“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-16 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Program scripts from week of February 29, 2016
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Record Industry
Making your living in the music industry has never been easy. For every band that gets a recording contract, there are dozens that don’t. For every artist that actually makes a paying career out of their music, there are hundreds who finally have to find “real jobs”.
I wondered if that equation might change as the age of digital music and the Internet blossomed. The record industry has a somewhat, um, disreputable history at times. Artists have been signed to contracts that don’t benefit anyone other than the label, and then if they fall out of favor with the record label can be shunted to the side. So the digital revolution looked to be a way for artists to get more control. It isn’t always working out that way.
With sales of both physical music (vinyl and CDs) and digital tracks in something of a decline, the labels have seen profits drop. So the new thing is to strong arm their acts with something called a “360 deal”. It means that the label gets a cut of all income from the band. That includes touring, which was where the musical acts used to be able to make up for the money they weren’t getting from the record company. The result has been a lot more live performances but also an increasing physical strain on the artists. A strain that the record label has no liability to help with. It’s all profit for them.
On the other side are the streaming services like Spotify. The jury is still out on whether streaming services are decreasing sales of music. A jury may figure largely in the future of the folks at Spotify and other streaming services in the near future. Since December of last year, they have been hit with two lawsuits worth a total of more than three hundred million dollars alleging copyright infringement. Spotify has acknowledged that they have played songs for which they have not paid the appropriate licensing for. The service claims that they can’t always identify the songwriters, but that the appropriate monies are being set aside for when they are identified. Earlier this month Spotify filed two motions with the court to have the first case thrown out or moved to a different jurisdiction. A settlement is eventually expected. Spotify is still not a profitable venture and most of the artists can’t afford a long drawn out legal proceeding.
In the end, it shows that there is still lots of room for improvement. The record industry continues to keep an outdated business model alive by effectively making the artists pay for the privilege of being on the label. And the online world continues its rather lackadaisical relationship with intellectual rights.
Maybe someday the artists will be paid appropriately for the work they produce.
No Oscar for Max, Please!
The last couple years my track record for seeing Oscar nominated movies before the awards are handed out has been pretty poor. This year’s nominees are The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, and Spotlight. Which means I’ve seen a grand total of two of the nominees this year.
I saw The Martian and really enjoyed it. Just last week I finally saw Mad Max: Fury Road. Visually, this is a stunning movie. The stunt work in it should be more than enough to convince the Academy of the need for a stunt category. Having said all that I can not tell you how passionately, how devoutly I hope that Mad Max does NOT win the Best Picture, Oscar.
But I’m going to try.
Mad Max: Fury Road is nominated for no less than ten Academy Awards. If you scan down the list you will note that there is no nomination for Best Screenplay. There’s a very good reason for that. There is not a whole lot of plot to this movie. In fact, this side of 2012’s Best Picture winner The Artist, I’m not sure any nominee has had as little dialogue as this movie. It’s two and a half hours of car chases, explosions, the occasional bloody death or dismemberment, and, oh yes, more car chases.
No other movie in the Mad Max series has ever gotten a Best Picture nod, in fact, no other part of the franchise has ever gotten a single nomination before this. The reason is simple. While the movies are great fun with lots of action, they are not “great movies”. Setting aside the enormous level of willing suspension of disbelief required to make the story go (seriously, a post-apocalyptic world where all order has collapsed but somehow the incredibly complicated and sophisticated process to create gasoline chugs out the amount of fuel to run the absurd vehicles we see in these movies), they are pretty simple stories.
Until we hit Mad Max: Fury Road, which seems to give up on the idea of a story or plot pretty much all together. They steal from the bad man and run away. The bad man chases them till they kill him and then they come home. Sorry for the spoiler. This makes Star Wars look like Shakespeare.
Here’s why that worries me. Hollywood is a copycat industry. If this wins the Best Picture Oscar you can count on seeing dozens of near zero story content movies dominating the industry for years to come. It’s hard enough to find a movie with a decent story being well told.
I can only hope that when the time comes the winner for Best Picture is NOT Mad Max.
(I GOT MY WIIIIIIIIIIISSSSHHHHHH!!!!!!!)
Grumpy Old Folks
Seems like an awful lot of grumpy old folks in the news these days. The NBA is being overrun with older players dropping the “Get Off My Lawn” card with the current generation. The one that strikes me as much more disturbing is coming from the fashion world.
Former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs took a swing at the model featured on the cover of this year’s Sports Illustrated Swim Suit edition, Ashley Graham. Tiegs maintains that the media is doing a disservice to full-figured women by glamorizing what Tiegs characterized as an “unhealthy” weight. She quoted celebrity TV medical commentator Dr. Oz that any waistline over 35 inches was unhealthy.
The fashion industry has a long history of portraying an unrealistic body standard for women. Today the average woman in the U.S. stands five feet, four inches tall, weighs around one hundred forty pounds and is a size twelve to fourteen. The range for runway models is between size zero and size four. Ashley Graham is a size sixteen. In case you’re wondering, the fashion industry lists sizes eight to fourteen as “plus sizes”.
There has actually been some progress in presenting women in all the wondrous forms and sizes in which they come. Retailers like American Eagle have moved towards what’s being called “body positive” stances in some of their advertising. Lane Bryant has launched a new campaign for lingerie for full figured ladies. And, of course, Dove facial bars did a series of “real women” videos. The idea that a woman can beautiful in a variety of sizes is catching on.
Now, let’s also be honest. Ashley Graham is a professional model. While plus-sized she is also is showing off a body that is toned and tight. Meanwhile, something like sixty percent of the total American population is overweight to one degree or another.
Tiegs has tried to back away, at least, a little from her comments, trying to frame them as concern for the health of women. That’s an even worse place for her to try and make a stand. Is she Graham’s doctor? Has Doctor Oz ever examined Graham? Where do they get off making claims about what’s healthy for her or not? Setting arbitrary standards for health is just as foolish as arbitrary ones for beauty.
What needs to happen is for people like Cheryl Tiegs to get serious about women being healthy. She needs to hold the media’s feet to the fire about objectifying women and creating unhelpful and unhealthy body images.
Nobody needs a grumpy old woman yelling “Get off my magazine cover”.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2016
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
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