The Town of Lincoln is about to embark on the largest and most exciting building project in its history. The upcoming Community Complex which will house an arena, a library and community space will provide a new civic meeting place for sports, culture and organizations.
Starting the week of February 13, there will be a short survey on the Town's website soliciting information from Lincoln residents on what they would like to see for their new complex. Please add your input to this very important information gathering process.
The timely article below by Lisa Rochon appeared in February 11th's Globe and Mail on the Business Case for Beautiful Libraries and by extension beautiful civic space.
The public library is a city’s epic living room – that’s why the French neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée designed his utopian library as a monumental, barrel-vaulted hall big enough to hold the memory of the entire world. That’s why the New York Public Library is a source of enlightenment and architectural pilgrimage. And it’s why every year 19 million people flood into Toronto’s libraries, many of them exhilarating, award-winning structures. Now, under constant fire from cities desperate to save money, libraries are figuring out how to get the message across that they are crucial to a vibrant civic life.
The Free Library of Philadelphia is focusing hard on the economic case. After $12-million (U.S.) was cut recently from its budget, the institution fought back with a compelling economic analysis. Its business plan targeted fresh ways to assist job hunters, education for small business entrepreneurs, orientation for newly arrived immigrants, the appetites of digital geeks and classes for pre-kindergarten kids. The University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government created an economic impact report quantifying the value of the city’s vast library system in dollars and cents. What it discovered was that homes located within one-quarter mile of the library were worth more than those further away. And that the library had contributed through its training programs and sourcing of jobs an estimated $30-million in earned income in one year. To cost-cutting politicians, those are the kinds of arguments that matter.
There’s a key similarity between Philadelphia and Toronto: Both cities have seen an increase in police budgets while delivering punishing blows to libraries. Put more boots on the street to manage increasingly disenfranchised populations – the logic seems crazy but it’s real. “Nearly 50 per cent of working-age Philadelphians are functionally illiterate,” said Siobhan A. Reardon, president and director of the Free Library in a lecture at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. Though it operates as a municipal agency of the city of Philadelphia, the Free Library’s 40-member private board is planning to step up its fundraising efforts to cover recent budget cuts.
While the Free Library has used hard business-case facts, there are also libraries that have fought back with exhilarating, high-design environments. Desperate to re-engage a disenfranchised, illiterate community, politicians in southeast London turned to British pop-architect Will Alsop to produce the Peckham Library as one way to compete – somewhat – with hooliganism at soccer games and nightly binges at the pub. The copper-clad library raised up on cock-eyed stilts, much like the Alsop-designed Sharp Centre for Design at Toronto’s Ontario College of Art & Design, won the Civic Trust Award in 2003 for excellence in public architecture. In a city that enjoys wealthy patronage as well as the harsh reality of inner-city crack alleys, the $170-million Seattle Public Library was designed as a piece of contorted urban spectacle by Dutch cerebral starchitect Rem Koolhaas. On a Sunday afternoon a few years ago, the ground-floor atrium was pleasantly peopled, though not with the crush of people that regularly flows through the sumptuous, wood-lined Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal by the Patkau Architects of Vancouver.
Because of its critical role as a receptacle of collective memory and consciousness, the public library has always attracted among the most talented architects and even geniuses of art and design. In a cloister in Florence, Michelangelo designed Italy’s first public library, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (1534), with theatrical, almost surreal flourishes such as overscaled stairs that cascade from the reading room into a grey stone entrance vestibule.
One afternoon this week, walking through the white, light-filled Bloor-Gladstone Library in Toronto’s west end, reimagined in 2009 so that a contemporary glass jewel dialogues with a historic Beaux-Arts library, I was struck by the young, fit-looking urban dwellers focused intensely on a book, or working through some chemistry problems while others studied computer screens. Every lounge chair was taken. Every wooden work counter set below each of the gracefully arched windows had been claimed by pairs of people.
Across the city, where some 40,000 newly arrived Muslims from countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and India live in high-rise towers, the new Thorncliffe Park Public Library is crammed with children who march from their elementary school – at more than 2,000 students, considered to be the largest one in North America – and into the naturally-lit, joyous space. There’s an interactive early literacy centre for parents and children under 5 at work here, and the computer stations are packed with teens and adults who are without Internet at home.
More and more, true, unfettered public space is increasingly hard to come by. And no, Coffee Time and Starbucks do not count. In a world obsessed by connection, via Twitter, e-mail and endlessly multiplying Facebook friends, the library gives us permission to hunker down by a window or a fireplace, disconnect from the hammering distractions of everyday life, and get on with what has to be learned, and contemplated.
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Downton Abbey’s real appeal: Class warfare isn’t historical
Judith Timson From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published
Last updated
It’s not just me. The most addictive British series since the 1980s hit Brideshead Revisited, Downton Abbey, the soapy saga of a grand estate in Yorkshire and the lives and loves of not only its owners – the Earl and Countess of Grantham and their three marriageable daughters – but of their vast domestic staff downstairs – has found giddy favour at a time when much of its audience is financially hurting and obsessed with the notion of class again.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The U.S. presidential race is replete with back and forths about “class warfare” and President Barack Obama’s supposed “war against the rich.” (The President has been sternly talking about people at the top paying their “fair share.”) Prominent Republicans are turning themselves into instant comic canon fodder for comedians like Jon Stewart by intoning, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels did, “This is not a nation of the haves and have-nots, it’s the haves and soon-to-haves.” (This resulted in a pie chart on The Daily Show, with the “haves” and the “somewhat later to haves.”) And when GOP comer Senator Marco Rubio of Florida taking another stab at finding the upside in a country in which the myth of meritocracy has given way to a shockingly widening gap between the rich and the poor, explained that when Americans drive through rich neighbourhoods, “they don’t say we hate the people who live in these nice houses, they say congratulations on your nice house and guess what? We will be joining you here soon”, Mr. Stewart smirked: “There’s nothing that rich people like more than poor people circling their neighbourhood at night saying we will be joining you soon.”
Meanwhile a disturbing new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, by controversial American academic Charles Murray has been met with both criticism and approval even in Republican circles as it argues that “America is coming apart at the seams – not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”
According to Mr. Murray, we now have the “cognitive elite” living the gated good life, absorbing their own culture (like Downton Abbey?),safe in their self-perpetuating bubble of good schools, relatively stable marriages and well-paying jobs while the new lower class, unemployed and shorn of religious belief or the promise of a better life, wander morally unmoored in a bleak landscape of family breakdown.
I found some rueful truth in Mr. Murray’s depiction of a self-satisfied cognoscenti who wouldn’t be caught dead watching The Bachorlette but claim to know exactly what the audience of such a show is thinking or feeling. And the prospect of a world in which equal opportunity is a myth while only those at the very top plunder and prosper, is of course what fuelled the still percolating Occupy movement.
So it’s no wonder, with high unemployment numbers, continuing foreclosures, stacks of unpaid bills, and a bleak global economic outlook, the haves and the haven’t-quite-paid-for-it’s alike are feasting their sore eyes on the real-estate porn of a great fictional English country house in the 1900s.
But it has probably not been lost on many viewers that the current middle-aged Earl, played to gallant perfection by Hugh Bonneville, was forced to marry Cora, an American heiress (Elizabeth McGovern with an odd mid-Atlantic accent) whom he now loves dearly, just to keep that old pile of bricks going.
Meanwhile, down in the butler’s pantry, where there is more intrigue than you can shake a silver candle snuffer at, almost every servant is dreaming of a better chance in a fairer world.
So while the overwhelming attraction of Downton Abbey may a cracking good storyline and great characters amid splendid garden parties and gleaming candelabra, it’s also about financial peril, how to keep what you’ve got and get more, and how to get ahead no matter what the world throws at you.
Or as everyone’s favourite character, the wickedly witty Dowager Countess Violet, deliciously brought to life by Dame Maggie Smith, says to Lady Edith, one of her downcast granddaughters who can’t seem to find a husband or a place in her rarefied world: “Don’t be defeatist, dear, it’s very middle-class.”
I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The U.S. presidential race is replete with back and forths about “class warfare” and President Barack Obama’s supposed “war against the rich.” (The President has been sternly talking about people at the top paying their “fair share.”) Prominent Republicans are turning themselves into instant comic canon fodder for comedians like Jon Stewart by intoning, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels did, “This is not a nation of the haves and have-nots, it’s the haves and soon-to-haves.” (This resulted in a pie chart on The Daily Show, with the “haves” and the “somewhat later to haves.”) And when GOP comer Senator Marco Rubio of Florida taking another stab at finding the upside in a country in which the myth of meritocracy has given way to a shockingly widening gap between the rich and the poor, explained that when Americans drive through rich neighbourhoods, “they don’t say we hate the people who live in these nice houses, they say congratulations on your nice house and guess what? We will be joining you here soon”, Mr. Stewart smirked: “There’s nothing that rich people like more than poor people circling their neighbourhood at night saying we will be joining you soon.”
Meanwhile a disturbing new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, by controversial American academic Charles Murray has been met with both criticism and approval even in Republican circles as it argues that “America is coming apart at the seams – not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”
According to Mr. Murray, we now have the “cognitive elite” living the gated good life, absorbing their own culture (like Downton Abbey?),safe in their self-perpetuating bubble of good schools, relatively stable marriages and well-paying jobs while the new lower class, unemployed and shorn of religious belief or the promise of a better life, wander morally unmoored in a bleak landscape of family breakdown.
I found some rueful truth in Mr. Murray’s depiction of a self-satisfied cognoscenti who wouldn’t be caught dead watching The Bachorlette but claim to know exactly what the audience of such a show is thinking or feeling. And the prospect of a world in which equal opportunity is a myth while only those at the very top plunder and prosper, is of course what fuelled the still percolating Occupy movement.
So it’s no wonder, with high unemployment numbers, continuing foreclosures, stacks of unpaid bills, and a bleak global economic outlook, the haves and the haven’t-quite-paid-for-it’s alike are feasting their sore eyes on the real-estate porn of a great fictional English country house in the 1900s.
But it has probably not been lost on many viewers that the current middle-aged Earl, played to gallant perfection by Hugh Bonneville, was forced to marry Cora, an American heiress (Elizabeth McGovern with an odd mid-Atlantic accent) whom he now loves dearly, just to keep that old pile of bricks going.
Meanwhile, down in the butler’s pantry, where there is more intrigue than you can shake a silver candle snuffer at, almost every servant is dreaming of a better chance in a fairer world.
So while the overwhelming attraction of Downton Abbey may a cracking good storyline and great characters amid splendid garden parties and gleaming candelabra, it’s also about financial peril, how to keep what you’ve got and get more, and how to get ahead no matter what the world throws at you.
Or as everyone’s favourite character, the wickedly witty Dowager Countess Violet, deliciously brought to life by Dame Maggie Smith, says to Lady Edith, one of her downcast granddaughters who can’t seem to find a husband or a place in her rarefied world: “Don’t be defeatist, dear, it’s very middle-class.”
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Downton Abbey
Many of my patrons are very excited that season 2 of Downton Abbey is being released in DVD.
I found this article on how the fans of the show celebrate it. They are almost as passionate as Coronation Street fans!
I found this article on how the fans of the show celebrate it. They are almost as passionate as Coronation Street fans!
A passion for Downton Abbey inspires viewing parties — but without butlers
Watching Downton Christina Haag, left, and Emily Bergl put steak and Guinness pie and Eton mess on the menu for their Downton Abbey viewing party.
Andrew Kropa/New York Times
NEW YORK To much of the civilized world, the “entail” sounds like some part of a cow that Mario Batali might serve alla Romana. But to aficionados of Downton Abbey, which recently began a second, highly anticipated season on PBS, it is “the great matter,” the root of all evil — and all delight.
The series was introduced last year to a North American audience of Anglophiles parched for a refreshment of costume-heavy British soap opera. (It’s been a long wait since the 1984 miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, and the recent sequel to Upstairs, Downstairs was widely deemed a bit bland.)
“All the DVD stores have been back-ordered for The Forsyte Saga just to fill in the gap,” said Julie Alter, 54, a casting director who grits her teeth at any mention of the entail, “that absurd act of legal theft,” as the mistress of Downton calls it, which forbade English women from inheriting property and forms the series’ main plot line.
See clips on YouTube
Indeed, passion for Downton runs so deep that many diehard fans greeted the new season as a reason for viewing parties. At the Manhattan home of Kelvin Dinkins Jr., 24, a graduate student at Columbia, friends gathered for finger sandwiches, properly made pots of tea and a drinking game: a slog of wine or beer every time the dowager countess (played by the scene-stealing Maggie Smith) delivers a withering one-liner. (Nearly falling out of a swivel chair and informed that it was invented by Thomas Jefferson, she snarled, “Why does every day involve a fight with an American?”)
Kate Lewis, 39, an executive director of human resources at Conde Nast Publications, took some licence with the time frame (1916) of the second season première to prepare an Edwardian feast. (King Edward VII died in 1910.)
“We thought of hiring a butler but decided we could wait on ourselves,” Lewis said. Guests enjoyed cream of parsnip soup, roast pork with chestnut glaze and sticky toffee pudding at her Brooklyn home.
“But I don’t know if we can ever watch the show together again,” she said. “There was a huge debate about Mr. Bates. I love him, but my friends think he’s kind of a wimp.”
Christina Haag, who wrote the book Come to the Edge about her relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., brought a selection of British cheeses to the party held by her friend, actress and singer Emily Bergl in Greenwich Village.
“I eat red meat about twice a year, but Downton has given me a craving for it,” Haag said, and Bergl obliged with steak and Guinness pie, a recipe from her Irish mother.
Dessert was Eton mess, a whipped-cream-and-berries homage to the prep school of Bergl’s English father, who grew up in a Downton-esque home, now owned by Rod Stewart. Bling was provided by napkin rings that resembled large diamonds, and Bergl burned a briquette of turf, which she poked in the fireplace, exclaiming, “Excuse me, lords and ladies, while I tend the fire.”
The concept of marriage based on dowry — a common custom at the turn of the century — grates on Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Lady Cora. “Much of my challenge is not screaming about what she has to accept,” McGovern said. “I find myself viscerally wound up a lot of the time, without realizing why. It’s because the lot of many women at that time was leading such idle, frustrating lives.”
The eminently crafty Martha Stewart, 70, does not prepare special props or foods for watching Downton, but the show did engender a recent craving for cucumber sandwiches on white bread.
“I’d never seen Season 1 because it wasn’t on at a convenient time,” she said. “But then I got sick so I locked my door, uploaded the entire series onto my iPad and watched all seven hours. I was so depressed when it was over and I had to wait for the next season, but whatever flu-ish symptoms I had were gone.”
For Sarah O’Holla, 29, a librarian at the Village Community School in Manhattan, “my British obsession started last year when I woke up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding,” she said.
A friend brought back a feathery fascinator headpiece, which she now wears for Downton viewing parties. The guests are other librarians and teachers who already had a tradition of reading Bronte novels together and formed what they called the Elegant Ladies’ Club (although the viewings now include one man). “We all have the same level of obsession about the show,” she said, “and we like any excuse to dress up.”
But the award for best costume might go to Patricia Morrison, 65, even though no one will see it. Morrison, widow of the rocker Jim Morrison and author of a memoir called Strange Days, watches Downton alone in bed, wearing sweat pants and a tiara. “I happen to have two,” she said. “Who knew you could get tiaras on eBay? But I’m deeply disappointed that nobody on Downton has worn one so far.”
She was also upset to learn that some bits of the show are broadcast only in Britain. “It’s edited here so that PBS can cram in Laura Linney to introduce it,” she said. “Lovely woman, lovely actress, but we don’t need her. More of Downton, please.”
New York Times News Service
The series was introduced last year to a North American audience of Anglophiles parched for a refreshment of costume-heavy British soap opera. (It’s been a long wait since the 1984 miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, and the recent sequel to Upstairs, Downstairs was widely deemed a bit bland.)
“All the DVD stores have been back-ordered for The Forsyte Saga just to fill in the gap,” said Julie Alter, 54, a casting director who grits her teeth at any mention of the entail, “that absurd act of legal theft,” as the mistress of Downton calls it, which forbade English women from inheriting property and forms the series’ main plot line.
See clips on YouTube
Indeed, passion for Downton runs so deep that many diehard fans greeted the new season as a reason for viewing parties. At the Manhattan home of Kelvin Dinkins Jr., 24, a graduate student at Columbia, friends gathered for finger sandwiches, properly made pots of tea and a drinking game: a slog of wine or beer every time the dowager countess (played by the scene-stealing Maggie Smith) delivers a withering one-liner. (Nearly falling out of a swivel chair and informed that it was invented by Thomas Jefferson, she snarled, “Why does every day involve a fight with an American?”)
Kate Lewis, 39, an executive director of human resources at Conde Nast Publications, took some licence with the time frame (1916) of the second season première to prepare an Edwardian feast. (King Edward VII died in 1910.)
“We thought of hiring a butler but decided we could wait on ourselves,” Lewis said. Guests enjoyed cream of parsnip soup, roast pork with chestnut glaze and sticky toffee pudding at her Brooklyn home.
“But I don’t know if we can ever watch the show together again,” she said. “There was a huge debate about Mr. Bates. I love him, but my friends think he’s kind of a wimp.”
Christina Haag, who wrote the book Come to the Edge about her relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., brought a selection of British cheeses to the party held by her friend, actress and singer Emily Bergl in Greenwich Village.
“I eat red meat about twice a year, but Downton has given me a craving for it,” Haag said, and Bergl obliged with steak and Guinness pie, a recipe from her Irish mother.
Dessert was Eton mess, a whipped-cream-and-berries homage to the prep school of Bergl’s English father, who grew up in a Downton-esque home, now owned by Rod Stewart. Bling was provided by napkin rings that resembled large diamonds, and Bergl burned a briquette of turf, which she poked in the fireplace, exclaiming, “Excuse me, lords and ladies, while I tend the fire.”
The concept of marriage based on dowry — a common custom at the turn of the century — grates on Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Lady Cora. “Much of my challenge is not screaming about what she has to accept,” McGovern said. “I find myself viscerally wound up a lot of the time, without realizing why. It’s because the lot of many women at that time was leading such idle, frustrating lives.”
The eminently crafty Martha Stewart, 70, does not prepare special props or foods for watching Downton, but the show did engender a recent craving for cucumber sandwiches on white bread.
“I’d never seen Season 1 because it wasn’t on at a convenient time,” she said. “But then I got sick so I locked my door, uploaded the entire series onto my iPad and watched all seven hours. I was so depressed when it was over and I had to wait for the next season, but whatever flu-ish symptoms I had were gone.”
For Sarah O’Holla, 29, a librarian at the Village Community School in Manhattan, “my British obsession started last year when I woke up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding,” she said.
A friend brought back a feathery fascinator headpiece, which she now wears for Downton viewing parties. The guests are other librarians and teachers who already had a tradition of reading Bronte novels together and formed what they called the Elegant Ladies’ Club (although the viewings now include one man). “We all have the same level of obsession about the show,” she said, “and we like any excuse to dress up.”
But the award for best costume might go to Patricia Morrison, 65, even though no one will see it. Morrison, widow of the rocker Jim Morrison and author of a memoir called Strange Days, watches Downton alone in bed, wearing sweat pants and a tiara. “I happen to have two,” she said. “Who knew you could get tiaras on eBay? But I’m deeply disappointed that nobody on Downton has worn one so far.”
She was also upset to learn that some bits of the show are broadcast only in Britain. “It’s edited here so that PBS can cram in Laura Linney to introduce it,” she said. “Lovely woman, lovely actress, but we don’t need her. More of Downton, please.”
New York Times News Service
Friday, 13 January 2012
Politicians shouldn’t decide what’s on library shelves, librarians should
National Post Jan 13, 2012 – 12:30 AM ET
As the City of Toronto’s 2012 budget gradually transforms into a kinder, gentler thing that even Adam Vaughan might be able to vote for, at least two things are clear. The first thing: The popular idea that Mayor Rob Ford and his committees are stocked with radical conservative ideologues has never been sillier. As my colleague Jonathan Goldsbie once observed of Mr. Ford, they don’t so much have ironclad political values as preferences.
To wit: Motions passed unanimously by Executive Committee on Thursday restored $1.9-million in funding for arts and culture; declared that three long-term care homes not be closed until “appropriate” replacement accommodations are found for their residents; earmarked $3.1-million in assessment growth windfall to offset the libraries’ budget crunch; and requested the Library Board not to make up the remaining $3.9-million with hours reductions.
The reprieve for the libraries came two days after councillor Cesar Palacio, a member of both Mr. Ford’s executive and the Library Board, launched a withering attack on the libraries’ collection of “popular” DVDs and magazines. He specifically called out Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Vogue and Playboy (to which the library maintains a single microfiche subscription, costing $278 per year).
To some extent, his complaint was cost-related: In 2010 the library spent $815,000 on “popular” magazines — examples include Scientific American, The Economist and Chatelaine, says library spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins. And it spent $885,400 on “popular” DVDs, which can range from blockbusters like Avatar to documentaries like Freakonomics. Such DVDs account for 9% of the libraries’ total circulation.
“While having a Blockbuster within our Library System may be nice to have, I believe my choice and the choice of Torontonians is clear,” he said in the release.
Well, clearly not, or people wouldn’t be borrowing all those DVDs.
There is a valid debate here: If it comes down to a choice, is it more important to maintain current library hours or not to touch the collection as it currently stands? Library Board chair Paul Ainslie said Thursday that he believes the DVD collection is integral; board member and councillor Jaye Robinson suggested movies could be a legitimate target in lean times. Both are reasonable positions.
Mr. Palacio’s release, on the other hand, argued that popular magazines and DVDs “are not even peripherally related to literacy and library purposes.”
When it comes to magazines, he’s just out to lunch. What kind of library doesn’t stock Chatelaine on principle? Or Seventeen or Vogue or Us Weekly, for that matter? If the goal of libraries is to promote reading and literacy, wouldn’t it make more sense to cancel the “popular” titles last, rather than first? And if you did want to wage war on trash, why would you stop at magazines? Why not burn all the Jackie Collins?
Presumably if a library was on fire, your average librarian would save the books first. But once you move beyond which media libraries should stock and start debating individual titles, you get hopelessly bogged down in irreconcilable personal prejudices. One man’s turd is another man’s classic.
Admittedly, I am somewhat appalled to learn that Toronto’s libraries maintain 46 DVD copies of the 2006 Matthew McConaughey vehicle Failure to Launch, but just a single VHS copy of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s 1992 Canadian masterpiece Léolo, about a Montreal boy’s transcendental escape from and descent into mental illness. I am even more appalled that, as I write this, 27 copies of Failure to Launch are out of the library. But who the hell am I to tell people to watch a tough, subtitled art film from Quebec instead of a breezy rom-com? Or to read Margaret Atwood instead of Stephen King, or Harper’s instead of Entertainment Weekly?
It’s one thing to demand the libraries outsource their cleaning, or close a little-used branch, or violently weed out inefficiencies. I’m all for it. But to criticize a repository of free culture for lending out ever more things every year that people want to read, watch and listen to is to punish success. Grown-up societies trust the experts in charge of their important, successful institutions. In Toronto, too many of us still just hurl our preferences at each other and call it virtue.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Toronto Type Books’ video shows the Joy of Books, goes viral
Check out this video!
By Raju Mudhar Entertainment Reporter, Toronto Star
Toronto’s Type Books is making a splash on the web with its fun stop-motion video entitled The Joy of Books.
A clever and beautifully shot short piece, the video imagines what happens after the bookstore closes. With books dancing, reading each other and switching around in a domino-like effect, it’s a cute message about the tactile joy of enjoy a book. Shot in a stop-motion format, each small movement of the books had to be moved by hand. The production clearly took some time and the YouTube posting thanks several volunteers who all helped make the cool visual effects in the video.
The description also makes mention of an earlier video called Organizing the Book Shelf, which looks like it served as a test for the larger scale second video.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
How Being Erica took Product Integration Too Far
CBC
Wonder what Being Erica's Erin Karpluk is trying to sell us here?
Being Erica has been circulating well in my library, especially for those who are in their teens and early twenties and female. I never got into it and found the time shifting tedious (I am not a lover of fantasy anyway). I am also not a member of the target demographic.
See below an article in the National Post about product placement. As mentioned, I also found the neverending commercials to submit a pizza eating video annoying and troubling.
This was the year I stopped watching Being Erica. Technically, 2011 may be the year everyone stopped watching the quirky CBC dramedy, as the show just concluded its fourth and potentially final season, with all the storylines tied up in a tearful Christmas bow.
Or so I hear — I didn’t actually make it to the finale. I broke up with Erica, my TV BFF, because she tried way too hard to sell me a car.
The Toronto-set program is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, but I’d never miss an episode, drawn in by Erin Karpluk as an underachieving-yet-loveable thirtysomething who, over time, manages to turn her regret-filled life around with the help of a therapist that allows her to time travel. (What’s not to love?)
It’s charming, critically praised, and has done well internationally, with distribution in 160 countries and plans in the works for U.S. and U.K. versions.
Perhaps all the success went to its head, though. The product placement, a.k.a. “branded entertainment,” became obvious in the third season, when Erica’s friend and business partner, Julianne, bought a car that got a lot of enthusiastic screen time — a development that also happened to earn numerous marketing accolades.
The proverbial last straw, though, came with the fourth season’s eighth episode, which begins with Erica (inexplicably) test-driving a car with Julianne. There’s a salesman in the back seat extolling the virtues of the vehicle. Here’s some dialogue:
Sales guy OK, time for the coolest feature — let’s park between those two [closely spaced] cars.
Erica What? There? That’s a little bit tight. I kinda suck at parallel parking.
Sales guy Trust me, so do I, which is why the Focus can parallel park itself!
Erica No way.
Sales guy Way.
I didn’t even finish watching the episode.
The lesson here is one I hope TV’s creators will take to heart, and it is this: Having your quirky indie show characters speak ad copy will render your program unwatchable.
I’m no fool. I know that shows need sponsors. I know about torrents and PVRs and budget cuts. But how are viewers supposed to remain loyal to characters who will so blatantly trade our affection for a dollar?
None of this is new, of course. Since E.T. ate his first Reese’s Piece in 1982, marketers have been devising new and creative ways to get ad messages out of the commercial-break ghetto. It’s now a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. We know American Idol is Coke and The X Factor is Pepsi based on the logos on the judges’ tables. We know Jack Bauer drove a Ford in 24, a show in which Cisco Systems had a supporting role in saving the world.
Some shows can get away with the integration of brand and story — as opposed to simple placement — that Being Erica attempted so jarringly. 30 Rock is frequently cited as an example, as its spoof context allows for brand mentions that serve both the advertiser (by communicating favourable messages about the product) and the audience (by being funny), as in this scene in an early episode where Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) brings up product integration to Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit):
Jack Look, I know how this sounds.
Liz No, come on, Jack. We’re not doing that. We’re not compromising the integrity of the show to sell —
Pete Wow. This is Diet Snapple?
Liz I know, it tastes just like regular Snapple, doesn’t it?
It’s not uncontroversial, but at least it’s meta, and it works here. Similarly, Seinfeld’s classic “Junior Mints” episode, in which Kramer drops a candy into the open chest of a man undergoing surgery, may not even register as paid placement, so natural was the mint-driven action in the context of that show.
Being Erica, unfortunately, does not have the advantage of being a cynical comedy or an action show where product placement heightens the camp (oh hello there, Jack Bauer). Quite the opposite, it’s an earnest show on a public broadcaster about being your best self.
Not everyone can pull off explicit product integration, and shows like this one should think twice before trying.
When the U.K. version comes out, I plan to watch it, but I can only hope that Erica’s British counterpart knows how to parallel park.
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
New Canadian Television Series - Bomb Girls
I am very excited to see that a new Canadian television mini series has been developed. Bomb Girls will present an important part of World War II history - the role of women in the Canadian war effort on the home front. Women were able to take on roles that had not been available to them before. I also have a special interest in this since I worked for many years at the Ajax Public Library. At the beginning of World War II, a munitions factory was built where the Town of Ajax is today. The Town sprang up to accommodate the workers and many stayed after the War.
I know that this will be popular at my library when it comes out in DVD. The British series Land Girls goes out very well so it will be nice to have a Canadian version of the time to complement it.
(From the T.V., Eh website)
Global’s commitment to creating powerful original dramas continues with the prime time debut of its new six-part series, Bomb Girls. Premiering Wednesday, January 4 – 8pm ET/PT, the drama profiles the life-altering experiences of five brave Canadian women who risk their lives working in a munitions factory during the Second World War.
“What I love about Bomb Girls is the unique perspective it offers on the constant conflicts and difficult personal choices these women faced in such a high-stakes environment,” said Barbara Williams, Senior Vice-President, Content, Shaw Media. “How did their lives change so profoundly? Why did it all matter so much? Bomb Girls brings the remarkable journey to life.”
The series entertains viewers with a wartime persona that is rarely acknowledged yet played an integral role in the country’s rich history; it reveals the necessity of the ‘bomb girl’ along with her significance. Leading the ensemble cast is legendary Oscar® nominee Meg Tilly (Agnes of God, The Big Chill), who makes her return to network television after 18 years, taking on the role of Lorna Corbett, the Victory Munitions factory supervisor.
Joining Meg Tilly are Jodi Balfour (The Sinking of the Laconia) as free-wheeling socialite-turned-bomb girl Gladys Witham; Charlotte Hegele (Murdoch Mysteries) as wide-eyed preacher’s daughter Kate Andrews; Ali Liebert (Hellcats) as tough-talking Prairie girl Betty McRae; and Anastasia Philips (Skins) as kind-natured Vera Burr. Commissioned by Shaw Media’s original content team, the series is produced by Muse Entertainment and Back Alley Films.
The series also stars Antonio Cupo (L’Ombra del destino) as Italian-born factory worker Marco Moretti; Sebastian Pigott (Being Erica) as Gladys’ fiancé James Dunn; and Peter Outerbridge (ReGenesis) as Lorna’s husband Bob Corbett.
This gripping dramatic series set on the Canadian home front tells the remarkable stories of the women who risked everything building bombs for the Allied forces fighting on the European front. Bomb Girls delves into the lives of these exceptional women from all walks of life – peers, friends and rivals – who find themselves changed profoundly as they are liberated from their home and social restrictions to join the work force for the first time and face previously unimaginable risks in the process.
Shot on location in Toronto, Bomb Girls is executive produced by Muse Entertainment’s Michael Prupas (The Kennedys, Pillars of the Earth), along with Back Alley Films’ Janis Lundman (Durham County) and Adrienne Mitchell (Durham County). Mitchell also serves as co-showrunner along with Michael MacLennan (Flashpoint, Queer as Folk) who is executive producer and serves as the series’ head writer.
I know that this will be popular at my library when it comes out in DVD. The British series Land Girls goes out very well so it will be nice to have a Canadian version of the time to complement it.
(From the T.V., Eh website)
Global’s commitment to creating powerful original dramas continues with the prime time debut of its new six-part series, Bomb Girls. Premiering Wednesday, January 4 – 8pm ET/PT, the drama profiles the life-altering experiences of five brave Canadian women who risk their lives working in a munitions factory during the Second World War.
“What I love about Bomb Girls is the unique perspective it offers on the constant conflicts and difficult personal choices these women faced in such a high-stakes environment,” said Barbara Williams, Senior Vice-President, Content, Shaw Media. “How did their lives change so profoundly? Why did it all matter so much? Bomb Girls brings the remarkable journey to life.”
The series entertains viewers with a wartime persona that is rarely acknowledged yet played an integral role in the country’s rich history; it reveals the necessity of the ‘bomb girl’ along with her significance. Leading the ensemble cast is legendary Oscar® nominee Meg Tilly (Agnes of God, The Big Chill), who makes her return to network television after 18 years, taking on the role of Lorna Corbett, the Victory Munitions factory supervisor.
Joining Meg Tilly are Jodi Balfour (The Sinking of the Laconia) as free-wheeling socialite-turned-bomb girl Gladys Witham; Charlotte Hegele (Murdoch Mysteries) as wide-eyed preacher’s daughter Kate Andrews; Ali Liebert (Hellcats) as tough-talking Prairie girl Betty McRae; and Anastasia Philips (Skins) as kind-natured Vera Burr. Commissioned by Shaw Media’s original content team, the series is produced by Muse Entertainment and Back Alley Films.
The series also stars Antonio Cupo (L’Ombra del destino) as Italian-born factory worker Marco Moretti; Sebastian Pigott (Being Erica) as Gladys’ fiancé James Dunn; and Peter Outerbridge (ReGenesis) as Lorna’s husband Bob Corbett.
This gripping dramatic series set on the Canadian home front tells the remarkable stories of the women who risked everything building bombs for the Allied forces fighting on the European front. Bomb Girls delves into the lives of these exceptional women from all walks of life – peers, friends and rivals – who find themselves changed profoundly as they are liberated from their home and social restrictions to join the work force for the first time and face previously unimaginable risks in the process.
Shot on location in Toronto, Bomb Girls is executive produced by Muse Entertainment’s Michael Prupas (The Kennedys, Pillars of the Earth), along with Back Alley Films’ Janis Lundman (Durham County) and Adrienne Mitchell (Durham County). Mitchell also serves as co-showrunner along with Michael MacLennan (Flashpoint, Queer as Folk) who is executive producer and serves as the series’ head writer.
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