How to Lose an Audience and Alienate Readers

When I glimpse at the homepage on Facebook, which is currently closed on my browser while I have Reuters, the Tribune and the New York Times open, I tend to see a lot of news-related links that are posted. People tend to use Facebook to share interesting articles, whether it’s an article that prompts a comment about Rick Santorum (or any politician for that matter) being a douche, other news to be outraged by, stories to be lift the spirit or articles from The Onion that people think are true. On my own Facebook page I share interesting news articles I’ve found around the internet and things I’ve written for Gapers Block.

Since the launch of the Facebook redesign that upset millions of people, a user has been able to see articles people have been reading that tend to be from the Washington Post or The Guardian—this tends to be the case with the people I’m friends with. If you click on the link, you’ll see that you need to install an app in order to read the article. This way, you can read an article from the Washington Post on Facebook without going to the Post‘s website.

When the app, Washington Post Social Reader, was released, I installed it after the prompt and thought I would see how it works. About two weeks later I uninstalled the app because I never used it. I was able to find more articles on the Washington Post‘s website, which is fine by me since I’ve had an account for their website since my senior year of high school.

The app doesn’t have the Post as its sole content provider. There are also articles from Reuters, Associated Press, Slate and The A.V. Club, among others. The problem with this for me is that I gather my news in a different way than most Americans. The Reuters website is one of the sites I read at 6:30 a.m. while drinking a cup of tea and getting ready to go to work. If there’s an interesting article from any of the aforementioned sites, I will copy the link, paste it into the status box on Facebook and post a link. With this, people who are my friends on Facebook can click the link and read the article to see what I’m talking about.

An app like the Washington Post Social Reader functions as a tease. You look on Facebook, see an interesting headline, click and see that you have to install the app in order to read the article. Meanwhile, you could go to the Washington Post‘s website, find that same article and read it without needing to install an app. This user experience is similar to when The New Republic posts a link on Twitter to an article that sounds really interesting. After clicking on the link, you then find out you need to be a subscriber in order to read it. Requiring people to use an app to read articles is no different from not letting readers know they need a subscription to read an article or requiring people to have a free account on a website in order to read an article.

It’s easy to see what the idea might have been behind the Washington Post Digital Reader. People can get news their news from a site they already spend lots of time on and share articles with their friends. But when you require people to install an app to read an article, it’s ultimately easier to copy a link, paste it into a box on Facebook and hit post. The perk of that is that option is no one has to shake a fist at the computer screen.

“Lego for Girls”

For the past two weeks there has been an uproar over Lego’s new line, Lego Friends. The line is targeted towards girls and includes characters that are vetranarians and horse groomers. The sets come in pastel colors and doll-like figures as opposed to the iconic minifigure standard with Lego sets. New to this will be books about the characters, a la American Girl dolls.

The uproar is caused by the fact that Lego is creating a line that is specifically for girls rather than saying their current sets are for all sexes and genders.

This isn’t the first time Lego has created a set geared towards girls.

I am old enough—or young enough, depending on your view—to remember when Lego launched the Belville and Scala sets, which also featured doll-like characters similar to what will be in the Lego Friends theme. Bloomberg Businessweek even put together a graphic explaining that this isn’t new for Lego. As someone who grew up playing with Legos, I never understood the appeal of the larger bricks and wasn’t surprised when the lines wound up in the Lego theme graveyard. You can still buy the Lego Beliville line from Lego’s website, but it’s a “Hard to Find” item.

However, I enjoyed playing with the large buckets of bricks that gave only suggestions for what to create. With that you could create your own stories and worlds while still following the laws of physics and engineering. My sister and I grew up with Legos, although she also played with Barbies while I found them to be boring. (I liked building, but hated cleaning up.) While once visiting the flagship Toys R Us store in Times Square I was shocked to find Lego dominated by sets that tied in with films and TV shows. What happened to originality and creating your own story on Mars or in the Earth’s crust? Lego has returned to this with their City, Pharaoh and Ninjago lines, which feels like a return to my childhood.

Although there are some who might say that this is a nice change for Lego from violent lines. Violence or crime themes in Lego sets is not new and I remember the first set I got was a knights set where the hero wore a helmet that looked like a bat head. The figures carried swords and a terrifying looking witch came with numerous sets. There were pirate sets, themes set in the Wild West, one that involved exploring Egypt.

The thing to remember is that Lego has come a long way from what it started off as with wooden blocks for creating. In a way, this is business as usual, but refined and with hours of market research poured into the development of themes. In a way, most of what Lego does now isn’t that different from when my generation was young, but our attitudes have changed.

Observations from 12 Years of Iowa Life

If you aren’t friends with people from Iowa, you may have missed Stephen Bloom’s Atlantic piece on Iowa and the fury it is inciting. The issue is mostly that Bloom, who is a teacher at University of Iowa that is currently teaching in Michigan, has portrayed Iowa as how everyone outside of Iowa thinks of Iowa. It seems as though Bloom decided to write the piece, “Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life,” to try to explain why such a podunk little state would have such importance in the presidential election.

The problem is that rather than painting a portrait saying “Yes, Iowa has some issues, but it’s not a backwards hick state like everyone thinks it is,” Bloom has mostly created broad stereotypes or reinforced those stereotypes.

Now, as someone who spent 12 years living in Iowa, I will dissect Bloom’s piece.

What is “Chicago-style” Theater?

I realize it might be my ignorance because I stopped seeing four plays a week more than a year-and-a-half ago, but I have no clue what the term “Chicago-style” theater means. I know what Chicago-style pizza and Chicago-style hotdogs are, but “Chicago-style” theater is beyond my comprehension.

The term started appearing in press releases I received a few months ago and I recently noticed it in some reviews. So after a question asked by Denise Schneider, publicity director of the Goodman, I thought I’d try to explore this phrase.

I do see a lot of theater compared to the average person, even though I went a few months without seeing a play this year. While I’m also now seeing theater in Milwaukee and have spent most of my life seeing theater in Iowa, I still see a lot of theater in Chicago compared to the average person. I have seen Broadway musicals getting their out-of-town tryout, plays performed in spaces smaller than my apartment, plays and musicals at the largest theaters in the city, shows at well established and fairly new off-Loop theaters. Maybe this is why I’m confused by the term, not to mention that my mind immediately thinks of food.

Does Chicago-style refer to a certain aesthetic seen in Chicago theater? This doesn’t make sense to me since aesthetic can change depending on what the play is and where it’s being performed, mostly due to space. Does it mean a play with a Chicago director and a cast made up entirely of Chicago actors? It would be nice if all theaters could use local actors, but that doesn’t happen in Chicago. Furthermore, it wouldn’t make sense since the phrase was used in a review of Chicago Shakespeare’s Follies, which did not use an all-Chicago cast. Since “Chicago-style” has been applied to large Equity productions, it couldn’t be a synonym for “small” or “storefront.” The best I can come up with on my own is ensemble-driven or based theater, but then that doesn’t make sense since some of the press releases I’ve seen have not been for theater companies with ensembles.

The closest thing I’ve gotten to a close idea of what a Chicago-style production is came from a tweet Schneider sent me last night after I was kvetching over the use of the term. She tweeted “Couldn’t Mamet be a singular exception?” This in many ways makes sense to me since Mamet has a distinct way of writing and directing style, not to mention I think he’s associated with Chicago theater, but I could be wrong about this.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what Chicago-style theater means? Or is this a term as confusing to others as it is to me?

Content and Paywalls

The big Chicago media news today is that the Sun-Times will now be using a “metered method” for views of their articles. Readers will get 20 free views before they will require a digital subscription, similar to what The New York Times does.

Here’s a potential problem: I dont’t have a reason to go frequently go to the Sun-Times website. The Sun-Times rarely gives me a reason to go to their website and when they do, it’s usually because of something Lynn Sweet, Mary Mitchell or Michael Nagrant wrote.

This is potentially a problem since I’m constantly consuming the media. It could be thought that a problem is the site design, which isn’t that great.

But the website for the Journal Sentinel isn’t stunning either. In fact, the layout is somewhat similar to the Sun-Times.

For the time being, the Tribune does not have a paywall or “metered method” and people could always flock to that for news after they reach those 20 views.

But the thing the Journal Sentinel, which I will mention for a point of comparison since it’s also a local paper that won a Pulitzer this year, has as well as the Tribune are things that enhance the articles, such as videos, applications and interactive graphics. Both the Journal Sentinel and the Tribune have released these in conjunction with investigations and special reports, which makes some stories even more interesting. I have never seen the Sun-Times do this. The Sun-Times never gives a unique visitor experience, which could potentially be a problem with the paywall.

The Sun-Times still does great work and write articles no one else is writing, which could be their benefit. But if they really want to make the paywall work, they need to possibly give their site a redesign or at least provide more content to make readers want to pay for it for other than the occasional column.

“You Go Alone to Have the Evening of Your Life”

La Cage Aux Folles, is coming to Chicago at the end of the month for a run from Dec. 20—Jan. 1. I will miss it since I will be in Milwaukee for a much-needed vacation, even though it is one of my favorite musicals.

So how is it that a far-from-perfect musical is one of my favorites? To be fair, very few musicals are perfect and yet some of my favorites have flaws*. So why does La Cage manage to be beloved by many, including myself?

The show has a wonderful score by Jerry Herman. There’s the simultaneously peppy and sad “A Little More Mascara” about Albin’s transformation into Zaza, the beautiful “Song On the Sand,” the amusing “Masculinity,” the rousing numbers “I Am What I Am” and “The Best of Times,” and the thoroughly delightful “La Cage Aux Folles.”

But the interesting aspect about La Cage Aux Folles is that it was written in the 1980s and portrays a homosexual relationship as normal, particularly one where a child is raised. While it still has a standard stereotypical gay relationship—Georges is masculine while Albin is a screaming queen—the main characters are really no different from a heterosexual relationship.

The reason why La Cage Aux Folles always seems to survive is because it is in many ways a tradition musical with classic sounding numbers. Is it the greatest musical ever? No, especially since the son seem despicable with his treatment of Albin, but it’s ultimately a fun musical with a great score. This is a world where the titular place is where people meet their boyfriend, mistress and wife, where a duchess can get pregnant at a bar and one can sip their Dubonnet in the nude. It is a place many of us couldn’t imagine. The score and a decent production is fun and provides an escape for the evening.

Assuming the tour is as delightful as the Original Cast Recording always proves to be, then seeing the tour when it comes to Chicago might be a good idea. It runs from Dec. 20-Jan. 1 at the Bank of America Theatre and is sadly not coming to Milwaukee anytime soon.

*Seriously, William Finn, the lyric “People might think I’m very dykish” is simultaneously the most awesome and awkward lyric ever.

Todd Rosenthal Built the House

There were some awards presented at tonight’s Jeff Awards that felt like someone was robbed, such as Jennifer Lim not winning for her outstanding performance in Chinglish, which was one of the things I actually liked about Chinglish. But the most egregious snubs were given to THE GREATEST PRODUCTION OF OUR TIME (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Steppenwolf) for not winning anything, particularly the following categories:

-Production of a Play—Large
-Actor in a Principal Role—Play (Tracy Letts)
-Scenic Design—Large (Todd Rosenthal)

Through this, the Jeff Awards continued to confirm the irrelevance of the award to Chicago theater by not recognizing the outstanding production or Tracy Letts’s magnificent performance as George. There are not enough words to do justice describing his performance, so I’ll just say that you must see the production when it opens on Broadway next year. This is a production that I still talk about with my mother because of how wonderful it was.

Now I need to watch this video to cheer up. (Language NSFW)

The Films of Pixar: “Cars 2″ (2011)

At the beginning of Cars 2, the audience is treated to a spy and espionage opening where Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) comes onto a cargo ship in search of one of his operatives, Leland Turbo (Jason Isaac), who has gone AWOL. While there, he finds a glimpse into the devious plan of Professor Zundzapp (Thomas Kretschmann) before going away into a thrilling chase that is accompanied by Michael Giacchino’s exciting score.

Unfortunately, the remaining 90 minutes of the film involves a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle that feels as if it is Pixar as written by the writers of a Shrek or Madagascar film. For a Pixar film, Cars 2 is crass and crude, lacking the sophistication of its predecessors. It is filled with bodily function humor that is mostly provided by Larry the Cable Guy and weird double entendres that are also mostly provided by Larry the Cable Guy, although anything about removing your fenders is now my new favorite euphemism.

This would be completely fine if Cars 2 wasn’t also boring. One of the benefits of the first Cars film is that it wasn’t built around chase and racing scenes, like Cars 2 seems to be. With the previous film, the racing scenes were basically at the beginning and the end, save for one during Lightning’s time in Radiator Springs. Here, we have constant racing scenes that are followed by chases, then some down time, then some more action.

The whole premise of the film is that Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) decides to compete in the first ever World Grand Prix, which is a huge publicity stunt for a new renewable fuel, Allinol. He decides to take his friend, Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), with him even though this seems like a terrible idea since Mater is absurdly annoying. Sure enough, Mater embarrasses McQueen in Tokyo and is sent off to the bathroom, only to end up being caught up in espionage after meeting Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). Hijinks ensue.

A huge problem with this film is that it tries to be too much. It wants to be an espionage thriller for the whole family, but it also wants to be a feel-good buddy film and a film about cars and racing. Ultimately, the spy plot only works out with the plot about the World Grand Prix, so there is only one solution for how to fix the film: Get rid of Mater.

The film seems to be more of a way of putting the maddening tow-truck in the spotlight while selling millions of dollars in merchandise. Mater was annoying in the first film, but he wasn’t as prominent in the film as Doc Hudson or Sally Carrera. Here, he seems to overshadow McQueen, which shouldn’t happen. Mater is possibly the most annoying sidekick ever created in a Disney film not because of his folksy ways, but because of how those folksy ways are portrayed by Larry the Cable Guy. He is the stupid redneck impressed by everything he sees. It’s a schtick that becomes tiresome quickly and his accent that sounds like a hyperactive Cletus Spuckler from The Simpsons. Throughout the film, you might find yourself hoping someone T-bones Mater simply because it would mean less screen-time for the character.

But the film does have some redeeming factors since it is made by Pixar. It’s very pretty to look at, especially during the scenes where the characters are in Tokyo and Giacchino’s score is excellent, evoking the right classic spy sound. Unfortunately, that seems to be it.

It would be nice if every Pixar film was wonderful, but this has proven to not be the case with Cars 2. The convoluted film shows that Pixar’s failure is caused by a film that is like so much out there. It is possible to create a great film with merchandising potential, as was seen with Toy Story 3, but that was not heeded with this film. At the very least, they probably sold plenty of merchandise tied into the film.

Goodman and Steppenwolf, Or, Crowning a Theatrical King

Yesterday I posted a quote on my Tumblr discussing “What Would Be America’s National Theatre?” and then proceeded to say, “The Goodman Theatre is not better than Steppenwolf. Also, Chinglish was overrated.”

Then I got some positive remarks on Twitter and angry emails from various people. Mostly because I said Chinglish was overrated and referred to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as THE GREATEST PRODUCTION OF OUR TIME.

Here’s an elaboration to my post because that post was on Tumblr and I like to be concise there.

The Films of Pixar: “Toy Story 3″ (2010)

For now, we are at the end of “The Films of Pixar” until I sit down and watch Cars 2 in November. (At least it will be better than Sucker Punch.) So how does Toy Story 3 hold up in the context of the Pixar filmography and in comparison to the other two films?

Toy Story 3 is the only film in the series that is not directed by John Lassetter and is instead directed by Lee Unkrich, who co-directed Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. While the first two films feel very much like fun family films, the third film meditates on the themes of loss, abandonment, attachment, betrayal, and love. While it doesn’t match the accomplishment of Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up, Toy Story 3 is still one of the best films Pixar has ever released.

When the film starts out, we see the toys in a typical western scenario that blends all of Andy’s toys together. This is the product of a child’s fertile imagination and, as it turns out, a memory of the old days. Time goes on and the owner of the toys grows up to the point that he’s ready to head off to college. In an early scene, Woody (Tom Hanks) assembles the toys together in a toybox for “Operation Playtime.” They take a home phone and dial the number for Andy’s cellphone, which causes him to open up the toy box and not just touch them, hold at least one, Rex (Wallace Shawn). After Andy (John Morris) leaves the room, the toys exit the box and we discover that their ranks have dwindled. The only toys left are the main characters, Buzz (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack), Rex, Hamm (John Ratzenberger), Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), Slinky (Blake Clark), and Bullseye. They are faced with the reality that Andy has grown up and doesn’t want to play with them anymore.

Andy’s mother (Laurie Metcalf) comes into the room and tells him to clean up his room, deciding what will be thrown out, what will go in the attic, and what will go to college. As Andy goes to clean his room, the mom tells Molly (Beatrice Miller) that her old toys could be donated to a day care called Sunnyside. Andy’s toys think this is a terrific idea, except for Woody, who insists that Andy still loves them. However, Andy places Woody in a box for college and the other toys in a bag destined for the attic. When Andy leaves the bag in the hall, his mother assumes it’s trash and takes it to the curb. While the other toys escape into a box headed for Sunnyside, Woody insists on telling them that they weren’t meant to be thrown out because Andy really loves them. (The toy that has the hardest time believing this is Jessie.)

When they arrive at Sunnyside, they’re greeted by a purple bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) and a warm, colorful environment that guarantees they’ll be played with. Barbie (Jodi Benson) meets a Ken doll (Michael Keaton) and falls for him. Everyone thinks this is wonderful except for Woody, who is still determined to get home to Andy, however he is found by a girl named Bonnie (Emily Hahn), who takes him home and takes care of her other toys. Meanwhile, the rest of Andy’s toys find out that Sunnyside isn’t as wonderful as they expected and they try to fight the playtime hierarchy and Buzz being switched to Spanish mode.

Toy Story 3 has one of the more complicated plots in the film and unlike it’s predecessor in the series, it doesn’t work very well without having seen the first two films. If this film is a person’s first introduction to the series, the loss of Andy as their owner and the other toys aren’t as affecting and Jessie being incredibly upset over being thrown out isn’t as understandable. The film’s structure still resembles the second film on some levels. Toys are taken to leave the house early in the film and at one point there’s a rescue mission and later a climactic battle scene. But this film handles these scenes better because of the stakes being higher for the characters. In Toy Story 2, the stakes are relatively low for them. In storytelling, raising stakes for characters can do wonders because it gives them more of a motivation for their actions and consequences for their decisions and what happens. In Toy Story 2, Andy is still young and even if Woody or Wheezy is gone, they’re still together and Andy will be there for them. It could be argued that there are higher stakes for Woody, but lower stakes for the rest of the toys. In this film, that environment isn’t there. They’re desperate for affection and attention and completely aware their days are numbered. Almost all of them come close to being thrown out at one point and end up in the destination later in the film, the equivalent of death for a toy. Oddly enough, the fact that the toys seem to have nothing left to lose is what makes their situation harder for them because—except for Jessie and Bullseye—this is the first time they have an owner that isn’t Andy and won’t give them the same treatment. This is the first Toy Story film where a happy ending doesn’t seem guaranteed and the question of what would be a happy ending is left out there. Clearly, returning to Andy isn’t an option and the environment of Sunnyside is the equivalent of a prison where the new toys are put in the worst place possible to test their endurance. Paradise is a journey for the toys and difficult to find because even when it starts off the place they know as home isn’t for them any more.

The most striking thing about this film is what has been done with the antagonist. In the first two Toy Story films, we are told that the antagonists are just that way and have always been. Sid is evil, Al is greedy, Stinky Pete is bitter, and Zurg was born programmed that way. Lotso has an exterior of being a sweet, cuddly bear, but is an authoritarian leader of the daycare. But unlike the other antagonists, he wasn’t always that way, and there is a reason for the change. In a flashback, we find out that Lotso was left behind by his owner with two other toys. After travelling back to the house, he sees that he was replaced after assumed as being lost. He takes this to mean they were replaced and their owner never loved them. For Lotso, toys are abandoned because their owners fall out of love with them, maybe meaning they never loved them.

For him, this matter is black and white because if someone loved them, they would never grow up, mature, and stop loving them. Woody sees that Andy loves them and always loves them, even though he has stopped playing with them. Meanwhile, there’s Jessie who has been abandoned by one owner and acknowledged that at one time Emily loved her. Her initial reaction is what is mistaken as Andy throwing them out is just a repeat of Emily dumping her on the side of the road. For Jessie, the matter is that an owner can love a toy at one point stop loving them, which is still painful. Not only is Lotso a complex villain, he’s also a third perspective in the drama of what happens when toys are left behind or donated.

Finally, the advancements in Pixar’s animation are evident in this film. All of the humans look realistic and we see the individual strands of their hair move as they walk or bounce along. There’s more detail and dramatic lighting in this film, particularly in the climactic scene that takes place in a landfill at night. The lighting also affects the atmosphere of the environments. At night, Bonnie’s house still seems bright and inviting while Sunnyside looks more menacing and has a prison-like feel.

What makes Toy Story 3 work so well is how it deals with the characters and grows them. It doesn’t send them off on a crazy adventure, but instead puts them in a different world with a different reality to face. Toy Story 3 isn’t as mature or beautiful as Ratatouille, WALL-E, or Up, but it still examines complex ideas through a toy’s viewpoint. Pixar managed to make a fantastic film that would sell millions of dollars in merchandise, but they gave it a heart and told a well thought-out story. After all, Pixar is known for telling stories with terrific characters, lots of emotion, and fantastic animation and that is what will keep them around for several years.