Maybe 'figure skating' itself isn't a brand, but it is indeed its own culture. One that my family is involved with intimately.
This week Disney released a DVD titled "Ice Princess". (BTW... what is Disney's fascination with unelected Royalty anyway. Everyone is a prince or princess or queen.)
The movie is about ice skating so I bought it for the kids. If you happen to rent it for your family I would like to tell you that it isn't even close to a semblance of reality. I am not talking about the lame story line ("No mom, I'm giving up your dream." -- Geeeezzz...), I am talking about the culture of the sport and the way kids and parents inter-relate.
In the movie everyone is rude, the parents are overbearing, the coach a cheater, and the ultimate best skater is a snotty bitch. The skaters slam each other and verbally attack one another constantly. Even the little kids, 6 or 7 years old are playing 'head-games' on each other. No one is nice. No one is supportive.
NO. That is not how it is in 99% of the rinks in the country. These kids are closely-knit and they cheer each other on even when they are direct competitors. One of my daughter's good friends is a competitor in the same level and they help each other get better.
The 'skate moms', even the worst of them, are never trying to physically hurt the other competitors, or gleefull when a child gets injured. They will lend a hand when another parent is ill or unable to take the kids in the morning. Disney's vision of real people as hateful and arrogant is... well, uh, hateful and arrogant.
(Hey, is this a review for a stupid kid movie? --ed.)
No. I am talking about how a major pop-culture entertainment company created a world of class warfare, viscous competitiveness, truly hatefull parental guidance and interpersonal dysfunction out of whole cloth.
Hey, writer folks... have you heard of research? Or did it not matter? Were you really on a self motivated revenge hit piece on the 'populars' from your past that got all the attention and....
Fools.
The point. This movie will give anyone even thinking about taking their kids ice skating a second thought. Who would want their children in this mean, anger ridden situation. One that was made up, and distributed to the public with no disclaimer or reality check. In the movie, a coach actually physically harms a skater in order for another skater to win. What? A coach that even remotely did something like that would be ostracized, marginalized, and if it was my kid, recuperating.
Since the movie came out earlier this year there is a marked decline in new enrollees at the rink where we skate (maybe a coincidence, I'll grant that). But I did notice that when I mentioned that my kids skated to a friend of mine she looked at me and said, "Really? How can you stand all those spoiled snots."?
Maybe she saw the film.
How has our industry taken lumps from pop culture? Remember "Animal" on the "Lou Grant" show. Obsessed, wore only filthy, rumpled t-shirts, lived like a hermit. How about "Blow Up"? Remember the photographer in that film? Sex-crazed and nuts, a total iconoclastic figure.
Is that us? Are we all like the guys in "Paparazzi"?
Of course not.
It is incumbent on all of us to keep the professionalism moving in an upward direction. In everything we do. Our very survival may depend on it. And the view that many in our industry have of us may not be as flattering as we would like.
Here's an excercise for you. Close your eyes and be a casting agent for a minute. You need a high powered graphic designer and world class photographer. What did you envision? Is that really the way they would look? Maybe... maybe not. Here's one for you - hire a southern sherrif and a deputy? See my point on stereotypes and how much the pop culture lives on them.
Let's make sure we never willingly allow ourselves to be maligned as a group.
(An aside: If they can't get even the facts right about figure skating - ie; calling beginners 'novices' when "Novice" is actually a strict term meaning very high in rankings - you wonder how much crap they give us in other films based on reality. My feelings about Pop-Culture are re-invigorated.)
3 comments:
Don,
Class warfare is the hallmark of liberal hollywood.
Maybe there is some truth to the photographic world though.People always comment to me how nice a guy I am for a photographer. I always ask if they have had an occasion to think photogs weren't nice. There answer is usually- "We used this guy once, boy was he rude, he was more than rude, he was an a-hole.
Didn't show up on time, return calls, shot only what he wanted."
By not treating your clients as you would like to be treated when you are the client is just bad business. Every photographer should be made to read- 'Hug Your Customers'- what a great book on customer service. The creative side of our business is only a small part of our total responsibility to our customers.The tempermantal artist might play well in some cirlces, but the corporate world has neither the time or patience for childlike behavior.
Last night on a re-run I saw a depiction of a news photographer who was hot to be considered a 'journalist'. He was grubby, unshaven, slovenly and drove a beat-up car that hardly ran.
What? That isnt what working photographers look like, at least not the ones I know. It is a shame.
However, you are right in that some in our industry do fit the stereotype. Some of them are successful, but in the end professionalism will win the day. It is the nature of the 'self-employed' beast that some miscreants will be drawn to photography.
I just wonder why that was the model they chose when creating the stereotypical shooter.
Even before the stereotype of the grubby photojournalist (a product of the Vietnam-era, I believe) there was the stereotype of the photojournalists with his Graflex elbowing other shooters out of the way for that one exclusive photo.
In thinking about it, though, probably the two most popular movies with photographers playing a central role in the last 50 years were Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window and Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County, neither of which were particularly damning.
What saddens me is that there are so many photographers whose lives would make interesting, exciting movies that haven't received the treatment they deserve. An accurate movie of the life of Gene Smith, Robert Capa or Joe Rosenthal would eclipse anything a Hollywood writer could dream up.
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