Interminable Entertainment

Eyewear would like to report that the war to colonise our imaginations has been won. Prince, as we have all heard in the last few days, has begun to disseminate (I select this term carefully), his songs for free, via newspapers and the Internet; meanwhile, reports stream in of a generation of "screen kids" raised on a steady diet of web-based, digi-tainment. Meanwhile, the Potter franchise - a mighty juggernaut - rolls forward.

Students of media and culture might want to suggest a term for this landscape of ours - one with no foreseeable horizon - "Interminable Entertainment". Put bluntly, there is no end in sight, to TV episodes airing, music groups releasing songs, films being produced, books being published - and new works being created and distributed in media as yet unknown. Creators have a moral right to protect these works - but do we, the targeted audience, have a moral right to resist? To ever shut down, turn away, avoid the never-ending stories and unceasing cacophony of new releases, new writers, new stars, new franchises, and on and on and on. Truth is, and exhaustingly, the people who, like busy bees or productive ants, scurry to make new things for us to consume as cultural entertainment, cannot stop, if they wanted - new people would replace them. Why? Two reasons: glamour and money. The industries that sustain a never-ending supply of product for our minds pay well, and, if only by association with celebrities and famous artists, are considered prestigious by many.

You may say I am being a curmudgeon here. But the lack of surcease, for instance, in the idea of televisual fare, is utterly numbing. Knowing, as I do, that moving images used for narrative pleasure, will be a form of mass communication for the next century, if not longer, fills me with dread and melancholy. All those concepts, all those pitches.

To keep it new, reviewers and marketers speak of new forms of distribution - but, whether the entertainment comes through a TV or other screen (or directly onto the retina) it is still someone selling something to us, to entrance us - shadows on a cave wall, that, alas, and classically, continue to deviate from a sunnier truth.

Review: Prison Break, Season 1

America is a giant prison, and the bars are made of television screens. Maybe not, but fortress America has an incarceration problem - large numbers of its young populations are in prison.

The rest just watch those that are. Prison Break (which appeared in the USA on politically-conservative Fox) is one of the best contemporary television programs, and, at times, achieves a pop culture giddiness that one only gets when in the presence of entertainment genius. Eyewear gives it four out of five specs.

Fusing various elements (and cliches) from the original Mission: Impossible series, with The Great Escape, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, The Birdman of Alcatraz, X-Files, and even Robin Hood, its series arc follows the semi-mythic TV paths of the mysterious, resourceful stranger who comes into a community (Shane) to redeem a lost world.

No world could be more lost (other than Lost's) or self-contained than a prison's - and no stranger-hero could be more thrilling than Wentworth Miller (pictured) - the small screen version of Barak Obama (photogenic, racially complex, and hyper intelligent). Miller's character - in a skin-trope doubled from the great Memento - enters a maximum security prison to rescue his death row brother with the entire blueprints for the prison house tattooed (and allegorically disguised with visual and verbal codes) on his body (he was the man who retro-fitted the enclosed structure).

Maximum security meets maximum planning - as Miller's beautiful, glib, masterful man, Michael Scofield, manages to slowly, surely, unravel his complex - preposterously complex and artful for that reason - escape plan. As a structural engineer, he's good with a system, and has visualised this one down to its last screw. What he hasn't counted on are the polymorphously perverse needs of, and dangers posed by, the other inmates he must also collaborate with.

Prison Break is - among other things - a hymn to the greatness of the American can-do capitalist system and rugged individualism, with a Depression-era FDR slant (sometimes we have to sacrifice a little elbow grease for our brothers). It's also a not-so veiled commentary on Guantanamo Bay, 9/11 and the surveillance society Bush has built (and later episodes even feature Iraq-based US-led torture as a surprise character backstory element).

After all, the main villain is the Vice President, and the shadowy forces of evil are CIA-style men in suits. More importantly, the key struggle in the series (between all the characters) is how to ethically deploy force and use power. The haunted, decent Warden (slowly building a miniature Taj Mahal for his wife, symbol of a love embedded in a built environment) is mirrored by the thoroughly sadistic, corrupt, freedom fries-chomping two-faced Captain Bellick, who plans his overthrow.

Michael must learn to work with thieves, mafia killers, and, most disturbingly, a cornpone child-killer. Meanwhile the Governor and his do-good medico daughter represent two ways of thinking about the justice system - throw-away the key, or rehabilitation. There are also strong Christian overtones (the two brothers who face death to save each other, versus, for instance, the two government killers who abandon their fallen "brother" in a deserted well).

Stacy Keach as Warden Pope is wonderful, although the two stand-out, bravura performances belong to character actors given the roles of their lives - Peter Stormare (originally of Fargo fame) as organized crime boss (with a tortured soul) John Abruzzi, and Robbert Knepper as T-Bag. Knepper inhabits the Southern sex killer in the white T-shirt, with two pockets for two prison-friends to clutch amorously, with the filthy lilting panache of Hopkins in Lambs, swaggering towards Babylon to be damned. The strength of the series, in general, is that it manages to generate a great deal of interest in, and sympathy for, characters who would normally be merely baddies, mainly by the gothic grandiosity of the writing.

There are a few problems with the series - the main one being the "outside" conspiracy theory plotline is much more far-fetched and less rigorously plotted than the gripping "inside" story. There's also the little matter of the Internet connection in the isolated deep-forest cabin without any phone lines. Also, two late-season twists, the amputation of T-bag's hand (too-reminiscent of Lecter's similar experience in Scott's Hannibal), and the intentional overdose of a beloved character, seem cliffhangers too far.

The last words of Season 1: "we run" - turning a closed-system exercise in nail-biting claustrophobia into a wide-open The Fugitive homage (with "big W" elements of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) - do not augur all that well. Still, I aim to view the sophomore season soon. And, Season 1 of the original The Fugitive series is out on DVD this August 14...

Look We Have Media Circus!

Those who live outside the self-serving and self-adoring media bubble that is Great Britain might be excused for not getting it. Recently, the third-rate television spectacle, that rancid format, Big Brother, featured a verbal catfight between a made-for-and-by-TV celebrity, Ms. Goody, pictured, and one of India's more attractive Bollywood starlets. Racial slurs were said to have been thrown at the Asian woman, and at the very least, there was gross verbal bullying directed her way. Riots ensued in India, engulfing the visiting Gordon Brown, the man who would be king, and the offending participant was voted off the show in record numbers.

Meanwhile, a related story developed, at least, in the media's eyes. A modest, and exceptionally gifted emerging UK poet, Daljit Nagra, who writes of the Indian immigrant experience with real verve (and often in dialect) has his debut collection, Look We Have Coming From Dover!, from Faber and Faber, out February 1. Nagra was a huge supporter of my Oxfam series (he's on the Life Lines CD) and is a great guy. Nonetheless, he should resist the way some talking heads in the media are now trying to position him as the answer to Goody's baddy-behaviour.

Last night, Nagra was afforded the sort of media spotlight the rest of us poets, frankly, just don't get very often (unless one is Tom Paulin). He was on BBC's major TV show, Newsnight, where cultural commentators focused on his new collection, with, for the most part, alarming ignorance of the literary context in which it arises. Only the dazzling Sarah Churchwell, observed, pointedly, that Nagra's verbal exuberance is granted permission for lift-off as much by Paul Muldoon's poetry, as his own, also-notable, invention. The other panelists seemed, thrown a poetry bone, unsure of how not to salivate. One said "give him the Nobel now". Another said this collection was the first in British poetry not to be, basically, flat and about bicycles. There seemed a genuine excitement at getting the chance to discuss poetry, but, rather than praising an individual talent, what drove the (welcome) enthusiasm was, basically, the pleasures of any poem (one commentator enthused about the long lines, and linguistic brio, as if these, pre-Nagra, were alien aspects of the form).

Maybe give the guy the Nobel in a few years? The marketing and pr machinery in the UK has nearly destroyed whatever legitimate conversation the British people might have or had with poetry. Every book is blurbed to the max on its back cover, with ringing endorsements that cannot all be true, certain few poets absurdly celebrated and celebrity-fied, almost all the rest totally ignored, and a general sense of lax disinterest prevails. Every six months, Andrew Motion correctly notes, in the media, that the problem is not that no one reads poetry in the UK, or that "poetry is dying", but that the media doesn't much read it, and always over-reacts when confronted with a poetry "story".

Why, for instance, is Nalgra the topic of the week, and not the ten other exceptional poets up for the Eliot awards, which was just won on Monday by Seamus Heaney? Or, for that matter, where is the media interest in leading younger Indian poet Ranjit Hoskote, whose brilliant New and Selected Poems recently came out from Penguin India? Hoskote does not yet have a publisher in London, which seems a shame for such a significant Indian voice.

At any rate, I believe Daljit Nagra has a good chance of winning the TS Eliot prize for 2007. Why not? His book is very good. He deserves to be read, very widely.

But, can the BBC begin to cover poetry, please, on a more regular basis, with sustained, researched insight? Poetry dumbed down isn't poetry anymore. It's a license for Big Brother.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/programmes/newsnight/review/6280089.stm

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1992990,00.html

Inland Vampire

Eyewear is sad to hear of the recent death of Canadian-born icon of silver and small screen alike, Yvonne De Carlo (pictured).

She was best known for her vampiress role in The Munsters (1964-1966), which was cancelled the year I was born. Like many who came to love her, and the show, I saw it in re-runs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1988638,00.html

To Boldly Go

Eyewear celebrates the 40th anniversary of Star Trek's first mission, and transmission, on September 8, 1966. Despite the claims from the site below, this televisual classic dramatic series, arguably the Shakespearean-standard by which all other shows must be judged, has not had the deep space impact of "Jesus"; Lennon-sized grandiosity aside, Star Trek is one of the five most significant cultural artifacts of the '60s - along with The Beatles, Mad Magazine, Bob Dylan, and the Viet Nam War.

For purists, all the spin-offs (and there have been more than for any other TV creation) cannot duplicate the magic of the Original Series, with its curiously perfect alchemy of personalities, namely, Spock's, Kirk's and McCoy's. Indeed, despite the jokes (boulders light as cotton; disposable lieutenants and ensigns; collisions that threw the crew about like popcorn on the bridge) what remains of the series is love. These characters, rounded, real, and flawed-but-heroic, ultimately are always made to decide what love is (Kirk kissing another space gal in lingerie, Spock's mind-meld): the love determined their course. In terms of story arc, then, friendship, loyalty, and mercy form the core values, plot the trajectory, and this remains moving - is, in fact, timeless.

Of course, the show was also political (inter-racial snogs; societies that aped fascism and gangsterism; gods that still wanted to be worshipped; federations dedicated to peace and science) - but never utopian, its idealism tempered by the existence of forces always threatening a better vision of things.

Other guiltier pleasures remain, ones that, sadly, the plan to remaster the original episodes will somewhat diminish, for I love the strange orange, and purple, and pink glow; the shoosh of the doors sliding open and shut; the beaming up sound; the implausibly dramatic music, with its bathetic crescendos and suspenseful glockenspiels. It was all of a package - to my mind, as a child then, an adult now, irreducibly great. From the sweat on Kirk's meaty torso, to Spock's ears, the look and feel of Star Trek was weirdly true to itself. Who is not comforted by an episode, beaming the '60s back to us with all their confusion and certainties?

As to the canon, some of the greatest episodes might be Amok Time; Devil In The Dark; and Mirror, Mirror. I have rewatched The Trouble with Tribbles and find it trite and overly-comedic. Star Trek was surely at its best when tragi-comic, not mock-epic. What astounds, in retrospect, is how fine the writing was, episode to episode. As a former TV writer myself, I can attest to the need for a great story editor (or show-runner) - and both Gene Rodenberry and DC Fontana (Sci-Fi's greatest woman creative arguably) were near-geniuses.

40 years ago? Like one of many Star Trek episodes itself, where time is but an anomaly, a different stream to step into, it seems just 45 minutes ago. Beam me up, Scotty.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/25215.html

Paranoia Agent

If you have to see one Japanese Anime TV series this year (and you know you do) then let me recommend director / creator Satoshi Kon's curious audiovisual guilty pleasure, the cult Paranoia Agent (Vol. 1) - the rest of the series is out later this month.

"Paranoia" may be a bit of a 90s theory thing for those of us in the West (see Panic, and the X-Files as sub-sets) but it has naturally made a come-back thanks to events like September 11th, whose latest anniversary is fast approaching.

Kon's series, which is expertly animated, escalates, each episode building from the previous one, in terms of levels of violence, sexual perversion, and indeed menace, so that, in fact, the viewer participates in a spiralling level of unease, and paranoia.

It starts innocently enough - a kid's cartoon designer (pictured above) begins to crack under corporate-life pressure before being apparently hit on the head in a random attack by L'IL SLUGGER - a weird boy with golden in-line skates and a bent-like-it's-broken gleaming baseball bat.

Enter a duo of very laconic detectives, and a cast of alpha-students, schizoid sex workers, mafia types and bent cops... complete with knowing references to cult American TV of the 90s, like Twin Peaks from David Lynch.

Having very recently been in Japan (and having been the credited story editor for the last season of Sailor Moon) I can maybe attest to the intelligent and nuanced way in which the series deals with issues of urbanization, globalization, techno-media-mania, work-related stress, environmental destruction, loss of identity in an alienated post-industrial world, in the context of the Japanese experience - but, startlingly, in a universal way, too.

It may not be The Simpsons (often considered the pinnacle of animated TV product) but this surely sets new standards for serious-yet-hip, smart-yet-fun, adult Japanese Anime.