In Praise of Funny Women

The world of comedy has been unkind to women.

Lucille Ball, Carole Burnett and Lily Tomlin aside, female comedians are somewhat of a rare breed.

Joan Rivers, Sandra Bernhardt, Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr and Ellen DeGeneres are great comic talents who approach their craft with the necessary fearlessness and reckless abandon. And yet, just when they achieved desired stardom, they were marginalized and taken down a notch.

Saturday Night Live and SCTV were launching pads for many a successful comedic career.

SCTV alums Andrea Martin and Catherine O’Hara were household names in Canada, and while O’Hara was rewarded with a few film roles, their popularity in Canada never really transitioned into the U.S. market.

Saturday Night Live has produced a slew of funny women, from Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin to Julia Louis Dreyfus, Cheri Oteri, Janeane Garofalo, Nora Dunn, Jan Hooks, and Sarah Silverman. Their talent cannot be understated, and although a few of them (Curtin and JLD) graduated to memorable sitcom careers, most others fizzled, picking up bit movie roles, roamed the stand-up circuit, or disappeared from the business altogether. In particular it seemed that Oteri had a bright future, yet her career path was more Dana Carvey than Mike Myers. And Radner had it all, aside from her health, and sadly, she ended up passing away from cancer at 42.

Thus, the world of comedy largely remained a male domain. Maybe America simply wasn't ready for funny women.

In 1997, Saturday Night Live hooked up with Tina Fey, and within two years, she became the first female head writer for SNL. A year after that, she began appearing on the show. Her talent wasn’t so much in writing and delivering punch lines as it was in her comedic ‘smarts’. Some people are just born to write comedy. And it was this talent that separated Fey from her predecessors.

It probably helps that comedy in the new millennium has evolved into more of a sophisticated art form. Comics and their audiences are certainly more enlightened than ever before. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher can be considered ‘smart’ comics. Their popularity has probably helped boost Tina Fey’s mainstream success, and her success, especially on 30 Rock, has helped spurn on a new generation of female writers and performers, including Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Samantha Bee and even Twitter sensation @kellyoxford. All of these women are producing smart, biting satire.

Is the female the new voice of comedy? It looks that way, and maybe America is finally listening.

Superheroes: Why we love them!

"The Avengers" is upon us, and already it is setting records on its first weekend and on pace to be on some kind of all-time list. With that, I felt appropriate to dig into the whole superhero phenomenon and why we love them. After a bit of reading and asking a few contemporaries to find out the reason behind our allegiance to these characters and movies.

Looking back at history, I'm tempted to believe that the creation of the idea of super heroes came right after the First World War in the United States as a way to reassure the public after a moment of crisis.  Super strong men who are not afraid of anyone created to reinforce America's superpower status. Also, it could be argued that superheroes were subliminally created to bridge the historical gap of heroism that America did not have in comparison to other great empires in history. 

Born between the Great Depression and World War II, superheroes took over comic books, then radio series and finally film and television, eventually becoming a national industry in America.
With their super powers put to serve a collective destiny, superheroes are both a wonderful fictional universe of escapism and a major propaganda vehicle for American values.
Mutants of the human species, angels or demons, superheroes are different, extreme, they crystallize the fears, exaggerations, but also the ideals of an America in search of a mythology that it never had.
Since the late 1930s, when two 17 year olds named Siegel and Schuster invent the character of Superman, and the superhero genre has never stopped evolving since.
During World War II, the first super heroes had been acting as vigilante for the free world, while Batman fights the mob, Captain America, Captain Marvel, The Justice League are attacking the Nazis and regularly confronting  the Führer himself. Then, once the war ended, they engaged in fights against communism and other social crisis.
Given the success, publications begin increasing, but while the genre was slowing in the late '50s, mostly due to the lack of villains in the real world, some comic book writers had the brilliant idea to invent Super-Villains. New fictional dramatic forces are created, and with the arrival of these new characters, storylines are modernised, bringing the idea that evil is essentially the alter ego of good.
Success is phenomenal and major publishing companies such as Marvel or DC Comics assert their supremacy and build real empires in America, spreading it across the world.
Uniting audiences of different ages, social conditions or levels of education, superheroes have been able to go beyond mere entertainment, and create a coherent world parallel to our real world, with its own laws, which from its apparent simplicity can not hide the inside look it provides into America's 20th century politics .

 Superheroes also represent a metaphor for the "perfect being", fulfilling some functions reserved to members of divinity, think about it: A superhero is usually alone, rebellious, and hides his true identity (usually a double identity), and he/she is good, fair and usually has super powers.

Some superheroes are made so that we, the viewers or readers, can easily identify with. Spiderman, for instance, is initially a regular human being with nothing magical. Superman is an alien from a planet whose inhabitants were exterminated to the last and was raised by human foster parents. Batman, who is easily the most relevant superhero in the media market today, before becoming Batman witnessed the murder of his parents and due to the frustration of not being able to protect them during his childhood, became the man-bat in adulthood. There is also another little known superhero created to allow individuals with disabilities to identify with: Daredevil, the man without fear, a lawyer by day and a vigilante at night. 

The impact of superheroes is similar to that of religion, but on a much smaller and weaker scale of course, since this is not a belief that tends to give meaning to our lives but rather allows us to relax, be entertained and especially to mitigate the frustrations of our everyday lives, as we briefly escape into their world.

The Hunger Games; A social media success!

Whenever a film breaks box-office records and creates a certain buzz, the skeptic and analyst in me tends to give an investigative look behind the scenes of the film's success. Being a movie lover and marketing enthusiast, and with the very successful launch of the Hunger Games movie on North America screens and worldwide, it seemed appropriate for me to dive into the marketing strategy of this first of three series inspired by novels of the same name.

Firstly, these next elements serve as the foundation of the film's success; a well-crafted story line featuring young people aged 12 to 18, an extreme reality show, archetypal characters, a futuristic society with totalitarian leadership; immortal themes such as romance, injustice, poverty, battle of good and evil, the class war, corruption, etc...  Secondly, to maximize the chances of a successful launch of the Hunger Games movie, the marketing strategy is initially removed from the traditional medium, i.e purchase of advertising in newspapers, television, billboards and bus-stop posters. In fact, for a period of time leading to the film's release, the only places I remember seeing a Hunger Games ad was during the pre-show at movie theatres and on social media. 
During this "can't-survive-without-internet" era, the marketing operation that Lionsgate (the studio producing and distributing the film) has relied upon is a heavy use of social media. For instance, a friend sent me a link to a site that issued an Internet ID card to become a good standing citizen of Panem, the imaginary country in which the story unfolds. On Facebook, I noticed that each district (the equivalent of our provinces in Canada) has its own page,The Capitol (The siege of Panem's totalitarian government) has its own Twitter account. I saw about 8 film trailers on Youtube, a few blogs devoted to the film, a hunger Games IPhone app, online video games and countless other distractions to drown you in the world of the Hunger Games. According to imdb.com, Lionsgate invested more than $ 45 million in marketing surrounding the launch of the film. Not bad for a film that cost close to $ 80 million, but that would be crumbs when compared to the usual promotional budget of a typical American blockbuster, which averages around $ 100 million.
In what promises to be a marketing recipe to be duplicated by others, this strategy has enabled Hunger Games to generate remarkable ticket sales at the counters, resulting in being ranked third all time, behind the Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2,  in box-office numbers for an opening weekend.One thing to mention is that the novel made things easier by preparing the ground and helping the migration of fan base from one medium to the next. Since September 2008, the three novels have sold an estimated 26 million copies (copies printed and sold). The books in the series are available in 38 countries and have been translated into 26 languages. Beyond the sales figures of books, the success of Hunger Games is also measured by the number of promotional materials, toys, posters and clothing.

All these marketing tricks do not diminish the quality of the work of Suzanne Collins, the author, but clearly, the success of Hunger Games (The movie) is based on an extraordinary marketing machine based ultimately on social media.

The Fan Experience

People who aren't die-hard fans often question a fan’s enthusiasm saying, “It’s just a game, movie, book, etc.. What’s the big deal about it?” The fan often ignores this, acknowledging the person's ignorance, nodding in approval and just moving on. Fans tend to identify themselves with the teams/athletes they root for, the characters they support in movies or the singer they are obsessed with, and consider themselves a part of the person’s journey. In the case of sports, when the fan's team/athlete wins, the fans tend to believe it’s their success too, in reflected glory (“we won”) and with defeats, they mourn equally (“we lost”). This new found identity of the fan not only inspires them, but also instills a sense of loyalty and respect in them.  The self-esteem of fans also somehow rises and falls with a game's outcome, with losses affecting their optimism about everything. Fans also escape their normal daily life, as well as social inhibitions and express themselves freely by cheering for their teams, rooting for their singers, getting lost in the world of their favorite stars or books, as well as lashing out at rivals whenever confronted. This shows that some fans find a sense of belonging and acceptance in the art form or person they are obsessed with, and while non fans watch sports, movies, television and read books for mere entertainment and finer nuances of the technicalities of the art form, for the fans, it is a much more complex experience which the others find it hard to relate to. It isn't just an obsession—but some people will never get it.... and I'm one of those that doesn't get it! ... btw, Go Leafs and NY Jets!

Harry Potter Fans camping out

Giants fans celebrating their Superbowl Win

Hunger Games fanatic!

Apple fans in China waiting to pick up the new Ipad

                                       

Apple fans can't wait

Not going anywhere

Bieber frenzy!

Girls aged 16 and under is probably the most powerful fans you will ever get. 

College Basketball Fans love painting themselves

Tim Tebow & Justin Bieber are polarizing figures in American sports and Entertainment

Linsanity fans in Toronto

Even politicians have fans!

Green Bay Packers and their fans

Okay, some fans can go to extremes!!!

Even in defeat, fans show their allegiance!

TEBOW TIME!

                                                                           

(Re)branding the NBA

During the 1980’s, the NBA was characterized by high socks, short shorts and the intense rivalry of Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson’s L.A. Lakers. As that rivalry grew, so did TV ratings. NBA President David Stern took notice and when their stars began to fade, he marketed the Association on the back of emerging superstar Michael Jordan.

Of course, it worked great. That is until Jordan surprisingly retired in 1993, sending shockwaves through the NBA. Despite frantic efforts, Stern and the league were unable to immediately find a suitable marketing figurehead. The game always had great appeal on the street, but Jordan helped fuel and blur the line between pop culture and sport. By the mid-1990’s, rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G were the reflection of the urban crime, gangs, and violent lifestyles of inner-city youth. Young stars Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, and Steve Nash simply did not cut it.

Instead, all attention, mostly negative, was focused on the doo-rags, tattoo’s and baggy jeans of Allen Iverson. Iverson was a great basketball player, no doubt, but he had a troubling past, constantly flirted with legal trouble, and was deemed uncoachable for his preference not to practise.

The NBA was drifting in a new direction. Starting in 1995, a wave of players such as Tracey McGrady, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Jermaine Oneal made the leap to the NBA directly from high school.

The game was getting younger, more brash, and definitely less mature.

The turning point may have been an all out brawl between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers in November 2004, that ended up spilling into the stands and involved several fans. Dubbed the Malice at the Palace, it was the final straw for Stern and the powers that be.

Over the previous decade, too much of the street had crept into the pro-game.

Realizing that attending a college could not only develop the player but also the person, a collective bargaining process in 2005 set the minimum age limit for draftees to 19 and at least one year removed from high school.

The difference that 7 years makes is considerable.

The NBA is still a star-driven league, but those stars have evolved.

Lebron James may be the Association’s biggest name, and although he was one of the final high schoolers to make the leap, he’s a walking billboard for GQ. The same can be said for Dwyane Wade, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Paul, and Kevin Durant. Clearly, these guys have stylists who monitor their ‘look’. MJ might have looked snappy in those designer suits, but these guys have captured nerd chic to a tee.

David Stern must be proud.