…Pete Townshend says The Who will rock the Super Bowl halftime show with a medley of hits including Pinball Wizard, Baba O’Reilly, Who Are You and Won’t Get Fooled Again….
---I know there’s spring training stuff to talk about, but I was more interested in the women’s free skate program tonight. First of all, can I say how much I love the “kiss and cry area?”---Read More:http://janeheller.mlblogs.com/2010/02/25/time-out-for-womens-figure-skating/
…The standard stuff. The stuff a band should play in such an environment. And The Who only has 12 minutes or so on stage, so given that many of their classics are beyond three minutes and change, arguably a good idea to do a medley.Meanwhile, best line of Super Bowl week came from Roger Daltrey, when asked about The Who’s short 12-minute or so set. No worries, he suggested. That’s about as long as the actual action in a North American football game.”I’ve heard if you take out the commercials, there’s about 11 minutes of playing,” Daltrey said. Read More:http://therecord.blogs.com/blogovich/2010/02/the-who-at-the-super-bowl-well-see-but-not-really-sold-on-this-medley-idea.html
Media people and those in the business of sport as spectacle, entertainment business have no guilty conscience about the fact of visual spacetime being dominated by everything except the game they are ostensibly there to cover. The game just exists as a vehicle to carry the advertising and lend a platform to corporate values. The activity is incidental to the advertising agenda. And the people who attend spend far more money on souvenirs, food, drink, and other branded merchandise that the face value of their admission.But what are being admitted to, both in person and on screen.Part is a fantasy world that truly is a fantasy and part is a fantasy as reflexive fake, buying into this construction, an artificial re-creation to reach a fantasy and all the publicity is a shopping trip for fantasies.
It is very depersonalized, and the technology of advertising “realizes” and personalizes the product.Are we awakening into reality as an escape from the real that engages our dreams? Its hard to know, but we do know that events are used to market the products, the Olympics in London being a good example of a global de-realization,almost psychotic the way it draws in a global audience as platform for a communal act of consumption, the power of the Global Plutocracy and Technocracy in full regalia; as if buying into that ideal is an imperative before the fantasies become overwhelming.
---There is not much difference in principle between the dancing mannequins of the Radio City chorus line and the static mannequins in a Vanessa Beecroft installation, however costumed the former and naked the latter. They are both glamorized robots, that is, derealized and depersonalized -- psychoticized and reified -- human beings, more particularly, theatrical appearances. --- Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/art-and-capitalist-spectacle2-8-11.asp image:http://un-titledproject.com/blog/2012/1/21/vanessa-beecroft.html
See link at end: …Skating is “a very technical sport,” the champion figure skater Mark Ludwig says, but it is also “a sport of esthetics,” and he thinks its esthetics have been corrupted by being turned into “theater.” He notes that “he had attended a U.S. Figure Skating training program in which skaters participated in a mock kiss-and-cry.” Kiss-and-cry was rehearsed and simulated, losing reality and personality by becoming a staged appearance. Indeed, David Michaels, “a senior producer for NBC’s Olympic coverage and the network’s director for figure skating,” points out that the Olympic stadium has a “kiss-and-cry area.” “’It’s gone from a blue curtain and a bucket of flowers on the side to plastic ice sculptures and crazy sets. It becomes a big design element that everyone works hard to figure out. . . . The network often adjusts the lighting to make it look more realistic and less like a TV set, he said, adding that one of NBC’s cameras is attached to a small crane that swoops into the kiss-and-cry from above.” He adds: “The value of the kiss-and-tell is basic. . . if you add up the total amount of airtime that the kiss-and-tell gets relative to the skating, it’s a very large percentage.” What is supposed to be an “unscripted moment” in which the skaters let “their guards down,” becomes a scripted moment in which the skaters let their guards down on cue. Thus spectacle triumphs over reality by simulating it, falsifies a life event by turning it into a pseudo-event, thus devaluing it and subverting its significance. Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/art-and-capitalist-spectacle2-8-11.asp
ADDENDUM:
According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.
In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there’s barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays.
---Unprecedented new wealth, a more mercurial environment of speculation, the celebration of individualism brought on by the attack on the welfare state, demoralization and fragmentation -- all these form the background for the artistic vocabulary of "postmodernism." I mean, jeez louise, Jeff Koons actually started out as a
modities trader! Meanwhile, for art as well as for politics, the more radical energies survived principally in the academy, as street-level counterculture and political movements alike went into a long defensive period. Praxis correspondingly took an esoteric turn. --- Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/semi-post-postmodernism5-15-10.asp
So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps. In the four broadcasts The Journal studied, injured players got six more seconds of camera time than celebrating players. While the network announcers showed up on screen for just 30 seconds, shots of the head coaches and referees took up about 7% of the average show.Read More:http://spaces.covers.com/blog/hugh613/NFL/01172010-WSJ-study-finds-football-games-only-have-11-minutes-of-action.html?t=0
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…The Who continued their foray into groundbreaking territory post-Super Bowl, making available immediately after their performance, a special recording of the Super Bowl halftime ‘mash-up’ to purchase, download and play in the groundbreaking music video game, Rock Band. “The Who Super Bowl S-mash-up” is available now in the Rock Band Music Store, on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Wii console from Nintendo, and will be coming soon to PlayStation®3. The Who commemorated this once-in-a-lifetime event for fans by recording a special version of their acclaimed performance so that fans may buy and play the specially recorded version in Rock Band!
The Who also engaged in a unique humanitarian effort that premiered in conjunction with their Super Bowl performance to help the residents of earthquake-devastated Haiti. Recording artist and goodwill ambassador will.i.am remixed the timeless Who classic “My Generation,” including a new guitar solo by legendary ex-Guns ‘N Roses star Slash, transforming the anthem into a memorable call-to-action TV spot that debuted right before The Who took the stage at Super Bowl XLIV. The Who announced that 100 percent of the proceeds of the full-length remix of “My Generation” will be donated to Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. The track will also be available for purchase for $1.29 on Amazon.com, Dipdive.com and TheWho.com, with all proceeds benefiting Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. Read More:http://www.thewho.com/news/title/the-who-rocks-bridgestone-super-bowl-halftime-show-at-super-bowl-xliv-on-cbs/tagName
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