Tyler Perry and his studio system are parodied relentlessly in an episode of the last season of Atlanta and in The Boondocks, these episodes assume one knows about Tyler Perry’s studio.
TV: I’m loving the series Reservation Dogs right now (not to be confused with Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs). It’s about some kids living on a Reservation in Oklahoma. It feels like a mix of the vibes of Freaks and Geeks and Northern Exposure, with lots of magical realism. Seems to be critically acclaimed but I don’t see a lot of buzz about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_Dogs
Similarly, Atlanta was fantastic, challenging, and seemed to throw something completely different at you in every episode. I think Hiro Murai is going to be one of the great filmmakers of his generation.
I guess it’s a stretch to call it underrated because it was overwhelmingly critically acclaimed, but I feel it belongs to be talked about alongside the all-time greats when anecdotally I don’t hear much about it. For example, I’ve heard several casual references to Mad Men in the past few months, whereas I have never heard anyone mention Atlanta except when I have brought it up. Could just be my perception that’s off, though.
I personally find it funny at face-value but the joke does get ruined for me because, as you say, it's just a veil for certain beliefs. I used to enjoy a lot more of Aronson's work until I realized he was just strawmanning the views he disagreed with. I had previously thought it was just good-natured ribbing.
For an actual funny (and not so "blah blah SJWs ruining everything") version of this joke, the tv show Atlanta does a much more entertaining version of it, you can find it if you search "transracial".
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
The media that bucks this trend always stands out to me, especially in series. The classic animated series "Avatar" rarely splits stories over multiple episodes, so that each episode ends in a satisfying way. Another example in a totally different genre is "Atlanta" (2016) which has a similar focused structure.
This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
Coincidentally came across a comment by Neil Gaiman today, related to this topic on Reddit: I don't write much about gay sex, as people who have read my book would know. But oddly, I don't read tweet like this and feel to convert. Instead I read it and vaguely wish I'd actually written more about gay sex. (Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/me_irlgbt/comments/x79303/me_irlgbt/ ).
Isn't it an interesting perspective from a writer? Inspiration and creativity comes from such moments, and tomorrow if this writer creates a gay character for some story, you can feel the author will do a good job of characterisation and making such character feel real. When the writing is good, an actor feels connected to it and the director and show-maker too are inspired to do justice it. Right now it doesn't often feel like that. sometimes when I see some of the awful effort of some of these LGBT / person of colour (PoC) / powerful women scenes, out of boredom I often find myself imagining how such a scene was shot - someone at the production unit suddenly remembers, "Ok, who is playing the token LGBT / PoC / Women? Let's get on with it. What's the scene about - Is it about them facing humiliation 'cos of their identity, showing them being accepted, a sex scene with them, or them finding their own voice or power?" ... (And later in the editing room some director instructing some intern) "OK, trim these hour long footage of the LGBT / PoC / woman character into 1 to 5 minutes snippets and insert it somewhere in episode 1, 5, 7 and wrap it up!" ...
As for every story requiring an LGBT character because they "exist everywhere", can't many other vulnerable / minority group too lay a claim on that? For example, I am sure there are more muslims in the USA than there are LGBTs - should every American TV show now start including muslim, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Indian-American, Chinese-Americans characters etc., etc? Obviously, you realistically can't. (And note that all these groups too face bigotry and hatred just because of who they are).
As a non-american, I prefer the previous format of American television where good story didn't have such contrived caricaturisation and only relevant characters that added to the stories. Will and Grace or Modern Family come to mind when I think of how LGBT characters were relevant, well integrated and portrayed well in the story. Recently I finished watching Atlanta and really love the show, especially due to the insights on black culture (in the US) it offered. Shows like "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight" show women empowerment so naturally and elegantly that you don't even notice it while enjoying the drama. I feel such dramas do more justice to an LGBT / PoC / woman character than some token characters inserted forcefully.
The issue is with the lack of new stories and the idea that just putting some color on "stories where the classic characters is white" is enough.
Diversity is something to be cherished. But if all we do is to, e.g, take Mozart pieces and give to conductors of different races and backgrounds, are we really promoting diversity or are we just putting a corporate spin in institutionalized racism, and implicitly perpetuating the idea that "classical" (or better, "erudite") music can only be valued if it comes from dead white people?
I haven't been watching much TV or movies lately, and one of the main reasons is that it seems that most of things come out are just re-heated servings of old stuff. The one exception that I can think of is Atlanta, which deserves praise exactly because it is more focused in telling a story and taking risks than in merely following a certain formula to please the audiences.
So, to repeat: the story of LoTR has been told already. It has its context and its place. To get diversity now, I rather see these talented people telling new stories, with their own voices and their own perspectives, not just put on some kind of display by the studios and used to manufacture fake virtue.
Yes, don't forget, be conscious, but for me is fine that Gnome take that money.
The situation remembers me in some capacity to a recent Atlanta episode when one of the black protagonists choose to accept the money/opportunity of a white rich dude, even knowing the whole troubled past about slavery, and knowing that he is scamming him.
The episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Tree
A good analysis: https://youtu.be/PAk9UTNKNEM
By the way, the recent Gnome 42 was a milestone on UI/UX and performance improvements, that may be in part of that MS $ (oh, this donation is more recent, but you get my point).
Lupin isn’t that good of a show. I think Netflix has the best shows of any media company year to year. They have so many. So Lupin is great, but Netflix has other high quality stuff too to make it not as impressive.
Atlanta because you’re from there? You wouldn’t watch it otherwise? I think it might be the best 30 min non sitcom ever.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
I haven't seen one priced at 99 cents for a couple of years now. The best price in convenience stores where I live (US) is typically 2/$3.00. The cans don't even say 99 cents anymore, they seemed to start phasing that out after that episode of Atlanta someone else linked.
I asked my wife to cancel Hulu live recently because it was $85 USD/month with ads. Insane. She has one or two shows she likes to watch live so I suggested Sling Blue instead. Sling is OK for live stuff but anything on-demand is completely obnoxious with ads. We tried to watch an episode of Atlanta the other day and Sling injected more ads than the length of the show, eg it was longer than 30 minutes of ads to get through the 30 minute show. The inevitable that everyone said was going to happen is finally a reality - streaming platforms are back to where cable was 20 years ago.
You've picked two films by a single Korean director who is outspoken about his views, which his hardly a good way to show it's a recurring theme across the media in general.
I could pick Atlanta and The Wire and say American media is commonly critical of police. Or turn around and pick CSI and Law & Order and say that American media is commonly supportive of police. It hardly says something about the overall landscape. And thats even picking shows with different directors!
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
I just watched episode 4 of Atlanta last night and Donald Glover's character had a really good monologue about being poor after finding out his friend had helped him turn 190$ into 2000$ but that it wouldn't be available right away:
Earn Marks: Poor people don't have time for investments, because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor. Okay? I need to eat today, not in September.
Full scene is worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hOCjX_SSXY&ab_channel=ThaiMurphys
I use it every day. It's just now getting Comedy Central. I tried to DVR an episode of Atlanta and it just didn't do it. It did record an episode later on though.
Some of it is status, but I think what would trigger an emotional swell like that is the potential of being embarrassed by having a knock-off communication device--and I think Androids are viewed this way by many teenagers. And you're exposed the moment you reply to a text.
There's a great example of what its like to wear the wrong thing in Atlanta Season 2 episode 10, which centers around a Fubu t-shirt.
> In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.
This thought often crosses my mind in particular when I consume media that is more 'psychological' in nature. Much of the time I can't shake the feeling that no matter how convincing the characters and their 'inner life' is presented, we're still ultimately seeing a projection of the writer themselves.
Sometimes I notice how certain characters seem richer than others, and usually these characters are obviously closer to the writer's own life. Perhaps this is why slice-of-life shows seem to do well (Atlanta, Better Things, Louie), because they're just the writers writing about themselves.
Or when I read a Dostoevski novel, I can't help but wonder how much of these character's inner lives are really just thinly-veiled versions of Dostoevski's (and, considering my love for his novels, probably my thoughts are 'compatible' with his).
What makes all this worse or more complicated though is that especially for television as a media, there are all sorts of pretty serious constraints. A show needs cliffhangers, ideally every episode, and at least every season, and unless you're on Netflix, you need mini-cliffhangers before every ad block. I imagine that's got to have some significant effect on the story.
I rather like this article by David Foster Wallace that sort-of goes into all of this: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction).
Yeah, the Atlanta area is home to a lot of movies and TV shows at this point. There's even a huge movie studio built south of Atlanta (Pinewood, opened in 2014).
Most of the recent Marvell movies were shot here.
Recent films shot in Georgia include: Godzilla: King of Monsters, the Ant Man movies, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Pitch Perfect 3, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Some television shows shot here: Stranger Things, Ozark, The Walking Dead, MacGuyver and Atlanta.
There's definitely a booming production industry in the Atlanta area.
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things.
You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks.
BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issues on television.
Wow, that's a jarring shift to heavy sarcasm that would be solidly in Poe's law territory without your first statement.
> so they feel comfortable not speaking in pc terms to me.
I think Donald Glover covered that fairly well in the first episode of Atlanta in the Flo Rida scene (both of them), but I'm not really one to judge the accuracy... (why is it so hard to find clips of that show?)
Hacker Cinema
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So that one episode of Atlanta with Yodel Kid was pretty much reality.
Tyler Perry and his studio system are parodied relentlessly in an episode of the last season of Atlanta and in The Boondocks, these episodes assume one knows about Tyler Perry’s studio.
TV: I’m loving the series Reservation Dogs right now (not to be confused with Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs). It’s about some kids living on a Reservation in Oklahoma. It feels like a mix of the vibes of Freaks and Geeks and Northern Exposure, with lots of magical realism. Seems to be critically acclaimed but I don’t see a lot of buzz about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_Dogs
Similarly, Atlanta was fantastic, challenging, and seemed to throw something completely different at you in every episode. I think Hiro Murai is going to be one of the great filmmakers of his generation.
I guess it’s a stretch to call it underrated because it was overwhelmingly critically acclaimed, but I feel it belongs to be talked about alongside the all-time greats when anecdotally I don’t hear much about it. For example, I’ve heard several casual references to Mad Men in the past few months, whereas I have never heard anyone mention Atlanta except when I have brought it up. Could just be my perception that’s off, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_(TV_series)
This is one of the episodes of the Atlanta TV series.
I personally find it funny at face-value but the joke does get ruined for me because, as you say, it's just a veil for certain beliefs. I used to enjoy a lot more of Aronson's work until I realized he was just strawmanning the views he disagreed with. I had previously thought it was just good-natured ribbing.
For an actual funny (and not so "blah blah SJWs ruining everything") version of this joke, the tv show Atlanta does a much more entertaining version of it, you can find it if you search "transracial".
Clerks - $27,575 [0]
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]
Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]
The Blue - <$100k [3]
Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]
Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]
Greenlight - <$100k [3]
Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]
Man in Camo - <$100k [3]
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)
[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night-brings-beauty-to-vampires/
[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/
[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-this-announces-2021-indie-film-nominees-for-drive-in-event-virtual-ceremony/
The media that bucks this trend always stands out to me, especially in series. The classic animated series "Avatar" rarely splits stories over multiple episodes, so that each episode ends in a satisfying way. Another example in a totally different genre is "Atlanta" (2016) which has a similar focused structure.
This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
Coincidentally came across a comment by Neil Gaiman today, related to this topic on Reddit: I don't write much about gay sex, as people who have read my book would know. But oddly, I don't read tweet like this and feel to convert. Instead I read it and vaguely wish I'd actually written more about gay sex. (Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/me_irlgbt/comments/x79303/me_irlgbt/ ).
Isn't it an interesting perspective from a writer? Inspiration and creativity comes from such moments, and tomorrow if this writer creates a gay character for some story, you can feel the author will do a good job of characterisation and making such character feel real. When the writing is good, an actor feels connected to it and the director and show-maker too are inspired to do justice it. Right now it doesn't often feel like that. sometimes when I see some of the awful effort of some of these LGBT / person of colour (PoC) / powerful women scenes, out of boredom I often find myself imagining how such a scene was shot - someone at the production unit suddenly remembers, "Ok, who is playing the token LGBT / PoC / Women? Let's get on with it. What's the scene about - Is it about them facing humiliation 'cos of their identity, showing them being accepted, a sex scene with them, or them finding their own voice or power?" ... (And later in the editing room some director instructing some intern) "OK, trim these hour long footage of the LGBT / PoC / woman character into 1 to 5 minutes snippets and insert it somewhere in episode 1, 5, 7 and wrap it up!" ...
As for every story requiring an LGBT character because they "exist everywhere", can't many other vulnerable / minority group too lay a claim on that? For example, I am sure there are more muslims in the USA than there are LGBTs - should every American TV show now start including muslim, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Indian-American, Chinese-Americans characters etc., etc? Obviously, you realistically can't. (And note that all these groups too face bigotry and hatred just because of who they are).
As a non-american, I prefer the previous format of American television where good story didn't have such contrived caricaturisation and only relevant characters that added to the stories. Will and Grace or Modern Family come to mind when I think of how LGBT characters were relevant, well integrated and portrayed well in the story. Recently I finished watching Atlanta and really love the show, especially due to the insights on black culture (in the US) it offered. Shows like "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight" show women empowerment so naturally and elegantly that you don't even notice it while enjoying the drama. I feel such dramas do more justice to an LGBT / PoC / woman character than some token characters inserted forcefully.
The issue is not with the casting.
The issue is with the lack of new stories and the idea that just putting some color on "stories where the classic characters is white" is enough.
Diversity is something to be cherished. But if all we do is to, e.g, take Mozart pieces and give to conductors of different races and backgrounds, are we really promoting diversity or are we just putting a corporate spin in institutionalized racism, and implicitly perpetuating the idea that "classical" (or better, "erudite") music can only be valued if it comes from dead white people?
I haven't been watching much TV or movies lately, and one of the main reasons is that it seems that most of things come out are just re-heated servings of old stuff. The one exception that I can think of is Atlanta, which deserves praise exactly because it is more focused in telling a story and taking risks than in merely following a certain formula to please the audiences.
So, to repeat: the story of LoTR has been told already. It has its context and its place. To get diversity now, I rather see these talented people telling new stories, with their own voices and their own perspectives, not just put on some kind of display by the studios and used to manufacture fake virtue.
Yes, don't forget, be conscious, but for me is fine that Gnome take that money.
The situation remembers me in some capacity to a recent Atlanta episode when one of the black protagonists choose to accept the money/opportunity of a white rich dude, even knowing the whole troubled past about slavery, and knowing that he is scamming him.
The episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Tree
A good analysis: https://youtu.be/PAk9UTNKNEM
By the way, the recent Gnome 42 was a milestone on UI/UX and performance improvements, that may be in part of that MS $ (oh, this donation is more recent, but you get my point).
Lupin isn’t that good of a show. I think Netflix has the best shows of any media company year to year. They have so many. So Lupin is great, but Netflix has other high quality stuff too to make it not as impressive.
Atlanta because you’re from there? You wouldn’t watch it otherwise? I think it might be the best 30 min non sitcom ever.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
I haven't seen one priced at 99 cents for a couple of years now. The best price in convenience stores where I live (US) is typically 2/$3.00. The cans don't even say 99 cents anymore, they seemed to start phasing that out after that episode of Atlanta someone else linked.
I asked my wife to cancel Hulu live recently because it was $85 USD/month with ads. Insane. She has one or two shows she likes to watch live so I suggested Sling Blue instead. Sling is OK for live stuff but anything on-demand is completely obnoxious with ads. We tried to watch an episode of Atlanta the other day and Sling injected more ads than the length of the show, eg it was longer than 30 minutes of ads to get through the 30 minute show. The inevitable that everyone said was going to happen is finally a reality - streaming platforms are back to where cable was 20 years ago.
You've picked two films by a single Korean director who is outspoken about his views, which his hardly a good way to show it's a recurring theme across the media in general.
I could pick Atlanta and The Wire and say American media is commonly critical of police. Or turn around and pick CSI and Law & Order and say that American media is commonly supportive of police. It hardly says something about the overall landscape. And thats even picking shows with different directors!
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
If you want good content go watch the following TV shows (if you haven't already):
- Euphoria
- Bojack Horseman
- Atlanta
- Fleabag
I just watched episode 4 of Atlanta last night and Donald Glover's character had a really good monologue about being poor after finding out his friend had helped him turn 190$ into 2000$ but that it wouldn't be available right away:
Earn Marks: Poor people don't have time for investments, because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor. Okay? I need to eat today, not in September.
Full scene is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hOCjX_SSXY&ab_channel=ThaiMurphys
We skipped season 3 and I missed season 4! https://next-season-of.com/atlanta/
:)
The data does seem to be pretty solid in my random other searches though.
I use it every day. It's just now getting Comedy Central. I tried to DVR an episode of Atlanta and it just didn't do it. It did record an episode later on though.
Some of it is status, but I think what would trigger an emotional swell like that is the potential of being embarrassed by having a knock-off communication device--and I think Androids are viewed this way by many teenagers. And you're exposed the moment you reply to a text.
There's a great example of what its like to wear the wrong thing in Atlanta Season 2 episode 10, which centers around a Fubu t-shirt.
> In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.
This thought often crosses my mind in particular when I consume media that is more 'psychological' in nature. Much of the time I can't shake the feeling that no matter how convincing the characters and their 'inner life' is presented, we're still ultimately seeing a projection of the writer themselves.
Sometimes I notice how certain characters seem richer than others, and usually these characters are obviously closer to the writer's own life. Perhaps this is why slice-of-life shows seem to do well (Atlanta, Better Things, Louie), because they're just the writers writing about themselves.
Or when I read a Dostoevski novel, I can't help but wonder how much of these character's inner lives are really just thinly-veiled versions of Dostoevski's (and, considering my love for his novels, probably my thoughts are 'compatible' with his).
What makes all this worse or more complicated though is that especially for television as a media, there are all sorts of pretty serious constraints. A show needs cliffhangers, ideally every episode, and at least every season, and unless you're on Netflix, you need mini-cliffhangers before every ad block. I imagine that's got to have some significant effect on the story.
I rather like this article by David Foster Wallace that sort-of goes into all of this: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction).
Yeah, the Atlanta area is home to a lot of movies and TV shows at this point. There's even a huge movie studio built south of Atlanta (Pinewood, opened in 2014).
Most of the recent Marvell movies were shot here.
Recent films shot in Georgia include: Godzilla: King of Monsters, the Ant Man movies, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Pitch Perfect 3, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Some television shows shot here: Stranger Things, Ozark, The Walking Dead, MacGuyver and Atlanta.
There's definitely a booming production industry in the Atlanta area.
As a black person, sometimes I just want to watch a sitcom about regular black people, doing regular things.
You'd think I'd be able to find this on streaming services. We have Atlanta and Insecure and Blackish now, but those are all tokens of their networks.
BET and other Afro-centric networks/streaming services cater to that need for black people to escape from the constant bombardment of white lives and white issues on television.
Wow, that's a jarring shift to heavy sarcasm that would be solidly in Poe's law territory without your first statement.
> so they feel comfortable not speaking in pc terms to me.
I think Donald Glover covered that fairly well in the first episode of Atlanta in the Flo Rida scene (both of them), but I'm not really one to judge the accuracy... (why is it so hard to find clips of that show?)