May 2, 2008 2:53

TV Weekend: Man + Camera Crew + Room Service vs. Wild

Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls returns tonight, continuing season 2, which began airing episodes last fall. The controversy last year, in which it was discovered that Grylls occasionally stayed at resorts and had assistance from the crew accompanying him, did not finish off the show, whose premise is that Grylls travels to inhospitable places and does all the dangerous things and eats all the disgusting creatures one must to survive there. But it does carry a plus-sized disclaimer now:

Bear Grylls and the crew receive support when they are in potentially life-threatening situations, as required by health and safety regulations.

On some occasions, situations are presented to Bear so he can demonstrate survival techniques.

Professional advice should always be sought before entering any dangerous environment.

Tonight, Gryllls journeys to Zambia. Educational takeaway: giant beetle larvae have more protein, pound for pound, than beef. And far more disgusting things squirt out of them when you eat one.

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May 2, 2008 2:01

My Last Miley Post, I Promise, I Think

Regular commenter shara says lays down some common sense in the previous thread on the Miley Cyrus brouhaha:

If the parents of little kids are upset, then that's their business I guess, but they can't expect a young woman to not grow up just because they want a kid-friendly icon or role model. She plays a character on TV, she shouldn't have to live her life as that fictional girl so overprotective parents will have an unrealistic role model for their sheltered kids. If she went topless and bedheaded on the kids show, then, that would be a somewhat different matter, and the bru-ha-ha from outraged parents would seem more reasonable.

Boldface mine. One pet peeve of mine, whether in this case or any other pop-culture blowup, is the complaint: "Now I suddenly have to explain to my __-year-old child that..." Yes, God forbid you should be forced to explain an uncomfortable truth about the world to your child. Call me crazy, but I've always thought that as a father,* that was my job. I don't always get to choose the timetable. I don't like having to explain the war in Iraq to my six-year-old, for instance, but I do it.

Whenever those uncomfortable discussions come along—it doesn't matter if it's about death or pregnancy or a TV show—it's probably sooner than you want it to. But however young your child is, there are age-appropriate ways of explaining it. And another one of the things it's my job to explain, especially in the media world we live in, is the difference between real people and characters.

That is even trickier, I will admit, with Hannah Montana, as the show to some extent depends on conflating Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana (her character's "real name" on the show, after all, is Miley). But young fans who are really into Cyrusiana will have noticed that she's made the point lately of distinguishing her real self from her character (for career reasons, presumably), recording under her name and doing concerts as both "Hannah" and herself. I wouldn't underestimate kids' ability to grasp this sort of thing. (Though again, if you're that worried about your daughter being confused, perhaps she's a little too young for Hannah Montana.)

Really, the controversy isn't about sheltering kids. It's about sheltering parents.

* Before someone asks, I have two kids, both boys. Some people would say that I have no business sticking my oar in on this if I don't have daughters. I disagree. First, because I have my own battles to fight with boy culture, having much more to do with violence and that sort of thing—but I think that comes with the job too. Second, because I think that any argument that depends on narrowing and narrowing the set of people who are allowed to have a valid opinion (you need to be a parent... well, you need to be a parent of girls... well, you need to be a parent of girls of a certain age...) is probably a flawed argument.

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May 2, 2008 12:09

Dead Tree Alert: Montana or Molehill?

In this week's Time, it fell to me to write The Moment—the mini-column that opens the magazine—on Miley Cyrus. Think of it as a last-minute asterisk on her Time 100 entry, written before the Vanity Fair incident, by the frighteningly prescient Donny Osmond ("Miley's fans are not thinking about the fact that she will grow up too. As she does, she'll want to change her image, and that change will be met with adversity").

My bit begins thus:

"I think it's really artsy. It wasn't in a skanky way." Thus did America's big sister, Miley Cyrus, describe a Vanity Fair photo by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz of herself, tousled and clutching a blanket to her torso. Many parents of fans of Disney Channel's Hannah Montana, on the other hand, saw not an homage to classical portraiture but a topless 15-year-old. Um, no, they demurred. That was totally in a skanky way.

Cyrus later apologized for the "embarrassing" pic, but calling it "artsy" may have been a greater cultural misstep than the photo shoot itself (which she did with the blessing of her manager mother and the participation of her co-star father). As with the Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl, the dustup revealed a chasm between those who shrugged off the photo and those who saw it as an assault on common decency. The artsy/skanky gap, if you will.

You may have already guessed that I'm more on the molehill side of this divide, but even to someone who thinks the Cyrus photo was an overblown, largely media-driven scandal, the real anxieties and cultural gaps it touched on are still interesting. Or at least they were way back on Wednesday, when I wrote this. Ah, I remember it like it was the day before yesterday.

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May 2, 2008 9:58

The Morning After: Step into My Office, Baby

Stanley (Leslie David Baker) steps out from behind his crossword. / NBC Photo: Chris Haston

Another strong post-strike episode of The Office, which seems to have rediscovered its balance between comedy and drama, while toning down the zaniness of some of this season's early episodes and dialing up the humor of awkwardness. The workplace comedy of this show is largely about the social boundaries and rules of the workplace, the humor that comes out of it and what happens when someone breaches them. When it's Michael doing the breaching—as it usually is—it's easier to take because we're used to it. But some of the really jarring moments come when another character crosses a line and reminds us that there are real emotions and stakes behind the idiosyncrasies and laughs.

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May 2, 2008 7:27

Lostwatch: Ghost Story

So this guy says to his doctor, "Doc, it hurts when I go like this." / ABC

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, get a prescription for sleeping pills, crack open a beer and watch last night's Lost.

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