Tag Archives: media

My Second Love

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In addition to having felt less than healthy lately, Sydney is now experiencing day six in a streak of incessant rain, an apparent weather phenomenon.  Lucky timing, huh?  So, other than the observation that in a hilly city, six days of rain turns gutters into miniature water parks, my cultural observations have been somewhat limited to what I can observe from my couch.  Fortunately for me that means I have spent a great deal of time with my second love, television.

To begin with, a lack of cable means you only have five channels.  I think with some sort of external box we could get an additional five for free, but a desire to remain cloistered in a dry apartment has prevented me from doing so.  By American standards, we might see that as having nothing to watch, but there is actually an astounding variety of things on from day to day.

During the day, standard American soap operas and talk shows dominate, but I have yet to figure out why Ellen and Oprah are about half a season behind, and The View seems to be right on schedule.  I might know where the soap operas were in sequence if A. I watched soap operas and if B. their plots ever actually moved forward.

International news comes on at lunch, and breaks up gaps between shows.  It may come as no surprise to news watchers that the programs here are far better, and far more informative than they are in the States, but to someone who used to avoid the news like it was the swine flu, this is an unexpected change.  The police blotter and crime news takes up an insignificant blip of time, as opposed to becoming a drawn out drama.  Human interest pieces are limited to things that are actually interesting.  And the news is stated simply, informatively, and without co-hosts to pass inane banter passed back and forth across the news desk.  I, however, do miss weather maps that are actually readable.  Australia is a big country.  I really don’t care what wind conditions are like in Darwin.  Zoom in!

To catch up with the weirder events in the news, you might choose to watch a show like Good News Week, where a group of comedians get together to play games associated with the oddest international events of the week.  I think what I enjoyed most about this show was its completely unstructured structure.  The comedians essentially rule the stage.  It was just like having a group of friends over for game night.  Eventually, everyone gets drunk enough that it doesn’t matter how the game is being played or who is winning, and the conversation degrades until you’re discussing fingering.  Yes, that’s exactly what they were discussing toward the end of the show.  And despite the fact that a popular sketch comedy show called Chaser was, just the previous week, suspended for making jokes about dying children, I have yet to hear about any sensor backlash from that.

And speaking of odd censoring decisions, why are shows like Man Men on at 8:30, while The Supernatural is on at 10 (in addition to being rated M for mature)?  And yes, Mad Men is on regular TV here as well as Flight of the Concords.  They are every bit as good as everyone said they were, and cable seems less essential now.  Primetime in Oz (which I think starts at 7:30 or 8:30, odd that) is also fleshed out with American shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Bones, Castle, Law and Order (of course) and the Aussie reality competitions like Master Chef Australia and the soon to be starting Dancing with the Stars Australia.  Pretty standard fare, even if the imports are still about a half season behind.  Please don’t tell me who wins So You Think You Can Dance, just give it a couple of weeks and then we can talk about it.

But perhaps the most fascinating shows, are the documentaries and quite real reality shows, which run frequently and are sometimes unnervingly uncensored.  I’ve already discussed the surprising doc, The Perfect Vagina, but to add to the graphic surgery in that hour of TV I have since seen spinal surgery, watched brain tumors being removed, see an entire team of rugby players give themselves a check for testicular cancer (in the locker room, all at the same time, without any clothes on, and without any “blur” put in during post) and seen real footage of people going to doctors about embarrassing illnesses on a show called, you guessed it, Embarrassing Illnesses.  The next time you have to go to your doctor for an emotionally uncomfortable procedure, just think to yourself, at least I’m not on TV.

In addition to TV watching I, of course, also had to test the DVD player.  Since I believe in total cultural immersion, it only made sense to rent Mad Max and The Road Warrior.  It was nice to see that having been here a while I could appreciate something about the movies I never would have noticed before.  In almost every outdoor scene there is one constant background noise, bird calls.  It just goes to show, the birds have and will always, even in a bleak apocalyptic future, rule Australia.

Progressive? Or just for laughs?

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I was told, and knew to expect before I came to Oz, that it was a very progressive country.  This means “liberal” in the American sense, although “liberal” means the opposite here when it comes to politics, so let’s just stick with the word progressive for now.  So it was no surprise when I saw an ad for feminine hygiene products that featured a beaver.  Yeah, you heard right, the animal that builds damns across water.  The tagline was something along the lines of “it’s the only one you’ve got, so be good to it.”  Yes, it was funny, and might have been played on MTV in the US, but probably never made it as an ad during ANTM (“America’s Next Top Model” for those of you who don’t know) but during ANTM is precisely when I saw it the other day (of course the A stands for Australia’s out here).

But, I don’t think you would ever see and ad in the States for help with premature ejaculations that featured an, *ehem* animated logo.  I’ll let your imaginations sort that one out.  And even though it was a documentary, on after 10pm, I’m not sure KCET would have ever played “The Perfect Vagina.” This British documentary featured no shortage of “fannys” or “lady bits” (as the Brits call them) and even footage of an actual labiplasty, a surgery I hope to never have to talk someone out of.

But among all the eyebrow raising ads, are hints of what I would call a few old fashioned notions.  Advertisers still imply that making a good roast is women’s business, and watching rugby is men’s.  The other day while walking around my neighborhood, my attention was attracted by a bright pink van.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a handyman service called “Hire a Hubby”.  As cute as the van was, with it’s little stick figure wearing a tool belt as a logo, I’m sure the company name would have never made it past the planning phases in an American business model.  Even if it had, some political interest group or another would have attacked the company for promoting the stereotype that women can’t preform household repairs and, lacking a husband, must turn to a handy-MAN.  If you’re anything like me, you would think that they should go out and find something better to do with their time, but that wouldn’t stop them from getting press.

Of course, are all these ideas really so different from what we get bombarded with in the states?  Isn’t dishwashing soap still sold to women, and large TVs for watching “the game” still sold to men?  There is still a rating system for televisions shows, and it functions on parameters similar to those in the US.  Even the word “balls” was bleeped out during and episode of The View, though in the states we’ve grown far past “The 7 dirty words you can’t say on television”, of George Carlin’s day.  (well, maybe not most of them, but I think the FCC has come to at least accept “tits” (the word, not the act of exposing them during the Superbowl))  I think the only real difference is, that Americans worry much more about who they might offend, and get offended a bit too often.

Documentaries aim to bring about an understanding of something we couldn’t possibly understand if they were edited down.  Cute company names are created to help you remember them.  And funny ads are simply that, funny.  So I can only hope that my exposure to Australian media will, in addition to re-familiarize me with “Magnum PI” (You haven’t aged a day Tom Selleck), also encourage me to lighten up.