Remember 80′s South African television on SABC? Back in the day television days on the ‘white’ channels[1] used to alternate between Afrikaans and English; Mondays would start with Afrikaans in the day time and then switch over to English at 6pm, Tuesdays would start English and switch over to Afrikaans at 6pm etc – fucking ridiculous[2].
In that time the funniest thing by far on the boob was a short animated show about a nameless little white line guy on a solid blue background who would walk up and down alternately shouting at or chatting to the bizarre things he encountered. I’m pretty sure that if you grew up in 80′s South Africa you know what I’m talking about; that little line-man with the big nose strutting up and down the line – hillarious.

Up until about a week ago I never knew what its name was (it didn’t really have a title sequence), but I can, to this day, sing the wordless song that introduced mr. line-man[3]. And then someone mentioned in passing that it was available on Youtube, and holy shit was it funny.
It turns out that the name of the show is La Linea and the character is named Mr. Linea. And it is hillarious.

Mr. Linea

The show was created by Italian animator Osvaldo Cavandoli in 1969 and the short (2-3 minutes) episodes he produced throughout the 70′s were broadcast all over the world. Part of the beauty of the show is that the main character speaks a gibberish language which translates to just about anything worldwide.

Mr. Cavandoli

Here are two of my favourite episodes from Youtube.

In which Mr. Linea meets a horse who takes him for a ride.

In which Mr. Linea encounters the boob tube and in it himself.

More than anything the genius in the execution is not about the bizarre plot lines[5], nor was it the insane vocal performances – it’s how elegantly the animator conveys the meaning of Mr. Linea’s day just with gestures – arm waving, pointing, shouting, laughing, pensive moments of silence. Regardless of your age or the language that you speak, you know exactly what Mr. Linea thinks.
There was no better television than this surreal show and it hasn’t aged in the least. Now if only someone would upload some episodes of Wielie Walie to Youtube.

[1] yes, even television channels had Apartheid
[2] though not more so than any of the other ludicrous nation-building enterprises of the 80′s
[3] all together now! Badoo-badoo, badoo-badoo, badoo-badoo
[4] an even better place to get episodes from is the archives of Italian TV5.
[5] which twist and turn and loop back on themselves at will, and invariably end abruptly with the demise of Mr. Linea.

Prince(the artists currently known as) has upped the ante as far as high volume music distribution is concerned. He managed to distribute 3 million copies of his latest album entitled Planet Earth all before 12:00 on a Sunday – yesterday. The album was given away as a freebie in the UK with yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Yes, a full length album – free.
The newspaper printed an additional 600 000 copies to meet the expected demand. By all accounts it was an overwhelming success with many larger outlets reporting being sold out by 10:00 and the majority sold by 12:00.

This move on the purple one’s part has, predictably, brought out the old-skool executive and retail types in howl’s of outrage. The following is from The Guardian

One music store executive described the plan as “madness” while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince’s label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.

The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway “beggars belief”. “It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. “It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

You can smell the fear in those quotes. I especially like [...] the damaging covermount culture [...] is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. If my business model were built on a perception of value I would be shitting my pants regardless of what the scale of the threat was.

Prince o’ Darkness

More interesting was HMVs response. Initially HMV were as outraged, shocked and concerned as the rest of the old-skool musik krew about Prince and the Mail’s move, but they woke up to the reality and for the first time ever offered newspapers for sale in their stores. They sold 50 000 copies of the newspaper yesterday.

Less interesting is what this says about Prince as a recording artist. Obviously most reports are casting him as some ground breaking luminary of the new music revolution, but I think that there is less to it than that. The fact is that Prince doesn’t need the money, what he wants is to generate as much media around the release of his album and for his music to be heard. If he had released it through traditional channels[1] his album would have drowned in a sea of younger, more marketable airhead pop punk bands.
Given his position in the global music market this made perfect sense as a way to generate maximum press for an non-event album.

[1] via his record company, into music stores with posters and radio giveaways

I recently saw a fascinating documentary on Charlie’s Angels[1]. First airing on American network[2] television in 1976 the show caused a tsunami of media coverage as it exploded in popularity. It launched the career of Farrah Fawcett[3] and created the iconic 70′s california girl image.
But, more than just being a great(trashy) piece of pop-culture of its time, the show had a more profound social impact that is relevant even today.

Angels

Firstly, in terms of popular media culture the show created the genre of Fluff TV in which the audience is less interested in story arcs or character nuances than what they want to see experience the characters’ exciting and beautiful lives. To paraphrase one of the producers; the audience didn’t care about the struggles of the characters, all they wanted was to see what the characters were wearing, where they hung out and how much fun they had.
Consider this; while the show had a very modest production budget[4] it had an unheard of budget for wardrobe – $2,500 per week, and that’s 1976 dollars. The show had an in-house designer responsible for the girls’ clothes and they never wore the same outfit twice.
The idea that a show’s characters are showpieces first and foremost and the emphasis placed on wardrobe was embraced first by the ladies of Dynasty then by LA Law and now by Desperate Housewives. It has become a staple of high-end pop culture entertainment.

Wardrobe TV

Secondly, it took genre of Sex TV to the next level, or as its was called Jiggle TV. The most radical decision the producers took in the first season was for the girls to stop wearing bra’s on the show. It was nipple central from there on out.
This legacy of squeeky clean innocent sex culminated in the early 90′s in Britney’s Baby One More Time and now in the Girls of the Playboy Mansion.

The Farrah poster – 8 million copies sold on the back of those babies

And most radically, it upset feminists no end because here you had a bunch of blonde[5] chicks who were clad in the images of sex, but still totally innocent in character. They were flirty and rambunctious but the show still insisted on selling them as strong independant women. How is this possible? It’s an impossible contradiction. Yes, I burnt by bra, but not so that some airhead could run around jiggling all over the place.
It was the perfumed smell of post-feminism wafting bra-less through the corridors of social power.

[1] the TV show, not the movie
[2] ABC to be exact
[3] and undoubtably her hair stylist as well
[4] i.e. was produced on the cheap
[5] sure, two of them were brunettes, but all of them were blondes in spirit

This is the most illin’ thing I’ve seen in some time!
It’s Blingee and it deserves to be the next viral hit, because it is off the chain, the hook and the charts[1]!

Simply, it’s a web-based tool for pimping your photos and it is raw!

It makes me feel all raw and serious to bling my photos like this, so send this link (featuring my mighty, pimped viz) along to all of yo crew and rate the party girl!

Seriously, it’s a great idea and they deserve all the money they get for it.

Now if only I could look like this guy.

baby boy yoy stay on my mind

[1] to paraphrase Strong Bad

Just saw 300.
I really liked it. It’s graphic, pacy, violent and – yes – mythical.
I certainly didn’t go into the movie expecting anything other than another frame-by-frame translation of a Frank Miller dark-dark graphic novel, and within this aesthetic it works.

300

Anita had the flick’s number from the start when she said that the tagline should actually be ‘Prepare for Gory!’
Boy, was she right. It’s vi-o-lent with a capital ‘o’. But the violence is slick and stylised and comic-book-as-fuck.
I also thought that the makers managed to extract a reasonable narrative from the extremely simple storyline.
Pity about the soundtrack – who knew that the Spartans were into strip-mall-metal guitar power-riffs? The soundtrack is more Xbox than Xerxes.
In the end it’s more testosterone (and thong) heavy than Sin City, and as such I liked it.

Now if only someone would produce a screenplay that could convince Frank Miller to film The Dark Knight Returns[1].

Prepare for Gory!

I did cringe a little at the pompous speeches made by Leonidas, his queen, Gorgo, and the his mythmaker sidekick Dilios.
It’s all quite standard flag-waving fare about glory and honour and justice and puking in your popcorn. More strip-mall-metal guitar chords ensue. I wasn’t fazed[2].

But what did get me about 300 was something due in large part to my own response to all the macho flexing.
I was amazed at how viscerally I react to all that glory/hero nonsense. I sat there squashing popcorn in my balled fist, squirming in my seat with each US-Marine-like A-ROOH! let out my the crimson clad warriors.
Here’s what I’m talking about:

Xerxes: Imagine what horrible fate awaits my enemies when I would gladly kill any of my own men for victory.
Leonidas: And I would die for any one of mine.

Leonidas: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, that even a god-king can bleed.

Leonidas: [Dying words] My Queen! My Wife! My Love.

Leonidas: No retreat, no surrender. That is Spartan law. And by Spartan law we will stand and fight, and die.

What bullshit! But my testosterone/adrenaline levels attested to its efficacy(on guys at least).
Me too Leonidas, I also want to go and fight with you! A-ROOH! uhm, cough. sorry.

Stiff upper lip, kiddo.

It’s not that I don’t know what’s happening or what the dialogue is designed to make me feel.
I’m not ignorant of the mechanics of the appeal to emotion that makes propaganda and Newspeak work.
But I was surprised at how effective the technique of repeating(loudly) a oversimplified, testosterone-fueled message really is. By the sixth time Leonidas was crying for the Spartans! I was ready to shout back at him.
I guess that’s what makes crap like the following tender snippet work.

Stelios: It is an honor to die by your side.
Leonidas: It is an honor to have lived at yours.

diee!

And I’m convinced that it’s not simply a matter of having been socialised/brainwashed to respond to such oversimplified messages – it’s something far more reptilian[3] and its radically powerful.
Does the following sound familiar?

Dilios: This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny, and usher in a future brighter than anything we could imagine. Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300! To victory!

The world’s military is built on crap like this – honouring the glorious dead. And it’s not about honouring the gory carcasses at all – it’s about that injection of adrenaline/dopamine/testosterone at the back of the spine that makes you shout.

Still, good movie – violent.

[1] The only graphic novel that I re-read after years and loved just as much the 8th and 9th time around.
[2] Since Saving Private Ryan’s flag-waving end I’ve been prepare to stomach just about anything aimed at US cineplexes.
[3] From the linked wikipedia article: ‘The Reptilian complex is named for the most advanced part of the brain higher mammals share with reptiles. It is responsible for rage, xenophobia, basic survival fight-or-flight responses, territoriality, social hierarchy, and the desire to follow leaders blindly.’