#library of american broadcasting | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mercurygray · 5 months

Text

So I Hear You Liked...World War Two Dramas

What's that? You said you wanted a World War Two series where women actually speak to each other? Have I got a deal for you!

When Band of Brothers first came out, I did not have cable, but what I did have was a card at a library that owned seemingly every PBS drama ever broadcast. I know and love a lot of these shows, and I hope you do, too.

As we wait for Masters of the Air to join us, maybe you can fill some time with one of these!

Classic: These shows were made in the 70s and 80s and while the production values are not the same as something made more recently, they're all fun to watch.

Danger UXB - daily life in a bomb disposal unit.

Dad's Army - comedy show about the Home Guard.

Hogan's Heroes - situational comedy about life in a POW camp.

Piece of Cake - follows British pilots stationed in France as the Phony War begins.

Homefront Perspectives:

✨Housewife, 49 - Based on the wartime diary of Nella Last, who participated in the Mass Observation project. One of my favorites.

✨Foyle’s War - procedural crime drama following DCS Foyle and hsi team as he solves murders in wartime Britain. Another favorite.

Island at War - Wartime life on the Channel Islands during the German occupation

Land Girls - Follows the lives of a group of Land Girls working on an estate farm.

Bomb Girls - Follows the lives of a group of workers in a Toronto munitions factory.

Home Fires - Life in a small British town near an air base. Based on a book.

World On Fire - Follows the disparate lives of several people in several countries as the war begins.

✨All Creatures Great and Small - The life of Yorkshire Vet James Herriot, based on the book series of the same title. A favorite, both the 1970s original and the 2020 version.

A French Village - Daily life in a French village is upended as the Germans invade. Follows the same village through the entire war.

My Mother and Other Strangers - An Irish village deals with the introduction of an American Air Force base.

Colditz - life in one of the war's most infamous POW camps. Features Damian Lewis!!

Atlantic Crossing - the life of Crown Princess Marta of Norway as she tries to advocate for her country while living in the United States.

The Halycon - Life in a posh London hotel during the 1940s

Spies and Science:

X Company - Canadian drama about life overseas for spies

Resistance - French wartime drama about a woman in the French underground movement

Restless - Postwar drama about a woman who spied for the Russians in England during the war.

✨Manhattan - If you liked Oppenheimer, have I got a show for you!! Follows the lives of several scientists and their families as they move to Los Alamos. A favorite.

✨The Heavy Water War - Norwegian/British operations Grouse and Gunnerside to destroy German heavy water plant. A favorite.

The Twelfth Man - Norwegian sabotage operation gets shot down in occupied Norway.

✨Generation War - German experience of war from variety of perspectives. This show is excellent. Everyone should watch this.

✨SAS: Rogue Heroes - Follows the foundation of a parachute regiment in North Africa that would eventually become the basis for Britain's commando units. A favorite.

Postwar:

A Place to Call Home - very soapy Australian post-war drama about an upperclass family.

Our Wonder Years - Follows three sisters in post-war Germany as they attempt to confront the past.

Tannbach - Follows a family whose German town is split in two along the new East-West border.

The Defeated - Crime drama following a policeman trying to find his brother in post-war Berlin

Small Island- a Jamaican woman moves to London after the war and tries to adjust to a country that doesn't want her there

Call the Midwife - Social drama in the 1960s addressing the health and lives of the post-war poor of London.

#band of brothers #so i hear you liked #i'm gonna rec it #masters of the air

188 notes · View notes

mydoctordrivesatardis · 8 months

Text

Edit: someone reminded me I can just put a link, so here you go. I'm not deleting the how-to stuff, because I'm lazy, lmao.

Anyway, link is here

I have found a place where I (an American) can legally watch Doctor Who classic for free! Thought I'd share it!

I don't know if it has the missing episodes that have been redone, but it has all of the of her episodes as well as the movies.

Edit: It has an unaired pilot and bonus videos of different things. Will edit more as I find out more.

There's a website, Internet Archive, and I've found where the BBC has released them by season!

For those who need it, under the cut is just how to get to it!

You need an account on Internet Archive, but they're free.

Once you're logged in, you can get to all the seasons if you first search up "Doctor Who Classic Season 1," which should being up the first season,of course.. Then you click that.

Then scroll down a little and click the "British Broadcasting Corporation" hyperlink below the video.

Then you'll be brought to all the stuff they've put out.

Go to the left of the screen to the filters and go to the "media type" filter and click "movies" (which really means video).

It'll reload with that filter applied and once it's done that, go back to filters and filter by "subject" and click the "doctor who" filter.

And then you'll have them! The seasons are out of order, but they're all there.

I don't know if missing episodes that have been recreated are on there. But the rest definitely is.

So, it should look like this!

And then just find the season you want, pick the episode you want, and watch the show!

211 notes · View notes

californiastatelibrary · 4 months

Text

Today, Jan. 30 California celebrates Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. Where does Fred Korematsu come in? Mr. Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who stood up to the U.S. government’s wrongful incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast during World War II. Even without support from his family or community, he disobeyed the government’s orders, and as a result, spent over two years in various prisons and wartime incarceration sites. His case went to the Supreme Court, and in 1944, the Court ruled against him, claiming the mass incarceration was a “military necessity.” Nearly 40 years later, the government finally issued apologies and reparations to the camp survivors who remained, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

In the same year (1998), California also launched the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. The program, managed by the California State Library, funds projects that educate the public about civil liberties injustices carried out based on an individual or group’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation (including, but not limited to, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II). Over 400 projects have been funded since the program’s birth, including video and audio broadcasts, books, graphic novels, photo collections and exhibits, museum displays, arts performances, material preservation, educational guides, websites, public art and monuments, and more. To learn more about the program, visit library.ca.gov/grants/civil-liberties.

#california #libraries #civil liberties #constitution #fred korematsu

67 notes · View notes

a-solitary-sea-rover-backup · 2 months

Text

Underwater Urban Legends: Jacques Cousteau's Secret Discovery?

(Carthago vol. 3, “Le Monstre de Djibouti”, by Christophe Bec and Milan Jovanovic, 2013)

When I first got interested in ocean creatures as a little girl in the late 90s, we had several oversized white-covered books about Jacques Cousteau's ocean expeditions around the house that my parents let me page through, even though the text was way too small for me to read. A little later on, I read the Cousteau Society's young readers' magazine Dolphin Log/Cousteau Kids every month at the library, especially the selections from Dominique Serafini's comic book adaptations of the Calypso crew's adventures.

As an adult who's still interested in marine science, I've read several of Cousteau's books, and seen some of his documentaries. In 2019, I even got to hear his grandson Fabien speak at an event at the American Museum of Natural History.

Across film, TV, literature, comics, and even music, the Cousteau family’s underwater adventures are pretty well-documented. But one persistent bit of sea-folklore I've come across in various forms and places is an urban legend that at least one adventure wasn't. Somewhere in the world, these stories say, Captain Cousteau saw (or heard) something underwater that was so shocking that he kept it a secret from the world. (Except, presumably, from whoever is repeating the story.)

Could there be any truth behind this fantastic story? What was this "secret discovery"? And where and when did all of this happen? Like most urban legends, there are a lot of conflicting accounts and not a lot of proof.

I'd love to see a site like Skeptoid do a deep dive (heheh) into this story someday, but since they haven't yet, my research is below the cut.

A Secret Discovery?

It's alleged that after a submarine expedition, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau said, "The world isn't ready for what's down there." (How Stuff Works)

As a reader and a writer, I have to say, this is an excellent pitch for a story. A world-famous explorer who witnessed all kinds of undersea wonders and environmental tragedies choosing to keep a remarkable discovery a secret for some unknown reason? Wouldn't you read that book? I'd read that book!

In fact, I did read that book! The French comic Carthago, first published in 2007 and translated into English in 2014, features a character based on Cousteau named Major Bertrand, a famous ocean explorer who made a discovery so shocking that he not only kept it a secret, but retired and lived the rest of his life onshore afterwards. The actual scene shown in flashback is a beat-by-beat retelling of the "Red Sea Monster" version of the story we'll discuss below. According to an interview with the comic's writer Christophe Bec, that scene (and the comic itself) were inspired by an article in the French paranormal magazine Le Monde de l'un découverte (The World of the Unknown) published in February-March 2001. That article is in French here.

Here are the broad outlines of the story as I've seen it in various places online:

Cousteau surfaces, shaken from a dive, OR

The Calypso crew recover either a shark cage that has been destroyed OR

An underwater camera or hydrophone that has recorded something

Cousteau says some variation on "The world is not ready for what I have seen"

Cousteau orders any film or audio recordings of the incident (taken by either divers, underwater equipment, or film crew aboard the ship) to be either destroyed or suppressed and hidden away in a safe

(Some accounts have people saying they actually saw the incident happen on TV, which is unlikely as I don't think any of Cousteau's documentaries were live broadcasts.)

Cousteau is so shaken by what he saw that he never returns to the site of the incident

The Red Sea Monster

The most famous and detailed version of the story, and the one Carthago adapts, sets the action in the Gulf of Tadjoura off the coast of Djibouti, near where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean. Investigating legends of a sea monster in a cove called the Ghoubbet al-Kharab, or Gulf of the Demons, Cousteau's team lowered a camel carcass within a shark cage. When the cage was raised, it had been badly damaged, perhaps even destroyed.

[The Ghoubbet al-Kharab is the little inland bit at left almost cut off from the sea x]

The article in Le Monde de l'un découverte says this incident happened sometime before 26 June 1995, when the secret was revealed by a writer(?) named Stéphane Swirog, and that it had also been discussed on French TV in 1987. (I cannot find any information about a “Stéphane Swirog” online except in reprints of this story, although there is apparently an MMA fighter with that name. Is this one of those hoax articles with backwards names where “Goriws” sound like something hilarious in French that’s lost on me?)

This is a plausible part of the world to set this story, because Cousteau very famously did explore the Red Sea several times! A lot of his film The Silent World was filmed there, and his Conshelf underwater habitat was on the floor of the Red Sea off Sudan. In 2004, Cousteau's son Jean-Michel and grandchildren Fabien and Céline returned to these sites fifty years later for a new documentary you can watch here.

And we know Jacques Cousteau actually DID explore the coast of Djibouti in 1967-68! In his book Life and Death in a Coral Sea (1971), he says that when docked there, his crew, err, heard a strange story...

...we decided to visit the Goubet, a famous gulf of the Red Sea. Before leaving Djibouti that morning, one of our crew had by chance asked a local Arab diver about the Goubet. "Ah, sir," the man had replied, "it is a most extraordinary place. It is bottomless, and it is inhabited by monsters so large that they can drag down lines attached to 200-liter cans. Moreover, in 1963, Commandant Cousteau went there with Fredéric Dumas and his best divers, and they were so terrified by what they saw that they ran away." Naturally, we were eager to see the place in which, according to local gossip, we had earned so ignominious a reputation. I must report, however, that the Goubet was a disappointment. It is an inland sea or gulf that connects with the Red Sea by a narrow pass in which there is a very strong current, running up to seven knots. The surrounding area is very beautiful, and very wild, being dominated by volcanic mountains bare of foliage and marked in shades of red, yellow, and black. Once in the Goubet itself, we lowered the diving saucer to a depth of over six hundred feet without catching sight of even a small monster. The divers then suited up and went down also, but they saw nothing more remarkable than some very large sea urchins. There seemed to be very few fish of any kind. It is my guess that the "Goubet monster" of Arab legend was originally a manta ray, seen by some shepherd from a hill top. Manta rays are plentiful in this area, and it must happen occasionally that they wander into the Goubet and – because the inlet is so narrow and because mantas are not the most intelligent of beasts – have trouble finding their way out again. (Page 42)

(This is one of those "white-covered books" I still own a copy of!)

That's right, this story is so old it was told TO Cousteau in the late 1960s! It's the only version of the story he seems to have actually heard and commented on, and it was to deny the monster story.

It strikes me that two of the fearsome feats attributed to the Red Sea Monster— pulling air-filled cans/barrels underwater and destroying a shark cage— are things the shark in Jaws also does. While Peter Benchley’s novel came out in 1974, several years later, he did research sharks when writing it, so I wonder if “pulling barrels underwater” was just a bit of shark lore that was going around in the late 60s.

(At least the way it’s shown in the 1975 movie, the MythBusters showed a great white shark is strong enough to briefly pull barrel floats underwater but not to hold them there.)

The more embellished 2001 article post-dates Jaws and may be inspired by the cage-destruction scene in the film.

The Depths of Lake Tahoe

Apparently, years ago, Cousteau went scuba diving in Lake Tahoe. He emerged from the water shaken, but not with cold. He said, “The world is not ready for what I have seen.” (Jennifer Skene, “Rumors and Truth in Lake Tahoe”)

Another common account of the “secret discovery” story says that it didn’t happen at sea at all, but rather in the depths of landlocked Lake Tahoe, on the California-Nevada border. This is the version of the story most commonly associated with the “the world isn’t ready” quote. The Lake Tahoe version usually keeps things vague, speculating that perhaps Cousteau saw local legendary lake monster Tahoe Tessie OR a layer of hundreds of perfectly-preserved bodies of Chinese railroad workers or mafia victims floating eerily in mid-waters, OR some other mysterious thing too horrific to describe.

[Unspeakable horrors such as dinky maps found on Bing]

Both Tessie and the well-preserved bodies are urban legends seen discussed elsewhere without the Cousteau connection. Other legends speculate that the lake hides sharks, mermaids, an underground tunnel to Pyramid Lake, a crashed WWII bomber, and a fortune in gold bullion. Just your ISO standard set of underwater legends, really.

However, unlike the Red Sea, there is no evidence that Jacques Cousteau ever visited Lake Tahoe, let alone dove there!

According to other explorers who have explored the lake’s depths, the cold, clear waters do provide eerie visibility to the shipwrecks and sunken trees found there. While people have died in and around the lake and bodies are sometimes found, the more sensational claims of uncanny preservation and bodies eerily floating in mid-water, never rising or sinking, do not fit with Lake Tahoe’s known physical conditions.

The Screams of Hell

Indeed, the French diver Jacques Cousteau was swimming over Cuba some years ago, and he heard screaming noises at the bottom of the ocean. ... And Jacques Cousteau was so shaken up by what he had heard in the seas off Cuba, he never swam there again. ... He heard what he believed to be screaming, shouting, people being tortured, just as the Bible teaches. ("Ex-Catholics for Christ")

Yet another version of the story says that Cousteau heard the sounds of agonized screaming underwater, either while diving himself or recorded on a hydrophone, and possibly considered them the screams of souls in hell. These versions of the story tend to be vaguer, not always naming a time or place when this happened. (That version put it in Cuba, another in Greece, others vaguely “somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle”.)

That's probably because this version is just an adaptation of another, more well-known urban legend about Soviet geologists digging into hell and recording screams that has been repeated in various places since the 1980s. (You can see some of the problems with that story at the site linked.)

(Cousteau did explore Cuba’s waters in the mid-1980s as seen in the documentary, Cuba: Waters of Destiny. You won’t hear any screams from Hell in that documentary, but there is a guest appearance from Fidel Castro!)

Another religion-related urban legend about Jacques Cousteau is that he converted to Islam after discovering the Quran was correct about the mixing of the waters of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. This isn't true, either. In some places I'd seen this repeated in the same context as an equally-untrue claim that Neil Armstrong converted to Islam after hearing the call to prayer on the moon, and misremembered this as a claim Cousteau had heard the call to prayer underwater for a less-disturbing twist on the idea that the secret discovery was something heard underwater rather than seen, but as far as I can tell, that isn't the case.

Bells in Random Order

Do you know Jacques Cousteau? Well, they said on the radio That he hears bells in random order Deep beneath the perfect water ("Perfect Water")

The Blue Öyster Cult song "Perfect Water" has the lyrics above, which may be a reference to the "secret discovery" legend and specifically the above idea that it was a mysterious sound heard underwater. The band is known for having many references to legends, conspiracy theories, and the supernatural in other songs. "Perfect Water" was on the album Club Ninja, released in December 1985, post-dating Life and Death in a Coral Sea but predating the most famous accounts of the “Well to Hell” story. I can't find any other sources talking about Cousteau and mysterious bells.

This website instead thinks the lyrics are referring to Cousteau's actual descriptions of walruses as making sounds similar to bells in his writings and films. You can hear a walrus making a bell sound here.

Ask Me Anything

During an AMA session on Reddit in 2018, Fabien Cousteau (FCNomad) was asked about three different versions of this story (Djibouti, Lake Tahoe, and Fort Peck Reservoir in Montana.) He seemed most familiar with the Lake Tahoe version.

sotpsean: Hello, Mr Cousteau! It's an honour. When I was a child, family lived in Djibouti, Africa,(my father was a French Foreign Legionnaire). There was a local legend about a "sea monster" living in Lac Goubet. I've heard that your Grandfather might have investigated Lac Goubet in search of this "monster". Locals have thought it to be a prehistoric shark cut off from the sea. I've always wondered if someone might be able to shed light on this subject. Have you heard of this? Thanks for doing this AMA! FCNomad: Great to chat with you. French foreign legion? Serious stuff. There are legends of "sea monsters" in every body of water out there. Until we explore them we will not know for sure ;-) Lets go see! [x]

HulkVomit: Why did your grandfather never want to dive in Ft Peck Reservoir again? Would you ever come dive in it? Account-002: I am also REALLY curious about this. My Dad thought it was because if the siltyness of the water, combined with a possible encounter with multiple giant catfish/paddlefish that put him off. FCNomad: That does seem plausible and potentially sound due to the potential risks. He was focussed on filmmaking and if you can't see anything its hard to tell a visual story… [x]

TeddysGhost: Hi there, I live at Lake Tahoe and it is a common story around here that your grandfather went into the lake once and when he emerged he warned people that the world isn't ready to see what's down there? What do.you know about that story? Is there even a shred of legitimacy and if so what did he see? FCNomad: Ive heard this rumor as well. We were supposed to investigate on a new TV series but we never got the chance… [x]

Conclusions

...yeah, all versions of this story sound pretty fake to me. Sorry.

As Fabien says, almost every body of water has sea and lake monster legends attached to it, because the world’s waters really are mysterious, unpredictable, and dangerous. But over time, your local legendary water monster can become familiar, almost a sort of community mascot.

When reading the archives of The Liberator, a famous anti-slavery newspaper published in Boston in the mid-1800s, I found several articles where the writers referred to the New England sea serpent in these kinds of familiar terms, since to Bostonians it was a “local” monster. They even called it “our American sea serpent”— the children and grandchildren of the Minutemen, still defining their identity as Americans, could boast that England didn’t have such a cool monster.

In modern times, of course, a local monster legend can also be a major tourist attraction. Most of the sites I found repeating the Djibouti and Lake Tahoe versions of the story were… travel sites for Djibouti and Lake Tahoe (especially diving travel sites).

To present your local monster story as “verified” by a famous underwater explorer like Jacques Cousteau makes it sound authentic. It certainly spices things up for people planning their vacations, especially divers. And to say that your local monster scared away a globetrotting adventurer like Cousteau who had faced so many other perils all over the world definitely adds to the “local pride” angle. In Djibouti, a French colony that was having a vote in 1967 about whether to become independent, a story about a local monster scaring away a famous Frenchman may have had an appealing nationalist undertone.

The writer for Le Monde de l'un découverte, however, probably just wanted to tell a rip-roaring sea story. The presumably-French writer, writing for a French magazine, would have been writing for an audience who had grown up following Cousteau’s adventures. Perhaps they combed his writings in search of any mention of sea monsters that could fit in their paranormal magazine, found the passage about Djibouti in Life and Death in a Coral Sea, and created a more sensational version that conveniently left out Cousteau’s own debunking. For an audience who had grown up with Cousteau, what could be more exciting than hearing about one more adventure of their late hero, totally new and unseen, and a discovery so shocking it was being kept secret?

And, like I said, it does make for a great story! No wonder it inspired Christophe Bec to write his own version! And with the decades-long tradition of fictional stories parodying and homaging Jacques Cousteau, I can’t blame you if this piece has inspired you to write your own version of the “secret discovery” story— just please, make it clear that your fiction is fiction.

#jacques cousteau #the mythical seas #song of the sea #urban legends #underwater

22 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 7 months

Text

One way to understand the latest round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians—to distinguish it from previous rounds—is to see it through the lens of historical trauma. For both sides, the events of the past 10 days have evoked memories of their worst national suffering. For Israelis and Palestinians, this war has surfaced fears, always lurking just under the skin, that history could possibly repeat itself.

Let’s start with Israelis, of which I am one. For many of us, the first reports of the slaughter taking place near the Gaza border on the morning of Oct. 7 came from Israelis barricaded in their rooms with their children. One mother phoned a television anchor and pleaded for help on a live broadcast. Others made similar appeals on social media. Many of these conversations were played and replayed on television and radio in the hours and days to come, as the death toll rose: first to scores and then hundreds.

Pundits quickly dubbed the Hamas attack Israel’s 9/11. The total number killed, more than 1,300, is the population equivalent of more than 40,000 Americans. Israelis have our own library of trauma: the battles near those same kibbutzim around Gaza during the 1948 war; the tense weeks leading up to the 1967 war; the surprise attack in the 1973 war.

But for many Israelis, the Hamas attack evoked the most chilling memory of all: the Holocaust. It was reflected in the images of armed men going door to door to kill Jews, of parents cowering over their children to keep them silent, of families pleading for help and getting no response. Part of Israel’s creation story is the idea that Jews would no longer find themselves defenseless, that a modern state and a strong military would act as a guarantee against further exterminations. For many long hours on Oct. 7, the guarantor seemed to be missing in action.

To be sure, historical analogies are risky. Plenty of Israelis leaders have invoked the Holocaust to justify misplaced political goals, cheapening its significance. But Israelis weren’t the only ones to see parallels. A few days after the Hamas attack, U.S. President Joe Biden said: “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”

Palestinians have their own trauma, beginning with the Nakba—the catastrophe that coincided with Israel’s founding in 1948 and was intertwined with it. Approximately 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes and became refugees, many forcibly displaced by the nascent Israeli army. Most Palestinians in Gaza today are the descendants of those refugees.

Last week, when Israel ordered more than 1 million Palestinians to move to the southern part of Gaza ahead of an Israeli invasion, what the world saw was a humanitarian crisis in the making. But for Palestinians, it was also an echo of that historical trauma—and, quite possibly, the harbinger of a new Nakba. Israel pledged to allow Palestinians to return to their homes once troops routed Hamas in the north. (Already, some 3,000 Palestinians have died in bombardments.) But the promise would surely have rung false to anyone steeped in the memory of 1948.

I’ve witnessed the way in which the Nakba is a live issue in the Palestinian consciousness—not just a historical event—while working for years to prevent the eviction of Palestinian refugee families from Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, by government-backed settlers. Initially, individual families were targeted. More recently, entire communities with hundreds of families have become at risk of displacement.

The issue came to a head in 2021, after Itamar Ben-Gvir, then a lawmaker from Israel’s far-right (and currently minister of national security), opened a parliamentary office in the neighborhood. That May, violence erupted between Israel and Gaza, spreading to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel itself, where Palestinian citizens of Israel clashed with Jewish neighbors in several cities and towns.

The force of the Palestinian reaction surprised me. Never before had pending evictions in East Jerusalem sparked violence. Why had the issue of Sheikh Jarrah suddenly become so pivotal?

The answer quickly became evident. When individual Palestinian families were targeted for eviction, it was perceived as a violation of international law and a humanitarian outrage. But when an entire Palestinian community was targeted, as in the case of Sheikh Jarrah, it reopened the most painful wounds in the Palestinian consciousness.

Sheikh Jarrah is not an isolated case. Palestinians are facing forced displacement in other parts of East Jerusalem and in a growing number of communities in the occupied West Bank.

For years I had been told by Palestinian colleagues that the Nakba was not just an event but an ongoing process. It took the convulsive violence of 2021, and the increasingly blatant expulsions in the West Bank, for me to realize how close to the surface it was for many Palestinians. The Nakba is not the exclusive trauma of the 1948 refugees and their descendants. Like the Holocaust for Jews, it is the emotional inheritance of all Palestinians.

On the morning of Oct. 7, many Israelis, briefly but powerfully, came face to face with the unspeakable horrors endured by their parents and grandparents in the Holocaust. Days later, Palestinians in Gaza packed their most precious belongings and fled their homes, much as an earlier generation fled the war in 1948 that started all this.

Can either side recognize the other’s historical trauma? Even in ordinary times, Israelis and Palestinians have found it excruciatingly difficult.

For years, it was virtually a consensus in Israel that the Nakba never took place. Israelis accused the Palestinians of weaponizing this fiction in order to delegitimize Israel. Only recently has mainstream Israel begun to acknowledge the incontrovertible facts of the Nakba. This latest war will surely set back the effort.

Among some Palestinians, there is a trend to deny the historicity of the Holocaust, to claim that it never happened. For those Palestinians who acknowledge the horrific crimes of the Nazis, many feel that the creation of Israel was an attempt to redress those crimes at their expense. Israelis largely view these claims as a polemical construct designed to delegitimize Israel and a manifestation of Palestinian antisemitism.

So that’s where Israelis and Palestinians are as this war enters another week—triggered by our own traumas and reluctant to recognize the other side’s. When this war comes to an end, the chasm of mutual denial between us will be wider than ever.

35 notes · View notes

nickblaine · 1 year

Text

season 5 script summaries

links to previous script summaries: season 4, season 3, season 2, season 1, seasons 1/2 cont’d also, check my tht scripts tag for gifs, excerpts, and more details

i got the librarian’s email about season 5 scripts, and even though driving to and parking at WGAW has become a literal nightmare, i said fuck it and flew (crawled in traffic) down there the very next day. i wanted to see what the mood was like during the strike, anyway.

the staff had the library running business as usual, but the energy was high and there were pro-union shirts everywhere. there were a couple of guys on the first floor making literal piles of picket signs. i chatted with them for a minute and they said everyone was mostly out on the streets, picketing at every major studio in the city. rock on WGA ✊

i was on a time limit to beat rush hour, so when i read the season 5 scripts it was only Nick scenes. i searched for all instances of his name and wrote down everything i could. i may go back to read the rest of the season, but i can’t make any promises on when that will be.

before i begin (same as last time):

• everything described here is from the official scripts that are archived at the Writers Guild in Los Angeles. • the scripts i read are final drafts. there is no “writing in the margins.” everything described is from dialogue and script direction that was used on set. (click for an example) • the library has a strict no copies/photos rule in place which is why i summarize what i read. • anything in italics is a direct quote for the sake of clarity. • feel free to ask questions and i’ll answer to the best of my ability. my private notes are pretty detailed, but if i need to do more research i may save the answer for a future library visit. • please do not share this post without my permission. thank you in advance for respecting my wishes.

5x01 - Morning

Nick and Rose’s morning scene in this episode is more or less the same as this early script draft. The only difference is after Nick tells Rose her coffee is good, there’s an additional line that says: “It’s a lie, and they both know it. Rose appreciates the polite kindness.”

5x02 - Ballet

There was a short scene of Nick and Joseph Lawrence having a private chat at the airport before meeting with Serena Joy. It was cut from the episode, but you can see it in the trailer.

In this scene, Lawrence confides in Nick that he’s nervous about the meeting with Serena because - in his words - “You had to let your girlfriend go after Fred.”

Nick assures Lawrence that they’re going to spin it as a savvy political move by blaming the Americans for killing Fred. Lawrence still chastises him for not doing his job. Then the conversation pivots (a little clunkily) to this line from the trailer:

NICK: Serena doesn’t know what happened.

LAWRENCE: Doesn’t matter what she knows. It matters what she believes.

When they meet Serena on the tarmac, she instantly has suspicions that they were responsible for Fred’s death. The conversation is tense until they all see Fred’s body getting rolled off the plane, then Serena needles Nick’s guilt and pokes at it with her “Fred saw promise in you” speech.

As they are leaving the tarmac, there’s a line that says “Nick acknowledges Mark with a nod” and Lawrence notices it. In the episode you can see Nick and Mark exchange looks in the background as they leave, but otherwise Lawrence doesn’t notice.

At the Putnam’s party later in the episode, you may have noticed that after the Handmaids arrive, Esther and Nick share a notable look. The script describes this as a fraught moment in which Nick is filled with remorse and wishing he could do more. It also says Esther remembers Nick from when he and the Eyes arrested her, and she’s visibly pissed about it. As they walk away from each other, “Nick can’t help but be reminded of June.”

While Serena Joy is manipulating the Commanders into broadcasting Fred’s funeral, Nick steps in because he’s moved by her bravery and “attempting to atone for his hand in killing Fred.”

In the secret meeting between Nick and Mark there were a few cut lines of dialogue. Most notable is after Nick tells him he just tries to stay out of trouble, Mark replies, “Catches up to everyone, at some point.“

Opaque, Nick thinks about that. How long does he think he can keep going?

Ok, so the end of the episode when the funeral is on TV in Canada, I’m happy to report that Nick IS mentioned in June’s inner dialogue. The scene describes her recognizing who is onscreen with Serena. First she sees Lawrence, and then... “And finally, most painfully -- NICK.” (Yes, in all caps like that, lol.)

5x03 - Border

Cute June inner-dialogue when Lily asks her if Nick’s a big Jezebels guy: “June doesn’t know how to explain what type of “guy” Nick is.”

The awkward Lawrence residence dinner scene. Commander Mackenzie genuinely loves Rose (”old friend of the family”) and is instantly distrustful of Nick. Serena doesn’t buy Nick and Rose’s relationship as genuine either, and tries to subtly acknowledge Rose’s close relationship with June’s daughter’s parents by telling him how lucky he is. Nick is tense, but then his banter with Rose relaxes him, making Serena surprised to observe real affection in their relationship.

During the dinner itself, Mackenzie is just making everyone extremely uncomfortable by bringing up June. Nothing too interesting in the script here, it’s mostly just dialogue.

There is a cut line after dinner when Nick and Rose are leaving, and she says to him, “Well I wouldn’t say that’s the most relaxing dinner party I’ve ever been to.” (He responds “Yeah. No.”) Then he spots Mark all alone. Script says Rose understands what he’s about to do. “Nick squeezes her hand, then heads over to Mark.”

The script emphasizes here that Nick is unsure talking to Mark is a good idea, but he really wants to be the one to tell June about Rose before Serena does.

Mackenzie scares the shit out of him in this scene, and the “fuck” Nick mutters at the end was originally not spoken out loud (”OFF NICK, fuck.”) but I’m so glad it was.

Alright, phone call scene. One of our few big Osblaine moments!

NICK: June. Hi.

June suddenly feels like everything is going to be okay.

This scene is mostly dialogue. The final product is all the acting that goes into it. It does say Nick is stressed to relay upsetting information about Hannah and Rose. When June hears about Rose, she knew this was coming eventually, but it’s still a blow. It also describes how painful and hard this is for both of them. But at the end of the call, right after June tells Nick to be happy, is my favorite line in the whole script:

It’s an impossible ask, maybe, for these two to be truly happy without each other.

After the phone call, there is a cut scene between Nick and Rose where they simply look at each other.

Rose knows exactly who he was on the phone with, and what he said to her.

She looks worried for him, knowing it wasn’t easy.

He nods to her -- it’s done.

5x06 - Together

According to the script, Lawrence only invited Warren Putnam over to his house to get Nick on board with killing him. Warren repulses Nick so he’s down.

The next scene they’re in is when they execute Warren. (Such a good scene.) After Nick shoots him in the head, the script describes the camera hanging onto Nick and “his soldier’s stoicism.”

Then it cuts straight to Rose in the Blaine home. “She’s disappointed in him and he knows it.”

Now this scene threw me off. It’s written much differently than how Max acted it. Nick is actually a lot more warm toward Rose in the script, much like how all their previous scenes were. Several lines of Nick’s dialogue were changed (”Can I help?” became “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” onscreen) and his body language comes across way more cold and defensive than what’s described on paper.

As for Rose, she isn’t soothed by Nick’s assurances here. And that’s it for this episode.

5x08 - Motherland

New Bethlehem opens with another cut private moment between Lawrence and Nick.

Nick is brooding by the water, “still grappling with the moral and emotional consequences of shooting Warren in the head.” Lawrence finds him and tries to prod, but Nick gives him nothing.

LAWRENCE: You look a little more moody and broody than usual. Really, you sleeping okay?

NICK: I’m fine.

Lawrence moves on because they have work to do. He reminds Nick he’s counting on him.

Lawrence gives his New Bethlehem speech to the other Commanders. When one of them pushes back, “that’s the cue for Nick, the muscle. Enough carrots, time for sticks.”

After Nick bullies the Commanders and Lawrence consolidates his power, the script describes these two as a “dynamic duo” lol

Okay, brace yourselves, there’s a cut Osblaine scene up next. I had no idea this existed, I don’t think there are any shots of it in the trailer.

It takes place after June visits Serena in the detention center and realizes she can’t help Hannah unless she’s there. If you watch that part you will see her pull out Lawrence’s burner phone as she leaves. But instead of going to Lawrence’s office like she does in the filmed version, in the script she calls Lawrence and just says, “I want to talk to Nick.”

It cuts to the next night at the border wall between Gilead and Canada. June is waiting on the Canada side as flying drone searchlights swoop across the electrified fence. (All described in dramatic detail.) She sees Nick appear on the other side. They look at each other, waiting, and once the searchlights clear they move to meet each other at the fence.

JUNE: I need to know if this is for real. I need to know that Hannah and my family will be safe.

NICK: I know. You will be. I promise.

JUNE: How can you promise that?

NICK: Things are changing, people are scared of Lawrence. I’m in a position now where i can make sure you’ll be safe.

JUNE: I want to believe you.

NICK: June. You can finally be with Hannah, watch over her. Isn’t that what you always wanted?

She nods.

NICK (CONT’D): Then please. Come back.

“To me,” he means. June’s heart is torn.

At this point the searchlights return and they have to separate. This scene is written like a soap opera. “They can’t help but reach out to each other, almost brushing fingertips before they move apart and run back, escaping the lights.”

Photo of this scene from Max’s IG:

Later in the episode, Lawrence is back in New Bethlehem with Nick. Nick asks which way June is leaning and Lawrence says it’s toward yes. The script says here that Nick understands that Lawrence is trying to manipulate him, but he can’t help but be cautiously optimistic at the idea of having June and Nichole in New Bethlehem with him.

By the end of the conversation, Nick is “considering.”

5x09 - Allegiance

We’ll skip to 27 minutes into the episode, when June sits with Mark after the failed mission. Mark catches June off guard by bringing up Nick. She’s taken aback by the revelation that he turned down Mark’s offer, but Mark says she can still persuade him. The script says “June imagines the prospect of Nick in Toronto” which I think you can see pretty clearly on Lizzie’s face lol.

Then we cut to the big Osblaine reunion.

Lots of dramatic buildup in the script leading up to their conversation. I don’t know how to describe it other than to show you:

She looks toward the courtyard. And there he is --

NICK

Waiting for her. Strained.

JUNE

Takes a beat to soak him in. She gets out.

OUTSIDE

June approaches Nick, their eyes locked.

Like, damn. They love building tension with these two.

Anyway, dialogue proceeds as it does in the show. Nick tells June that his wife’s pregnant and June has the wind knocked out of her. She’s described as “appalled by Nick’s commitment to Gilead, but understanding of his loyalty to Rose and their future child.”

And then--

JUNE: I want what’s best for both our families.

They look at each other.

A giant chasm between them now. But they’ve shared so much. So much trauma. So much love. A daughter.

JUNE (CONT’D): Well. This is a fine mess, isn’t it?

This scene is once again described as painful for both of them. “She tries to keep it together. How can they part? How can they say goodbye?”

Before Nick says “I love you” he was supposed to wrap his arms around her, but in the final cut they keep their distance.

5x10 - Safe

Just wanna note that when Nick shows up on the bridge to meet Mark, it was originally written so American soldiers yank Nick out of his car, handcuff him, and drag him across the bridge to Mark. We were deprived.

Also the first thing out of Nick’s mouth here was supposed to be, “How is she?”

In the hospital, Mark is telling Nick what’s going on but, “Nick can’t even speak. Looking at June, with her black and blue eyes.”

Mark gets the hint and leaves Nick alone. An interesting thing to note is that the line “it’s probably better if she doesn’t know I was here” is NOT in the script. At all.

The rest of the scene is sweet and simple.

Nick crosses, sits beside June.

A beat. Nick takes her hand.

Says nothing as he watches her sleep.

And that’s it.

Mark and Nick’s second scene on the bridge is just as short and to the point. In fact it’s almost entirely dialogue, so the emotions you see onscreen came from acting and directing. The only notable difference here is when Mark tells Nick he could’ve run away with June, he was scripted to give actual examples of where. “Maybe not to Canada, but there are -- places you could’ve gone. Idaho, the Westward Territories.” (Hopefully foreshadowing lol.)

At the party, it is scripted that Rose tries to greet Nick when he arrives and he doesn’t even acknowledge her. Like she doesn’t even exist.

There isn’t much description to accompany the punch. There is a line that says if Nick wasn’t pulled off of Lawrence than he’d be happy to keep on whaling on him. It also describes Lawrence as “rattled” and Rose as “humiliated.”

At the train station, during June’s goodbye to Mark, she asks him to tell Nick that she and Nichole are safe as a nod to their phone call in episode 3. The only descriptive line here is, “A beat, as Mark clocks the deep and selfless connection between Nick and June.��

The final scene I have notes for is Nick and Rose’s breakup in jail.

There are a couple parts of their scripted conversation that didn’t make it onscreen. Starting with right after Rose tells him a good man wouldn’t leave his wife every time his girlfriend calls, Nick’s response was supposed to be, “she was almost killed.” Then Rose laments that she thought she was lucky that someone like [Nick] would deign to be with someone like [her.] Nick says, “I was the lucky one” and she tells him to shut up.

Then there’s the “You will never let go of her, will you?” line from the show. Nick explains that he tried, but Rose retorts with, “Who knows what that woman will bring to our door. I have to protect our son.” Nick is described as scared now, and pleads with her not to leave.

Now I have no idea if that “our son” drop was supposed to be a legitimate reveal or just hopeful Gilead thinking. The script says nothing else about it and it was cut from the show. But it will be fun to speculate as we wait for the final season.

#the handmaid's tale #tht scripts #nick blaine #osblaine #june osborne #rae.txt

109 notes · View notes

almost-a-class-act · 6 hours

Text

This week in "rabbit holes I sometimes go down reading about WWII history..."

If Day: In an effort to raise money by encouraging folks to buy war bonds during WWII, the Manitoba chapter of the National War Finance Committee went balls to the fucking walls and decided to plan and stage an invasion and occupation of Winnipeg, a city of over 200,000 people. And lest you think the organizing committee was going to take that mandate and plan a day of fun and enjoyable low-key festivities, you have gravely underestimated how bored people get in Winnipeg in the winter.

The name comes from the concept of "if one day..." the Nazis invaded Canada, having been left unchecked in Europe. And they did not fuck around.

The 'invasion', a military exercise that involved 3,500 personnel, happened on February 19th, 1942. There were 'German' planes that flew raids over the city and surrounding areas, simulating hits with dynamite and coal dust. The city itself responded by enacting blackout procedures, playing air raid sirens and broadcasting emergency messages on the radio. The fake Nazis and the defending Canadian military used real weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns, firing blank rounds. They faked the destruction of bridges and ambulances picked up the dead and wounded.

It's worth noting that the prospect of a land invasion wouldn't have seemed that absurd - at that point in the war, the Nazis were by no means on the back foot in North Africa and were occupying France and a good chunk of Europe. German U-Boats often attacked Allied convoys departing for Europe and the Battle of the St. Lawrence was only a couple of months away. The organizers had to forewarn American towns close enough to pick up the radio broadcasts.

In the morning, as the invaders entered the city, radio stations began broadcasting in German and city officials were arrested. The 'Nazis' occupied the city for the rest of the day, renaming it Himmlerstadt and running up the Nazi flag. They conducted a harrassment campaign that included roadblocks and patrols, entering schools to enforce the teaching of 'Nazi ideals', driving a tank down the main streets, looting and confiscating, and closing churches. They even released a German-language newspaper and burned books in front of the library.

As Victory Bonds were sold in each area of the 'invasion', it was recorded as having been retaken from the Nazis. The stunt ended with a parade and speeches by civic leaders.

They raised $3 million that day.

#please go read the article i linked the details are even more bananas #canadian history #wwii #winnipeg #history

7 notes · View notes

justinsentertainmentcorner · 10 months

Text

Alissa Wilkinson at Vox:

For the first time in 63 years, Hollywood has a double strike on its hands. The contract between SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, two guilds that merged in 2012) and AMPTP (American Motion Picture and Television Producers), which represents Hollywood’s studios and production companies, expired at midnight on Wednesday, July 12. SAG-AFTRA’s national board unanimously voted today to order a strike; membership had previously authorized the strike, with nearly 98 percent of voters in favor. Meanwhile, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) has been on strike since May 2. Like the WGA strike, a SAG-AFTRA strike comes with profound economic consequences. The WGA’s picket lines have already managed to shut down most productions in New York and Los Angeles and across the country as crew members refuse to cross. Since SAG-AFTRA represents 160,000 members — “actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists, and other media professionals,” as their website puts it — a strike would have profound effects on many industries. (By contrast, the WGA, which has just entered day 73 of its strike, has around 20,000 members.) To be clear, a strike doesn’t mean people can’t act at all; it means they cannot perform work for struck companies (which is to say, members of the AMPTP, like Disney and Netflix). Unless specific concessions are made, they can’t promote work for struck companies either. (Yes, their publicists are reportedly panicking.)

Major studios, for instance, have been dropping out of Comic-Con rather than have a poor showing with the few actors who might cross the picket line. You likely wouldn’t see actors promoting new movies (like Barbie or Oppenheimer) or walking the red carpet at film festivals; WGA members have already stayed away. And of course, they won’t be on set.

What does SAG-AFTRA want?

In many ways, what SAG-AFTRA wants is similar to what the WGA wants, all of which is driven by technology.

In a streaming-forward world, the typical TV season length has shrunk drastically, from the traditional broadcast model (up to 26 episodes per season) down to maybe eight or 10 episodes. That means actors are working far less on each job and tend to have larger gaps between jobs, which means it’s harder to make a steady living. But compensation hasn’t kept pace with the shift, and SAG-AFTRA is asking for a raise. (The specific terms are still scarce as negotiations continue.) Additionally, residuals — which are sort of like royalties, paid to actors when their work continues to earn money for the studio in the form of reruns or streaming content libraries — are at a level that the guild sees as unsustainable for its members.

Like the WGA, SAG-AFTRA is also enormously concerned about the potential for rapidly developing AI to replace its members. And it should be: AI can be trained on actors’ likenesses or voices, which can then be used to generate new performances both on-screen and in voice-over or other capacities.

In a bulletin to members addressing their concerns, SAG-AFTRA leadership cited creating guidelines around acceptable uses of AI, bargain protections against misuse, and consent and fair compensation when members’ work (such as their likeness or voice) is used to train AI systems and create new performances. “In their public statements and policy work, the companies have not shown a desire to take our members’ basic rights to our own voices and likenesses seriously,” SAG-AFTRA leadership noted.

[...]

Why isn’t AMPTP budging?

When asked, the studios tend to cite tough economics as the reason they can’t raise minimums or residuals. (They don’t talk a lot about AI, which in itself is probably worth noting.) Like the WGA, SAG-AFTRA takes issue with that math. In their bulletin, they note that “in sharp contrast to the diminishing compensation paid to our members, the studios are posting immense profits with a bullish outlook as demonstrated by lavish corporate executive compensation.” The reality is that studios and production companies are increasingly embedded in larger corporations and tech companies that are beholden to shareholders, and the way they think and talk about profit and revenue is different from the way the people who take home a paycheck do. It’s hard to argue with some staggering statistics about CEO pay at entertainment companies; average pay for a top Hollywood executive was $28 million in 2021, a hike of 53 percent from 2018. Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called the actors’ demands “not realistic” on TV on the morning the strike was called, recently signed a contract to run the company through 2026 and makes about $27 million a year.

On top of that, the AMPTP didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory in a recent Deadline article, published the day before SAG-AFTRA’s contract was set to expire, in which an anonymous studio executive told the reporter that with the writers strike, “the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” An “insider” quoted in the article called it “a cruel but necessary evil,” and the article suggested the AMPTP had no intention of returning to the bargaining table with the striking writers until October. WGA members reacted with scorn on Twitter, noting that AMPTP members will be hurt by these same tactics and that the economics of being a writer in Hollywood have prepared them well for this moment. “‘Let writers go broke’ would be a more effective tactic for an endgame if it hadn’t been their pre-game, too,” noted Fleishman Is in Trouble writer and showrunner Taffy Brodesser-Akner. The AMPTP soon backtracked the statement.

Yet, given its timing, some speculated the article had the hallmarks of being planted by the studio as a negotiation (or maybe non-negotiation) tactic aimed at scaring SAG-AFTRA out of going on strike. Furthermore, on Tuesday, reports surfaced that AMPTP had requested the aid of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) in mediating the contract with SAG-AFTRA. The actors’ union agreed to work with the FMCS, but issued a blistering statement aimed at the AMPTP. “We condemn the tactic outlined in today’s inaccurate Variety piece naming the CEOs of several entertainment conglomerates as the force behind the request for mediation, information that was leaked to the press by the CEOs and their ‘anonymous sources’ before our negotiators were even told of the request for mediation,” the statement reads. “The AMPTP has abused our trust and damaged the respect we have for them in this process,” it continues. “We will not be manipulated by this cynical ploy to engineer an extension when the companies have had more than enough time to make a fair deal.”

All of this suggests that AMPTP’s members believe that the unions will crack if divided and conquered. Others dispute that, framing this crisis as existential and noting the extraordinary solidarity from other unions in Hollywood, remarkable in contrast to the last strike in 2007. On Wednesday, the WGA, Teamsters, IATSE (which covers on-set tradespeople, such as electricians and greens people), and the Directors Guild (which ratified its own contract in June) issued a statement expressing solidarity with SAG-AFTRA. Whether the AMPTP’s tactics will ultimately prove to be effective remains to be seen.

[...]

Why is this strike so historically meaningful?

This is the first double strike since 1960, which alone is significant, but one of the stranger factoids is who led that strike. The main issue on the table was once again residuals, once again driven by a relatively new technology — this time, television. Both guilds were pushing for a similar demand: When they wrote or acted in a movie, and that movie was sold to a TV network and broadcast, the network would earn money from ads. The guilds wanted their members to be paid residuals, just as they would for a TV show. The studios, of course, didn’t.

SAG-AFTRA joins the WGA heading to the picket lines to conduct a strike, meaning that there is a double strike in Hollywood.

Concerns about AI and residuals are the driving force for the strike.

#SAG AFTRA #SAG AFTRA Strike #Strikes #WGA Strike #2023 WGA Strike #2023 SAG AFTRA Strike #AMPTP #Unions #Hollywood #Celebrities

37 notes · View notes

broadcastarchive-umd · 2 months

Text

#RudyTuesday Illustrator John Groth created "Giant in a Hurry" for a 1949 CBS advertisement in Sponsor magazine. Television Scripts for Staging and Study, by Rudy Bretz and Edward Stasheff (1953), includes this artwork as endpapers in the front and back of the book.

First in a series from the Rudy Bretz papers at UMD.

#Library of American Broadcasting #1950s #mid century #television #CBS

2 notes · View notes

lol-jackles · 1 year

Note

Streaming had mucked up things for 1st window shows because studios sent their tv shows to their own streaming services (this is why steaming service become unprofitable).

I feel like I'm missing something about streamers' business model. I thought that subscriptions to a streamer (giving the subscriber access to an up-to-date catalog including all of an associated studio's properties) turned a profit, compensating for lost syndication opportunities. Can you explain this at all to an outsider?

Streaming was profitable when it was only Netflix. Now there's too many streaming services, over 50! And it's hella expensive to launch and maintain the services, which is why Apple and Disney are losing at least $500 million in operating cost per quarter and why HBO Max are purging contents left and right from their library, because it's too expensive to keep every contents in their servers.

Imagine this, there are 7 major studios and if back in 2003, those 7 studios decided they no longer put their contents on DVD, but instead each studio come out with their own disc-based format and players and only allow you to watch their content if you buy their player. Would you want to have 7 different disc players piled up in front of your TV? Nope. Maybe you'll have 3 disc players at most. Americans subscribe an average of 3 streaming services, they can't subscribe to every streaming services out there.

2021 is considered the year where people have tried all the streaming services and picking which one to stay and which one to cancel. From 2022 going forward it's about keeping subscribers; in the past year both Netflix and Disney have reported losing millions of subscribers. There's even reports of people starting to ditch streaming for cable because they just can't keep up. Just like there are over 600 scripted tv shows, it's too much and you can't watch everything.

With that said, network broadcast shows still have bigger audiences than cable or streaming shows. As big as cable and streaming are, there are still a lot of people who only watch network broadcast tv. There will always be people who come home from work and want to turn the TV on and leave it running in the background while they do laundry or make dinner, and they don’t have the time or attention for an event, but they will happily put on something old and comfortable, and they don’t mind the ads.

In order for Streaming to become profitable, they'll have to move contents to Free-Ad supported streaming services (FAST) that are basically the traditional terrestrial television model. Despite losing million subscribers, Netflix will be one of the few premier streaming services making money by driving new subscribers and/or retaining old subscribers with 20-year old shows with 100+ episodes, like Grey’s Anatomy and Supernatural.

ETA: @brunnismemorybank, physical medias like dvds are superior. With SPN dvds, you get the original classic rock music, not the sad elevator music from Netflix.

28 notes · View notes

arctic-hands · 10 months

Text

youtube

Rough transcript from parts of the video (for some reason tumblr wouldn't let me post this when it was all indented for clarity):

Norman decided to strike back, using the tools that he knew best... He started with a series of TV commercials, urging people not to be so easily manipulated by charismatic religious leaders.

"So maybe there's something wrong when people, even preachers, suggest that people are either good Christians or bad Christians, depending on their political views."

Next, he produced a special called "I Love Liberty", celebrating the values he thought were most urgent to defend: equality, diversity, making sure the law protects and serves everyone, especially the most vulnerable...

...After that, Norman could see there was a lot more work to do, so using the attention from the ads and the special as a jumping off point, he founded a new organization to counter the forces of bigotry. He called it People For The American Way, and he made it his full-time focus, stepping away from the industry he helped shape, so he could devote himself to the cause...

...The timing was perfect, since Ronald Reagan had just been elected president, thanks in part to televangelists who ordered their followers to vote for him, and throughout the Eighties Republicans pushed hard to enshrine religious bigotry into law. For example, at one point Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Bork was a former Nixon sidekick who openly said that he wanted to roll back civil rights protections for minorities. In response, People For The American Way leapt into action, and they launched a campaign to oppose the nomination...

...Norman and People For The American Way mobilized across the country to contact their legislatures, and, sure enough, Congress rejected Bork's nomination, one of the few times that's happened...

...People For The American Way also led campaigns to stop groups from forcing schools to buy religious textbooks. When conservatives tried to ban library books with inclusive content, People For The American Way successfully filed lawsuits to stop them. They helped pass non-discrimination ordinances across the country, and in response to a rise of right-wing extremism, they created Right Wing Watch to expose hateful speakers, a tool that many people came to rely on...

...But for all the progress that's been made over the last few years, more recently, Norman has been seeing an alarming new trend.

"I'm not sure in my ninety-eight years I've seen another moment as worrisome as this."

In interviews today, Norman has described a level of intolerance that he hasn't seen in a long time. Now, he sees bigotry more emboldened than ever, with brazen displays of pro-Nazi sentiment. For all the times Norman says he's seen that ideology before, he has never seen it expressed so openly.

"...but I don't recall people in the streets and, uh, marching and, and showing hateful signs. You know, antisemitism, that, that worries me considerably now."

And you don't have to look hard to find conservatives targeting minorities, labeling them Enemies Of The Country, and calling for violence against them...

...But if there's any good news, it's that folks like Norman have first-hand experience dealing with times like these, and he has some ideas about how to respond. For one thing, he's revisited his most classic episodes about tackling bigotry, broadcasting them with all-new performers...

Now, obviously sitcoms alone can't single-handedly solve all the world's problems. But if there's anything that the decades of Norman's work makes clear, it's the power of laughter to help people see the world in a new way.

"Comedy can be an intravenous, you know, in one's arm. You're laughing and absorbing at the same time."

To introduce new ideas...

And to give people a vision of how to live together...

"...flying across the country at night, but I remember looking down for the first time thinking, 'Hey, it's just possible wherever I see a light, I've helped to make somebody laugh.'"

...It's had an immeasurable impact on the world: breaking down barriers that kept certain people from appearing on TV, exposing bigots for how ridiculous they truly are, and showing viewers what it looked like to confront prejudice head-on. So now he's starting his second century of making the world a better place, for everyone.

End transcript.

The video is about forty-four minutes long and that's a truncated transcript of the last ten minutes or so, but I encourage everyone to watch the full video. It is technically captioned, but with auto-captions, which aren't ideal but, lack of punctuation aside, seemed to be pretty accurate as I looked at them to type out the above

#Norman Lear #Matt Baume #United States #television #history #please tumblr post this time thank god I decided to back it up in a document first #Youtube

19 notes · View notes

mightyflamethrower · 5 months

Text

Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.

At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.

The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.

Hundreds of such incidents are now occurring on a daily basis—as the country is leaving its Weimar phase and heading at warp speed into normalizing Jew-hatred and worse. Instructors singled out Jewish students in classes at UC Davis and Stanford. Pro-Hamas students ripped down posters, swarmed public buildings, and disrupted traffic.

A pro-Israeli demonstrator in Los Angeles was hit on the head and killed by a pro-Palestinian university professor.

Jewish students were trapped in a Cooper Union university library surrounded by pro-Hamas demonstrators. At MIT, Jewish students were warned to keep away from particular areas of the campus deemed dangerous for them.

What would happen to a university president who warned black or Latino students to keep clear of areas where she could not guarantee their safety from other students?

A bankrupt media deserves much of the blame. They daily broadcast Hamas’s suspect casualty figures, as if that terrorist organization has ever been capable of speaking the truth.

The Western news regurgitated “500 dead at a Gaza hospital,” due to a supposedly deliberate Israel bombing. In fact, the hospital parking lot was hit by an errant Islamic Jihad missile intended to kill civilians in Israel.

No matter—few reporters apologized for spreading Hamas-fed misinformation, despite the previous Hamas lies that they never harmed civilians, that tunnels were not beneath hospital grounds, that they did not murder 1,200 Israelis; or their lies that Hamas gunmen do not rape, when they engaged in mass rape on October 7.

The media normalizes Hamas’s atrocities by treating it as if it were an ordinary government, not a murderous terrorist clique that decapitates civilians, takes children as hostages, and mutilates those it slaughters. That the terrorist organization has kidnapped at least ten American citizens and killed perhaps another 31 is lost on the “journalists,” many of them Americans who could care less about the fate of their fellow citizens.

The media fixates on the Israeli response to mass murder, but rarely the mass murder of 1,200 Israeli civilians that prompted the current war. During ceasefires do Israeli terrorists drive into Gaza cities, and shoot and kill innocent civilians—and then brag, as did Hamas recently, that such murdering will only increase?

Sometimes the anti-Semitic hatred reaches Orwellian levels of absurdity. A British reporter asked an Israeli official whether his country valued life less than Hamas did because it had agreed to Hamas’s demand to release three convicted terrorists in exchange for one Israeli captive. The media fawned over a released disfigured Gazan terrorist—without mentioning that her injuries came from a car bomb she exploded in hopes of killing Jews.

The media is further emboldened by the Biden administration. When asked about the outbreak of anti-Semitism across the U.S.—nearly 60 percent of hate crimes are committed against Jews, who make up 2.5 percent of the population—Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed them with the false claim that the White House “had not seen any credible threats” to Jews. And then she claimed that the real danger to American residents was Islamophobia and threats to Arab-Americans. Hate crime and interracial crime statistics do not support Jean-Pierre’s assertions, which prompts the question of why she made them in the first place.

Note that almost all the violence in demonstrations over the current war comes from the pro-Hamas side that shouts “river to the sea” genocidal threats, swarms the Capitol rotunda and the White House wall, disrupts traffic, occupies bridges at peak traffic, defaces private and public property, shouts down speakers on campus, harasses passers-by, and often battles the police. One wonders whether, should the U.S. military be forced to try to rescue American captives, the demonstrators would cheer for the American troops or Hamas hostage-takers.

Abroad, the world has gone even crazier.

The United Nations has appointed Iran—a theocratic, terrorist-supporting government that kills dissidents and takes hostages—as the chair nation of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum. What a cruel joke.

But what would one expect from the UN when its secretary-general, António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, a former Portuguese socialist politician, condemns the Israeli response to October 7, but rarely, if ever, the Hamas mass killing of civilians that prompted it. Right after the mass killing Guterres opined, “The attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” According to the secretary-general’s logic, I suppose, Pearl Harbor, the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not happen in a vacuum either.

When told that an Irish citizen hostage was freed by Hamas, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar declared that the “lost” child was finally “found.” In other words, he wished to hide the obvious fact that a terrorist organization had kidnapped an Irish citizen child, held her hostage for 50 days, and released her only when Israel gave up convicted terrorists to obtain her release.

Our domestic political leadership is not helping the situation.

Just days after October 7, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with the foreign minister of the now often hostile Turkish government, were calling for a cease-fire to prevent an Israeli response.

When the Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israeli cities went off course and damaged a Gaza hospital (leading to the fake story that Israel bombed the hospital), President Biden joked, “You got to learn to shoot straight.” Did Biden mean that, had the terrorists only launched a successful terrorist rocket into Jewish neighborhoods, there would have been no ensuing controversies?

Biden later apologized for doubting fatality figures provided by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas—a terrorist organization that has lied about the hospital “bombing,” denied it had tunnels under hospitals, denied that it had engaged in mass rape in Israel, and has supplied no proof of its civilian casualty numbers. Has Hamas released figures of how many of its terrorists were killed, and does it separate those numbers from lost “civilians?” And so are there really vast new cemeteries in Gaza to handle the 15,000 graves for those who, Hamas asserts, were killed?

What explains the collective madness?

For the last 40 years, while Western leftists have naively supported Palestinian terrorists, their governments have appeased terrorist-supporting Middle Eastern governments for very practical reasons. The old subtext to such mollification was that 500-million irate Arab Muslims, and a Middle East with 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves, in realist terms, simply argued against the interests of 10 million Israelis.

But now there are two new, venomous elements in the matrix.

One is that the racist DEI industry assumes that all intersectional nonwhite communities are victims of white privilege and supremacy. Therefore, as permanently oppressed, they are declared incapable of being racist themselves. And so they can harass with impunity the supposed victimizers—in this case American Jews, who are declared culpable whites.

So the oppressed, according to the DEI bible, cannot be anti-Semitic, though many certainly are. And they apparently cannot be held accountable for their hatred or frequent violence.

Secondly, in the last two decades there has been an epidemic of immigration into Western nations from the Middle East. In often-divided democracies like ours, politicians seek to appease as many pressure groups as possible, whether citizen voters or merely resident demonstrators, to acquire and maintain power.

Such pro-Hamas demonstrators, rah-rahing from a free, prosperous, and secure West, expect no rebuke for their obvious hypocrisy in cheering on an autocratic, dictatorial Hamas that has wrecked the economy of Gaza, shoots dissidents, and allows no free expression. And Middle Eastern guests and immigrants are never reminded that their very demonstrations are predicated on not being physically present in their homelands, where they might be shot for what they say and do freely in the West.

We are on a trajectory similar to that of 1930s Germany.

Every time a student is cornered, harassed, or threatened; a high school mob tries to swarm and harm a teacher; a government spokesperson dismisses such hatred; or American soldiers are targeted by Iranian-fed terrorist organizations; the madness, racism, and anti-Semitism will increase—until it reaches a saturation point of abject violence in our streets.

Once a society mainstreams the values of thuggish brownshirts, and ignores their “from the river to the sea” eliminationist chants and screams of “beat the f—king Jew,” then the next emboldened step is foreordained.

True, most Americans were appalled by October 7 and accept that every nation has the right to defend itself from terrorist killers. Most Americans deplore vicious demonstrators and their calls for violence on behalf of the Hamas death cult. And most Americans want their President to demand the release of American hostages and to deter Iranian-backed terrorists who attack U.S. military personnel in the region.

But unless the public demands that their universities enforce on campus the Bill of Rights and the right to move freely in safety, that police enforce laws against mob violence on America’s streets and in our schools, and that the United States stops greenlighting mass immigration from anti-Western nations and extending student visas to residents of anti-American, terrorist-supporting, and autocratic Middle East regimes, then in suicidal fashion we are headed for a 1930s nightmare.

8 notes · View notes