nonstopdisco

I am no longer in Media Production. I am now in Creative Media. Therefore, I have included in this new post a short excerpt of a re-write of my first blog to more accurately reflect my thoughts both at the time and in hindsight. Enjoy!:

Post Script Note: This following bit is bullshit, designed only to add an up-ending to this blog, since I knew that my lecturer at the time would be reading this, and since one in particular has a habit of giving biased marks against those with a different opinion to hers. Therefore, I had to bullshit for the sake of marks and I apologise to any regular readers out there for my false optimism.
However, the biased feminist nazi dictator lecturer in question is no longer my lecturer since I am in a completely new course, so I can feel free to express my truer opinions of the crap that we were being “taught”, and I can stop cowing down to the need to sound positive about anything.

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See? Wasn’t that crap. Here, then, is the re-write of that particular passage:
“Fuck that was a waste of time. In the three weeks it took me to jump ship, I could see that the whole course was going to give me nothing but a headache. I could see that some people, more technically minded, could get some benefit out of Jenni’s subject, since it was compassionately taught, and maybe even Liam’s, who is new, therefore a little green, but tries hard, and I’m sure will be a great teacher with a bit of experience, but the other one… the other lecturer… those in the course will know who I’m talking about. Man, that was the OPPOSITE of good teaching. Crap ideas, crapfully taught, and no matter how good or bad you were, you’d end up with marks that reflected ONLY how much she liked/didn’t like you, and often that had to do with whether or not you nodded when she uttered some of the bullshit that would continuously spit from her shallow and misguided head at such a rate that nobody who wanted to say anything useful could get a word in. I’m glad I’m out.”

Okay, I have conflicting results. Many point to a 50/50 split of male/female perpetrators, others rebuke that by pointing out flaws in that reseach. That given that the survery was only in one year, and does not account for the severity, a slap, once, does not equal 15 years of domination.

Emily, by lawyer friend, and in no way the basis of … oh, maybe she could be the lawyer on his side… says that in her study of family law, she only ever came across the stats that 5-10% of victims are male, the rest all female. Well, let’s look into that.

Another stat I’ve uncovered is that this whole thing about the gender wage-gap os a whole lot of hooey. That Men and women in the English speaking world, doing the same job with the same experience, get paid the same money. That any discrepancies come from men doign more dangerous work, being willing to relocate cities for more pay, losing rights to flexible hours for the sake of the company and possible promotion, and sometimes just plain full-time vs part-time and casual, which are sometimes churned into the wage-gap generator.

This may make for a reasonble doco on whether this is true or not, though of course, this would be rather a hiding-to-nothing. Chances are that nobody would care even if proved true, and it would make the filmmaker veeery unpopular with his female friends in any case. And I have a lot.

After all my rants, I’m finally starting to settle down to an idea of what I’m going to work on for my script.

Here are some stats, discovered by a pile of Domestic Violence investigations in a dozen countries. We will see if they are true later, as research unfolds:

1. The number of male and female perpertrators of domestic violence are roughly equal across all forms of physical, verbal, psychological and emotional abuse.

2. While there are many ways women are helped through government and community funded agencies and care centres. In Australia there is only one, and it is self-funded, and it is in Queensland. Men who are abused get no help and have no recourse to escape.

3. The media still support the feminist’s view of women as victims and men as aggressors despite this evidence to the contrary (pending research to discover whether this is true), and the legal system is geared towards believing women and disbelieving men, and cutting them a bad deal in the family court regardless.

So, we have some premises upon which to build a story. Things like this are coming to the fore already. Colin Friels is making a film about a man who is raped, and prevously made another about an abusive partner which I’ll have to track down. There are also novels coming out with stories of men being abused. The Pillow Fight is one.

If the facts stand up, we have a story. If they don’t, we have a twist. This story may help both sexes against this kind of situation by presenting it in a role reversal of the norm.

My story then would be about a man in a relationship, two kids, and a lawyer wife who is violent and abusive (possible cocaine habit). He is not a spotless character, takes a lot of stick from her sees no way to resolve it. But when he sees her taking it out of their son, he rises up and kicks her out. Enough is enough.

So now we have his struggle against the legal system set against him, and the community that now rejects him. Not knowing a lot of legal stuff, I’m not sure how it’ll pan out, but I hope to avoid the actual courtroom as much as possible. There is the possibility that a key turning point, just as he is on top, is that she comes out with the idea that the kids are not his.

This is tricky, because no matter what the state of the relationship with spouse or children, a male who is found not to be the father has no rights whatsoever. Since he loves the kids and wants them back, the bottom may drop too far if I brought this one in. I mean, the guy thought he had two kids for 7 years, and now he finds that because she had slept around 7 years ago, he’s going to lose them.

Bummer. Can’t see a way out for him. Much as I like a bleak ending, … nah, hell with it. I’m telling the story like that. A touch of Tony Abbott. She shagged someone, so he loses the kids. Cruel but honest. Oh! Maybe there’s a loophole that she’s not Australian, but the kids are. hmm…

so this is my story. all research is now underway. It had better not turn out to be too heavy, nor too light. Will try to make it both.

I had a debate recently with some catholic religeous education teachers. My point was that Christianity is not a monotheism. It is at least a duotheistic belief, since the Christians invented the Devil. The Devil is a deity, although by all accounts a nasty one, but still a deity, and therefore a god.

‘but no, The Devil is not a deity, he is a fallen angel’ said the more fingers-in-ears of the two. Now, aren’t angels are deities themselves? Disincarnate entities with personalities who influence people? So now we not only have God, his son and the Devil, now we have a hoard of angels to count in the mix. I’m not sure how many angels there are, but off hand there is Michael, Ariel and Gabriel. Thus, there are two uber gods and a whole lot of minor gods, therefore Christianity is just as pagan as the beliefs they’ve been persecuting and killing people for for the last 1500 years.

And they have. No greater atrocities have been committed than at the hands of Christians. Thriving culturally rich and scientifically advanced cities thrashed to the ground because they were Muslim. Holocaustal quantities of good-natured community-minded healing folk, the very heart and soul of most communities, burned at the stake for being a witch because the bible told them not to suffer them to live. This extended to anyone who looked as if they might disagree with the church, so, pretty much anyone they wanted to get rid of, they just up and killed in the name of God. This extends all the way to Bush’s evil empire.

Then we come to the fear and intimidation that goes with that. The idea that good folk are ‘God-fearin’.’. Why the hell should anyone respect a God that asks its followers to fear it? Is that the kind of tyrannical dictator we should want to follow? No! This God is a bastard. If you don’t agree with him, he will fuck you up. How is he any better than the Devil? This God has unleashed fear, hatred and war upon the world for 1500 years, and at the end of the day we’re supposed to believe that this is the light of the world? Fuck him. Fuck this God and all he stands for.

Now, in the debate I was having with these RE teachers, I didn’t put it anywhere near as strongly. I did point out that Emperor Constantine cut the guts out of the bible, took out all references to reincarnation and anything else that might let people enjoy some sense of personal freedom or salvation, reinvented Jesus into the spotless and inhuman character we have today and put forward a lot of myths such as the lowly, divine and virginal birth to emphasise this. Loaves and fishes, walking on water, his birthday on 25th December, Easter being about death instead of a springtime festival, the idea that he never married and didn’t have a brother… all that was made up in the 4th Century by Constantine, who then outlawed all Christian groups but the one sect that gave him the most power.

So, this God that I say ‘Fuck you’ to. It is this God, this made up bastard who takes after Constantine himself more than any all-good divine being, merged with the fucked-up beliefs of Aristotle that were brought in at the same time (women are lesser creatures, the world is flat, etc) that I spit on.

No, I am not an athiest. But I will not be made to feel in any way bad for not bowing down to this tyrant of a god, and I will not stand for this kind of bullying. Fuck him and the donkey he didn’t ride in on.

Yep, I’m out of Media Production, into Creative Media. MP was giving me a headache almost every class, and my head would have caved in if I had to deal with computer jargon for 18 months. So now I get to deal with plots and scripts and such, and my main tool is the pen and paper. Much happier.

Though there are one or two points that give MP an advantage, so make use of them while you’re doing it.

In particular, MP is more about getting people out and swinging a camera around. I love getting out into the field and getting my hands dirty making scenes, and unless we take up personal projects, this doesn’t happen until 3rd semester. So, my dear bretheren of MMP, make full use of this and film stuff! As much as you can! Film your cat sleeping if you like, then look at it and say ‘hmm, how would that go with a key light with a gold filter at 60 degrees from the left?’ and such things. Or put a mike under it and make it purr. Whatever.

Make stuff. Make a lot of stuff. A film every fortnight would be good. And when you’re planning to make something, give me a call so I can help you make it, ‘cos I’m gonna be starving to make something, so exploit this and use me for your own devious means. I’m up for it.

Now get going.

So say-it the Stu.

A thought from the documentary ‘The Human Face’ with John Cleese pointed out that people need celebrities for a sense of local identity. For centuries we used to have, say, no more than 100 people in any given village, so we knew everything about everybody ‘oh, did you see that young Tom, John’s son, built that strawberry patch for Mavis from over yonder lake. She’s taken quite an interest, she has…’ and so on.

Gossip. Gossip brought us together. Communities are forged around talking about each other. Soon, however, cities became large, and the invention of the home fireplace brought us apart. Now there are simply too many people to recognise and keep track of. Think of how many people you pass every day, and who you interact with, but know nothing about. We are all strangers in our own town. So, according to this program, we latch on to something, anything, any redily identifiable face and want to know more and more about it, to cast opinions upon its behaviour, to adopt that face whether we approve of their behaviour or not into our virtual village.

Yeah, I’m occasionally a little harsh on TV just-for-laughs. Yes, TV is entertainment. I shouldn’t ever delude myself into thinking that it’s a high art form. It is populist, and sometimes a lot of fun.

Heroes are created, villains discovered, all as if it happened to someone we know. Will Flick marry Blair? Will Bouncer survive his fall?

Will Shanon win? I think Whatshername deserves it more…

Did you see what happened on survivor? Oh, they were all made to… but in the end they…

My Dad can’t get enough Survivor, Big Brother, Idol and any other reality Tv that is on. Mum is a die-hard Neighbours fan. Can’t pull her away when it’s 6:30.

Should all TV be edifying? Should it always be wholesome and educational? Good heavens no! That’d be like never eating pizza any more. Is watching people humiliate themselves auditioning for Idol funny? You bet it is! I laugh my arse off. I got stuck into the first season of Big Brother as much as anyone, and I play Playstation far too much. Why, just last week my choice of film selection was ‘Vertigo’, ‘Planet of the Apes’ (the Charlton Heston version) and ‘Death Race 2000′. Which one do you think I enjoyed more? Hell yeah.

So I’ll stop trying to feed diamonds to people. People do what they enjoy, and eat what they will. I sincerely wish that people would balance their TV diet though. Seriously. It’s like eating McDonalds every day, and I sure wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for inventing those ‘are you sure these are made from chicken’ nuggets.

All I’m saying is that I can’t avoid that McDonalds television exists, and that it is popular, and people enjoy it, and that perhaps the style of television I revere would not exist without it, but too much will make you dull. Dull enough to want to watch more of it.

When Allan Funt started Candid Camera, he used psychological experiments to play his pranks, so that we all could see what an ordinary person would do if faced with a dilemma. Sometimes he’d talk with kids and find out what people thought at that age. It was entertaining and informative. It had soul.

The more recent generations of shows along a similar theme are… lacking. “Oh, what would ordinary people do if the waiter turned around and he had a bare bum? or if the cop that pulled you over didn’t realise he had no pants on? Ho ho ho!”

We have de-evolved.

Love him or hate him, and quite often it is the latter, Jeremy Beadle is holding on to this idea that content need not be base and meaningless to attract viewers. His pranks/experiments were often seen as cruel, but maintains that cruel as they may be, they push people’s boundaries, and this is the way to develop and a person.

(go see the article on Jeremy Beadle in the links)

To get where I’m coming from, please read my previous blog ‘this week in TV land’.

Fifteen years ago, Melbourne did not have a comedy scene, much like Sydney does not to this day. All Australia had were the likes of Rodney Rude. These were dark times. Dark times. The audience was alcohol-fuelled who got a laugh out of dick and fart jokes with a whole lot of swearing. Base, cheap humour. This was the comedians’ audience. If the performers weren’t crass, they got no viable audience, and venues, always looking for profit, would not book them.

You can conduct your own experiment along these lines. Take a child, or a few children, under a certain age and say ‘bum’ to them. They will laugh. Repeat, they laugh again. To test how far this will go, my brother repeated the word ‘bum’ fifty times, and got the same response on the fiftieth as he had on the first, even though he delivered each repeat in as deadpan a tone as each other.

Compare this to the audience of the late 80’s. Was the word ‘bum’ used often? Yes it was. Did people laugh? Yes they did. Did they develop from this experience? No, they did not.

However, not everyone was laughing. One man in particular, Dave Taranto, was by all accounts a grumpy bastard. To see him laugh was a rare event. He started a comedy night at the Prince Patrick hotel called ‘The Cheese Shop’. To get on his stage, the comedy had to be more that mere profanities. It had to be intelligent, sharp, witty. His audience found him, grew and developed as a result, many of which were comedians themselves, or would become them.

Melbourne comedy had a cradle. It is now a healthy strong figure with heart, mind and soul, and it is all down to Dave. Many people gave their thanks at his wake, and his legacy lives on.

We have a choice, people. We can uplift, educate and sharpen our audience, or we can keep saying ‘bum’ to them. It’s up to you.

This week we were introduced to someone who had ‘the job we’d all like to have’. Personally, I’d like to have Ron Jeremy’s job, but let’s leave that alone for the moment.

What is this Most Desirable Job? The person who makes the ideas for reality and gameshow TV!

…

……………

…but of course. The first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is ‘how can I make money from the base elements of human desire and cheapen media content at the same time?’.

Shows that were paraded in front of us were: ‘How Rong is that’, where people are asked to choose the wrongest things said or done by Guess Which Celebrity, or the one where if they didn’t do well enough, their deepest darkest secret is revealed to the world. With cash prises!

Sure, we could all come up with dozens of ideas for along similar lines. The thing that stops most of us is posession of a conscience, hope that people really aren’t that banal, and occasional nausea. Are we that far away from the situation presented in Series 7?

(go see the clip on the link to series 7)

The maker of this film wrote it ten years before it was made, and years before the spate of reality TV shows came out. At that time nobody would pick it up because nobody, including himself, could see media turning out that way. It was pure fantasy, a joke. So when he dusted off the script ten years later, suddenly it was a sharp satire, since what he envisenged as a media nightmare and wrote as a joke was ALREADY HAPPENING.

Is this what we are supposed to do with our careers? Make ‘Relationship breakup survivor’? ‘Sell yourself short’ (a game where …um… maybe short people are put on a date with really tall people, and… no no no, maybe there’s a bidding war between people to get other people to do something awful)? or ‘threesome jeopardy’, a title which has all kinds of potential?

Is this our direction? I feel a twinge of repulsion at the thought, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

But hold firm good people, for with just a touch more effort, a little more time spent on an idea, we can take the populist element from this pile of trite trash, put it in a format that is sound with content that has a soul and raise the level of our audience. We can pull them out of the mud. I still have a dream. That we can get people to actively participate in their own development, and enjoy it, even if they don’t realise that that’s what they’re doing.

We can do this. We can pull diamonds out of ditches, but we’re a-gonna get dirty.

Really, what am I doing here?

What is an actor, a writer, a philosopher, a tarot-reader, for god’s sake, doing in a tech-course like this?

I can create worlds in my head and bring them to life. I can breathe moist juice into the driest of theories, I can spin scenes that play with your head with a flick of a phrase. But the thought of making web-sites, file-sharing and how to get a Macantosh do anything useful makes me want to find a dark corner to hide in so I don’t scream.

…why am I here?

T… Tec… tech. tech.com, http://www.complicated.net.de, SMSMMS, still better than the DSS, but more painful than S&M.

Post Script Note: This following bit is bullshit, designed only to add an up-ending to this blog, since I knew that my lecturer at the time would be reading this, and since one in particular has a habit of giving biased marks against those with a different opinion to hers. Therefore, I had to bullshit for the sake of marks and I apologise to any regular readers out there for my false optimism.
However, the biased feminist nazi dictator lecturer in question is no longer my lecturer since I am in a completely new course, so I can feel free to express my truer opinions of the crap that we were being “taught”, and I can stop cowing down to the need to sound positive about anything.

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See? Wasn’t that crap. Here, then, is the re-write of that particular passage:
“Fuck that was a waste of time. In the three weeks it took me to jump ship, I could see that the whole course was going to give me nothing but a headache. I could see that some people, more technically minded, could get some benefit out of Jenni’s subject, since it was compassionately taught, and maybe even Liam’s, who is new, therefore a little green, but tries hard, and I’m sure will be a great teacher with a bit of experience, but the other one… the other lecturer… those in the course will know who I’m talking about. Man, that was the OPPOSITE of good teaching. Crap ideas, crapfully taught, and no matter how good or bad you were, you’d end up with marks that reflected ONLY how much she liked/didn’t like you, and often that had to do with whether or not you nodded when she uttered some of the bullshit that would continuously spit from her shallow and misguided head at such a rate that nobody who wanted to say anything useful could get a word in. I’m glad I’m out.”

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