Thursday, March 26, 2009

Panic in the Facebook corral

I always find it strange when Facebook users are referred to as customers (see here, here and here). Amidst all the bells and whistles of Web 2.0's interactiveness--not to be confused with collaboration--it's like people have forgotten one of the main rules of the media business. As Noam Chomsky reminded us years ago: the product of a newspaper company is not a newspaper, it's an audience which it then sells to advertisers. A newspaper generates its audience by providing a mix of news, features, analysis, comic strips and recipes that will bring in the largest number of readers. It takes that number, goes to advertisers and sells it.

The business of social media is exactly the same. Yes, Facebook and other social networking websites are more interactive, they are more flexible and they are more customizeable than newspapers. They have the appeareance of collaboration. But they're built on the old-media business model: user satisfaction only matters up to the point that people abandon ship. You just have to make them satisfied enough to keep your numbers up. And, since social networking systems know more about their users than newspapers know about their readers, it also becomes a question of the right kind of numbers--the right kind of people doing the right kind of things. To make a profit, the system needs to be tinkered with to achieve that balance; user enjoyment is a tool, not an end result that needs to be sought.

I like social networking sites; they let me communicate in a way that's fun and in a way I couldn't without them. But I don't and wouldn't pay for them. I accept they have limits and strategies that won't suit me--I accept it because they're free. At a certain point, their obligation to make a buck through partners and advertising might make their limits and other machinations untenable for me. Just as a newspaper might pull a favourite comicstrip, if Facebook were to invade my privacy a bit too much or take away too much control over my information flow or make the thing too ugly, I might give it up, cancel my subscription so to speak. Unlike a chicken in a factory farm--and the chicken does see some benefits in regular meal times--I can leave when I want.

Monday, March 23, 2009

The darkest hour

I hate to sound like an enviro-grinch, but I'm finding that the more well-known Earth Hour becomes, the more devoid of substance it becomes. I was brought up to turn off the lights, keep the door closed when the furnace was running and generally avoid needless electricity consumption. But the campaign does little to connect an hour of darkness with the desired outcomes. The campaign posters certainly dedicate more space to the sponsors than the intentions. It seems to have something to do with saving polar bears and Coca Cola--is it all polar bears or just the ones in the Coke commercials?

The World Wildlife Federation's website declares that the event "sends a very powerful message to government and world leaders that people want policies and regulations put in place that can achieve meaningful emission reduction to help fight climate change." How so? Does turning off the lights for an hour signal a desire for (considerably) electricity rates that reflect the real cost of power generation? A desire for rolling blackouts? Smart meters? For laws demanding more energy efficient appliances? For nuclear energy? For more wind mills? Who knows.

You can argue that any awareness of energy conservation is a good thing, but when you look at how many sponsorship dollars are being funnelled into this project, a feel-good hour of symbolism isn't a great return on investment. Organizers need to dump so more content into the event to help people connect the dots between one hour of conservation to a lifetime of eco-friendly consumption... make that sustainable consumption...er, make that less-destructive consumption. Any way you cut it, that's a lot of dots to connect.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Yes, period


While most of their peers—Depeche Mode, Madonna, New Order—have relied on periodic reinvention for their longevity, the Pet Shop Boys have always operated by other strategies, constant repositioning in a well-defined and carefully guarded terrain. The songs on all 10 of their official studio albums can be placed on a quadrant graph with "exuberant" at the top, "regal at the bottom," "melancholy" at the left and "wry" at the right. I've always liked them best when they've kept close to the melancholy/exuberant corner (The dance tracks of Behaviour, most of Very)and have had a growing impatience with wry/regal--most of the Fundamental album.

This precise emotional landscape is what makes the Pet Shop Boys sound distinctly like themselves (okay--occasionally like New Order) even while a new generation of electro-pop groups adopt their trademark disco-bass surge, tingly synths and laser-beam sound effects. The ironic persona transcends the quotation marks that make their 00s descendants, for all their homaging, sound very much 00s, not 80s. Neither a retro band nor of the electro-pop moment, PSB own their longevity to their creation of their own little world. That holds true even on their newest release, Yes, despite the participation of Xenomania as producer and co-writer on three tracks—if the collaboration has added something new to the formula, it's a sprinkle of cinnamon in a barrel of cookie dough.

Yes's core through-line follows the exuberance that made Very a best seller, a through-line that drives through the lyrics and even the packaging as well as the bounce of lead single "Love etc.,” Tchaikovsky-sampling "All Over the World," laser-beam bubbling "Did You See Me Coming?" and writhing “Pandemonium.”

The inevitable regal side turns up on tracks like “Vulnerable," "King of Rome" and “Legacy"--I accept them but don't love their theatricality. There are two experimental one-offs (yes, I’ve just added another dimension to the PSB quadrant graph): “Beautiful People” gets a hand from Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett but it’s glaring Echo and the Bunnymen-ness that makes it jump out at you; and the album’s only car wreck, “Building A Wall,” another of their unsuccessful attempts at being overtly political.

For all the Very 2 ambitions built into its DNA, Yes’s melodies and themes come across as overly cautious and restrained—perhaps even rout—as if the meticulous programming necessary for the album’s shiny surfaces contaminated everything. The exuberant beats only periodically pry open the tunes. But when it happens—like the chorus of “All Over the World” where Neil Tennant plays a the role of Cher-like diva presiding over a dance floor with the line “This is a song for all the boys and girls/You hear it/Playing all over the world”—it’s beautiful release.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

T.S. Eliot's kind of Spring


Except for all the multisyllabic German names and the harsh cut of the boy's school uniforms, Spring Awakening doesn't make much of a show of its late 19th Century German setting. Considering the 2006 musical version gleefully tampers with Frank Wedekind's play--I doubt the original had bare-butted simulated sex and lines about "My Junk" and being "Totally Fucked"--you wonder why they didn't go all the way and make the thing contemporary or in a more trendy conservative era like the early 1960s of Mad Men. I doubt you have to go back 130 years to find teenagers who believe in the stork stumbling innocently into sex, though I suppose I can more easily imagine young Germans than young Americans stumbling from innocence right into SM sex play.

Duncan Sheik's songs--the same sort of adult-oriented indie pop that made him beloved by critics way back on his debut 1996 album, that got him recognized as a smart songwriter that was perhaps out of sync with the industry's whims--are the show's main selling point. They're emotional without being theatrical, so we see the cast members grab a hand-held mic and break character every time they launch into one. The performances by the young cast are good but, since the soundtrack comes from MOR land, not Broadway, there are few opportunities to punch the audience in the gut.

Spring Awakening's caused some buzz for its racy content. You can see atypical theatre audiences buying into the passion. But as far as stage time goes, "happy sexual discovery," though its the main story line, accounts for about 15 percent. The rest is taken up by revelations of suicide, sexual abuse, pregnancy and abortion, with side trips to masturbation and homosexuality. Though it might claim to be an unexpurgated High School Musical--its teens Barbies moulded with genitalia intact--Spring Awakening actually comes a little closer to Jerry Springer: the Musical.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Feed from the world


Contemporary Toronto continues to sustain itself in two realities at once, hanging unquestioningly onto its whitebread WASP past until it can't be sustained anymore, then proceeding by committee and consultation into its multicult mode. If the default here is an accident of history, then change is going to be as calculated as possible. After years of hot dogs as our only legal street food, the city has finally varied the available menu.

You can totally hear the debates they must have had: Are all the continents fairly represented? Are two Asian choices okay, considering we have no South American representation (and what a missed opportunity! Empanadas! Papousas!)? Is Greek European or is it more Middle Eastern? Do we offend upper middle class sensibilities with jerk chicken on St. Clair? I say, open it up to anybody with a recipe and a food safety certificate and then close down the losers.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Chekhov's rebar

Watching the premier of Missing at Factory Theatre last night, I was reminded of the rule of Chekhov's gun: Don't show the audience a rifle if nobody is thinking of firing it. Most of the play's action takes place at the front of the stage which mutates from local diner to farm kitchen to the home of a female cop investigating the case of a missing woman. But near the back there's a huge metal tree, a structure so ugly I figured that it could not possibly be decorative. At a certain point, somebody must climb on it, or it will grow or changes shape or will be inventively lit up. As the characters bickered about this and that--affections and quarrels emerging suddenly from playwright Florence Gibson's ether--I sat quietly waiting for the tree to do something. For someone to at least mention it. Maybe it had something to do with the sugar bush they were talking about. I attributed the branches sticking out of the front of the stage to the sugar bush, so why not the metal tree?

At play's end, the metal tree had played no part in the events and revelations. I went to the afterparty in Factory's lounge and was standing by the door that looked back into the theatre. "I thought the set was cool," said somebody who had been sitting in the front row. "I guess the rebar had something to do with the bypass they were building."

"Rebar?" I said.

"Sticking out of the front of the stage."

"I thought they were branches." But it wasn't till I got home that the other shoe dropped. The metal sculpture wasn't a tree; it referred to the construction of a highway and its accompanying bypass. The thing wasn't a Chokhovian rifle; it was just cryptically ugly.

Mystery solved.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Big auto


As the pieces started falling out of our Lego-brick economy, my optimistic side took hope in the possibility that if a recession/depression reconstructed the automobile industry, it might all be worth it.

Western countries are trying to reduce green-house gas emissions and carbon footprints and--Look!--the industry that's the biggest culprit is reduced to tears. What a perfect time to shrink it and reshape it. Let it die and we'll start again fresh. The planet and neighbourhoods--the biggest victim of car culture--will rejoice.

Still, I am not immune to the trauma of lost jobs and a big whole in the continent's manufacturing sector. People need to work. I just don't think they should be working on fossil-fuel powered machines. So I was ambivalent about the U.S. and Canadian governments' plan for a bailout for the big three. How to save the jobs while retiring the product line?

My solution: Don't give the car companies a dime. But issue a request for proposals for green transportation and energy initiatives. The government can use the money for development grants to build non-fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, better wind mills, better solar panels--let's keep it as open-ended as possible. Anybody can make a bid.

There's no reason Ford, GM and Chrysler can't tender the best bids. It would certainly take new players a while to get things lined up to participate. The big three know vehicles. They know how to build things out of steel. But it's easiest for them to keep doing what they're doing.

The current government offers don't give them any incentive to make big changes. They'll improve fuel economy by a few percentage points, slap a battery on some models. But that's not good enough anymore. My idea forces them to totally rethink their business or there's no cash at all, not a cent.

Sign 'O the Times

I clicked a link to read a story on the National Post web page which did not load and rather than my usual first impulse--restart my tricky router--I had another, gloomier one: "I guess they finally pulled the plug."

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Ants on stage

Going into the Innovation program at the National Ballet of Canada, I figured that the Peter Quanz piece and the Sabrina Matthews piece would be well received, since both work in the neo-classical style the subscribing crowd likes so much, orchestral music and all. But it was Crystal Pite who provided the "Were you there when..? moment. She took her adventurous contemporary style and eerie rumbling soundtrack and used it to turn classical ballet moves on their head. The piece was dark, metaphorically and literally (my only complaint). You knew you were seeing something special when the female dancers came on stage en masse, all en point, masked like ants and you felt it was some weird hybrid insect scuttling out, cylon meets arachnid. Everyone's heart was beating faster at the end. Listening to the lobby conversations, even the stuffiest looking matron agreed--Pite's Emergence was a powerful piece.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Direct blogging

I'm not sure what I think about director's blogs. Phil Akin at Obsidian does one, which is interesting when it's random--he has an obsession with beautiful pens and comes up with some interesting profiles of the talent--but less so when he's hauling out "process" material when he's working on a show. Same goes for the director's blog for Missing at Factory. David Ferry gives you a sense of the creative flow, but I don't find it does much for "understanding" what the play will be. You wonder who the audience is: Is he using the blog as a backdoor method to coach the actors? If anybody's reading it, it must be them, which makes you wonder if he's holding back funny anecdotes to save everybody some embarrassment, but which would make the blog worth reading.