Eurovision 2010: More Retro-vision

It’s inevitable in any Eurovision year that there are former contestants returning to either: a) reclaim past glory or b) outdo their previous score.

Well, this year, it seems that Ireland (which hasn’t repeated an entrant since Johnny Logan’s second win in 1987) is doing option A, with 1993 winner Niamh Kavanaugh flying the Irish flag with a song entitled It’s for you.

Personally, I think her 1993 effort (even if Ruth Jacott/the Netherlands were the true winners, in my humble opinion) is the better of the two entries. I wonder if some of these entrants realise that present-day Eurovision scores are not entirely jury-based.

Here’s this year’s Irish entry:

 

And here’s Ruth Jacott & Co. doing their best back in 1993 despite blinding lights (blame RTE), dodgy sound (blame RTE), and a peculiar set design (again, blame RTE).

 

The UK entry is decided on tomorrow, and for no other reason than to warn them off of doing a retread of the past, here’s the British entry from 1966:

 

And guess what? The big show’s presenters have been named: it’s Haddy, Nadia, and Erik. I think I’ll work with the acronym of HEN, although only HE will do the opening and interval chit chat, while ickle N will do the real heavy lifting: the scoreboard. Alas, I don’t think we’ll have any comedy a la Ingvild Bryn this time, and this lot seem to be stuck in the early 1990s as well.

Wednesday Jukebox says Jealous? This is not a game

What happens when you take Lady Gaga’s approach to celebrity image, add in R&B, and relatively hazy bio? JASMINE, apparently.

Debuting last year with two relatively bland ballads (saved mostly by her outfits), her 2010 output has fortunately been upbeat. This is her latest: Jealous (which apparently involves her standing totally still)

 

And just earlier this year she released This is not a game (the lyrics are pretty much “i need a shag” hence the pole dancers and fetish outfit…the merry-go-round, however is beyond me)

Tuesday Jukebox is a butterfly

Well it is March, so it does seem appropriate (at least in the Northern Hemisphere sense) to feature a song called Butterfly City.

Now, I have never paid much attention to the Yakuza series of games, but apparently they’re a bit like Grand Theft Auto: Japan, which explains why the song seems like techno-gangsta rap.

Is there a connection between Gen-X & Koalas?

For no other reason than I just found this a funny trip down nostalgia lane, here are two articles (c. 2001- 2002) from a site called Progressive Boink that compare and contrast two stalwarts of Nick Jr.’s old lineup: The Noozles and The Adventures of the Little Koala.

Dripping in classic Gen-X ironic detachment, the first article compares and contrasts the two shows*, while the second focuses in on The Noozles and the show’s trippy comment on police states.

* I actually quite liked David the Gnome, though Maya the Bee worked my preteen nerves.

It would only be fair to close out this nostalgic trip down Cartoon Koala Lane with some opening sequences.

The syrupy sweet original Japanese opening to The Adventures of the Little Koala:

 

The equally sacchrine (and slightly aggrivating) opening to the English dubbed version of The Noozles:

 

Surprisingly, Australia got into the animated Koala TV cartoon game late (1993), despite having the original Koala-as-children’s character, Blinky Bill:

Eurovision 2010: Turkey Gives A Glimmer of Hope

Although it could be argued that Turkey going the rock route is playing it safe (see 2004, and the really excellent 2008 entry), We could be the same performed by maNga is at least not another “watch me shake my belly and bum” song (see 2009, 2007, 2003)*.

 

*I’m not counting 2006 because it at least was a refreshing twist on that theme, instead of watch me (or my female dancers) shake my belly and bum, it’s watch my male dancers shake their bums and thrush their crotches at lightning speed. Yes, I’m biased.

 

And 2005 doesn’t count because despite the cheeky title (to Anglophone ears), it’s relatively free of bare skin…and awfully wholesome.

The Devils from Down Under

Now here’s an interesting critique: Live Performance Australia is complaining that an SBS documentary is “an error in judgement.”

The reason why? Well, the documentary in question, Angels in New York, follows the two Australian creators behind the musical Angels who fly to New York, flanked by a film crew, audition 1500 actors, and hire crew even though they don’t have one bit of the $16 million needed to put the show on.

Live Performance’s complaint is that the doco makes Australian theatre production and producers look bad. Via The Australian:

Australian productions and producers have fought really hard to win the respect of American producers and investors. America is the home of the musical and we're reliant on the flow of productions and funds to create musicals here. Why a government-funded authority would support a program that inadvertently undermines our industry and focuses on negative aspects of it when there are so many positive stories to be told (escapes me)…If a group of American producers came to Australia and replicated what I've seen on TV so far, Australia's musical theatre industry would be up in arms.

Meanwhile, SBS gives a very good “let them eat cake” response:

It's not our job to judge whether those dreams are realistic…They [The creators of Angels] attracted the work of some good people in New York and good luck to them.

The documentary is part of SBS’s Secrets and Lies series.

Aunty Bites Back

It’s Mark versus Mark, as in Mark Day (whose op-ed piece in The Australian I commented on yesterday) versus Mark Scott (head of The ABC).

This time it’s Aunty’s turn and Mark Scott lets rip on ABC News’s website at Day’s suggestion that the ABC be flogged off. 

Some highlights:

Mr Day's assertion that the ABC should be weakened or destroyed to prevent it causing "havoc" among commercial rivals, ignores the fact that the US is the media sector where "legacy" companies are most at threat - and the US does not have a major television public broadcaster like the ABC or the BBC. Monday's edition of The New York Times reports savage cost cutting in the news divisions of American's television networks - even though the public broadcaster offers effectively no news service there at all…

…Those eager to draw a parallel between the ABC and the BBC are ignoring the glaring distinctions that exist in relation to their history, economics and role in society.

The BBC began as the monopoly provider of broadcasting services in the UK and remained so for decades…Australia, by comparison, has always had a mixed environment of commercial and public broadcasters and the ABC's role in that space has always been clear.

…The areas that the BBC is speculated to be withdrawing from are activities that the ABC is not involved in, does not receive specific funding for or is the sole free provider. Mr Day would appear to be attempting to import a "solution" to a very British problem.

Burn.

In defence of the Public Broadcaster

Yesterday’s Australian featured a very interesting opinion piece by Mark Day, which asked what exact role does the ABC as taxpayer-funded media serve in this modern multi-platform digital age. Does the fracturing of media by the internet and the rise of pay television make Aunty an anachronism?

Day makes some very worthy arguments, particularly when pointing out that under Mark Scott, the ABC is getting more aggressive in pursuing new media at the taxpayer’s expense (mind you, given how incestuous the commercial landscape is, it almost seems like a fair match).

Yet, I think there is and always will be a place for the ABC, although my belief stems from the fact that I believe wholeheartedly in public broadcasting (as in taxpayer funded, not the weird charity case that is the PBS system in the US.)

I haven’t lived in Australia long enough to have a strong emotional attachment to Aunty, but bloody hell, it’s pretty damn apparent that Aunty works very hard and very long. The ABC defines Australia like a state broadcaster should, and it also seems to have no problem being redefined by the public it serves.

There is no real state broadcaster in the US (at least not one within its borders—and the external one is a bit of dull dishrag, given that it’s prohibited from broadcasting to Americans), and at least at this moment in time, there really isn’t a need for one. Americans pretty much have long since come to the conclusion that commercial broadcasting would define us ever since Lucy & Desi started hawking cigarettes without breaking character, probably much earlier.

What we did in the US instead was market the living daylights out of our media both domestically and internationally (thank you WWII). The funny thing about the majority of American media, however, is that it’s inward facing: it’s American lives, having American dilemmas, in a world that is mostly devoid of influences from other outside nations, except for Canada, Mexico, and the UK on occasion.

And surprisingly such inward, navel-gazing entertainment sells overseas! (Again, thank you WWII.) It’s a constant surprise to me that commercial television stations all over the world lap up some of the dregs that US television spits out. Yet, that’s the role that the US media has always desired to have on the global market since well WWII, as the top supplier of filler.

The problem is that, like junk food, we fill you up way too much and you start thinking that you make us your whole diet, which is a grave mistake.

This is where a public broadcaster like the ABC comes in. The ABC doesn’t care about whether it’s cool amongst the 18-35 crowd, it just is. It stands apart from Sevens, Nines, and Tens, because it is defiantly Australian 24/7, or at least attempts to. (Everything ITV touches ain’t gold, Aunty.) I can’t say the same about Nine’s digital channel, GO!, which is constant American cartoons and vintage sitcoms.

This may sound shocking to some, but television plays a significant role in our sense of identity, and it is joined by the other new media which have popped up since its creation.

You would be hard pressed to find any country out there who would contract out its identity to another one who, to be blunt, sees no further than the tip of its nose.

Get your kit off, Grant

We absolutely looooove Grant Denyer over at this corner of the internet.

And only Grant “unintentionally offensive racial comment” Bonaparte did show some skin for Spencer Tunick’s nude art installation (for Mardi Gras) today at the Sydney Opera House.

Over on Today, Steve “Bonaparte”* Jacobs just gawked at the nude bodies and looked awkward. Mind you, he is just coming off of compassionate leave after his father’s death, so I can understand the awkwardness completely.

*Australian breakfast television shows seem to have requirement that their weathermen be below average height.

Eurovision 2010: Prepare Yourself for Retrovision

Apparently Slovenia has decided to turn back to clock to the days of Yugoslavia, because this would not look out of place in the 1980s.

Good luck, because they will need it.

 

 

Mind you, this may very well be a retro-vision year as the Dutch entry is unabashedly 1970s kitsch (even written by the man who wrote the 1973 entry…which actually is better than this chirpy dross, in my humble opinion)

 

Finland has gone for the ever-popular two blondes and an accordion combination.

 

Iceland has also opted go for their traditional strength: dance pop belted out by a woman with a big voice. (Well, they’re also borrowing from Kate-Don’t-Mess-With-Me-Fellas-Ryan)

 

And Denmark’s winner recalls not the happy-go-lucky Danish entries of the 1980s, but pretty much every 1980s rock ballad ever made.

 

As for the hosts: Norway has gone moody. Really moody. Not bleak, but 1990s Ireland moody. (He has looks on his side, but that didn’t help Iceland back in 2004, did it?)

 

Poland sends another ballad, but wait…it’s a male singer and it’s folk(ish).

 

Macedonia also does the exact same thing they’ve been doing since pretty much time memorable, which is insert rap into some really dated song. This year it’s really bland rock-rap. (And I still bet they’ll get really close into qualifying.)

 

Finally, Switzerland has an upbeat song in French, which also wouldn’t be out of place in 1980s Eurovision or 1980s French children’s television. (He’s singing about it raining gold, and the first thing that came to my mind was the Mysterious Cities of Gold. Anyone else think the same thing?)

 

The UK’s entry will be written by Pete Waterman, and if anyone could out-retro this lot, it’s the man who was part of the trio who put Kylie Minogue on the map.

1 Chalet Rendez-vous = 1 more season of Crap TV

We’re in the ratings season now, and honestly, the most interesting programmes on Australian television continue to be imports from Canada (Little Mosque on the Prairie), New Zealand (Outrageous Fortune and Go Girls repeats), the UK (The Bill 2.0: Bleaker than’ eck), and the US (well, The Good Wife and Two and a Half Men—yes, I said it).

Nine has got the Winter Olympics, so we can cut them some minor slack until that wraps up, but Seven has been coasting on the success of its reality programming (Border Security, which should keep Grant Bowler free to do whatever he wants), and Ten seems think that all and sundry still wants to watch Talkin’ Bout Your Generation—despite sliding ratings.

Not much hope for new Australian drama on the horizon it seems.

Well, thanks to Senator Stephen Conroy (the current Communications Minister), that forecast looks to remain unchanged. Conroy apparently had a meeting with Seven’s boss Kerry Stokes in Vail last month, and magically the government gave the Free-to-Air networks a Scrooge McDuck calibre rebate on their TV license fees. (Read Uncle Rupert’s take on the whole fracas here.)

I wouldn’t have a problem with that per se, except for one fact: the networks can do whatever they want with the money to make whatever Australian programming they want.

No restrictions on whether it is for drama/comedy or reality, which could very well lead to yet another year of constant fly-on-the-wall docusoaps creating more disposable sub-lebrities for them to further flog via their magazine divisions.

Oh joy.

Monday Jukebox is Scandal(ous)

Some big news: This corner of the internet may be moving to Tasmania by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Factor in the recent controversy over the TV license rebate that the networks may be getting and it seems that Scandal is an appropriate song for today’s jukebox.

Out from the gloomy past

Well, who would thought John Mayer was such a…hmmm…Neanderthal?

Personally, it’s no real loss on my part as I never cared for anything of his in the first place. Is it that shocking that the man whose first big hit was an ode to sex is a womanising pig? Not particularly, in fact, given that Mayer was downing malt liquor (oh, the irony!) I have to wonder whether his real purpose was to kill off the John Mayer image in a blaze of glory…while still maintaining his career.

I didn’t really come to this conclusion until I read Brendan Shanahan’s opinion piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. Entitled “Take heart, Cupid’s not a racist,” Shanahan argues that finding people of certain races unattractive does not make one racist, because of the “illogical nature of sexual attraction itself.”

Yes, because sexual attraction makes no sense at all, it is totally possible to rule out entire ethnicities composed of people you have never met or never seen.

Hilariously, Shanahan seems to think that in these modern times we don’t live with the cultural stereotypes of the past, which is why he thinks we should be horrified by the song Brown Sugar, which talks about slave women being raped by their master in New Orleans. Yes, we’re horrified, but it also is portraying a period in time, documented not only by narrative but by people. (Hi Brendan, I’m one of them. Black Americans didn’t magically appear from anywhere.)

Shanahan does appear to be onto something when he talks about bigoted Australian men being horrified by Asian immigration, but sexually obsessed with submissive Asian women, and gleefully going to brothels to live out their erotic fantasies. He also mentions the classic Mandingo stereotype that black men have.

What he fails mention is that these stereotypes are created by centuries of cultural programming ranging from the Greek myths of the Amazons to Othello to Madame Butterfly and to, yes, Mandingo. (Have you ever heard of Edouard Said, Brendan?)

Shanahan’s assertion that it’s not wrong to prefer one race over another would make sense if we all lived in a bubble devoid of interaction or influences from the outside world as well as classic and popular culture. Yet we don’t.

In his closing paragraph, Shanahan paradoxically advocates miscegenation while still defending the right to unilaterally find people of other races unattractive. Seemingly winking to the reader, Shanahan says not sharing an attraction might make one “unworldly, but doesn’t make [one], or John Mayer, a racist.”

In this sense, not sharing an attraction does not make one racist, but advocating, tolerating, and even mere acceptance of someone’s right to discriminate against entire ethnicities due to skin colour is well…racist.

There are no facts on TV News

In what appears to be a statement made to the Sydney Morning Herald issued from Wonderland, the ACMA has said that television news is not a “factual program.”

Here is how this all came about:

The commercial networks get money from the brokerage arms of the banks (CBA and Macquarie basically) to comment on the day’s financial news, which in many people’s view (including my own) gives them significant influence. Plus it would seem that this arrangement between the banks and the commercial networks would need disclosure under the new code of practice covering the terrestrial channels which came to effect this year. 

One must wonder why the ACMA is so hesitant to rule on this issue.

A Little Bit of Homesickness

I can survive having my birthday during the Austral Summer, but pictures like this still make me long for having my birthday in winter. (courtesy of the ABC)

Have A Realistic Wish

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this.

Ajay Rochester, who used to host the local version of The Biggest Loser apparently is desperate to get fame in the US.

How desperate?

She’ll settle for the Z-list Celebrity Fit Club.

Just read this article from a Daily Telegraph last month, which seems to be taking a degree of glee (I’d say schadenfreunde, except they are no freunde of her) in the misadventures of Miss Rochester.

Personally her story seems like it’s going to end like Inside Daisy Clover.

More Tales of Two Countries

Population and unemployment: this is a bit of an apples and oranges subject(s), especially given the size of Australia and New Zealand.

Nonetheless, it’s rather interesting to see how the local media treats it.

New Zealand: Stop Coming Home and taking our jobs. (TVNZ)

Australia: Perhaps Logan’s Run was a good idea (ABC), Or Soylent Green (ABC), Or bugger it, let’s get more skilled migrants (The Daily Telegraph)

Yes to the remix, No to the redux

Apparently the theme of the day is polished turds in popular culture.

Earlier, I pondered if we’re still stuck in a decade of bad cinema.

Now, let’s shift the focus to music, and a very specific kind of it: the charity pop single.

Warwick McFadyen in today’s Sydney Morning Herald takes the two recent ones (in aid of Haiti) to task, lamenting not the desire to aid, but the almost “let-them-eat-cake” result.

I especially think this section is worth noting:

There is no doubt that Haiti needs all the help the world can give it. More than 170,000 people died when an earthquake struck the impoverished nation on January 12.

But even before that, Haiti was deeply mired in economic and social grief. About four-fifths of the population live in poverty.

Did this lot give a toss beforehand? Not particularly.

All these charity efforts just come across as the idle activities of the talented but bored, especially when they cannot get their pampered arses together to actually write something original.

The decade of bad movies?

Empire Magazine has published a list of the 50 Worst Movies ever made, topping the list is Batman and Robin (which effectively put the franchise in hiatus), but what I found interesting about the top ten was that six of the top ten were made in the previous decade.*

*arguing that the naughties were 2000-2009

I don’t believe that this is just a mere coincidence, there are more chefs in that particular kitchen for that to happen. So what happened in the naughties?

Did potential profit blind the studios to crap cinema?

And if it did, is it possible to reverse the trend?

Perhaps.

Let’s Sin Again…like we did last Summer

A BBC magazine declares Australia the most sinful nation on Earth, followed by the US.

Presuming that there is no old colonial bias at work here, it’s rather interesting to note in which sins both Australia and the US excelled in: Australia ranked first for envy (determined by the amount of thefts that occurred), the US ranked first for gluttony (determined by money spent on fast food).

Also of note:

Lust (determined by amount of pornography consumed) was topped by South Korea, and greed (determined by the percentage of the population earning less than 50% of the median income) was topped by Mexico.

I have yet to see BBC Focus on sale in newsagents here, but you can get a digital preview here. The way the figures came about is rather…interesting.