Prime Time
CULTURE KICKS: After nine months of living with cable, after watching liberal doses of CNN, CSpan, the Atlantic and Chicago �superstations,� Lifetime, MTV, VH-1, The Nashville Network, The Movie Channel, Cinemax (wasn�t so foolish, though, as to purchase HBO or Showtime...yet), the USA Channel (well, maybe not the USA Channel—that�s a column in itself), The Christian Broadcasting Network and so on and so forth, one begins to sense the demographics here—a composite of the various target audiences emerges.
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ARMADILLOS LASHED MY KNEECAPS
by
Richard C. Walls
CULTURE KICKS: After nine months of living with cable, after watching liberal doses of CNN, CSpan, the Atlantic and Chicago �superstations,� Lifetime, MTV, VH-1, The Nashville Network, The Movie Channel, Cinemax (wasn�t so foolish, though, as to purchase HBO or Showtime...yet), the USA Channel (well, maybe not the USA Channel—that�s a column in itself), The Christian Broadcasting Network and so on and so forth, one begins to sense the demographics here—a composite of the various target audiences emerges. The average cable viewer, one must conclude, is white, middle-aged, middle-class, either apolitical or more conservative than Reagan, suburban, and, uh, a little on the dim side (experience teaches that it�s best to make this last accusation as gingerly as possible—all you have to do is use the word �stupid� and everybody takes it personally).
Possibly there will be more variety, culturally speaking, once the major cities get hooked up, but for now it�s timid white bread most of the way. Even the movie channels, where you might expect a certain freedom (or looseness) of expression tend toward conventional entertainments. There are a couple of exceptions to the blandness, though they�re not all they could be. The Arts and Entertainment Channel, e.g., is a good idea, but its staple is the bloodless BBC mini-series, the kind of thing that gives �respectability� its bad name. Add to this a gaggle of mediocre British sit-coms and you get the distinct impression of a small town attitude that defines �culture� as something, anything, that�s imported. On the plus side, they�ve recently shown some decent documentaries, particularly a six-part series on George Orwell (BBC import, but hey) and a good one on William Styron (in which he offered the opinion that religion was �a lot of bullshit,� a refreshing reminder that the First Amendment is alive if not well). Also the station comes up with one or two decent jazz features a month— Johnny Griffin, Wynton Marsalis, Stan Getz, Bobby Hutcherson, and Richie Cole have been well presented recently—though overall it�s too genteel by half.
The other, somewhat more successful attempt at a cable cultural corner is the pay channel Bravo. In the pamphlet our local cable service handed out when it was canvassing, Bravo is depicted as an opera/ballet/classical music station, but its big attraction is movies. The channel offers a good range, from the scandalous (A Woman In Flames, Fassbinder�s overheated swan song Querelle) to the essential (the standard Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini, and Bunuel—a great way to catch up) to the genuinely hard to find (Orson Welles�s F For Fake, a trio of obscure Bunuel Mexican movies, Alain Resnais�s famous short on the holocaust Night And Fog) to recent Art House Hits (Moonlighting, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Mephisto) to who cares (Educating Rita). Also, a sprinkling of not runof-the-mill American flicks.
The only problem with Bravo, aside from the inevitable repetition and the fact that it�s only on in the evenings, is that while it�s fairly upto-date with its ballet, opera, and, you know, classical stuff, its jazz programming seems to be under the control of someone who stopped listening to the music around 1958. Recent salutees include Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Buddy Greco (!?), Herbie Mann, and Les McCann (token Negro?— really, consider the percentage of important jazz artists who are black and this list seems even more curious). Great movies, guys, but when it comes to Le Jazz Hot, this is the kind of stuff that seems to target an audience of white, middle-aged, middleclass...you get the picture.
THE DEVIL AND BABA WAWA: 20/20, ABC�s 60 Minutes clone, recently aired a perfectly disgraceful �expose�� of the �epidemic� of satanism among our nation�s youth. The whole piece ran like a bad satire of the standard investigative number. Dubious sources abounded, including an alleged psychologist who specialized in the occult, a policewoman who knew something was happening somewhere if she could just find some proof, some woman somewhere saying something some children had told her about (gasp) cannibalism. All these factoids were presented in the totally unskeptical, absolutely noperspective, shamelessly exploitational (did you know, that in harmless-looking record stores, in wholesome clean-cut appearing malls across our fair land actual Black Sabbath records are being sold!?) way that�s favored by the mush-minded loonies on The 700 Club and such shows. One could dismiss this as an aberration, a last spasm of generation gapism, if it weren�t that two weeks later 20/20 did a segment on the Grenada invasion that could have been written by Newt Gingrich (and if you don�t know who he is, then lucky you). Watching these two segments I experienced that little twinge I felt when I saw 700 Club honcho Pat Robertson on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post a few weeks past—a feeling that the erstwhile guardians of �normalcy� had gone totally apeshit insane. Just a feeling...
