The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
BUA
From page 5
the air hung with Chinese lan-
terns; wool-capped graffiti
writers slouching in the train
yard, wielding canisters of spray
paint.
"Istarted paintingthingsthat
people told me not to paint," Bua
said. "I'm painting MCs and b-
boys and break dancers and
graffiti writers. People asked,
'What the hell you painting that.
for? No one cares about that!' I
said, 'I hear you, I respect that,
but I'm a do what I wanna do."'
He's recently started to paint
pimps and hustlers, people from
the neighborhood. "They're
city-dwellers. They're the peo-
ple who are forgotten by the
mainstream," Buasaid. "They're
the people who made New York
what it was, and they're just as
important, just as much a part of
the New York City skyline as the
Brooklyn Bridge or the Empire
State Building."
The tradition of urban art is
not necessarily about hip hop
and jagged, skyscraper-scarred
landscapes. It's about the lower
class, about the images of the
people.
PENN
From page 5
ly the greater picture here is
the size of his courage and his
will, and how, those things tell
me that if he was brave enough
to justify it for him, then that's
enough for me."
"McCandless's journey," he
explained, "while very dramatic
and in some ways reckless was
nonetheless so brave and so
clear that there's inspiration to
be gotten out of that."
At 141 introspective minutes,
the movie feels markedly per-
sonal, but that may be more in
the completed product than it
was in the production. Though
Penn has a long connection to
this material - he was in touch
with McCandless's family for
nearly 10 years before they
finally decided to let him make
the movie - he said its inner-
most thematic value rests pri-
marily within a generation not
his own.
"For a 47-year-old at this
point who read this book when
tIwas a little closer to the magic
years of life," he said, filming
the movie mostly made him
become frustrated with what
he called the "lack of activism"
amongyoung people who arrive
at McCandless's suspicion of
establishment and social expec-
tation.
Asked what he hoped a
"I paint the underclass, like
Rembrandt or Bruegel. They
painted the poor people of their
culture, and those are the kind
of people I emulate, too," Bua
said. "I like to paint the heroes
of my day and the people I grew
up around next to this welfare
hotel."
Bua's life in this environ-
ment created the experiences
he would draw upon as an art-
ist. "It was just this cesspool of
drug dealers and crazy people.
But these are the people that I
say, 'Hey, this is what gave New
York City its flavor,' " he said.
Bua moves urban art in new
ways, connecting Rembrandt
and graffiti in the same way art
unites people.
"I think that art is tremen-
dously powerful, and it can
move masses. When you say
a picture speaks a thousand
words, it really speaks more
than that to me," he said. "Art
and hip hop are about gratitude
and hope and bringing together
people from all walks of life."
Bua's got the booming sub-
woofers behind him, shaking it
up, lending that bounce to the
bass player, to the graffiti writer
in the train docks and to that
artist on the streets.
younger generation would take
away from the film, Penn, in
his famous dead tone, said sim-
ply "whatever they want." But
as his eager camera lingers on
the movie's stunning expans-
es of desert, forest and other
landscapes, most of which he
said were chosen for the "360-
degree freedom" they provided
the production, Penn's belief in
Audiences
can take away
'whatever they
want. Lucid.
Chris's journey and its revela-
tions is clear.
"I think there's an enormous
value to what he did, in that in
his case, the triumph was not
necessarily hope and survival,"
he said. "The big thing is that
he rebuilt himself." The movie,
whatever its stark destination,
is ultimately about "the pursuit
of freedom - freedom on what-
ever terms each person who
sees the movie will find on their
own."
So if the deeply personal
experience a movie as existen-
tial as "Into the Wild" evokes is
not his, Penn said, he hopes it's
his audience's.
AMR%
Aft
o
<<y
,;
Y OF NBC
Its last hurrah may not equal "Seinfeld," but "Scrubs" will surely be missed.
NO 'Scrubs' on this sitcom
By ALEX ERIKSON
Daily Arts Writer
When "Scrubs" has its season
premiere tonight on NBC, it will
mark the start to the unfortunate
end of one of the most ground-
breaking sitcoms ever on televi-
sion.
The show is
the first single- SCrubS
camera comedy.
- that means no Thursdays at
live studio audi- 9:30 p.m.
ence, no laugh NBC
track - and it
breaks almost
every other rule of the half-hour
comedy. There's a recurrent
voice-over of the main characters'
thoughts, and dramatic plot points
seep into nearly every episode. It
changed the way character can
function.in primetime comedy.
When the show leaves the air,
its legacy will not. At this point,
the comedic style can almost be
considered old school, especially
true in the wake of witty, hour-
long dramedies like "Chuck" and
"House." The show has found a
happy medium between popu-
lar (and serious) hospital dramas
"ER" and "Grey's Anatomy" with
the quirky, lovable smile of Dr.
John Dorian (Zach Braff, "Garden
State").
That might seem unlikely for a
show that's clearly a comedy, but
this is in no way a typical sitcom.
Even with an extensive cast of
essential characters - JD, Turk,
Dr. Cox, Kelso, Elliot, Carla, Ted
and high-fiving womanizer The
Tod - the show's players are
developed more deeplythan those
on any other sitcom on televi-
sion. Where most are relatively
stagnant, on "Scrubs" each of the
multitude of characters has gone
through significant transforma-
tion over the course of seven
years. The fact that even the less
important characters go through
considerable changes was vision-
ary when the show first aired and
has changed the way we conceive
TV comedy.
Without these characters,
much of the comedywouldbe lost.
The repartee between J.D. and
the janitor (who is never actually
given a name) is often the subject
of entire episode, like when the
janitor devises an elaborate lie
about a janitorial conference so he
can put J.D. in yet another uncom=
fortable situation, or "get" J.D.Per
usual, though, the janitor's plan
backfires and he ends up "getting"
himself.
Elliot's metamorphosis, from
scared Connecticut rich-girl
intern to ass-kicking hot doc-
tor revealed levels of character
unknown to comedies of its gen-
eration. Viewers watched as J.D.
went from an overwhelmed intern
to a slightly less frazzled resident
to finally being comfortable with
himself as Dr. Cox's right-hand
attending physician. Even Turk
transforms from a self-confident
fratboy surgeon to a concerned
and caring father. What's so amaz-
ing about "Scrubs" is that each of
these dramatic transformations
happened within a genuinely
funny half-hour comedy. 4
"Scrubs" has also had a revolv-
ing door of well-known guest
stars, who individually have
brought a pair of main characters
closer together. When Michael J.
Fox played an OCD, double spe-
cialty dream doc, J.D. struggled
with the reality of not yet finding
a mentor.
Kelso and Dr. Cox grew closer
over a shared hatred of a bub-
bly character played by Heather
Graham. (That episode produced
the timeless quote "people are
bastard-coated bastards with bas-
Amazing that
the show 's
innovation
hasn't dried out.
tard fillings.") And Dr. Cox and
Jordan's strange relationship was
introduced with the appearance
of Heather Locklear as a sexy
drug rep.
It's also impressive that as the
show enters its final season it
hasn't been squeezed dry of the
innovation that first made it so
appealing. The characters are as
surprising as ever, and the come-
dic edge is still fresh enough to
be relevant in today's television.
It begins tonight poised to end
with the same panache as when it
began.
Thursday, October 25, 2007 - 3B
The
odd
couple
t was going to happen. Some-
one with a "media" column is
bound to throw his lot into the
tired "blogs as journalism" debate,
and usually it's a pro-blog stance.
The debate's
trademark,
though, is typi-
cal of main- q
stream analysis:
a black-and-
white break-
down of an issue
that deserves a ANDREW
wider perspec- SARGUS
tive. Blogs are KLEIN
sensational,
but most have no credibility, and
old-guard journalists don't trust
change and can't acceptblogging as
a legitimate purveyor of news.
Whatever. Both sides have their
narratives, and neither lends itself
to understanding how blogs and
newspapers operate in the shadows
of the other.
The best blogs and Web maga-
zines typically are aggregators. At
least part of their content involves
accumulating the headlines and
stories from major newspapers
and magazines - and analyzing
them. Slate.com will email you a
daily synopsis of front-page cover-
age from The New York Times, The
Washington Post, USA Today, The
Wall Street Journal and the L.A.
Times. But aggregation is not lim-
ited to the online world. Nearly half
the world receives its news from
The Associated Press. The Michi-
gan Daily, as well the thousands of
AP subscribers, run AP stories and
photos covering relevant news. The
Daily also runs stories from The
New York Times's front page.
While not nearly as expansive as
onlineaggregation,newspapers doa
fair amount of aggregating to cover
their bases. At the recent United
Auto Workers strike at the Willow
Run Powertrain facility in Ypsi-
lanti, the Daily ran an AP cover of
the strike, since it wasn't very local
to Ann Arbor and the AP had more
See KLEIN, Page 4B
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