So THAT'S what a kerfuffle looks like

[thedeadlyhook]

Gorgeous day outside. First really nice, sunny day we've had in awhile. Went for a nice long bike ride, which makes me feel all virtuous. (We'll see how long that lasts.) In fandom news...

I see from my flist that fandom seems to be blowing up about Veronica Mars (see rusty_halo for a link). Or rather, flinging nasties at each other about various impressions of the accuracy of depiction of SoCal life and the female high school experience, yadda yadda within VM. I have nothing to add to that argument, since I don't watch VM - sadly, because I would really like to support a show with a spunky female lead, but I have a short temper for high school-based shows, to which I've only made exceptions for Buffy, Smallville, and... well, Power Rangers, I guess, to go farther back. High school I hated. Passionately. Revisiting it is about as enticing to me as having teeth pulled, so unless there are werewolves, vampires, crypto-freaks, or transforming kung-fu monsters, I can't even bring myself to think about caring. No offense to VM fans, because plenty of people I read on LJ really seem to like it, so I'm pretty sure it's a solid show.

But I do remain puzzled about the regional aspect of the kerfuffle, the is-this-what-SoCal life is really like question. I'm not sure why anyone should care either way. Either you connect to a situation or you don't, and you know, I didn't go to school in SoCal. And unfortuately, just about every high school drama is set there, which sometimes makes for head-scratching on my part. I mean, I liked Donnie Darko but didn't completely "get" a lot of it - I'm from hicksville, and we didn't do things that way. Was it good art? Sure. Should I be blamed for not getting it? Huh-uh. If the work isn't speaking to me, it doesn't say anything in particular about the artist's integrity, just that it's not speaking to me. I think this is a connection that keeps getting missed when discussing TV. The audience's only responsibilty is to be entertained and/or engaged, or not. If that ain't happenin', well, there's a lot of reasons that could be. Blaming the audience isn't probably the right one.

For the most part, I've stopped wondering why TV and film don't bother to depict much of American life outside of its own sort of navel-gazing creative centers, New York and L.A. It's a function of the producers and creators, no question - they're doing what they more or less "know." I don't mind it, for the most part, because life in the heartlands can be kinda boring, and New York and L.A. are glamorous - that's why celebrities et al live there. 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. I remember laughing really hard at the name of Lana's original boyfriend in Smallville (can't remember it now) as the sort of male-model name that would get one laughed at fairly consistently in a real small-town setting, and also that show's high school cliche thang of sexy!cheerleaders and school politics. And I will never be able to get past that school newspaper. Sweeties, I remember three things about high school: 1) being bored 2) being neurotic about what everyone thought of me and 3) being hormonal and hysterical. High school on TV is too well adjusted for starters, too pretty for seconds (believable, maybe, in Beverly Hills, not Kansas), and where are all the classes? The greasy junk food runs? The hanging-around-parking-lots because there's nowhere else to go? Only in fiction could this be an attractive setting.

But then again, I'm probably oversensitive. I used to get teeth-grindingly annoyed at Twin Peaks for what I perceived to be its viewpoint that people from small towns are all knuckle-dragging hicks running off at the gums about weasels and lumber and cherry pie. I've since been told that I was just seeing the wrong episodes (by some freak of circumstance, every time I tuned in I seemed to get the Log Lady or the Pine Weasel, nothing that anyone ever told me was "cool") and plan to give the series an actual fair watch-through... but still. The whole NY/LA-centric thing that Hollywood has... sometimes it feels like we haven't escaped that high school cliquery thing at all. Whatever.

Now I'm wondering how long it's been since there's been a show about high schoolers set in New York? Do we have to go all the way back to Welcome Back Kotter? Or Fame, maybe? Just wondering. Isn't it about time to reverse the trend started by 90210?

Comments

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

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.

Wow, what a rambling reply :) Sorry about that.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Oh, never worry about rambling replies. I love 'em to bits.

I only dipped my toe in the smallest part of this particular controversy, but I was amazed at how huge that conversation got, with all the "and then she said..." Really understand now what people mean about being in online fandom as being part of a cultural moment. I guess only being involved in something like that would make you understand what it's like.

But the way small town life is depicted is truly strange, and often smacks of hostility.

The stereotyping does get pretty annoying at times. I remember quite liking the movie Fargo because quite a few of those people felt recognizably "real" to me of the kind of area I grew up in, and that felt very rare.

As I get older I see myself moving farther and farther out, into the rural places. Keep Manhattan and gimme that countryside.

The older I get the more I see the appeal too. I have great memories from being a child in a small town - it was only as a teenager, when you've explored everything there is to see and want to grow, but there's nowhere else to go and nothing new to discover that it gets limiting. I think as one gets older, that pattern starts to reverse again a bit, where you start to long for the peace and quiet.

And now you've gone and reminded me of Green Acres! They sure don't make opening songs like that anymore...

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

remember quite liking the movie Fargo because quite a few of those people felt recognizably "real" to me of the kind of area I grew up in, and that felt very rare.

Yes! When replying I tried to think of a few "small town" depictions that didn't seem condescending or shallow, and Fargo came to mind. I didn't mention it because I felt I was already drifting longwindedly all over the place. :)

And someone else has mentioned Northern Exposure. Another good one.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I suspect that this is because all the people in the arts and entertainment who grew up in small towns are the ones who left there screaming like bats out of hell as soon as they were old enough, and still hate where they grew up.