Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
Did any among us not grow up with Disney? Children of the 40s marked their years with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. For boomers, it was Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Jungle Book. By the time I came along, Disney’s animated features had lost their spark. But my family gathered around the family TV set every Sunday night at 7:30 to watch The Wonderful World of Disney — a collection of animation, feature movies, TV dramas and nature documentaries. This brew, rich on American stories like Davey Crockett, helped shape my worldview. For children of the 80s and 90s, Disney animated feature films returned to the forefront and for this we have one person to thank: Disney’s keeper of the faith, Roy E. Disney.
Twice when Disney the corporation drifted away from its basic mission, Roy E. Disney, son of Walt’s brother, Roy O., has stepped in like a prophet to remind them of what matters.
Though his father was CEO and president of Disney until his death, Roy E. was never given control, and held only one percent of the company stock. He did have an executive title and a seat on the board of directors, though, and after Walt’s death in the mid-60s, then through the 70s and early 80s, he watched as Disney Corp. drifted away from its roots. The board’s focus on high-yield activities and careful protection of capital had turned Disney into what Roy E. once called a real estate holding company that happened to make movies.
Fed up, in 1977 Roy resigned his executive position, and then in 1984, he dramatically quit the board, signaling to investors and analysts his lack of confidence in the company’s … Continue reading Faithful Departed — Roy E. Disney
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
Using the economic downturn to reevaluate your life’s choices
Nancy’s whole career has been in pharmaceutical communications. After watching round after round of layoffs at her firm over the past two years, her ticket finally came up in February. She went from a high level, lucrative management position to unemployment overnight. Stories like this are playing out across the country by the thousands. Good skilled workers lose their jobs and find strong competition for lesser positions. Seemingly secure financial futures based on real estate and stock investments disappear overnight, leaving uncertainty and worry.
But listen to Nancy:
“Ironically, this may be one of the greatest gifts I have received in my life — not because unemployment is a gift but because this gave me a forced opportunity to evaluate where I am in my life and if I want to continue on this path. In fact, I had been increasingly stressed out by and unhappy with my job for some time.”
Is it just blowing self-help smoke to say this was a good thing? Is Nancy just some crazy exception? Not in my experience.
Losing a job can be a shattering loss of identity and purpose, or it can be an opportunity to assess your true calling and look for a better fit.
Losing your nest egg can be a wrenching loss of stability and security, or a lesson in how attached you’d become.
Losing status can be humiliating, or the beginning of real humility.
[Read the rest of What Works: Losing your footing and finding the ground at bustedhalo.com.]
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
A typical late-boom baby, I had a TV in my room from a very early age. This gave me a remarkable amount of control over the cultural influences that entered my world. (Of course, this was before cable, so everything was filtered through the network censors first.) Using my command of the dial, the most subversive thing I watched in my atheist home might have been a sweet little show that has been loved now for generations: Davey & Goliath.
Son of a Lutheran minister, Dick Sutcliffe started his career as a journalist, but soon found himself working for the church, as assistant editor for The Lutheran magazine, then with the radio division, then television. Sutcliffe, as director of Lutheran radio and television ministry, was one of the first religious officials to realize the potential of television, starting in the late 1950s. When church leaders told him to put together a new TV show — a typical sermonette type of thing — he had a different idea. How about taking advantage of this new medium to give kids some good entertainment, so the moral and religious messages would go down easily.
[Read the rest of Faithful Departed—Dick Sutcliffe at bustedhalo.com]
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
William Asher was one of the directors on I Love Lucy; the character’s name was Lucy Esmeralda MacGillicuddy Ricardo. Asher went on to produce/direct Bewitched, starring his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, as Samantha. In Bewitched, the bumbling nanny’s name is Esmeralda, played by Alice Ghostley.
Ghostley played Mrs. Murdock in the movie Grease (DVD/VHS). Eve Arden, who played Principal McGee in Grease, guest starred on Bewitched as Nurse Kelton in the episode where Tabitha is born. Arden also had a cameo on I Love Lucy in 1955.
Besides rehashes, spin-offs and specials related to Bewitched and its cast (inc. the series’ Tabitha and The Paul Lynde Show), Asher also directed episodes of Gidgit, Alice and The Dukes of Hazzard. But despite the importance of Lucy and the lasting power of Bewitched, Asher’s most significant project in the canon of pop culture was probably as director and co-writer of all the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach movies: Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and Fireball 500 (1966).
Annette Funicello’s measurements were 36-22-36. Asher’s son John married Jenny McCarthy, whose measurements were 38-24-34. Cultural ideal shift: two inches off the hips, two inches on the breasts. (McCarthy did eventually remove the implants.) McCarthy hosted a series called World’s Best Beaches. McCarthy first came to fame as co-host of Singled Out, which was hosted by Chris Hardwick. Hardwick later costarred in a teen flick called Beach House. Beach House costar Brooke Langton is best known for her role on Melrose Place, as a character named Samantha.
© 2004 Philip F. Rose
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
XeRo: Turn-of-the-Millenia (Zero)
By La Ruocco
La Ruoc & co.; (September 3, 2003)
ISBN: 0974345407
function popUp(URL,NAME) {
amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,’location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10′);
amznwin.focus();}
document.open();
document.write(““);
document.close();
La Ruocco’s Xero is epistemological profanity at its cleverest. A chaotic
but perfect world to explore. For the lover of art that makes you think
and laugh, Xero is, as Robert Bork once said, an ‘intellectual feast.’
Xero mixes free-associative, recursive, pun-filled, and at times startlingly
clear prose on topics from religion to La Ruocco’s ass. To itemize the topics,
to give away too much detail, would be to ruin part of the fun, which is discovery.
The book unfolds, the ideas link and fertilize each other.
Interspersed throughout is copious color photography, much of it including
said ass and the rest of Laruocco’s stunning beauty.
Collaborative portions include a conversation about intellectual property
and pornography with John S. Hall, and documentation of a scheme with Michael
Portnoy to replace Calvin Klein ads with their own ass-based versions.
Xero is less a book than a journey and a performance piece. But that’s wrong.
That’s because we have preconceptions of what a book should look like, be
like, act like. When you spend time with Xero you are provoked, stimulated,
tickled. You don’t just read about experiencing; you experience. You’ll be
enlightened, exhilarated and entertained by the journey.
— Philip F. Rose
© 2004 Philip F. Rose
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
(Orig. September 21, 2003; updated 10/28/03 to reflect Fox schedule changes and add a few notes and
changes of opinion) (updated again 11/10 to reflect additional schedule changes
and cancellations)
Last year’s annual fall TV season preview ran 9,000+ words. It’s about
two-thirds that this time. (I’ve also dropped the endnotes. I thought they
were fun, but it’s hard to do them well on the web so they ended up just
being an obstacle.) I’m focusing more on what I like, and not covering what
I don’t unless its badness is interesting. In fact I’m also going to watch
fewer shows this year. There are two reasons for this. For one, I plan to
be more selective in what I add and I’ve dropped quite a few. And for the
other, though there are a number of shows that are possibilities this season,
their strength is not as certain as last year. I’m not expecting more than
a few of my favorites to survive.
(Update 11/11: I felt I needed to update this one last
time because of another batch of changes. Once again, the troublemaker is
Fox. I can’t blame Fox for canceling the fun Skin, since the ratings were
bad, but it’s still a huge disappointment. I loved the series and wonder
why it didn’t do better. Perhaps the fact that the good guy was the pornographer
who was concerned about the well-being of his actresses and was willing
to give money to charity anonymously because it was the right thing to do,
and the bad guy was the district attorney who was driven by inner demons
and who was having an affair with his assistant, was too much for a mainstream
audience to handle. It all worked for me, especially with Ron Silver as
the porno producer. I loved every second of it. Ah well. With Joe Millionaire
2 getting mediocre ratings, Fox has abandoned the plan to have a … Continue reading The 2003 Fall TV season (in ONLY 6,000 words)
Culture
by Phil Fox Rose
(This is a merging of the original two articles and an update that made
up my look at the 2002 Fall TV Season (9/23/02, 10/28/02 and 3/21/03.) One, in September, came before most
shows had aired. It was more a preview, sharing what I expected, good or bad,
based on a show’s premise and the people involved. The second, in October,
offered reviews of those and the ones that started late. As I combine them
and post this to the web in 2003, I’m adding some comments but not attempting
to update them all. Many stand as reviews of the shows at that point. Hope
you find some of this interesting or useful. Feel free to pass it along to
anyone you think might be interested, as long as you include attribution or,
better, point them to the site. The footnotes/endnotes are nothing fancy.
(A bit of explanation about why it’s either. As originally conceived, this
article had footnotes, but when I converted it to HTML, they
became endnotes in that version.) When you click an endnote number it takes
you to that endnote at the bottom of the document; then to get back to your
place, you can click the endnote number down there or hit Back in your browser.)
There are shows that matter, shows that are thought-provoking and shows
that are just fun. The list of shows that matter — shows that affect
our culture, our politics and our views — is short. The West Wing
reaches millions of Americans every week with thoughtful and often challenging
political views. The Daily Show is the primary news source for a large percentage
of younger adult viewers. South Park has broached more controversial subjects
with kids (or perhaps with everybody) than any other show in history. Boston
Public provides the discussion points for America’s high school kids every
week. Buffy, which is more about the meaning of life and death than … Continue reading The 2002 Fall TV season (in 9,000 words, with footnotes (or endnotes))
|
Hosted by
|
