What is a Critic?

       I am sitting in the living room at my dorm with the television mumbling in the background while I take turns to stare at the blank screen of Microsoft Works and then to the decorative notebook page full of questions and topics that I can use to write this final essay. Then I look at my pack of cigarettes with the ash tray beside it and I want desperately to light up one just because it would give me an excuse to procrastinate longer. I snap out of my nicotine addicted trance and focus on the questions that are bickering at me.

       “What have I learned about being a reviewer?” Nothing fast is coming to my mind, but then the oblivious answer pops into my thoughts; it is a hell of a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Before the semester started, I had to register for Reviewing the Arts because it is a requirement for my major, but I told myself it would not be so bad because I enjoy giving my opinion about anything. However, after the first three assignments I realized that I really could never do this for a career. Sure, reviewers get a chance to go to awesome movies, plays, and concerts but at the end of the day they have so many restrictions that it is hard to voice your true opinion.

       By using the plural word “restrictions,” I just think back to the middle of the semester where one of the guest speakers talked about how she was replaced for that week at the newspaper because of her opinion of the play “Wicked.” When the play company bought advertisement in that newspaper, they also bought the critic‘s review. I always knew that was the way the entertainment industry worked, but to actually see a person brought down by her non-popular opinion really bothered me. It’s actually down right pathetic that newspapers are afraid to lose a little money, but in actuality if they reinvent themselves to have true opinions, they will be respected more and will probably gain many more readers in the process.

       To be honest, that is one of the main reasons why no one really cares about reviews anymore because it seems like every reviewer talks about how great a movie is, especially on the trailers. Seriously, I cannot think of the last time I saw a trailer for a movie that did not involve the following phrases: “Best movie of the summer!” “Best movie of the year!” “Best comedy!” “Best drama of the year!” “Best movie in a decade!” I cannot stand to watch trailers after they debut in theaters anymore because of all that bullshit. If reviewers and their opinions can be bought, the question of “What is the role of the reviewer?” is more tricky to answer.

       Most critics/ reviewers are either seen as harsh or extremely nice and this opinion of them is everywhere. For example, Pixar’s movie “Ratatouille” has a food critic named Anton Ego and throughout the movie he is depicted as the bad, mean guy until the very end of the movie. Ego is emotionally moved by the rat’s food because it reminded him of his mother’s cooking, so he writes in the newspaper an unfair definition of a critic:

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends… Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

       Is all that really true? Is the average piece of junk more meaningful than a critic’s role in judging something meaningless? I do not agree with that first part of Ego’s statement at all. If I have learned anything in the Reviewing the Arts class, it is that the reviewer’s job is to inform their audience. If all their opinions are controlled by their bosses and the media outlet and they continue to give positive reviews over every piece of entertainment, then they cannot reflect the other part of their job, which is to reflect society by what is offered in the entertainment industry.

 

Fantasy Television Shows

       It is October 3, 2007 at eight o’ clock at night and I am watching in total amazement the season premier of “Pushing Daisies” on ABC. I am greeted with colorful images of a bright, yellow flower field with playful clay animation and an unique storyline about Ned the pie maker, who finds out as a child that he has the ability to resurrect the dead by touching them. I am drawn in the story even more when the narrator (Jim Dale) explains the conditions that comes with having this gift; if the dead is conscience for more than one minute, something of similar life value must replace the revived thing or person. I am instantly addicted to the dark humor, the love story between Ned and his childhood sweetheart Charlotte “Chuck” Charles, and the investigations of murder conducted by private detective Emerson Cod.

       I watched “Pushing Daisies” religiously for weeks while quite content with the mystery surrounding Chuck’s life when suddenly there was an advertisement which depicted another fantasy fiction televisio show called “Eli Stone” which was to premier January 31, 2008. I shuddered when I saw in the commercial Stone (Jonny Lee Miller) in bed with his fiancé Taylor Wethersby (Natasha Henstridge) as he jumps out of bed because only he can hear the song “Faith” by George Michael coming from the kitchen, and of course who else would be standing there when Eli runs into the kitchen? That’s right, George Michael.

       In an instant, “Eli Stone” took “Pushing Daisies” from being considered original to being considered ridiculous, because another show of the same genre gave me perspective; although I still watch “Pushing Daisies,” it is no longer as magical as it once was for me. After the Writer’s Strike, “Pushing Daisies” returned for a second season during the Fall programming and once again there was another fantasy fiction television show being advertised to premier in November. This time I just shrugged at the show that had a David Bowie song title “Life On Mars.”

       I find myself feeling annoyed toward shows like “Eli Stone” and “Life On Mars” rather than the intended effect of curiosity. Does my annoyed feeling spawn to a degree from the grudge of ruining my magical outlook? Perhaps, but my reasons are justified in the light that it seems most of the channels on T.V. have a fantasy type show, but ABC always seemed to stick (mostly) with scripted programs that could possibly happen in real life. The idea of ABC falling into this trend has got me interested in their reasons. Does the network have reason to believe that their massive number of viewers want to watch this sort of genre? If they do not think there is a demand for fantasy, then is ABC trying to be innovative in an attempt to cure millions who are addicted to reality television? But most importantly is the question of why are these shows popping up now, and when did these ideas really start?

       To answer my questions, I decided to research the masterminds behind these “unique” shows; the creators. I turn to Google to study the person behind “Pushing Daisies,” and the name Bryan Fuller is everywhere. Among all the websites, Yahoo! UK & Ireland posted an excellent interview with Fuller earlier this year. When asked how he arrived at the idea of a fairy-tale-with-a-twist and where did he get the idea for Pushing Daisies, he answered, “I was working on the show ‘Dead Like Me’ and because I was writing about grim reapers taking lives, the opposite concept popped into my head… as I started writing and exploring the idea, it seemed the subject matter was on the surface a little morbid, so to give it a different spin, I decided to make it more of a happy show, that seemed an interesting direction to go in.”

       Ah! So the idea sprung from the show “Dead Like Me.” That program was on Showtime for two seasons which ran from the years 2003 to 2004. Brian Fuller was only a part of that show for five episodes before leaving because of “creative differences.” Four years may not sound like a long time, but when you have a vision of another program, it must have felt like an eternity. So why did it so long for Fuller to sell the concept of “Pushing Daisies?” Especially since so many networks have fantasy-type shows? Fuller just remarks, “I’d been trying to do this project for years and previously it had proven to be a tough sell, but that was because I was working for a studio which favored more down-the-middle sorts of television shows and this was more out-of-the-box. Once my contract was up there I got a contract with Warner Bros Television and the head of the department was so encouraging when I pitched the original to her.”

       I stupidly forgot all about the networks because they are the ones responsible for agreeing to film and produce a show. Knowing that it was very unlikely to find an interview with any President of a corporation, my research only discovered one short statement from Jeffery R. Schlesinger, President of Warner Bros International Television, in which he said on the Time Warner website, “We are thrilled that ITV has acquired this compelling series with a distinctly different look that will appeal to viewers across a broad spectrum.”

       Noticing that there is not much else to find on the subject of “Pushing Daisies,” I decide to focus on the more (in my opinion) annoying topic of “Eli Stone.” However, my feeling of irritation towards the show turns out to be justified because there are three times as many interviews with George Michael than there is with both of the creators combined. When Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim do appear on the Google search engine, most of the time the words “discuss the making of the Green Lantern” appear immediately after their name, even after I typed “Eli Stone” after their names to shorten the search results.

       A single interview with Marc Guggenheim only briefly answered one of my questions when Chris Arrant on Newsrama.com asked him to describe the series, in which Guggenheim replies, “It’s a drama with fantastical elements. It’s about a young lawyer’s journey to re-examine his life, both professionally and spiritually. We drew a lot of inspiration from comics, television, and movies. There’s that magical realism of ‘Field of Dreams’ and also that tinge of ‘Jerry Maguire’ which deals with someone in their thirties and their midlife crisis.”

       The rest of the interview dealt for a short time with character casting, but then the rest of the discussion between Arrant and Guggenheim involved (you guessed it!) George Michael and the Green Lantern. Both creators never talked about how they came up with the idea of “Eli Stone” or any specific inspirations, in fact all of the interviews they hardly discussed the show at all. It seems that Guggenheim and Berlanti are more proud of themselves for developing the concept of “Eli Stone” than they are of the actual show. To no surprise, I found no commits from the networks other than the controversy of the first episode in which a mother sues a vaccine company for giving her son Autism.

       I had a lot more luck with finding information on the next show on my list with “Life on Mars.” I found out the show that is currently on ABC is actually a remake from the original BBC program. It was broadcasted between January 2006 and April 2007 and won an International Emmy Award and received a British Academy Television Award. Since I did not talk about it earlier, “Life On Mars” is about present-day Detective Chris Skelton who gets into a car accident and goes back in time to the year 1973 in which he works for the same precinct. Throughout the series, Skelton sets his efforts to figure out what has happened to him and how he can get back home.

       I discovered an article online from SFX Magazine that has an interview with Matthew Graham (one of the creators of the original BBC program) back in 2006 before the show premiered. The article is interesting because it states, “The program was originally conceived in 1998, when writers Matthew Graham, Tony Jordon, and Ashley Pharoah were sent to the seaside resort Black Pool by Kudos Film and Television to come up with new program ideas. Originally titled ‘Ford Granada,’ the series was rejected by the BBC network.” Why was it rejected? Giving pretty much the same Fuller did with his rejection, Graham tells the magazine that, “Back then, broadcasters just weren’t comfortable with something like that, something that wasn’t set in the real world and that had a fantasy element to it.”

       But why are broadcasters accepting fantasy television shows now? After all this research I still have not found an answer. Maybe writers, executive producers, directors, and networks really are tired of being involved with “reality” T.V. If that is the case, then the people involved in making these fantasy shows did choose an interesting perspective for change. The perspective I am talking about is the vision that there are still things out there that we cannot understand. “Pushing Daisies” deals with death and “Life On Mars” and “Eli Stone” are both about a different dimension of consciousness.

       Since the concept of “Life On Mars” was developed in the year 1998, I have thought about all the traumatic events that has happened to us within the last ten years and the list is quite a lot; Columbine happened in 1999 and then eight years later Virginia Tech massacre occurred, we had the terrorist attacks on September 11, we are at war in Iraq (again), Hurricane Katrina was a disaster, not to mention the stress of the current economy in which people are constantly loosing their homes because they are also loosing their jobs. We see all this tragedy around us and if we do not eye witness violence, we see it on the news. With all of this hardship, maybe we need to believe that this world is not the only thing out there.