“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.
Programs from week of November 13, 2016
This Week’s Podcast:
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.
Miyazaki Unretires
If you know anyone who loves Japanese animation, about a week to ten days ago they probably started acting strangely. They may have run around waving their hands in the air and screaming inarticulately. Or they may have just looked catatonic, mumbling some kind nonsense sounding word over and over. But then if you have friends who are into Japanese animation, you probably expect them to act a little strange.
What set off this latest nerdy euphoria was the announcement that one of the greatest creators of animated movies of all time had announced that he was coming out of retirement. No, they’re not defrosting Walt’s head. Instead, Japanese legend and icon, Hayao Miyazaki announced that he would make one more feature length movie.
If the name Miyazaki rings no more than a dim bell, don’t worry. His work has become better known in the last decade because Pixar and Disney head honcho John Lasseter has made clear his deep respect for the Japanese master’s work.
For the last three decades, Miyazaki has produced some of the most amazing animated movies you will ever see. The stories, the characters, the incredible detail in every scene going the whole way back to the horizon, just the incredible richness of the images on the screen will astound you. Having grown up on some of the truly cheap and lazy Saturday cartoons of the ’60’s and ’70s, I was stunned by the first one of his movies I saw. (For any of the fandom out there, my first was “Porco Rosso”)
In late 2013 the animator announced that he was retiring. His fans mourned that there would be no new additions to the amazing filmography. Thirteen films, including his 2003 Academy Award winning movie “Spirited Away”. Those movies are simple enough to please children but complex enough to challenge adult viewers as well. He virtually never includes a classic “villain” to oppose his main character. The world is more nuanced and it makes for some fascinating adventures.
If you’d like to figure out what all the hoopla is about I would recommend my personal favorite, “My Neighbor Totoro”, along with “Spirited Away” or Howl’s Moving Castle” as fairly easy entry points.
The reason for the excitement is that Miyazaki decided he wanted to do one more feature length film. Following his retirement, he continued to do some manga illustration and worked on creating a museum dedicated to his now closed company Ghibli Studios. Given that he takes up to five years to complete a full-length movie (and that he would be almost 80 years old by the time it was finished), there is still a long way to go before the fans get their wish.
In the meantime, you should check out what’s behind all the excitement.
Commercials and TV
When it comes to the media, there are usually plenty of different opinions about just about everything. Everything, that is, except commercials. On that, there is almost universal agreement. Nobody likes them. And it’s pretty much a universal dislike. We don’t like ads in print, on the radio or on TV. There are plenty of reasons to dislike them, but we also need to understand the vital role they have played in the media for a very long time.
You don’t hear the term as much any more, but once upon a time you would hear people talking about “free TV”. They were trying to distinguish between over the air broadcasting and pay TV, usually cable back then. What is funny is that there has never been any such thing as “free TV”. Whether it was “I Love Lucy” or “All in the Family” or “The Walking Dead” you were paying for that TV. With commercials. The deal was simple. You watched the commercials for laundry detergent or toothpaste or the latest car model, and the advertiser paid the expenses of the TV show you were watching. That’s the model for the business of television going back to the earliest days. No commercials, no TV shows.
But things have changed in the last couple decades. HBO led the way with fee-based, commercial free service. The Internet made things even more interesting by getting us accustomed to totally “free” stuff (although it’s not really free either).
All of this leaves the media in a bit of a muddle. They have built their business model on commercials. But we don’t want them. And more of us are trying to find our way around that old model. A survey done in the third quarter of this year shed light on how we the consumers think about a variety of issues concerning television, including commercials. From the industry’s point of view, I’m not sure it was useful light.
Especially regarding commercials, the study seemed to be good. Seventy percent of those surveyed said they would, in fact, watch TV with commercials. Yay, current business model saved! When you did a little deeper you discover that those same people say “Yes, I would watch one to four commercials per half hour of programming”. In the current TV world, you could see three commercial breaks in a half hour with anywhere from three to six commercials (depending on length) per break!
There’s no doubt that all the media needs to figure out how they are going to make the business of producing media pay. It is a business. The one thing I can guarantee is that there is no model waiting for us in the future that will bring that media to we, the consumers, for free.
For the foreseeable future, commercials are here to stay, at least in some form.
Choosing Stories
This is one of those weeks when stories get told. When we gather together and share the stories that have made us who we are. I hope you get to enjoy lots of them.
Over the years, I have come to the realization, hardly original, that all human communication is story. Everything from a child’s bedtime reading to a quarterly sales report, they are all stories. Over the last couple weeks, I have been bashing the media, and journalist in particular, about how badly I think they’ve been telling us stories. I am not backing away from that assessment one bit. But today I want you to consider that the media isn’t the only one to blame for all of this.
You and I need to take responsibility for our part in all of this as well.
Because we choose which stories we hear. And the stories we choose to listen to change us. So if we choose comfortable stories, ones that do not challenge us, that do not challenge what we already believe, we will not grow. When we choose stories that characterize our opponents as demons, and our leaders as saints, we lie to ourselves. Because neither side is demon nor saint. When we only choose stories that allow us to remain comfortably unquestioning aren’t we really saying “I can’t be bothered to think”, or perhaps “I’m afraid I might be wrong”. And so we choose to be comfortable and wrong, rather than accept the challenge.
What got me thinking about all of this was a computer game. The game is called “We Become What We Behold”. You’ll find a link to the game at viewfromthephlipside.com. In the game, you are watching a world with little round-headed people and square-headed people as they walk around. You get to choose which of them appear on the TV in the game. But what you choose changes how they all behave. You are encouraged to pick when they do something “interesting”. Like yelling at each other. Very quickly the quiet little world begins to change. The end is a little bit inevitable and still a little bit shocking. And completely realistic.
The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we choose to have told to us, have a profound effect on who we will become. Choose only scary stories and you will be made afraid. Choose only stories that ignore grim realities and you will lose contact with real life. Refuse to hear stories that test your flexibility and you will grow brittle and hard.
Stories not only tell us what has made us who we are, they help to form who we will be going forward. We need to choose the stories that make us the best, not merely the most comfortable.
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
Stories Are My Life 
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