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Movie PosterIn the 1960’s there emerged in movie / TV land the concept of “High Concept”, this was the idea that TV and movie shows had to have a single simple concept in order to hook in the viewer.
The end result of this as been an enormous amount of sheer crap and nonsense and in many respects a serious dumbing down of popular entertainment.
Why so? Because anything complex was deemed not to be simple enough and therefore had to be avoided at all costs. One of the further results was that it was so much simpler to rip off ideas that already had been shown to work than to think of new ideas. Creativity or being difficult is just too much of a bore so let’s avoid it.
Let’s now go into examples of “High Concept” idiocy.
From game shows we have three examples:
1, The Price is Right. This show simply involves people guessing the prices of items and those getting closest, (without going over), winning some rather over priced merchandise. Now basically the show was nothing more than a one hour commercial for merchandise, during which there were gaps for more commercials. It was watched mainly to see people go nuts winning a new washer or having a multiple orgasm on stage winning a new living room set. The show was frankly terminally boring only the fact that Bob Barker was basically a class act as host made it even remotely more than complete crap.
2, Wheel of Fortune. Watching that wheel go round while contestants have withdrawal symptoms from forgetting to take their tranquilizers while air head in chief Vanna White, who at first turned and later touches letters so they appear, is a nice way to induce a coma. The show is indeed simple and it is also relentlessly boring. It is basically MacDonald’s food, full of fat, sugar and starch and virtually nothing nutritious.
3. Deal or No Deal. Probably the most boring game show ever. With its metal cases containing money and contestants making dull exchanges of one case for another. The show requires no ability on the part of contestants and no thought on the part of the watcher. Of course it is fun to watch germaphobe Howie Mandel cringe whenever a contestant tries to hug him. This is a show where basically nothing happens.
One can contrast this with Jeopardy! A game show that actually requires real skills and knowledge. In this case it is a show that requires you to know an enormous amount of trivia. Of course you must frame your answers in the form of a question. The show is enormously popular world wide. So I guess that sometimes people want something challenging occasionally.
From sitcoms here are three examples.
1, Webster. A show about a white couple who adopted an adorable black kid. The show was an obvious rip-off of the show Different Strokes. With Emmanuel Lewis, playing Gary Coleman. Like Different Stokes the show had an adorable character played by a real life midget with a disability that helped render him “cute”. The “High Concept” was not just the blatant rip-off but the centering of the show around a “cute” atrocity to bring in the mindless. The scripts lived down to the mindless idiocy of the idea.
2, Friends. A Seinfeld rip-off. Instead of having four wastes of space whine about nothing for thirty minutes this show had six wastes of space whine about nothing for thirty minutes. Of course the “High Concept” is six beautiful, but vapid, things complain about stupid shit.
3, Family Affair. A sitcom from the sixties. In it three lovable waifs are raised by their uncle after their parents have been killed off. At the time this was a common concept in TV land. Mad Magazine actually did a parody called Familar Affair. It was also beautifully boring. In an era where you couldn’t have a divorced woman in a sitcom you could kill off parents and stick children with relatives who barely knew them. Well whatever.
In contrast there are shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show which centered around a man working on a comedy show as a writer and his family. It was funny and it enabled the writers to poke fun at TV.
Now for some so-called Dramas.
1, The Big Valley. A western from the 60’s with Barbara Stanwyk. Instead of having a drama about a widower and his sons in the old west like Bonanza, we have a drama about a widow and her sons in the old west. Yup ripping off an idea that works is so much better than thinking up your own.
2, NCIS. Also known as CSI in the Navy. In both shows a group of eccentric investigators led by a semi-basket case, using cutting edge near perfect forensic technology, much of which does not exist in the real world, along with kicking ass, which forensic pathologists would not do in real life; solve crime after crime in a few days. Of course all DNA tests take a few hours at most. Basically it is police forensic work as fantasy and magic. Of course rather than have NCIS do anything that is real it like CSI takes refugee in delusions of omniscience. Of course ripping CSI adds one more degree of “High Concept” to an already “High Concept” notion.
3. BJ and the Bear. A show about a trucker and his pet chimpanzee. The gimmick is of course the cute chimp; which is also what sells the show. This shows “High Concept” and selling point was how “cute” the Chimp was. Things like plot, acting etc., were of course not important.
Showing that shows didn’t have to be mindless or simple minded there was Hill Street Blues. This was a cop show with a difference complete with multiple story lines and gritty realism it lasted for years and got ripped-off a lot but still remains one of the best shows ever on TV.
Movies.
Star Wars. The ultimate “High Concept” movie a fairly simple good versus evil story complete with simple-minded dialogue and cardboard characters etc. The show concentrated on action and effects, acting and script were secondary. It was still a lot of fun however. Unfortunately ripped off endlessly by other people. The movie started the trend to have movies concentrate on being huge blockbusters, with lots of action and huge amounts of special effects and serious dumbing down. Just how much the dumbing down had progressed can be seen in the three Star Wars prequels which are basically nothing more that special effect rides designed to dazzle the viewer and hide the glaring defects with script, acting and dialogue.
The Flintstones. A live action cartoon coming from the trend of making movies out of old TV shows. This is another “High Concept” idea. It avoids the terrible trauma of actually thinking of anything new by simply and mindlessly copying an old TV show. In this case it was a live action version of a cartoon show. Not surprisingly it was a disaster in virtually all respects.
Forest Gump. Here the “High concept” wasn’t the originating idea but what they did with it. In this case what they did was take a cynical black comic novel and turn it into a festival of mindless nostalgia and patriotism. The “High Concept” comes clearly in the movies motto which is the mindless feel good banality “My mother always told me ‘life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what your going to find inside”; which is the movie’s version of the following line from the book, “Life is no box of chocolate when your born a retard!”. Thinking that audiences would be unable to take the originating novel’s black comic tone and style they turned it into a “High Concept” bit of feel good schmaltz, with a mega dose of saccharine.
A completely movie is Fargo which is anything but simple minded and involves complex acting, plot and characterization. It makes demands on the viewers and is also both black and comic. Such details as making the Sheriff 8 months pregnant and deliberately leaving loose ends that are NOT cleared up make this movie anything but "High Concept”. The fact that the “Climax” of this movie is most deliberately very anti-climatic is also another violation of the “High Concept” ethos.
In the end the idea of “High Concept” is in the end a refugee from real work on creativity and a escape into easy solutions. It is further based on the idea that people cannot tolerate anything different or difficult. It is also simply cowardly.
Pierre Cloutier
The Oscars will soon once again darken our television screen with c. four hours of mega boredom. It will be only a few hours but it will seem like an eternity spent watching white paint dry on a wall.
The Oscars are a big cultural phenomena but as an award show picking my nose and eating the dried up snot found there is easily much less boring and vastly more intellectually stimulating.
Watching those deathly dull musical numbers and another host bore for an Everest of eternity is indeed a circle in Dante's hell. Only the possibility of another host proving that they can blow it and be stunningly unentertaining gives this bore fest even a moment of interest. Jackass in chief David Letterman's performance as Oscar host has a severely spastic retarded moron was mildly diverting at times. It was nice to see Mr. cream my jeans to overflowing while I gaze upon myself in the mirror prove that he was indeed the biggest douche bag in the universe.
As for a mark artistic excellence. Well Oscar and artistic excellence should provoke uncontrolled, rolling on the floor, tears streaming down your face laughter. Not that Oscar fucks it up all the time. It does get things right from time to time, but lets face it so much of the time Oscar losses it big time!
Let’s see Do you remember How Green was my Valley? Well Oscar thought it was a better film than Citizen Kane!!?? Seriously! How about the fact that Cary Grant never won an Oscar. Or how about the fact that Orson Welles not only never won an Academy Award for Best Director but was only nominated once! Even a film as budget deprived has The Chimes at Midnight, (Orson Welles) is easily vastly superior to virtually anything that Hollywood has given a best picture Oscar to. One could of course add the Oscar deprivation of Directors like Kubrick and Hitchcock to the mix. One could of course mention Kurosawa in this list also.
But then this is an institution that boosted such saccharine crap has Forest Gump, (more accurately it should be called Forest Gunk), and gave Mel Gibson an Academy Award for best Director. No doubt Mel is a much better director than Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Kubrick and Welles. Yeah right!! Can one mention the Academy Awards boosting of On Golden Pond, (better called Geriatric Bowel Movement), or Rocky and similar schlock fests. Or how about deciding that You Light Up My Life deserved the best song award!
Also please can someone explain to me how Jack Nicholson got an Academy Award for acting in Goodwill Hunting. All he does is what he has been doing for a generation be Jack Nicholson doing Jack Nicholson!
Often Oscar tries to make up for its slighting of real film art by giving honorary Oscars to those slighted, (See Cary Grant, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Welles). Which basically amounts to a "So Sorry! We Fucked up!". Sorry it doesn't make up for it.
So not only are the Oscars boring to the nth degree, it is also very far from rewarding artistic excellence.
Pierre Cloutier
Movie Poster
The Sphinx
9, Michael Wood's embarrassing In Search of the Trojan War, which manage to dance around the question of how much history was in Homer's poems while serving great gobs of romance. In throw away lines Wood would admit that the historical kernel in the poems was small but then go right back to romance and leaving viewers with the impression that the modern study had shown that the historical kernel of the Homeric poems was substantial.
Best
1, The Archeology TV series. Provocative and interesting.
2, The case of the Ancient Astronauts, A dagger through the heart of Chariots of the Gods.
3, Ape Man, a journey narrated by Walter Cronkite about how we became us.
4, Ancient Lives. Romer’s personal view of the ordinary lives of a group of Ancient Egyptians's, showing how they were and were not like us. An example of how ordinary dirt archeology can illuminate the past. Required viewing, and reading, for anyone interested in Ancient Egypt.
5, The Lost Pyramids of Caral. A interesting overview of the discovery of the site of Caral and what that tells us about the origin of civilization.
Pyramids of Caral
6, Legacy, Michael Wood's bite size look at several original civilizations, China, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Central America, built around themes, done with sympathy and sense. Wood’s In search of the Dark Ages is also excellent.
7, The real Garden of Eden, for reasons obscure to me this show about archeology on the island of Bahrain, (in ancient times Dilmun) has stuck with me.
8, The Secrets of Easter Island, a stake through the heart of Heyerdahl's ideas about Easter Island.
9, Building a Pyramid. Who says "conventional" "Orthodox" ways of building the pyramids are not interesting and provocative?
Pierre Cloutier
This passage and several others have been used as evidence that Thomas more was a tolerant man however it ignores that the Utopians were not tolerant of atheists:…for this is one of their most ancient laws, that no man ought to be punished for his religion. At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves; after he had subdued them, he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by force of argument, and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.
This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly, and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition, as corn is with briars and thorns.
He therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause;…5
…only he [Utopus] made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast's: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims, either to honors or offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but despise them, as men of base and sordid minds: yet they do not punish them, because they lay this down as a maxim that a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions; which being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians. They take care indeed to prevent their disputing in defence of these opinions, especially before the common people; but they suffer, and even encourage them to dispute concerning them in private with their priests and other grave men, being confident that they will be cured of those mad opinions by having reason laid before them.6Further it is clear from Thomas More’s comments that one of the signs of the Utopians superiority is that they are eager to listen too and be converted to Christianity. Further since the Utopians are non-Christians they would have to be religiously tolerant to be able to more easily receive Christianity.7
And for heretics as they be, the clergy both denounce them. And they be well worthy, the temporalty doth burn them. After the fire of Smithfield, hell doth receive them where the wretches burn forever.8Another example of Thomas More’s victims was Thomas Hitton a priest who was sympathetic to various aspects of Protestantism. Thomas More writes that Thomas Hitton was:
…an apostle, sent to and fro betwene our Englysshe heretykes beyonde the see and such as were here at home. The spirit of errour and lyenge hath taken his wretched soul with him strayte from the shorte fyre to ye fyre ever lastyng. And this is lo sir Thomas Hitton, the dyuyls [devil's] stynkyng martyr, of whose burnynge Tyndale maketh boste.9When a man named John Twekesbury was burned Thomas More stated:
burned as there was never wretche I wene better worthy.10While he was Lord Chancellor Thomas More violated rules of English law to get at heretics and he continued to rejoice until his own death in the destruction of heretics.11 He carried out until his death a vicious vendetta against William Tyndale the translator of the New Testament into English. Thomas More described William Tyndale as:
beste oute of whose brutyshe bestely mouth cometh a fylthy fome.12Eventually Thomas More played a role, even though Thomas More was in the tower at the time awaiting his own execution in William Tyndale’s horrible death by fire.13.
The Execution of William TyndaleThe Author showeth his opinion concerning the burning of Heretics and that it is lawful, necessary, and well done.15
…a fond friar, to an apostate, to an open incestuous lecher, a plain limb of the devil, and a manifest messenger of hell.16
there is no fault that more offendeth God.17
...with deep feeling. I find that breed of men [heretics] absolutely loathsome, so much so that, unless they regain their senses, I want to be as hateful to them as anyone can possibly be for my increasing experience with these men frightens me with the thought that the whole world will suffer at their hands.18
To stand before a man at an inquisition, knowing that he will rejoice when we die, knowing that he will commit us to the stake and its horrors without a moment’s hesitation or remorse if we do not satisfy him, is not an experience much less cruel because our inquisitor does not whip us or rack us or shout at us.
But in the same work, [More’s, Apology, 1533] More - by then out of office – exhorted the bishops not to falter in their zeal to suppress heretics by any measures at their command.Thomas More as a man of tolerance is a myth. The tolerance in his ideal society described in Utopia is a function of the fact that the Utopians are non Christians that More wants to become Christians so of course they are tolerant,; but not of atheism which More abominated. The tolerance of the Utopians tells us zero about More’s own attitudes in this matter. Instead his large corpus of written writings is full of hatred against so-called heretics and zealous in calls for their violent suppression by terror and painful death right to the end of More’s life. All this makes an interesting contrast with More’s friend Erasmus whose tolerance and dislike of violence make it manifest that he would almost certainly have never have overseen the judicial murder of individuals for so-called heresy.
His own labour was utterly single-minded and not mitigated by any flash of mercy or tolerance. Heretics were enemies of God, servants of Satan, minions of hell, and beyond all that, they were usually lower-class, people without roots resolved to root out the grand old faith which was the only guarantee of meaning in the universe. More believed that they should be exterminated, and while he was in office he did everything in his power to bring that extermination to pass. That he did not succeed in becoming England’s Torquemada was a consequence of the king’s quarrel with the pope and not a result of any quality of mercy that stirred through More’s own heart.19
In this piece I would like to talk about the above book Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, Tom Rodgers, Sourcebooks Inc., Naperville ILL.,2007.Now if you watch a lot of films you know that they have a revolting number of absurdities. The above book not only details the absurdities but gives a pretty good lesson in Physics. (The more technical sections are separated from the main text, so you can go back to them later or never, they go into the nitty-gritty of physics equations.)
I can't discuss all the examples from the book but I can give a brief run through of some of them.
1, The infamous person shooting from the hip. (pp. 15-30), Sure it looks real cool, but its damn stupid. You simply can't control the gun that well, shooting from the hip. Yes its in so many Cop films and Westerns, but its plain dumb. if I'm ever in a gun fight I want my enemies to shoot from the hip while I shoot properly, they would be sitting ducks. This section explains why.
2, Downing the space craft in the movie Independence Day, (pp. 164-168), basically its a damn colossally stupid idea. The energy released by them dropping to earth would generate massive winds (several hundred miles per hour at least) and intense heat. The devastation would be hideous. (This ignores what would happen if the power source on the ship blew up, which given the energy need to take such a ship, 15 miles across, into and out of Earth orbit would be huge.
3, Very controversial. A section on the Kennedy assassination which tears apart some of the nonsense about the assassination (pp. 195-211). The idea that if Kennedy had been hit in the back his head would have jerked forward and not to the side, which supposedly indicates that he was hit from a shot from the Grassy Knoll. Well elementary physics indicates that purely has a physical reaction, (ignoring nuro-musculature spasms), such a reaction from a shot from behind is virtually certain. No shot from Grassy Knoll needed. In fact people who think this have been watching to many movies and ignoring real physics.
4, People out running explosions in shafts (pp. 113-114). Well it possible in theory, but given that the explosion moves very fast, (less than a tenth of a second for 50 feet.) outrunning it while hugely entertaining in films is highly unlikely in real life.
5. In the movie Armageddon, a Texas size asteroid is headed towards Earth and a collection of Hollywood misfits is sent to save it. (We are doomed!) They drill a hole, explode a nuclear device, the asteroid divides in two and both sections go around the world and don't hit it. This is of course entertaining but absurd, (Along with character played by Bruce Willis dying-Yeah!) on so many levels. (pp. 167-170) To put it simply doing what happens in the movie is both incredibly stupid, ( it would make the devastation worst if it "worked"), and it almost certainly wouldn't work at all. Why, because assuming the explosion happened when it did,and did in fact split the asteroid, (very big ifs!), it would only have separated the asteroid haves by under 200 feet before impact!
That is just a sample of some of the fun in the book.
Tom Rodgers has a web site at Here.
Other books in this area are.
The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss, HarperPerennial, New York, 1995.
Beyond Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss, HarperPerennial, New York, 1997.
The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios, Gotham Books, New York, 2005
Pierre Cloutier
"Michele"
Scene From Movie