The Noughties give way to the Tensies?
So my blog is called Media Whip, I talk about the media, yaddah yaddah. But until I can get my head round the fact that I have an exclusive and sparkly Dreamwidth account (seriously, now I’m actually a member of the secret holy club I don’t know what the frick to do with my blog), I have to submit my musings on this here readily customised wonder. I thought, we’re already quite a way into 2010, so perhaps it’s time to look at life in a retrospective New Yearsy sort of manner.
2009 was an intriguing year for the world of media. America found its superhero in Barack Obama, the first black man to reside at the White House not for the purposes of fetching coffee. I’m still waiting for the day when American gets its first black lesbian transgender president, but it might take them another few hundred years to become quite that relaxed. So I’ll probably miss that one. There were what felt like more celebrity deaths than usual, perhaps because of their high profile nature – Jade Goody losing her battle with cervical cancer, Matt Lucas’ ex partner’s saddening suicide, Michael Jackson’s untimely pre-tour demise, Farrah Fawcett also succumbing to the dreaded C word and somewhat overshadowed by Jackson, Stephen Gately’s shocking passing which seemed to feed the bizarre brain-demons that live in Jan Moir’s head, and delicate Brittany Murphy just before Christmas.
The world went Twitter crazy with the eclectic likes of Stephen Fry, Lindsay Lohan and Philip Schofield documenting the minutae of their lives, and while the bread slices in that sandwich maintained a delightfully amusing and straightforward status quo, Miss Lohan, the low-fat filling, appeared to become evermore dishevelled and confused, pasting heartfelt confessions of love on her page then deleting them, bewildering the heck out of Elle magazine as detailed on After Ellen and changing her sexuality more often than we mere mortals change our socks. Meanwhile Fry slimmed down and got a tan, and Scofe just got more perplexingly handsome. What is it about kids TV presenters growing old gracefully, eh?
While Big Brother was a complete flop (no surprise, I personally don’t think it could have ever matched the glory of the first and finest offering… less social experiment with psychological insights, more room-where-sleb-wannabes-gather), audition-based (I refuse to use the term ‘talent show’, because… seriously) ‘Reality’ TV had its golden year. Britain’s Got Talent spawned Susan Boyle, whom the public placed on a pedestal so high the poor thing got vertigo and went understandably mad, and The X Factor merged with the aforementioned show so closely via a live audition format that even the contestants were confused. Yes, Cowell, Cole and co had to deal with a great many elderly men with spoons and unstable women with supposed wonder dogs stating the words, ‘I thought this was Britain’s Got Talent‘.
It was the year in which my beloved Chris Morris was made a prophet in my mind. Yes, when my equally adored Charlie Brooker highlighted in his excellent panel show You Have Been Watching the fact that ITV News pitted Michael Jackson’s memorial service against that of Princess Diana’s, those of us in the know thought we’d stumbled onto another superbly dark episode of The Day Today. Nope, this was real. Terrestrial TV is getting bloodthirsty these days. Speaking of doom, panic about the recession gave way to panic about the weather. We British love a dull crisis don’t we. If it wasn’t enough rainfall to fill a bin in three minutes it was a spell of such powerful snow that the average Joe or Jane was sitting freezing in their Slanket yelling ‘What Global Warming?!?’ at those eerie adverts where the man is reading the Climate Change Fantasy Story to his daughter (he might as well have just stuck The Day After Tomorrow on the DVD player she’s no doubt already wasting electricity with.
Adolescent girls became even more irritating than usual with the added facet of an obsession with vampires and werewolves, middle aged women unnervingly more so. Stephenie Meyer’s unfathomably popular sifted and filtered version of mythical folklore comes out so sparkling (literally) and clean, it can be contrued as undead demons and flesh-hungry savages as written by a Care Bear. It was the year of Robert Pattinson, offering a reversal of the backstories of Johnny Depp and Heath Ledger – yes, the cigarette-puffing musically talented ‘serious actor’ Brit who once starred as a young and rampantly bisexual Salvador Dali in the little-known independent Little Ashes became an object of hormonal lust for pubescent emo types everywhere (and their mothers, again, creepily) and almost killed himself jaywalking into a road in New York to avoid their clutches. This is exactly how Depp and Ledger started (Cry Baby and Ten Things I Hate About You, anyone?) before they became the culty, edgy types they are/[sadly] were. Entertainment websites and gossip magazines became embroiled in the non-existent relationship between Mr Pattinson (‘R-Pattz’) and his co-star Kristen Stewart (‘K-Stew’ – what is wrong with these people?) to the point of announcing what flowers and canapes would be at their wedding.
Conversely, and appropriately, it was a great year for American drama, not only with series after series making its way to our shores but predominantly for the delightful True Blood, lovechild of Six Feet Under‘s Alan Ball and a programme which effectively took the Twilight franchise, smacked it about a bit and laughed at it. Handsome and moody vampire? Check. Introverted and lonely human lady? Check. Rough around the edges eye-candy shapeshifter? Check. Love triangle between the three? Check. Murder mystery in a small town? Check. Inept police? Check. So far, so Twilight. Add swearing, violence, plenty of blood, a heap of graphic sex, fairly represented alternative sexualities, an Australian actor most notable for Home and Away with the best American accent I’ve heard since Mel Gibson’s and a group of secondary human characters which are NOT two-dimensional props, Stephenie Meyer, and you have something gripping, delicious and addictive.
Now for the personal. 2009 was a year which started off pretty dreadfully for me, landing myself in hospital with a small but awkward knee injury which required major surgery and left me sofa-bound for a few months. It was a year of introspective soul-searching where I realised that there was more to life than earning comfortable amounts of money doing jobs I hate, thus throughout the year I made it my priority to get into writing. Thankfully those who had told me during my lifetime so far that my writing was good were not wrong by industry standards, and I secured myself a two month position at the website Yelp as well as getting a number of articles confirmed for print publication in MediaMagazine which has always been a dream of mine. Starting 2010 as a freelance writer feels pretty great, if not the most secure means to a living, well, my happiness levels have gone through the roof and that’s what matters.
I’ll be publishing all my MediaMag articles on this blog too as well as the regular media musings I offer. The first is already here, the aforementioned ‘Faking It’. So, Happy New Year to all fellow bloggers – here’s to the start of the Tensies. Cheers, folks.
