Television – Page 5 – artdiamondblog.com

Chinese Learn “a Way of Life” from U.S. TV Shows

Shanghai friends watch downloaded, subtitled, episode of "Friends." Source of photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.

SHANGHAI, Aug. 8 — For the past year and a half, said Ding Chengtai, a recent university graduate, friends have wondered why he seems to have disappeared.

Mr. Ding, 23, an Internet technology expert for a large Chinese bank, chuckled at the thought. He has kept himself in virtual seclusion during his off hours, consumed with American television programs like “Lost,” “C.S.I.” and “Close to Home.”

He is no ordinary fan, though; none of the shows he watches can be seen on Chinese television. Instead, he spends night after night creating Chinese subtitles for American sitcoms and dramas for a mushrooming audience of Chinese viewers who download them from the Internet free through services like BitTorrent.

. . .

To a person, the adapters say they are willing to devote long hours to this effort out of a love for American popular culture. Many, including Mr. Ding, say they learned English by obsessively watching American movies and television programs.

Others say they pick up useful knowledge about everything from changing fashion and mores to medical science.

“It provides cultural background relating to every aspect of our lives: politics, history and human culture,” Mr. Ding said. “These are the things that make American TV special. When I first started watching ‘Friends,’ I found the show was full of information about American history and showed how America had rapidly developed. It’s more interesting than textbooks or other ways of learning.”

On an Internet forum about the downloaded television shows, a poster who used the name Plum Blossom put it another way.

“After watching these shows for some time, I felt the attitudes of some of the characters were beginning to influence me,” the poster wrote. “It’s hard to describe, but I think I learned a way of life from some of them. They are good at simplifying complex problems, which I think has something to do with American culture.”

For the full story, see:

HOWARD W. FRENCH. "Chinese Tech Buffs Slake Thirst for U.S. TV Shows." The New York Times (Weds., August 9, 2006): A6.

Beware of a Snapshot of a Moment in Time

Source of photo: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html?pagewanted=2

The photo of Condi Rice touching her forehead ran on the top of the front page of the New York Times on Thurs., July 27, 2006. It ran big: filling over a third of the length of the paper, and over half of the width. It ran right next to the main headline of the front page: "CEASE-FIRE TALKS STALL AS FIGHTING RAGES ON 2 FRONTS."

It appears that Condi Rice is discouraged, or has a headache, or is overcome.

But a great CNN report by Jeanne Moos run on Sat., July 29, shows a dynamic version of the minute during which this snapshot was taken. It shows that this photo is a split-second moment of Condi Rice brushing hair off of her forehead.

Our usual view of competition is to look at how many competitors there are at a moment in time. We look at a snapshot. But to really judge competition we must take Schumpeter seriously and look dynamically at whether there is the possibility of leapfrog competition over time.

In an earlier blog entry, I noted that Ronald Reagan resisted sitting for still photos because he thought that still photos could easily be manipulated to mislead. Ronald Reagan was right.

(Jeanne Moos’s report was entitled "Hairy Talks or Hair in Eyes?" on the CNN web site. I believe it first ran on 7/28/06, though I saw it replayed in the afternoon of 7/29/06.)

Entrepreneurs Saluted in Orange Business Services Ad

Source of screen captures: the downloaded Orange Business Services BBC World ad cited below.

Last month (June 2006) when I was in France, I saw a fun Orange Business Services ad on BBC World. Two entrepreneurs open their fast food truck in the middle of an empty desert. Something like a comet strikes the desert and a crowd of cars appears and a line forms at the truck. The entrepreneurs smile. Tag line: "here’s to the entrepreneur in all of us."

Orange Business Services let’s you watch, or download, the ad at: http://www.francetelecom.com/sirius/obs/en/index.html?cmp=BAC-van-bbcworld

(I saw the ad in Sophia Antipolis, France on BBC World, at about 7:10 AM, French time, on 6/23/06.)

Louis Rukeyser: Optimistic, Witty, Defender of Free Markets; RIP

Louis Rukeyser. Source of image: http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/Apr-06-Sat-2002/business/18455995.html

Louis Rukeyser, long-time host of PBS’s Friday night "Wall Street Week," died May 2, 2006, at the age of 73. (JAMES GRANT. "Louis Rukeyser, Television Host, Dies at 73." The New York Times (Weds., May 3, 2006).)

Louis Rukeyser was a pun-loving, urbane, optimistic analyzer of Wall Street and defender of the free market. His weekly "Wall Street Week" was the first show my daughter Jenny watched at home after we brought her home from her birth at Children’s Hospital.

I never met him, though I remember once being on the same airplane with him. He was the narrator for my audio book: Frank Knight and the Chicago School.

PBS, true to form, fired Rukeyser from the show he created. I never watched it again, and the ratings for the Rukeyser-less version tanked: sometimes there is justice in the world.

Source of image: http://www.audioclassics.net/html/econ_files/knight.cfm

Seeing How Life Has Improved Since the Days of the Cowboys

A cowboy on "Texas Ranch House." Source of image: the WSJ article cited below.

"Texas Ranch House" — circa 1867 — is the latest PBS experiment in transporting a group of people back to another era so we can watch them live and struggle the way our ancestors did. (Part one of eight begins Monday, 8-9 p.m. ET, but check local listings.) As with past series such as "Colonial House," everything — clothing, tools, food, housing and all-around deprivation — is authentic. Once again, though, stuffing 21st-century mentalities into period costumes and situations is a tough fit. And once again, it’s the folks wearing the bodices that chafe the most.

The Western setting is fascinating for two reasons: What seems familiar from movies and TV takes on fresh significance when there are real people — not pampered actors — trying to scratch out an existence on the frontier 24/7, with no plot to guide them. There is also the fact, as one of the participants points out early on, that many of us exist today only because a forebear actually did make the real journey West and manage to survive there long enough to bear children. What luck, we are reminded more than once during this series, that those ancestors were so different from contemporary Americans.

. . .

The trouble that threatens to sabotage the entire experiment develops in the widening gap between the cowboys and the Cooke family. The first time one of the employees disses boss man Mr. Cooke, yelling "Don’t let your wife run your life," we react with disgust at the insult. As one of the women in the household explains to the camera, all the cowboys "are sexist bastards." Besides, instead of rising early to ride the range in search of mavericks for 10 hours, the cowboys — mostly young Americans plus one frisky British boarding-school boy playing the part of 19th-century remittance man — indulge in long naps during the 100-degree days and often wake up in the morning with hangovers after nights of hard drinking.

At some point, though, certain facts begin to sink in: Mr. Cooke does have management shortcomings and Mrs. Cooke is far more involved in running the business side of the ranch than a frontier wife would have been. The ladies, in general, don’t enjoy the roles or status that historical reality would dictate, and some act out in defiant, liberated ways. A fatal flaw, if not the only one, for the success of the ranch enterprise. In 1867, spending days making cornhusk dolls while the house filled with flies and vegetables rotted in the garden wasn’t an option for folks who wanted to stay alive. And, like it or not, keeping the ranch hands happy, as obnoxious as they might be, was more important than maintaining marital bliss.

This being a made-for-television environment, no one perishes, but there are no happy endings here, either. When one of the Cooke daughters says to the camera, "I feel lost and dazed and hurt," you feel genuinely sorry for her. At the same time, it’s clearer than ever that emotional pampering, navel-gazing and gender warfare are modern luxuries. Like it or not, if these had been features of daily life in the West 100 years ago, many of the people reading this would never have been born.

For the full review, see:

Nancy deWolf Smith. "TV REVIEW; The West That Never Was." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., April 28, 2006): W10.

Getting the Job Done: “Monk” and “House” Celebrate Quirky, Intelligent Competence

Source of image: http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/theshow/characterprofiles/tony/index.html#
“Monk” and “House” on the USA Network present suspenseful plots, and intelligent dialogue. But, more importantly, they present unusual “characters” for television: Monk and House are primarily concerned, not with their social standing or sex life, but with getting important jobs done–for Monk, solving murders, for House, curing diseases. One possible moral: maybe it’s OK to be intense in the service of a good cause?

An episode of ”Monk,” in which the title character — an obsessive-compulsive private eye played by Tony Shalhoub, below — suffered amnesia after a blow to the head, was the most-watched show on advertiser-supported cable for the week that ended Jan. 22, with an audience of 6 million. USA Network, where ”Monk” lives, was again the No. 1 basic-cable channel in prime time for that week. USA is also benefiting from reruns of the Fox medical show ”House,” which it began broadcasting earlier in the month: the ”House” that ran after ”Monk” on Jan. 20 attracted 3.79 million viewers.

Source:
KATE AURTHUR. (sic) “Arts, Briefly; ‘Monk’ Strong on Cable.” The New York Times (Mon., January 30, 2006): E2.

The Creation of “Freedom” in Iraq

"Freedom" (oil painting by Esam Pashwa). Source of image: http://www.artvitae.com/art.asp?art_id=1571&bhcp=1

When Saddam Hussein fell, artist Esam Pashwa pulled down a huge poster of Sadam and painted a mural underneath. The gesture, and the art, attracted the attention of art expert Peter Falk, who contacted and encouraged Pashwa. He learned that Pashwa, in addition to his art, has served as a translator for the coalition forces in Iraq. Falk has organized a show of Pashwa’s work in a New York gallery.

As of 2/1/06, the "Freedom" oil painting above was offered for sale through the gallery. For more information: Peter Hastings Falk Hastings Art Management Services, Inc. P.O. Box 833 Madison, CT 06443 203.245.4761 peterfalk@comcast.net

(The source of most of the information in the entry above, was a CNN report/interview entitled "The Art of War" that was broadcast on 2/1/06. It is viewable at CNN.com at: http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/world/2006/02/01/intv.art.of.war.cnn)