimate news sources: Wade Keller's Pro Wrestling Torch and Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer. Why did I do this? Because I knew something like the Benoit case was coming one day. It was amazing to me that a publicly-traded company like the WWE could get away with rampant abuse of its employees and never be called out for it. I knew one day things would hit the fan, though of course I never imagined it would be in such a tragic way.

WWE was allowed to get away with such foul business practices for so long because wrestling occupies a peculiar space in American culture unlike any other cultural product with the possible exception of pornography. It is a multi-million dollar business that everyone wants to pretend doesn't exist. The mainstream media can pretend wrestling doesn't exist and more or less ignore the premature deaths of 60+ wrestlers in the past two decades because they have convinced themselves that wrestling is only of interest to toothless hillbillies and hyperactive children and that the wrestlers who die don't deserve their pity because they are nothing more than roid-raging circus freaks.

However, thanks in large part to Vince McMahon, wrestlers are no longer performing at county fairs for the toothless hillbillies and on Saturday mornings for the hyperactive kids. WWE's primary show, Monday Night Raw, is consistently one of the highest-rated prime-time shows on cable. Raw airs on USA, the country's most-watched cable network. USA and its sister station Sci-Fi Network, which also airs WWE programming, are both part of NBC Universal, which is of course famously owned by GE.

So, wrestling is not a county fair sideshow, but a major show on a major cable network owned by a major entertainment conglomerate. Now, let's play with a hypothetical situation for a moment. What if several stars of Law & Order, another NBC Universal show, had died prematurely during the close to 20 years that show has been on the air? Additionally, what if there was strong evidence that the horrible working conditions on Law & Order, which included near-mandatory drug use in order to keep one's job, had been a major contributing factor in these deaths? Do you think NBC Universal would have allowed this to continue for such a long period of time without at least sitting Dick Wolf down to discuss the situation? Do you think the media would have allowed NBC to stick its head in the sand for so long?

This is exactly what has happened with WWE. NBC Universal and WWE's other corporate partners, which includes CBS Corp. (whose CW network airs WWE Smackdown), all major cable and satellite systems (who carry WWE's pay-per-view events) and a myriad of other video distributors, toy manufacturers and arena operators, have allowed McMahon to operate unchecked because they don't want to admit that they are making money off pro wrestling. Meanwhile the media, which doesn't want to acknowledge pro wrestling's existence, is silently complicit.

And we all know why. Because wrestling is strongly associated with the last group in America that it is socially acceptable to discriminate against: poor rural whites. Wrestling is perhaps the loudest and most embarrassing example of white trash culture. This somehow makes it acceptable for the media and corporate America to try and pretend it doesn't exist, even while they are quietly profitting from it.

Well, now that a young child and his mother are dead, it appears things might actually change. There are reports of WWE programming being cancelled in international markets and there is even talk of the board (remember, WWE is a public company) ousting McMahon as chairman and demoting him to stictly creative role. I don't ever see this happening, given McMahon's own history of steroid-fueled erratic behavior, but there will be major changes. It is a shame that class prejudice made it necessary for such a horrible tragedy to set these changes in motion.

Branding History

For movie fans in Arizona, it is hard not to love Harkins Theatres. They are a local family-owned movie theatre chain that started with a single theatre on Mill Avenue - Tempe's main drag - and now dominates the Phoenix area and has expanded into four other states. They have competed with the national chains and fought to keep ticket prices down while setting the standard for luxury viewing experiences. In addition to giving us a great place to view blockbusters, they also operate the only two arthouse theatres in the area - the Valley Art, their original theatre on Mill, and Camelview, which has been a big-city arthouse for a lot longer than we have been a big city.

So, with all that said, I must question their use and abuse of the Cine Capri name, which reaches a new level with the opening of their newest Tempe theatre this week. A little backstory: the original Cine Capri was an old-style movie house in Phoenix that was demolished in 1997. Harkins owned the theatre at the time, but not the land it was located on, and led an impassioned campaign to save it. Dan Harkins, the chain's chairman, vowed to resurrect the Cine Capri. And he did, sort of. He placed a 500-seat theatre with a screen the same size as the original Capri -the largest in the state-in a new multiplex located in the farthest northeast corner of Phoenix. I had a problem with Harkins using the Cine Capri name back then, but it seemed as if his heart was in the right place, wanting to preserve a piece of history, if only in name.

Then, quietly, and without many people in Arizona realizing it, Harkins began expanding the Cine Capri name to other states. Three of the four other states Harkins has expanded to now have their own Cine Capris, all denoting the biggest theatre in the area.

Now, this weekend, Harkins continues its branding of the Cine Capri name by opening one, with a larger screen and seating capacity the one in north Phoenix, in its new Tempe Marketplace multiplex.

Part of me is excited about the opening of this theatre, as the other Cine Capri is too remote and Harkins has vowed to convert its other Tempe theatre -Centerpoint - into an arthouse. But something bothers me about the conversion of Cine Capri from a physical place with a particular history to a brand name denoting bigger and better.

Adorno at Dunder-Mifflin

I am done talking about The Sopranos, but I have to pass along this article by the wonderful Heather Havrilesky at Salon. It said everything I wanted to say but only better. (On a side note, how sad is it that the once-brilliant Salon has two of its only interesting regular writers left covering TV and sports? If it weren't for Havrilesky, King Kaufman and Camille Paglia's bimonthly incoherent screeds, Salon wouldn't be worth the time at all anymore. A sad, sad fall from grace. Lets have a moment of silence.)


Also, before I get started on today's topic, a little note from the Reinforcing Arizona Stereotypes file. It pretty much speaks for itself, but one important note is that Russell Pearce, one of the key players in this tragicomedy of 50s era paranoia, is also kind of a white supremacist. Pearce's city, Mesa, also still refuses to flouridate its water because it may be some type of evil U.N. plot.

OK, onto the business of the day. I have been reading alot about Shakespeare and pop culture lately and mulling over the typical academic definitions of pop culture and mass culture. Most academics' ideas about mass culture still derive from Adorno's idea of the culture industry. This idea holds that mass culture is essentially no different from any other capitalistic product, homogonized to appeal to the lowest common denominator and please the largest number of people possible. This distinguishes it from folk culture - culture by and for the people - and high culture, which is not meant to please the masses, but challenge a cultivated audience. Nevermind that this idea was formulated before the birth of television and rock & roll, the twin forces that created modern pop culture and has therefore been outdated for over 50 years. I believe that this idea has become even more outdated, and possibly unworkable, in the past decade.

Why do I think this? I am thinking of one of my favorite TV shows, The Office. The Office is a quirky, original, critically-acclaimed show with several awards and a devoted online cult following. It finished this past season at 68th in the overall Neilsen ratings. In other words, it has all of the markings of a cult hit.

However, it has one big difference from other cult shows of the past. It is a cash cow for its network. NBC, which nearly did not bring the show back for a second season, has turned the show into its workhorse. It is the anchor of its Thursday night schedule, one of its producers has just been given a network executive job, and they ordered a practically unprecedented 30 half-hours for next season.

Why so much love from the execs for a show with such pedestrian ratings. Because, in today's fragmentary pop universe, overall ratings mean practically nothing. What matters is demographics, and The Office is a leader among demographics that advertisers crave, particularly viewers ages 18-34 and those with incomes over $100,000.

The "affluent" demographic has become increasingly important over the last few years and it has tended to favor low-rated, critically-acclaimed shows. This makes logical sense, as higher income is, on the whole, tied to higher levels of education. It is the "affluence" factor that has allowed NBC to keep low-rated shows like The Office, 30 Rock. and Friday Night Lights on the air.

This all leads to the paradox that may unravel the typical notion of mass culture. In an entertainment world in which the quality of the audience becomes as important, if not more important, than its overall size, there becomes a financial reward for producing quality television.

Obviously, this is a half-baked idea at best right now, but it is something to keep in mind.