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Yeah, it was, actually. It reached levels of awfulness that were simply sublime. It was immaculately shot, beautifully designed, charmingly acted, and written with passion and brio—all in the service of ideas of a staggering, fundamental Wrongness. There were parts of it I had to watch from the doorframe, and parts that caused me to simply leave the room.
Here’s the thing; for all his showbiz inside-baseball patter, Aaron Sorkin demonstrates no understanding of pop culture—of what it is, of how it works, of why it's popular in the first place. Indeed, he seems to view pop culture as the disease, and himself as the cure. Which would be fine—if he weren’t writing about a show that allegedly epitomizes pop-culture cool.
A wonderful bit of hypocrisy; early in Episode 2, Jordan say that “We’re never going to assume that the viewer at home is less intelligent than we are,” or words to that effect. Then the show spends the rest of the episode proving her wrong.
Later, we’re in the writing room. Matt is blocked. he asks the hypothetical question, “Who’s the ultimate in frat humor?” This viewer at home thinks, quite reasonably, The National Lampoon? The Daily Show? Monty Python? South Park? But no. Turns out that the right answer is... Gilbert and Sullivan.
No, seriously.
We then enter into some weird-ass parallel universe where people care deeply about “the legacy of television, Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra,” where jokes involving Bill Cosby an Jell-O Pudding Pops still get a laugh, where a “Modern Major General” pastiche, performed in white gowns and tails, has ‘em rolling in the aisles on the show that is supposed to be the premiere arbiter of hipness. (Yeah, the Gilbert & Sullivan CDs are just flying off the shelves of my local Hot Topic, I’ll tell you.)
Screw that stuff you like, Sorkin is saying; Here’s what you should like. And you can believe us when we tell you this, because we understand the history and legacy of this medium. Because we are professionals.
And that’s where Sorkin’s real beef lies; with the dissolution of the traditional media paradigm and the attendant democratization of content. Hence the bitching about “these bloggers in their pajamas,” who dare to question and dissect what they consume. Hence the obsession with “credentials”—bloggers, of course, lack them, and how did this nutbar from Rapture Magazine get them? Hence the pounding on the concept of “professionalism,” leading up to Matt’s tear on Kids these days, the way they dress—a scene of jaw-dropping Wrong-Headedness.
Sorkin’s misty romantic view of television—and not just television, network television—is leading him to defend the indefensible. He’s longing for the days when the Big Three functioned as a (mostly) benevolent monopoly, dictating the public taste rather than serving it. In this view, the opening up of the media landscape is a bad thing, leading inexorably to a race to the bottom; alternate forms of distribution are bankrupt because they lack proper filtering—to really be any good, you’ve got to be “credentialed,” whatever that means.
So, to sum up; Aaron Sorkin is an elitist prick who hates the youth, fears the future, and has constructed STUDIO 60 an elaborate angry-old-man rant to defend Old Media from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
No wonder so many talented TV actors and creators are lining up to work with him; by its very premise, STUDIO 60 is designed to reassure them that they still Matter. |
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