Even though ABC’s new sitcom Happy Endings has a bad name and isn’t particularly clever and gets details about Chicago wrong and is part of that usual trying-to-be-Friends genre, I watched five episodes on Friday, so it can’t be that bad (hint: yes it can).
When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on 27 December 2007, her family was horrified but not altogether shocked. Indeed, they believed she was never quite safe in her homeland, Pakistan. According to Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara’s documentary, premiering 10 May on PBS, hers was a life of tumult and tragedy: for all her commitment to public service—elected twice to be Pakistan’s Prime Minister—she also felt compelled by a kind of destiny. In addition, Educated at Harvard and Oxford, a woman of great intellect and expectations, she was picked by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to succeed him as political heir (this being a departure from Muslim tradition, to hand down legacies to sons). Bhutto agreed to an arranged marriage as a means to navigate her career, only to have her husband Asif Ali Zardari, spend 11 of their 17 years as man and wife in prison. Indeed, she also spent many years in detention, as Pakistani military leaders sought ways to contain her. Sorting through Pakistan’s remarkably complex history, replete with strife, violence, and corruption, the movie posits Bhutto as a devoted mother as well as an embodiment of democracy—and so, hope and freedom. Her energy and persistence are revealed in archival interviews, adoring crowd scenes, and haunting images of her white scarf blowing in the wind. These conventional visuals are punctuated by lively music soundtrack choices (including Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam) as well as animated maps and other graphics, insisting on Bhutto’s unusual ability to cross borders, between past and present, east and west, personal and political.
Reality television is about many things: voyeurism, spectacle, extreme fertility, finding love, losing weight, baking cakes. If the broadcast venue is MTV, it’s about becoming a teen parent. If the words ‘Competition’ and ‘America’ are in the title of a reality show, crying and/or a B-list celebrity may be involved and eventually, someone will talk about achieving their version of the American dream.
The group of red, white and blue reality TV includes America’s Next Top Model, America’s Got Talent and American Idol. Each show promotes the notion that the American system makes it possible for every individual to succeed. In these series, if you perform better than your competition (or the public likes you) you win the chance at a better life.
I’m not quite sure if Gwen Stefani’s L’Oreal lipstick commercial is annoying because of the one word rhymes and “it” repetitions (and that’s all she speaks), or if I should let my niece watch it as a more glammed up version of Sesame Street‘s word/phrase of the day. We see the red and I’m seeing red. We get it. Bold and beautiful, no soap opera.
Congratulations on beating out Christina Aguilera as red lipped queen of the world. Can we move on to the next campaign? Disdain. Pain. Hate It. Move It. Over It. See L’Oreal?! I can do “it” too! Gimme a contract!
The house is everywhere. Whether it ‘s one of the stock movies about haunted houses or in literature such as Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street, it’s clear that the house has another function that transcends its materiality. The house (or rather, mansion) figures prominently on British television, rather like a never ending royal wedding. As urban theorist Anthony King observed;
“Socially, buildings support relationships, provide shelter, express social divisions, permit hierarchies, house institutions, enable the expression of status and authority, embody property relations; spatially, they establish place, define distance, enclose space, differentiate area;culturally, they store sentiment, symbolize meaning, express identity; politically, they symbolize power, represent authority, become an arena for conflict, or a political resource.” (King, Global Cities. Routledge 1990)
The house is thus never a given, an uncultured or objective setting where the lives of the characters happen to take place. It’s rather a force in itself, at once reflecting and shaping value systems that are inherent to society and that are incarnated in individuals themselves. ITV’s Downton Abbey is a perfect case in point, as even the title of the series indicates the importance that the house will come to assume; Downton Abbey is the estate of the Crawley family, inhabited by them and their small army of servants.