4B — Thursday, February 25, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By ALEX INTNER
Daily Arts Writer
The musical TV genre has
experienced a massive creative
growth recently. The relaunch of
the genre started out with “Glee”
in 2009, which used pop songs
to tell its story. The show was a
massive success for FOX in its
first season, but it never really
found an ability to tell its story
through song. Then “Smash”
arrived onto the scene, bringing
in a mix of contemporary pop
and original content. The show
was touted as the next big hit by
NBC when it premiered, but it
never connected with the public,
not lasting past its second season.
Then along came “Galavant” and
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which
have tiny viewerships, but are
two of the best out there right
now.
This leads to the question:
is there something inherently
limiting, from an audience per-
spective, about musical television
shows? If so, that’s really disap-
pointing, because both “Gala-
vant” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”
are brilliantly inventive, using
their songs to tell their story in
new ways.
Something astonishing hap-
pened during the second season
of “Galavant.” The show elevated
itself from a cheap musical I’d
watch out of respect for the
format to something fun and
unique. Most of that change
came from the music itself. In the
first season, the songs told jokes,
but they didn’t lead anywhere
for the stories or the characters.
Composer Alan Menken (who
wrote the music for many of
Disney’s ’90s musicals) expanded
the scope of the songs, using
them to address both humor and
character growth. In the second
season, the show lost its fear of
advancing its characters through
song. A moment in the show’s
finale comes to mind. King
Richard (Timothy Omundson,
“Psych”) meets his “inner-child”
in a song addressing his hopes
and fears. He sings: “Will my
star ever rise? / Will my life ever
change? / Am I destined to be
achievement-free forever?” This
type of self-reflection through
song is something the show
would never have attempted in
its first season, and shows a lot of
growth on the show’s part.
Some of the songs end up
in full-fledged parody. A song
where Galavant (Joshua Sasse,
“The Neighbors”) tries to set the
mood for a date between Richard
and Roberta (Clare Foster, “The
Bill”) reminds me of a classic
“Little Mermaid” tune, though
its refrain of “Maybe you won’t
die alone” is slightly different
from “Kiss the Girl.” And one
scene involving Richard and
Roberta sharing the story of first
sexual encounter to their zombie
army features a similar tune to
“Grease” ’s “Summer Nights,”
complete with zombie grunts
filling for in for the greasers’
responses.
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is also
pushing the musical-comedy
boundary, using music to deal
with some of the show’s deeper
themes surrounding mental ill-
ness. During the series, there are
a few moments where Rebecca
(Rachel Bloom, “Fuck Me Ray
Bradbury”), the show’s main
character who moves to West
Covina, CA to follow her former
summer-camp boyfriend Josh
Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III,
“Hostages”), is upset because of
something Josh did, and each of
these moments features a song.
The first, “Sexy French Depres-
sion,” puts Rebecca’s feelings
front and center with a scene that
uses berets and a black and white
aesthetic. The second, from the
latest episode, when Rebecca’s
lies catch up to her and push Josh
away, features Rebecca singing
“You ruined everything, you
stupid bitch / You’re just a lying
little bitch who ruins things and
wants the world to burn.” It’s
heartbreaking to watch her bash
herself like this, but it’s a beauti-
ful way to illustrate the impact of
the moment.
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” also
does something the best musi-
cals do: use its music to address
character relationships. In a
scene from earlier in the season,
Josh addresses Rebecca after a
moment of contention between
her and the rest of the group, and
the two share a reprise of “West
Covina” where the two affirm
their friendship. It’s a moment
that only a musical could do, put-
ting two voices in tight harmony.
But I don’t want to discount
the success of live musical
broadcasts from NBC and FOX,
which have been big fat hits for
the networks, and pretty damn
good as well. Those events are
better able to draw an audience
because the networks can push
them as happening live. They
also utilize big industry names
who probably wouldn’t commit
to a full series.
Still, despite all the warm
critical reception of these new
musicals, neither of the continu-
ing series is likely to see another
year. “Galavant” ’s big supporter,
Paul Lee, was just fired from
his position as ABC’s President
of Entertainment, and the rat-
ings for its recent run were just
abysmal. And less than a million
people watched the premiere
of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” with
little growth in DVR views. That
signifies one of two things: either
viewers didn’t find the show or
just outright rejected it.
That’s such a sad thing for me.
People will watch the live broad-
casts of known musicals, but they
either can’t find or won’t watch
the weekly series. This is an
unfortunate situation, because
both the shows are using songs
to tell stories in ways that other
series just can’t. They’re explor-
ing new ways of advancing story
and character through their orig-
inal music, and it’s a shame that
they probably won’t be able to tell
these stories for much longer.
TV NOTEBOOK
EPISODE REVIEW
This season of “Shameless”
launches the Gallagher family
into new
territory.
The family’s
dynamic has
always been
at the core of
the show, but
it approaches
a turning
point now
that the kids
are grown
up (with
the exception of Liam). Fiona
(Emmy Rossum, “The Day After
Tomorrow”) must cope with
her siblings’ resistance to being
told what to do, and she seems to
lose her sense of purpose in the
transition.
The episode “Pimp’s
Paradise” shows the calm before
the storm. After getting evicted
when their house is foreclosed,
the Gallaghers navigate a series
of hurdles to regain ownership of
their home. They hope to return
to a sense of normalcy, when
their lives aren’t getting torn
apart by drugs, jail or romantic
strife.
This is normalcy for the
Gallaghers: Liam getting
lice, Debbie (Emma Kenney,
“Epic”) seducing her employer
recovering from cancer,
Lip (Jeremy Allen White,
“Afterschool”) getting his
professor fired after nude
pictures of her are leaked from
his phone and Carl (Ethan
Cutosky, “The Unborn”) using
his (likely) drug money to pimp
out their house with a slide and
DJ booth.
As the family’s individual
subplots drift further apart
from one another, the episode
struggles to reincorporate the
driving element of the show’s
drama: Frank (William H. Macy,
“Fargo”), the only character
who never changes. His attempt
to reclaim his status as head of
the household prompts Fiona to
throw in the towel and move in
with Sean (Dermot Mulroney,
“The Grey”). With Fiona’s
history of doomed relationships
and Frank’s pattern of flighty
opportunism, another upheaval
is bound to hit soon.
- SHIR AVINADAV
SHOWTIME
B-
Shameless
Season 6,
Episode 7
Sundays
at 9 p.m.
Showtime
TV musicals and you
D
ear Gillian,
Sometimes it feels
like
I’m
constantly
‘looking for love.’ However, I have
lost
sight
of
what
that truly
means. In
this
day
filled with
Tinder,
hookup
culture
and
increased
sexuality,
how
can
I look for
love with all this sex in the way?
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t
turn down the opportunity for
sex but I often feels like it gets in
the way of finding a relationship.
I’ve never been good at finding
the love part, and the sex part
just seems to complicate it for
me. I desire both but one seems
like an immediate gratification
and the other seems like exit
out of a long complicated maze.
Please send me advice on how to
navigate between desire for sex
and longing for love. Are they
mutually exclusive? Is it possible
to be on the hunt for sex and find
love along the way? Or do I have
this whole thing upside down?
Please help.
— Lovelorn and Lonely
Dear Lovelorn and Lonely,
People
have
been
sitting
around musing on the topic of
what love and sex do to and for
each other since Eryximachus
proposed that for the post-
feast entertainment in Plato’s
“Symposium,” everyone should
belt out a little oration in praise
of Eros, the god of love. This
wine-fueled series of exegeses
on the subject yielded some
thought-provoking
opinions
that have stood the test of time.
But they were so wide-ranging
that the only conclusion from
them is that there is no coherent
consensus on the topic, one
which is destined to dominate
everyone’s little black book of
eternal mysteries of human
existence.
Plato — well, the words of the
prophetess
Diotima
through
Socrates’ speech — posits that
the erotic desire of romantic
love cannot be satisfied by sex
and is really an existential
yearning to transcend our own
beings and mortality. Exactly
what you have in mind every
time you bring someone home,
right?
Then there’s Aristophanes’
creation myth of primordial
beings with two bodies in one
before they were split in half
by the gods, leaving a world
of “individuals” trying to fuse
back together with their other
halves. This stands now, 2500
years later, as not only one of
the most striking metaphors on
the topic, but also as a bountiful
source of pickup lines at Rick’s.
The mystery was not solved
by Xenophon’s response to Plato
(also titled “Symposium”), nor
in the many Symposia since.
Heaven knows that in the
Symposium held at my house
last year featuring History Prof.
David Halperin’s students in
togas, the love/sex mystery was
hopelessly
compounded
and
shrouded in a dense enigmatic
fog that, for many of us, has yet
to lift.
A
little
later,
Aristotle
maintains
in
his
“Prior
Analytics” that erotic desire is
actually more a desire for love
than it is a desire for sexual
intercourse.
If
Aristotle’s
on to something and love is
actually the aim of sex, why is
it often so detached and void of
emotion or commitment? And if
it’s not for love, what is it for?
That’s the question Halperin
will take up in a forthcoming
article “What is Sex For?” in
which he will attempt to tie this
Aristotelian paradox into the
no-less-mysterious topics of gay
bathhouses and Adele.
Since figuring out what sex is
for seems doomed, do we have
a better chance with love? We
turn to essayist Susan Sontag,
who managed to demystify the
art of photography and then
took on the question what is
love for. “We ask everything of
love. We ask it to be anarchic.
We ask it to be the glue that
holds the family together, that
allows society to be orderly
and allows all kinds of material
processes to be transmitted
from one generation to another.
But I think that the connection
between love and sex is very
mysterious.”
Thanks
a
lot.
Sontag
continues:
“Part
of
the modern ideology of love
is to assume that love and sex
always go together. They can,
I suppose, but I think rather
to the detriment of either one
or the other. And probably the
greatest problem for human
beings is that they just don’t.”
Well, Lovelorn, at least you’re in
good company.
But
let’s
move
up
from
philosophy and intellectualism
to the arts, which, I believe,
are better at eternal mysteries.
There’s a film from 1971 called
“Carnal
Knowledge,”
from
the Jules Feiffer novel, in
which Jack Nicholson and Art
Garfunkel meet as freshmen
roommates at Amherst. In terms
of your letter, LL, Nicholson’s
character can be said to be sex
and Garfunkel’s, love. The film
follows them through their
lives, and although there are
many lovely insights and some
great lines, by the end, the
question of which one fared
better is … you guessed it, a
mystery.
Some have weighed in on the
relative merits of love and sex,
elevating one above the other.
Plato and Aristotle saw love as
the higher pursuit. Freud saw
sex is primary, driving virtually
everything we do, and love as
just one of many constructs we
use to get more sex. In her novel
“Love,” Toni Morrison explored
infatuation, a kind of half-sex-
half-love minotaur:
“Do
they
still
call
it
infatuation? That magic ax that
chops away the world in one
blow, leaving only the couple
standing
there
trembling?
Whatever they call it, it leaps
over anything, takes the biggest
chair, the largest slice, rules
the ground wherever it walks,
from a mansion to a swamp, and
its selfishness is its beauty ...
People with no imagination feed
it with sex — the clown of love.
They don’t know the real kinds,
the better kinds, where losses
are cut and everybody benefits.
It takes a certain intelligence to
love like that — softly, without
props.”
Looking at history, I don’t
think our world of dating sites,
apps and i-things has yielded
an era of more sex and less love.
But I do think they have made
finding and losing sex and love
more impersonal and reduced
our accountability for how we
carry ourselves in doing so.
This may be pushing sex and
romantic love further from each
other and I think this is what
you are sensing, Lovelorn.
Yet there’s no correct recipe
for finding genuine love, as
Stendahl illustrates in his novel
“The Red and the Black,” which
locates love in the spontaneity
of the moment and not the
strategic love games of jealousy,
drama and roles.
So
with
no
formula
or
equation for solving for love
with the variable of sex, I hope
I’ve been able to prove you are
not alone in feeling your way
through the complicated maze
of yours. No, the two pursuits
are not mutually exclusive, but
no one’s been able to calculate a
correlation coefficient.
Send an email to deargillian@
michigandaily.com or anonymously
here describing a quandary about
love, relationships, existence or
their opposites. Gillian will attempt
to summon the wisdom of the arts
(literary, visual, performing) to
soothe your troubled soul. We may
publish your letter in the biweekly
column with your first name (or
penname). Submissions should
be 250 words or fewer and may
be edited prior to publication.
CULTURAL CURES COLUMN
I’m looking for love,
but just finding sex
GILLIAN
JAKAB
By RACHEL RICHARDSON
Daily Arts Writer
During
the
classical
film
era, theorists grappled over
the importance of shooting on
location. Those who encouraged
it claimed that it evoked a layer
of depth unmatched by the
sentiments the actors produced
when recording on a sound stage.
This was extremely critical for
“Rome, Open City,” where the
suffering emitted by the people
lining the decimated streets of
Italy constantly reminded the
actors of the brokenness their
characters felt and enhanced the
emotional authenticity. Others
argued that it didn’t matter
where the film was shot as long
as the director could convince
his audience that the story took
place in the exact location that
he told them it did. Nowadays,
few directors prioritize filming
on-site, as audiences willingly
accept
the
idea
of
feigned
locations.
To
disguise
one
city
as
another,
directors
carefully
select
indistinguishable
areas
to shoot their films in addition
to
employing
other
creative
techniques. For example, “The
5th Wave” is set in Cincinnati,
Ohio, yet it was shot in Macon,
Georgia
though
it’s
almost
impossible to tell since the tall
trees and dirt covered ground
make
the
woodland
setting
appear like the forest you’d
expect to see in Ohio. There’s also
a clever shot of a sign indicating
how many miles the heroine
must travel until she reaches
the Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base, which is located in Dayton,
Ohio. So, although the movie
itself was far from believable, I
was thoroughly convinced that
the action happened in the exact
location that I was informed it
did.
However, for Ohio residents,
this effect may not have been
achieved. To locals, it doesn’t
matter how average the forest, or
how many cutaways to city limit
signs the director uses, they will
always be able to discern that it’s
their city. My familiarity with
Grand
Rapids
unfortunately
led to a state of temporarily
disillusionment.
I
vividly
remember the morning I learned
that Jessie Eisenberg and Jason
Segel were downtown shooting
“The End of the Tour.” In that
moment, I felt a sense of pride
knowing that my hometown was
going to be featured on the big
screen. Sadly, this exhilaration
subsided once I actually watched
the film.
Initially,
it
was
exciting
to hear the little voice in my
head
exclaim
“I’ve
walked
past that” (the office building
at 50 Monroe Avenue), “I’ve
seen
that
restaurant,”
“I’ve
driven on that stretch of I-196”
and “I think I’ve actually been
inside that building.” But, this
also emphasized that the story
isn’t
actually
unfolding
in
Bloomington, Illinois. Now this is
not to say that I didn’t thoroughly
enjoy “The End of the Tour,” just
that I became frustrated with its
lack of genuineness.
With a much bigger production,
“Batman V Superman: Dawn
of Justice,” having been shot in
Detroit, it will be interesting to
see if Michiganders will notice
any familiar buildings or streets.
Typically,
the
background
tends to lose its significance
in films dominated by special
effects,
computer
graphics
and
fight
scenes
whereas
in
calmer,
narrative-driven
features such as “Tour,” the
characters’ interaction with their
environment is salient.
While in the early days of
cinema, all elements equally
determined a film’s success,
contemporary
Hollywood
heavily depends on acting and
post production work. Audiences
have come to rely on movies for
a
complete
manipulation
of
reality, not a beautiful recreation
of it. Thus, the importance
of
on-location
shooting
has
sadly
diminished.
But
this
strategy cannot be completely
neglected, especially when its
absence can prevent the viewer
from
completely
engrossing
themselves in the film.
FILM NOTEBOOK
Location, location ...
WARNER BROS.
“The People Mover is even worse than I thought.”