The problem isn’t that it insults filipina women — its not funny.

You can read their defense here. There relevant portions:

The production company behind a BBC comedy sketch that provoked outrage in the Philippines for being racist said Tuesday that the show was “absurd” and should not be taken seriously.

Yup, thats a pretty good defense. Its the same defense that a show like southpark would use.  Insult comedy only works if its true (that some filipina women end up being abused). But its funny only if you are insulting the powerful and the established (politicians, the church, gays, etc), or if its inconsequential (Family Guy’s stewie and brian, make fun of how Wallet and Vallet are spelled the same but pronounced differently), or if its in some level false (this is the Dave Barry definition). 

But there is a problem — filipinas do end up being abused in foreign countries. Hence, it fails all three tests…  1) the person insulted is not powerful, 2) its not inconsequential, 3) its true both literally and figuratively. 

An example of how a good show respects these ideas, see SNL’s latest move.

Dilbert creator also has a few guidelines on how one can write funny.

I’m disappointed in the show. British humor is supposed to be pretty good. This show isnt’. Its crap.

Last night, was the long awaited dance-off between fake political pundit Colbert and the very real k-pop superstar Rain. There has been alot of downsides to globalization recently, but now here is an incredibly silly but hilarious upside.

Speaking of the dangers of globalization, this comes after as something i was a afraid of — Koreans not ‘getting’ Colbert. But it all ends well, and i’m glad they figured out its all for laughs.

from outinfour.wordpress. posted with vodpod

NYTimes has a great article on series creator Michael Patrick King.

An interesting excerpt:

Mr. King’s mother is also a practicing Roman Catholic, and his history has left him with a vexed relationship to his own faith. “I’m happiest in an empty church,” he said. “I love the smell of a church.” In the opinion of his closest friend, the novelist Adriana Trigiani (with whom he shares a brownstone in the West Village), his Catholicism is also a constant presence.

“He loves the pageantry and the drama,” Ms. Trigiani said. “He took the structure and holiness of the Mass, and I think it’s informed anything he’s done.” She noted that her friend writes with a sharp eye toward consequence.

Pursuing this meme, if you watch the show, you’ll see how most episodes are built as a parable that conveniently wraps up in less than 30 minutes. This is what i like best about the series. Its also what will surely be lost the movie version. But i’m sure Mr. King knows whats he’s doing.

I wish he’d come back, but his correspondent days are over.

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

I was scouring the net for more insight into comedy, when i hit upon this excellent post by Allison Silverman. Allison Silverman is one of the Executive Producers of the “Colbert Report”, and was a former writer on “The Daily Show” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”.

Its got great insight into how jokes are written in the real world. Political power is an important part of who gets mocked. Financially strong coalitions that can sue are excluded in the mockery. This means that many things aren’t made fun of:

Everyday, a script of the show goes to our legal adviser to be OK’d before the taping. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, but we all know to avoid certain areas. For instance, the Church of Scientology is not the subject of jokes on The Daily Show. And The Daily Show does not put beloved children’s characters into adult situations. You get the idea.

Clearly, in the Philippines where skins are thinner than tissue paper, much political satire won’t work. This makes me respect “Bubble Gang” even more.

The last sentence is about “man on the street interviews”. TDS /CR can feature particularly mean man on the street interviews. And yet there are limits:

Also, when working off a sound bite, no matter how mean the man-on-the-street sounds, we can’t follow him up by saying something like, “This man then left to check on the body in his trunk.”

So, its ok to make someone look stupid or evil, but the show should never have to say so outright.

A philippine version of Playboy will be coming out. From its editor:

Dolor said Playboy Philippines would feature Filipino women as “playmates” in the centerfold, but won’t show full frontal nudity or genitalia because that would run counter to Philippine business and cultural considerations.

“Maybe one nipple,” he said.

Because two nipples are just awful.

“The Return of Jezebel James” premiered last week. I saw it, and i thought it was bad. I checked the interwebs; reviews are mostly bad. Metacritic aggregates reviews and gives it a 29, one of the worst reviewed TV show in the Fall 2007/2008 midseason, beat only by the super-short lived “Cavemen”. There are many complaints. Alot of people, myself included, hate the laughtrack. But i believe that the uncomfortable laugh track is only a symptom of the true problem with the show.

I’m disappointed because its show runner is Amy Sherman-Paladino, creator and writer of “Gilmore Girls”. That show is known for its fast talking leads and eccentric townsfolk. Its heart is that its a fantasy about relationships. The close relationship between an a thirty-ish something woman and the daughter she had while still a teen herself, and the the relationship the woman has with her old-world, manipulative parents.

First, what is it about? In the pilot (22 minutes, roughly), Parker Posey plays a high-strung children’s book editor who realizes that she wants a child but cannot due to a medical condition. She contacts her laid back, dirt poor sister, Lauren Ambrose, to convice her to be her surrogate mother. Lauren accepts upon learning that Parker has published a book about her childhood imaginary friend, Jezebel James. Parker and Lauren then move in together.

JJ is a 30 minute, laugh track sitcom, so the rules — and its limits!– of the medium must be respected. First, the premise is too much for a 30 minute pilot. if the second to the last sentence of the preceeding paragraph sounds goofy to you, then join the club — no one knows why Lauren accepts the proposal, except that it has something to do with the imaginary JJ. But in the space of 22 minutes, she must, because they have to complete the premise of the show. (i.e. they have to live together for the hijinks to ensue).

Now, revealing the entire premise of the show in the pilot is a tradition of the 30 minute laugh track aided sitcom. The solution is to to have a super simple premise that can be introduced in less than two pages of dialogue. All the great sitcoms ‘obey’ this rule. The Family sitcoms of the 80s and early 90s: Cosby Show, Growing Pains, Full House — all of them followed this rule. The other ones too, like Frasier, Friends, Golden Girls, Cheers. The point is the setup cannot be complicated, because half-hour sitcoms cannot be complicated plot-wise. We don’t want to ask questions: why is Sam Malone a serial dater?, or Why is Alex P. Keaton a republica? As viewers, we just accept the set-ups. But in Jezebel James, it literally begs questions and the answers it reveals don’t make sense. We don’t know why Parker wants a child, we don’t know why Lauren accpeted, and we don’t know who Jezebel James is!

Next, the 30 minute sitcom is built around once charismatic, or at least interesting, character. Micheal J Fox, Ray Romano, Kelsey Grammer — all of them anchored shows at one point or another. The alternative is a ensemble, the members of which are on their own too weak to anchor a show, but together work nicely. Examples are Friends and Will and Grace. The third, most popular choice, is to have a combination of the above. An example is Seinfeld.

JJ isn’t anchored by a charismatic character. Parker’s character is hard to like, and in another show would be one of the supporting ‘eccentric’ cast mates. Lauren’s is meant to be the straight man in this ‘odd couple’ pairing, but since we don’t know why she’s onboard, we are confused about her too. [i have not seen the Odd Couple, which critics say is a model for the show. I will add this to my queue.]

To summarize, Amy hasn’t adapted her signature style to the 30 minute sitcom. If this were an hour long dramedy, which can accomodate a more complex plot, this would have been better.

Some lessons. The premise was (is) full of comic potential. What they could’ve done was to allow the premise to unfold over several episodes. In this way, JJ would indeed ‘re-invent‘ the 30 minute sitcom. This way, they can allow the heavy plot to unfold over a longer period of time, and let each episode focus on one specific thing at a time.

Lack of focus is also the reason why the laughtrack seems off. The jokes come flying a million times a minute. The pilot was too busy. But this isn’t how jokes work in a sitcom (unless you are an animated sitcom). For example, in a typical episode of Everyone Loves Raymond, they’d spend 4 minutes on some absurd thing, and all the jokes revolve around it, based on the eccentricities of the characters. Coupling is another example (and for me the funniest sitcome i’ve ever seen). In the pilot, every scene is basically a couple, and they talk about some absurd thing, again based on the character’s weirdness. The best scenes are with Jeff, and how the writers would take their time, making an absurd situation stranger each second that passes. This is from the famed “Man with One Leg” Episode.

Another lesson: add more people who can contribute to the comic potential of the show. In other words, make it more of an ensemble show because Parker and Lauren cannot carry this show alone. None of the sitcoms on air now are anchored by one main character anyways, and JJ needs all the help it can get.

A paper by a UC San Diego professor on the effect of an appearance of politicians on the show’s segment “Better Know a District” on their fund raising. The show gives a significant bump to Democratic congressmen who appear on the show — they earn 37% more than similar democratic congressmen who didn’t appear on the show. The analysis is merely suggestive of a causal link. The paper is written in ‘colbert style’ and is quite entertaining to read, and is a great resource about the colbert and its “disproportionate influence” in politics.

Another blog by juice analytics studied colbert’s influence on book sales. their analysis indicates that on-average, books sales increases by 10%, and that this effect comes from the increase in sales of pop intellectual book and liberal book authors that guest on his show. I’m pretty sure that if they study “The Daily Show”, they would get a TDS bump result as well.

I wonder how powerful this effect is vis-a-vis the authors’ other opportunities to market their book? From a professor in my school, i know that an appearance in either show was heavily encouraged by his agent.

Here is a video from AP about the same phenomenon and some choice words from the man himself.

If it is, we’re in trouble!

I saw Juno today and it was very good. The writing was fun and easy. The direction, acting  and music were all great. Its not a movie that costs much. We should have more movies like this. Specifically: 1) an straightforward plot, 2) an engaging hero/heroine, 3) smart writing, 4) an actual character arc. It made me think about the Juno’s journey in understanding what love is between a guy and a girl, and how sex and pregnancy is this complicated thing that makes things better and/or ruins things. The funny scenes are too numerous to mention, but i have two favorite heartwarming scenes. The first is when Vanessa touches Juno’s stomach and says thank you. It teaches Juno that being a mom is this wonderful thing, that while she’s not ready now, one day she might want it for herself. Second is when Juno asks her dad, whether its possible for two people to be happy together forever, and her dad tells her what to look for in a guy. On the face of it, its standard love story stuff. But here, it exists in a context (which i won’t share here for fear of ruining the movie to the three people who read this blog!).

Also, somewhat beside the point i’m making here, they kept using what now is my word of the month -shenanigans. Such a funny word!

I think that the vast majority of Filipino movies rely on fantastic scenarios (i’m looking at you GMA films!), complicated-stereotypical relationships between family, and by-the-numbers romances.

Let me talk about romances a bit more. The movies are only vehicles for love teams, so the story is basically maximizes the romantic interactions between the pair (one might call this: mining the ‘kilig factor’). The Plot is basically variations on the same theme: a couple, then something happens, they drift apart, then they end up together. the end.

A recent example is One more Chance. The premise was a promising one — a couple that has been together for ages splits up to ‘find themselves’. Even the first scene was golden — john lloyd’s character is so insecure, that it takes a gastric event (wink!) from Bea Alonzo to allay his fears.

Great start — but the characters don’t grow. At the end of the movie, we just know that they MUST: 1) be different somehow, 2) split up from their respective partners, 3) get back together. But we don’t know HOW they get to this point. The film makers don’t want to tell a STORY. All they want, is a beginning/premise, and then an ending. The most interesting part (potentially) of the movie — the middle — is never shown on film!

Not all pinoy movies are like this. I recall, Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo wanted/tried to tell a middle part. Alot of the movie is how real couples get their act together and make mistakes along  the way. Indeed, i came out of that movie thinking: when is it okay to forgive your husband for his infidelity? Ultimately, how they resolved this issue was unsatisfying to me;  but at least it made me think.