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• China And The Pirates

  In the current issue, the filmmaker Jia Zhang Ke writes about how China's rampant DVD piracy has created a class of street vendors operating suitcase cinematheques, their tables overflowing with Hollywood blockbusters placed willy nilly next to arthouse obscurities and Asian hits. There's very little sense of curation: if it's been released somewhere, the Chinese will bootleg it (researching this phenomenon in Shanghai, in and among Pirates of the Caribbean and Mission: Impossible discs, we found illicit copies of the '60s avant-garde film Chappaqua, and The Brave, a little-seen film that Johnny Depp directed in 1997).
  
  Understandably, Hollywood studios have spent a lot of time attempting to fight piracy, but the subject isn't quite so black and white. Because the Chinese government only allows 20 non-Chinese films a year to be exhibited in theaters, the black market provides a window onto the outside world that wouldn't otherwise be open; many Western stars are stars in China primarily because of piracy.
  
  Last month, a Beijing DVD vendor was convicted and sent to prison for Intellectual Property Theft, the first retailer to be so punished. Such gestures may increase as the Olympics approach, but the true culprits who manufacture and distribute counterfeit DVDs, software, clothing and electronics will continue to evade prosecution—despite Government avowals in support of the Motion Picture Association and other IP watchdogs, a significant portion of the country's GDP comes from pirate goods, and in part the Chinese regard profiting this way as historical payback for their exploitation by the West in the late 19th and early 20th century.
  
  An overview of piracy written by Anne Stevenson-Yang and Ken DeWoskin for the Far Eastern Economic Review, can be found here (.pdf). A contrarian take by Aaron Schwabach in the Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law, arguing that the problem has been overstated, can be found here.
  
  Of course, the aura of romance, danger and adventure surrounding the notion of Chinese piracy dates back to the 1800s. Much of it can be found in Milton Caniff's groundbreaking 1930s newspaper comic "Terry and the Pirates," an adventure serial following a pair of American fortune hunters up and down the Chinese coast. Though marred by the kind of condescending Orientalism then prevalent, the comic is genuinely thrilling, beautiful to look at, and an obvious source for the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" series. IDW have recently published their third handsome volume of the complete strips.
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  • Date: May 15 2008
  • Posted by Jaime Wolf

• Intermission

  A Flickr user has edited together moments of silence from BBC newscasts into an eerily powerful video called "The Day There Was No News." Watching the newscasters you can't help but imagine what could render them all speechless. We can't tell if this is the tranquil kind of silence or the awestruck, first-encounter kind.
  
  
  
  Via Boing Boing. Larger version here.
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  • Date: May 14 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Gas Tax Milkshakes Bring No One To Yard

  As you may have heard, McCain and Clinton have both suggested we all stop paying the 18.4 cent-per-gallon excise tax on gas over the summer. They think this is a good idea (or, more likely, hoped the public would think so) because at first glance a gas tax holiday sounds like a sale on gas. Who wouldn't want a sale on gas? People who study how money works, that's who. Economists across the political spectrum agree this is a bad idea. Putting this in terms we can understand—frozen desserts—the Christian Science Monitor points out that "If a driver uses 10 gallons a week, he or she would save about $26 during the three months – enough to buy seven or eight milkshakes." So for only a handful of milkshakes per person, we'd suffer a huge administrative hassle, add to the deficit, and take a big step back in weaning ourselves off oil. Pandering isn't new. The fact that the media and the pundits aren't biting is what surprises us. News shows can't find economists to support the plan on air, and Matt Yglesias even found a case of reporting on television (below). Is the media going to start dabbling in objectivity and insight again or is this a special case?
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  • Date: May 01 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• China's Less-Polished News Sources

  Too frequently the slick, overly produced style of network television news shows ends up obscuring the actual subjects they're purportedly covering—most programs, despite the opportunities presented by the medium, are sadly more "tell" than "show." As a result, some of the more interesting glimpses of life in China can be seen via various scrappier and less polished outlets. Over the past couple of years, Current TV has presented a handful of China pieces, including stories on the influx of Western entrepreneurs trying to establish businesses in China, migrant labor, and the Chinese sex industry. The expat-run web-video concern Sexy Beijing TV produces quirky documentary snapshots on urban development and local culture, and Al Jazeera often runs China stories, including reports on the growing Chinese auto industry, and about Chinese workers brought to Italy to work in sweatshops operated by the country's textile industry.
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  • Date: Apr 30 2008
  • Posted by Jaime Wolf

• Pentagon Propaganda Machine

  A piece from Sunday's New York Times details how the Pentagon used a large number of retired generals as a propaganda machine to combat criticism of Donald Rumsfeld in 2005. Called "Military Analysts" by the "news" stations on which they appeared, and "message force multipliers" by the Pentagon officials who gave them their marching orders, the generals would parrot administration talking points on TV in exchange for access to classified information. Check out the top right-hand screenshot above: one of these stooges even sneaked onto PBS! Evidently investigative journalism has survived into the present, if only to occasionally expose the sham journalism that's running rampant. See the article here and the slideshow here.
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  • Date: Apr 21 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Vanity Fair Recycles Convoluted Celebrity Cover, Not Paper

  Vanity Fair's third annual Green Issue is currently on newsstands. You've probably noticed the cover—Madonna bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders—which is almost as ridiculous as last year's. Almost. Anyway, our complaint isn't with the cover. No, it's not about the Material Girl per se; it's about the material of the magazine. For the third year in a row, Vanity Fair's Green Issue was not printed on recycled paper. We appreciate the fact that such a massively-distributed, mainstream magazine even does an environmentally-themed issue. But when you consider that none of Condé Nast's publications are printed on recycled paper, and that the singer on the cover of this one has a larger carbon footprint than some cities (offset shmoffset), the gesture feels pretty hollow. Are we overreacting? Or does this seem like the summit of hypocrisy to you as well?
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  • Date: Apr 16 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• Super Slo-Mo And Abu Ghraib

  There is a really remarkably interesting essay over at Slate that tackles the power of super slow motion in film as it relates to the evils of Abu Ghraib and the philosophical problem of determinism. "From Slo-Mo to No-Mo" by Rob Rosenbaum.
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  • Date: Apr 10 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Katie Couric and CBS to Split?

  Doomed-from-the-start Evening News anchor Katie Couric and her record-low ratings may be parting ways with CBS well before the expiration of her $15-million-per-year contract. Inked to stay on board through 2011, the once-maven of morning television has had an extraordinarily rough go in evening news since she signed on to replace interim anchor Bob Schieffer—who had sat in for Dan Rather after the Bush National Guard affair—in June 2006. The Wall Street Journal speculates that Couric may depart as early as January—once the aftermath of the presidential election simmers—and could potentially fill the benign interviewer seat of 74-year-old Larry King (who, as a side note, recently got tossed from his son's little league game). CBS denies the break-up rumors in The LA Times.
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  • Date: Apr 10 2008
  • Posted by danielriley

• Zero Worship

  This morning, we stumbled upon two editorials that address issues of praise and merit.

  First, Salon writer Gary Kamiya reviews Gerard DeGroot's The Sixties Unplugged, a book that attempts to debunk the much-mythologized impact of the hippie generation. DeGroot calls attention to the self-delusion of an indulgent counterculture, writing that "the most profound revolution that occurred [in the 1960s] was the emergence of a consumer society." As Kamiya puts it, "The would-be world changers ended up co-opted and marketed to." Kamiya, however, doesn't totally dismiss the hippie impact—but he does appreciate the examination of who we revere and why.

  Second, Slate writer Troy Patterson takes a swing at the current state of political comedy. You might have noticed that a lot of people are touting Saturday Night Live's recent return to glory (and relevance). Patterson keeps that in check, essentially asserting that the political jokes never develop past their premises—and thereby offer confirmation of viewer assumptions rather than any sort of pointed or thought-provoking commentary. The show may be a bit funnier than it was a few years ago, but that's not much of a benchmark, is it?

  
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  • Date: Apr 09 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• Photoshopping Ethics

  Complaints about the unattainable, unnatural, or unhealthy standards of beauty perpetuated by the fashion industry aren't new. But in Britain, fashion photoshopping in particular is facing new scrutiny. A group of British media associations are considering adopting "'a voluntary code covering the use of digital manipulation [in photography].' Publications could...be asked to declare if an image had been altered." As Amy Odell points out "If magazines follow this voluntary code, every picture would bear an 'airbrushed' stamp because every picture is digitally enhanced in magazines." How about the opposite tack? What if unaltered images had the right to carry an "authentic" stamp? Via PSFK.
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  • Date: Apr 08 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice