Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Upstart Crow: “Go On and I Will Follow”

Just when I thought writer Ben Elton had become totally predictable, he wrote an episode that hit me in the stomach. Not literally, of course, but metaphorically. And this reaction was from an episode I saw before the recent health crisis.

¡Feliz Día del Padre!

Happy Father's Day to all my readers!

I hope you all are able to enjoy this holiday with your own fathers.

My father, unfortunately, is no longer with us but while he was alive, he inspired me in so many different ways that it seems futile for me to try and list them all.

For example, I once saw him working on a painting that looked much like the above illustration. When he asked him about it, he said that he had copied it from a picture -- and I'm guessing that the above illustration -- which comes from a famous book by Mexican architect Ignacio Marquina -- is the one he copied it from. To some people, that might not seem like much but it seemed obvious to me even when I was a child that it took a lot of effort for him to duplicate a picture like the above illustration so well that it looked like an original piece of work. And of course, my father's interest in things artistic eventually helped inspired my interest in the arts -- although, unlike him, I never seriously tried to copy an actual picture, much less create one from scratch.

Anyway, I am sorry that I never had a chance to question him more about his painting when he was alive but perhaps it is just as well. After all, some things are better left to the imagination.

Anyway, please enjoy the holiday.

(A repost in honor of my late father.)

Things I've Learned from My Father

1. Think for yourself.

2. Beware of ideology.

3. Poverty is hell.

4. It's not how much you earn that matters but how much you save.

5. Education is the best shortcut out of poverty.

6. Tell me what you brag about and I'll tell you what you lack.

7. Cada cabeza es un mundo. (Every head is a world; i.e., all people are special.)

8. You can always find an excuse not to do something if you don't want to do it.

(A repost.)

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

One Day at a Time: “The Politics Episode”

Every time I'm ready to give up on this series, it surprises me. But not always in a good way.

For example, the most recent episode was the first effort by a major TV series to find a way around the rules of social distancing by using animation to alleviate the need for having cast members stand so close to each other. And while the animation was nothing to make a fuss about, it worked well enough that I looked forward to seeing future episodes filmed in a similar fashion.

Unfortunately, the script was another matter. Granted, one could expect only so much from a thirty-minute sitcom episode but I still found it hard to put up with the constant parade of political cheap shots masquerading as jokes.

Yes, I get it. Nowadays is a very frustrating time to be a liberal. On the other hand, it is also frustrating to be a conservative -- especially one who does not automatically agree with the current occupant of the Oval Office. Moreover, there used to be a time when Norman Lear shows found time to focus on nuances that most sitcoms avoided. However, if the current version of One Day at a Time is any indication, those days are long gone.

Anyway, I could have lived with a sitcom whose political beliefs were different from mine if the jokes were actually funny. But like the conservative show Last Man Standing, the writers often assumed that their political humor was a lot more clever than it actually was.

It was not until toward the end of the show when the show showed a hypothetical dialogue between lead character Penelope and her conservative cousin Estrellita that the show showed any sign of genuine wit. Ironically, the one thing that won me over was the way the show managed to evoke the specter of Fidel Castro in order to explain the political viewpoints of Estrellita and Penelope without turning it into a cliché. A lesser show would have either ignored Castro or else exploited him for a number of political cheap shots. But the show managed to find a way around all that that evoked genuine sympathy from me for both Penelope and her cousin -- and for that, I am grateful.

Still Mad for The Muppets -- and That's a Good Thing, Right?

Early on in the 2011 movie The Muppets, a network executive (played by Rashida Jones of Parks & Recreation fame) gave an audiovisual presentation that portrayed the Muppets as being shamelessly unfashionable. So it became fairly obvious at that point that the movie was taking place in an alternative universe.

But seriously, folks.

Apart from being a trifle unbelievable -- after all, Hollywood is full of celebrities whose careers have come and gone within all the years that the Muppets have existed -- the scene in question also defines the major challenge facing The Muppets: the idea that American culture is no longer capable of accepting of accepting the gentle, humanistic humor of the original Muppets.

Of course, I would like to believe that idea is wrong. After all, as I've noted, this franchise has outlasted quite a few rivals -- so much so that I find it a bit disconcerting to realize that this movie has fans whose parents were not even born when the Muppets were first introduced to American TV viewers. And quite frankly, I find it hard to believe that everyone is necessarily into the hard, cynical humor that is usually promoted as an alternative to the Muppets.

Plus, as much as I hate to admit it, this movie is my favorite movie of all the Muppet movies I have seen -- including the first one.

Granted, there are some parts I could have done without -- the farting shoes jokes, for example. And I must admit that I found it hard not to roll my eyes when the writers chose to have a wealthy character blow up his own workplace rather than help solve a problem that could have been fixed by the simple writing of a check. And what was so bad about the characters played by Amy Adams and Jason Segel that so many critics refused to give them their due?

Oh, well. At least the movie got made. And better yet, it produced a sequel.

But will we see yet another Muppet movie after the most recent one? That, alas, is a question that has yet to be answered.

R.I.P. Enrique Fernandez

Cuban-American blogger, journalist and former Village Voice columnist Enrique Fernandez -- best known for -- among other things -- his "El Norte" column in the now-deceased alternative newspaper known as The Village Voice -- joined the fate of his former employer on December 29, 2018, at age 75.

He will be missed.

Yet More Words of the Future

1. Anglosplaining -- the process by which a white person of non-Hispanic descent chooses to lecture a Hispanic person on Hispanic issues; a word that originally referred to people of English descent lecturing Germans on their own history.
2. Anglx -- English equivalent of Latinx.
3. Ben-and-Glory moment -- a moment in which you find yourself explaining the same thing over and over again.
4. Do an Elsa -- let it go.
5. Go all Sally Field -- seem overly anxious to be liked.
6. The Juan Peron Syndrome -- a term inspired by a story told by my late father about how his American teacher taught him one year that Juan Peron was a great friend of the United States and taught him the next year that Peron was a great enemy of the U.S.

The Mystery of Juarez

There are a lot of mysteries concerning old-time Hollywood that will probably never be solved but if I had to pick the one that most intrigued me this week, it would be the mystery surrounding the reasons why the 1939 movie Juarez received its current title. After all, the movie itself did not seem to be too interested in telling the story of the Mexican president it was named after. Indeed, despite playing the title role, actor Paul Muni spent so little time on film that it seemed a wonder that he got any dialogue at all in the movie.

Nor did it help that he was constantly upstaged by actor Brian Aherne (who played would-be Mexican Emperor Maximilian I) and actress Bette Davis (who played Maximilian's wife Carlotta). True, Muni did get to make a lot of serious speeches but in the end, it was Aherne and Davis whose characters who got the bulk of the filmmaker's sympathy if for no other reason that they were among the few historical figures in the movie who got to be portrayed as human beings.

Thus the movie Juarez presented its viewers with a paradox: a movie that was allegedly about the triumph of the first Mexican president of Indian descent that nevertheless chose to concentrate most of its story on his European opposition. Which is a nice thing if you always wanted to see a movie about people like Maximilian and Carlotta but kinda besides the point if you wanted to see a movie about people like Benito Juarez.

If that wasn't a big enough paradox, the movie also found time to portray Porfirio Diaz (the head of Juarez's military forces) in a heroic role -- a development that seemed ironic considering what would happen to Diaz in later life. But, alas, this was a movie that had little room for irony.

Book of the Week

Michigan-born author Zev Chafets investigated the racial complexities of pre-riot and post-riot Detroit in his 1990 book Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit. It was one of the few books about Detroit that I found to be worth reading even if Chafets leaned a bit much upon personal anecdotes in order to make a point sometimes.

Of course, in the wake of recent events, some might argue that Chafets tried a bit too hard to end his book on a happy note. But I know many Detroiters who would beg to differ.

Then again, one of the reasons I chose to buy this book back in 1990 was because the author name-dropped the name of a Detroit journalist to whom my favorite first cousin was then married so perhaps I'm not the most objective critic this book could have.