Guest Writer Patrick King: The Majesty(?) of The Hills

I might be the only male, or maybe person, at Hampshire College who obsessively watches The Hills. It has been mocked mercilessly from all angles since it premiered, except by teenage girls, who regard it as seriously as males do the fucking NFL playoffs (the “after shows” consist of giddy bitties deconstructing each episode-evidently it inspires their Derridean side). But why do I love it so much? Obviously, it seems pretty shallow at first glance. The show basically deals with beautiful women, dressed mostly in bikinis or cocktail dresses, handsome and chiseled dudes, all with fucking impeccable teeth, who spend their nights eating at chic restaurants and then hit up the hottest club spots, after breezing through their dream jobs (fashion stylists, nightclub promoter, etc.) during the day. It has been criticized for being fake, an illusory fabrication of Lauren Conrad’s (LC) glamorous life in Los Angeles, with all the storylines scripted and any conflicts completely set-up and intentional. But I don’t think one can brush it off as easily as that. As LC remembers from one of her appearances on Letterman, “one of the writers said that they believe The Hills is the most important show made in the last 10 years.” Routinely, it hits from 8.0-9.5 in Nielsen ratings, and Audrina, LC, and Speidi (an amalgam of Heidi Montag, Lauren’s former BFF turned arch-nemesis, and the root of the split, Heidi’s now-husband Spencer Pratt) have their smiling faces posted on tabloids in every grocery store checkout line in the nation. Fucking whole blogs have been posted devoting shot-by-fucking-shot analyses of multiple episodes. The New York Times have compared it to the works Antonioni for its deliberately distant dialogue, focus on reaction shots (protagonist as beauty!), and the prioritizing of personal tribulations (see: Zabriskie Point, Blow-Up,). Think of a soap opera on ‘ludes, and you kind of have an idea of it, as it has been categorized as a “docu-soap.” But with all of this academic and critical jargon, and to some extent, lauding, this shit has to have some merit, right? A Matter of Visual Aesthetics First, it has to be noted that this show is fucking gorgeous. There’s no getting around it: its eye-candy in both setting and characters. Yes, it is a spin-off of Laguna Beach, but that was child’s play compared to The Hills. It literally looks like a movie-maybe even better. This is what reality television was supposed to look like; I honestly want to move to L.A. after seeing it. In a recent article for Rolling Stone, Jason Gay noted the stunning visual look: [I]t’s filmed with digital cameras on tripods, with elegant evening scenes shot in low light. When its aerial cameras swoop down for a dream view of Sunset Boulevard twinkling at dusk, L.A. has never appeared more desirable. Much of The Hills’ look is credited to Hisham Abed, a young director of production who worked on the show’s first season and was also responsible for the golden tint ofLaguna Beach. Abed says he based The Hills’ cool evening look on the films of Michael Mann. “I like Heat,” Abed says. “We were trying to emulate the look offilm on television.” In the episode, “Girl’s Night Out,” there is a scene where Spencer and Heidi have a minor quarrel in a nightclub corridor. This would seem like a relatively unimportant event—it isn’t, in the broader context of the show—but it is honestly, one of the most beautiful pieces of visual art I have ever seen in my life. The club’s music is heard in the background as two cameras cut between reaction shots of Spencer and Heidi mid-argument, while they are doused in the morphing colors of the house lights. I may be romanticizing a bit, and it doesn’t hurt that Heidi (and possibly Spencer) is aesthetically pleasing in any environment, but I would highly recommend searching online for this episode (all episodes are on MTV.com), just for this scene. This scene along with the preceding shots of the L.A. evening, are perfect examples of this type of cinematography and production that Abed and his crew were looking to portray. Hell, just look at the title sequence: glittering shots of West Hollywood interlaced with enticing scenes of girlfriends partying, synced to Natasha Bedingfield’s incredibly optimistic anthem “Unwritten.” Now, obviously most viewers of the show are not going to be obsessing over the mise-en scène. It is pure, escapist fantasy in most other respects. Its basic premise is basically like The Mary Tyler Moore Show set in age of materialism. LC moves to West L.A., going to school and working her way up in the fashion industry, all while she experiences new friends, boy troubles, and break-ups with old friends. No South Central barrio exists here: where to eat, shop, and party are the only social problems these people must confront. This is where much of the mockery comes from: who the hell cares about Lauren’s minute problems? Honestly, who gives a shit? LC and Inherent (In)Authenticity Therein lies on of my attractions to the show. Lauren is a complex character: call me an idiot, or a starry-eyed male if you want. But I think she does more to highlight the critique of superficiality rather than the glorification of it. In the same Rolling Stone article, show creator Adam DiVello notes the peculiar nature of her character. “She is the girl who has it all—but doesn’t have it exactly.” She is constantly looking (a “searcher” as Gay says) for a lover, trustworthy friends, and her dream job in fashion, but never finds it. She has become pessimistic in her outlook. In a recent episode, when Audrina doesn’t trust her denial about hooking up with Audrina’s “boyfriend,” the notorious and hilarious Justin Bobby, LC just says fuck it, in a sense. When Audrina apologizes, Lauren seems to be beyond it: it seems like she read No Exit as a manual to analyzing her friendships for now on. Furthermore, she talks in a particular vernacular, one that is recognizable to young girls, and young people, in general. In interviews, Lauren has constantly defended the show’s authenticity. If anything, she has learned to not take things at face value. She has ended up unhappy too many times (Lo is the only constant friend in the show, and they have known each other since 3rd grade) to do that. That’s not to say The Hills isn’t scripted in some ways: total mimesis is not possible in this day in the age of mechanical reproduction, especially on television. Shooting locations have to be planned and mapped out, as the crew has to know where the cast members will be and prepare the area (since filming scenes with bystanders can’t really happen). Their semi-real jobs always must contain some sort of real work to push storylines along at times (Heidi’s job as a nightclub promoter, Lauren and Whitney’s fashion jobs), so that DiVello and the editing team can “pick and choose” what they are going to keep. Audio overdubs have to be done in a studio at times if there are technical problems. With the lack of the traditional “confessional” mainstay of reality television (think Real World, Survivor) the editing room becomes the place where the story lines are conceived and brought to fruition. As Lo describes, the producers “really little nothings and turn them into story lines.” Additionally, some of the cast members will act differently onscreen than off. Spencer, Brody, and Audrina all have commented publicly on this, usually with the response they would rather be entertaining than boring, for the sake of good television (that comment can speak volumes by itself, but on a different tip). What then, becomes of any merit of the show? It is in this lack of a confessional where a major part of the majesty of The Hills lies. The Minutiae Aspect Justin Wolfe, the aforementioned blogger who during the 3rd season (which is the series’ zenith, in my opinion) contributed extremely layered and detailed analyses of many episodes, has referenced Antonioni, Rohmer, and Godard in his criticisms of the show. He is quoted in an article by Kate Taylor’s article “There’s a Revolution Brewing in The Hills” with perhaps the perfect summary of the strength of the docu-soap approach: “What I enjoy most about The Hills is seeing things that I have never before seen represented on television,” writes Justin Wolfe, a recent English graduate from Florida State University, who keeps a blog about the show. “[…]I mean in the micro sense: the small gestures and body movements, the casual poses, the verbal tics, word repetitions and vocal inflections; all the things that colour [sic] the fabric of everyday existence. The Hills’, by foregrounding what is unnoticed, defamiliarizes it. It make what’s completely normal feel strange.” I recently had a conversation with a friend while watching the show. He was a completely objective viewer, having never really watched it consistently. But he noted this phenomenon. Can we really say exactly what we would do when in a similar situation as Lauren, for instance while arguing with a friend? You can pick up on certain phrases or inflections each cast member loves to use: Lauren loves the word “shady”, Heidi talks with an over exaggerated Valley-Girl drawl, Justin Bobby speaks in ridiculously generalized, pseudo-philosophical statements, and Whitney adds an extra syllable to any word ending with a –g. I have the feeling I could watch these people discuss absolutely mundane things for hours. When you see people react to certain situations on screen it seems written because perhaps it isn’t, but rather it is your perception of what is scripted and real. Neo-Kantian sentiments are surely the idea. Conclusion Regardless of opinion, The Hills’ popularity, and the larger movement of the docu-soap that it has been at the forefront of, is groundbreaking in television. As MTV program-development director Tony DiSanto points out, their goal was to “do a reality show in the visual language of narrative film, to see if we could throw out the language of documentary film.” But it is a quest whose source has been seen from Ibsen to Zola, to the Italian directors in the school of Neo-Realism, but now with a voyeuristic tinge, viewing wealthy American white women. Susan Sontag, the renowned American cultural critic, wrote in her famous essay “Against Interpretation,” that, “[t]ransparence is the highest, most liberating value in art—and in criticism—today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are." This is the greatness of, for example, the films of Bresson or Ozu and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. The Hills doesn’t completely achieve transparence, and I know that. One has to tease out its merits at times, deconstruct it—to use that overused word in the faintly Derridean sense—to come to any real conclusions. Otherwise, it may come off for what it is, which is a docu-soap marketed to teenage girls or young women about a privileged life in the big city. But I still love it, and I will still actively consume it (Whitney now has her own spin-off, The City) and so will millions of others. It is part of a new breed of television, one that has its aforementioned drawbacks and its strengths. But this may be the closest we can get to reality on television, following the lives of the beautiful and the rich. Or perhaps, that is all that the American public is ready for. Works Cited Gray, Jason. “Are They for Real?” Rolling Stone, May 2008. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. 1966. Taylor, Kate. “There’s a Revolution Brewing in The Hills.” Globe and Mail, September 2007. Patrick King is a writer and student at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusets, when not watching The Hills he spends time reading Hemingway and being awesome.

Bitches Be LARPing

I've been busy as all hell. Don't hate on me. http://www.alliancedeadlands.com Come play. It's pretty sexy. There are zombies and shit. I'm playing a banshee this weekend. And a baby dragon. And a dryad. Dryads are awesome.

Review: The "Master Chef" Part 2

Alright, so it is time once again to continue the review of my home-built system, the "Master Chef." As stated, this time I'm going through the building process and doing detailed reviews of the products. The first box I opened was the lovely Cooler Master RC-690 case. I chose it on a whim for its looks, included power supply, and at the time of purchase it was on sale for only $99. I'd never had personal experience but had always heard good things about cooler master and this was the time to give things a shot. The case came in a fairly well made cardboard box with Styrofoam fittings to keep it safe and in place. The box it comes in is important because if you ever want to travel with your computer, this is likely the box you're going to use. Nothing special here, but nothing appalling. The case was sturdily built and was light on the plastic bits. There was a neat screw repository system included on it, where any screw you would need for the hard drives and motherboard, had their own little screwed in place near the external media drives. It made it simple and convenient during the build to use and place screws. Anything not having to do with motherboard or hard drives was thumb-screwable, which was pretty welcome. though not all was perfect. The hard drive bays had these pretty innovative "slide in, slide out" holders that made it easy to install them. However, the way the sliders worked when you wanted to plug the drives in, the sockets were on the opposite side of the case, facing the wrong way. This made overall drive installation difficult and any future hard drive installations would be met with even more difficulty. Also the case panels were made up of the flimsiest metal, which resulted in them slightly bending during the build process. The fans were a little more conservative than I was used to. I usually tend to use something around the Antec 900 class, so a 250mm fan and more is standard for me, though this case just had 3 120mm fans: one in the front bottom, one on the side and one exhaust fan. Surprisingly, though, the case cooled extremely well, there were parts where there was ventilation, but no fan, and those seemed to work very well. The PSU was also on the bottom, which reduces overall heat and increases airflow. The fans had no speed adjust, which I was pretty disappointed about, since that limits a lot of flexibility in overclocking. Temps measured very cool after the build, though, and I couldn't argue with that. Getting the motherboard in was the most annoying part (as it often is), and the RC-690 offers not much relief on that front. Many of the screw sockets were badly made so that the screws were loose and uneven. This is typical of cases in this class, but this was especially finicky. Though it did have a ton of room, which sort of made up for these flaws. The PSU I really have not much to say about, It came not fully screwed in so I had to redo it, but other than that, I re-screwed it in, plugged in the parts and boom, I was off fraggin'. There's mesh around the cords to cut down on clutter (which it does fairly well) and sturdy clips on the end of each plug. The PSU worked great with no problems whatsoever. I give this case a lot of props for looks. It's sleek and sexy, but not overly flashy or exotic. The blue fan in front is a subtle touch that gives the case a fast look. The silver lines running along the case and curved corners set it apart but not so much as to make it distracting. Of course looks are all personal preference, but for me at least it does well. Overall I'd give this case a solid 7 out of 10. It is pretty sturdy, and has everything you could really ask for, save a few quirks, lack of fan speed adjust, and finicky screws. For a budget box with a great included PSU you can't go wrong. Moving on to the motherboard, I chose the MSI P7N-SLI motherboard for mostly its price compared to similar ASUS models. To be honest I stick pretty exclusively with ASUS when I build stuff for myself as they've never given me a problem, but Tom's Hardware had always touted MSI as being a pretty big competitor with comparable features at a lower price. Turns out they're spot on. The most difficult part of this build was fitting the motherboard into the case, the thumbscrews that you put on the back of the motherboard so that the back doesn't touch the case were extremely finicky. I finally got the motherboard in, then remembered I forgot to connect the peripherals panel, so I had to go through that whole process again. I give a lot of credit to MSI for having a sturdy board that well survived my frustrated abuse. I'm afraid I can't judge the board on overclocking as I did not this design this rig to overclock. I can say, however, that Pheonix AwardBIOS offered tons of options and did very well in configuring devices and manually setting memory timings. I hadn't had much experience with AwardBIOS was was impressed at how intuitive the interface was, no digging through submenus looking for what I wanted, everything was neat. To its discredit I can say, that the included software is complete and total useless buggy shit. The only thing you should use from the included CD is the drivers. Though I'll finish this next time, this whole thing is turning out to be a little longer than I thought it would be. I wonder if anyone who reads this can even understand this shit anyway. owell.

Lulz Of The Time

bork

Ok, Fucking Fine

So, I guess it's just me, I cant promise a constant stream of posts, but I'll try my bestest. For now I'm gonna cry in a corner for a bit.