Here in Van Nuys

Here in Van Nuys

5 comments on Skews young.

Skews young.


One of the asinine “rules” of the entertainment industry is that certain creations are either geared towards younger or older people. Executives expend intellectual sweat and muscle labeling movies, TV shows, music and web-sites as either young or old. Then they put (mostly juvenile and ignorant) programming on the airwaves which is mostly watched by [surprise] young and simple minded viewers which then confirms the erroneous assumptions of the marketing “experts” that all entertainment is age specific.

A Chicago based, web-site named “Liquid Generation” is full of exploding Flash animation of such delightful topics as Paris Hilton’s boobs and a repulsive portal named Suck My News LQ describes itself as an “intense entertainment portal and media company for GEN Y teens into music, fashion, games, partying, sports, subculture, and more.” Excuse my old fogey un-coolness: GEN Y sounds like so 1998 to me.

I grew up reading the pages of an encyclopedia that was then 20 years old. The black and white photos of such places as “Ceylon” and the “Belgian Congo” fascinated me. I watched “I Love Lucy” and old Marx Brothers movies from the 30’s and listened to Frank Sinatra. Too bad there was no advertising or marketing expert to warn me that I was being exposed to materials that were not skewed to my age or probable purchasing habits.

An empirical review of my own entertainment experiences seems to refute any age or gender preferences for certain programs. MTV’s Real World is frequently watched in my house, by a 45- year old man, who religiously tapes every episode. “Will and Grace” with its gay themes is particularly annoying and irritating to this gay author who finds it’s ear piercing idiocy and prancing fags exasperating. “South Park” gets laughs out of vomit and farting, and jokes about Jesus, and this non-believing Jew is offended at the anti-Christian satire. Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are both around my age, and I haven’t seen either of their two movies. Shouldn’t they be “skewed” towards me? Would I skew Brad Pitt? I leave you to answer that question.

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Here in Van Nuys

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5 responses to “Skews young.”

  1. eric Avatar
    eric

    I agree 100%. But how can we stop the madness?

    And the young demographic will continue to be so sought-after because it is easiest to convince that it needs to buy more and more useless shit.

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  2. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    Speed it up, dumb it down, scream it in our ears…..that’s the way media works these days. We need to slow down and stop trying to sell, sell, sell every last thing in our lives.

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  3. LA Writer Avatar
    LA Writer

    “Too bad there was no advertising or marketing expert to warn me that I was being exposed to materials that were not skewed to my age or probable purchasing habits”

    It seems like the industry these days really works the other way around – marketing and entertainment executives are desperately trying to pick the brains of the ‘target demographic’ to find out what the next big thing might be, and spend millions collecting data to predict it. The big entertainment corporations are all about getting the most dollars out of the least amount of risk, so they research the hell out of it and find they still can’t predict the next big hit.

    I wonder what they would have pigeonholed me at that age – I liked classical music, Hitchcock, punk, Shakespeare and ‘The Terminator.’

    Liquid Generation, video games and things like that go for the familiar, the broad, and the immediately accessible, which translates into sometimes easy success. The people who put them together often aren’t much older than the ‘target demographic’ so their tastes are just as juvenile as their fans. But they certainly don’t last long in the business.

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  4. VI Avatar
    VI

    In your picture…. you truly look pissed off.

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  5. MOSES Avatar
    MOSES

    The spiritual worlds are not seen by most of us. But, everything that happens to us flows from the supernal worlds. Positive things and even things that seem negative to us originate from the convergence of forces in the supernal world. All of this understanding should invigorate our spiritual work.

    Unfortunately we often awaken to spiritual work when we find ourselves in negative situations, hoping that a stronger connection to the Creator can assist us in relieving the situation. This is not a wrong thought, but it is important to realize that it is easier to change negativity before it actually manifests in this world, when it is still in potential in the supernal worlds. When everything seems fine we sometimes tell ourselves that we will pursue our spiritual development at some other time. Or, even if we are involving ourselves in spiritual work it is not with the intensity of someone in a negative situation. All this is unfortunate.

    We should remind ourselves that we do not know or see what is occurring in the spiritual worlds. This should not scare us but rather push us to focus and develop our spiritual self and connections now. Maybe the work that we do or intensify now will deflect some form of negativity that we are not aware of. The irony is that we will probably never even know that through our actions we have removed this negativity from our lives, nevertheless the Light we reveal will certainly fill our lives.

    moshe_sandes@hotmail.com

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