Must say, as kerfuffles go, that was a doozy. It was sort of like Godfather II-- even deeper and richer than the original. :)
As for the SoCal stuff -- I was born and grew up in Orange County, and I have to admit that part of the kerfuffle baffled me. Class warfare? In Orange County? Only recently I was remarking to a friend how, when I was a kid, you could literally drive an hour and a half in any direction (well, except west, because you'd end up in the water) without seeing any shift in economic scale. It was a huge sprawling landscape of sameness. Los Angeles, yes -- Compton and Bel Air are a contrast, to say the least -- but not Orange County.
But the flipside is that sometimes I wonder how out-of-touch the industry really is, and can see why conservatives get uptight about "values" sometimes, since even the fantasy versions of "small town America" seldom match anything recognizeable about small town life.
Also a conversation I've had, with a fellow Los Angelean before I fled to the midwest (he ended up moving out of LA too, to a small town in the northwest). I can understand shows portraying life in southern California as glamorous, and casting pretty kids, because they think that's what people want to watch. But the way small town life is depicted is truly strange, and often smacks of hostility.
Eh, I like small towns. I lived in one for a couple years in my 20s, and I remember it as one of the happiest times of my life. As I get older I see myself moving farther and farther out, into the rural places. Keep Manhattan and gimme that countryside.
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Date: 2005-01-26 04:02 pm (UTC)As for the SoCal stuff -- I was born and grew up in Orange County, and I have to admit that part of the kerfuffle baffled me. Class warfare? In Orange County? Only recently I was remarking to a friend how, when I was a kid, you could literally drive an hour and a half in any direction (well, except west, because you'd end up in the water) without seeing any shift in economic scale. It was a huge sprawling landscape of sameness. Los Angeles, yes -- Compton and Bel Air are a contrast, to say the least -- but not Orange County.
But the flipside is that sometimes I wonder how out-of-touch the industry really is, and can see why conservatives get uptight about "values" sometimes, since even the fantasy versions of "small town America" seldom match anything recognizeable about small town life.
Also a conversation I've had, with a fellow Los Angelean before I fled to the midwest (he ended up moving out of LA too, to a small town in the northwest). I can understand shows portraying life in southern California as glamorous, and casting pretty kids, because they think that's what people want to watch. But the way small town life is depicted is truly strange, and often smacks of hostility.
Eh, I like small towns. I lived in one for a couple years in my 20s, and I remember it as one of the happiest times of my life. As I get older I see myself moving farther and farther out, into the rural places. Keep Manhattan and gimme that countryside.
Wow, what a rambling reply :) Sorry about that.