Soundbites on YouTube

Politicians around the world are gingerly using YouTube to make policy statements, or maybe just to get their soundbites out there while avoiding having to have a press conference.

Now some Catholic seminarians have parodied the Mac vs PC ads (which I already loathed anyway) to convey the Vatican’s doctrine on Natural Family Planning vs Contraception.

They’ve got three videos up now, with more planned.

Now I disagree with the practicality of Natural Family Planning, although I applaud much of the sentiment: avoiding excessive chemical intervention with bodily functions, increased communication and intimacy between partners about avoiding unplanned pregnancies etc. Increased communication about sex before it actually happens can only be a good thing.

Unfortunately, NFP requires abstention during ovulation, which is the woman’s peak time of sexual desire, thus NFP involves a lifetime of women acquiescing to sex outside their peak period of desire and being forbidden from other forms of attaining orgasm during the peak period of sexual desire. Sounds like a recipe for frustration and resentment for me.

I notice that these videos simply don’t mention at all that NFP works (as far as it does work) only for people who are in monogamous committed relationships, which of course to the Church means marriage. So they’re simply not addressing the rather large population of adults who are not yet married but who are interested in sexual intercourse anyway. The unsaid only option for unmarried adults is abstinence. I’m not surprised that they’re not addressing that.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting exercise in propogating a set of policy soundbites. I await the replies that will surely multiply in the next few weeks with great interest. I also wonder when various lobbying groups on various social issues are going to fully embrace the viral aspect of YouTube etc for getting their soundbites more effectively out into the social consciousness. Let’s face it – I’m blogging about the videos above because they were put together with a modicum of wit about a controversial issue. Other people will do the same. If other groups do similiar things, those videos will be viraled and generate discussion. Get your issues out there, folks.

crossposted at LP

Filed under: Media, activism/charity, culture wars, netgeek, performance, religion, reproductive freedoms, technology

Heehaw of the Day

Via For Your Entertainment (via a private mailing list):

If you only watch one YouTube movie today featuring dancing country farmer’s daughters contortionists singing about potato salad, it should be this one.

Heh. Wow.

Filed under: fun, performance

*grin* Stop having a sook, Australia

What a glorious rant! Starring a Chopper Reed impersonator.

This video uses language that is Not Safe For most Workplaces.

Filed under: crass, performance

Review: Exit The King

I was fortunate enough to step into a seat for the sold-out season of this play when my Belvoir St Theatre-subscribing friend C’s friend C was too ill to make it. How lucky was I? Geoffrey Rush on stage in Eugene Ionescu’s absurdist farce on mortality.

There’s some comprehensive reviews of his performance available. [The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Stage Online]

I can’t disagree with any of the gushing about Rush’s performance as King Berenger. He was mesmerising throughout. I hadn’t been aware that he studied mime and theatre with LeCocq in Paris but it explains a great deal about his immensely vital physicality and how finely he can shade his physical emphasis to highlight the decay of the dying King. Some of his “bits of business” were pure vaudevillian cant, including perfect pratfalls. One of the astounding features of both Ionescu’s script (co-translated by Rush and director Neil Armfield) and Rush’s performance is that these frivolities only emphasised the inner dignity of the character towards the end.

The rest of the cast, the set design, the lighting and sound design rose to match the occasion as well. Neil Armfield is to be congratulated for his direction coordinating all these elements so seamlessly. I found the final section, where the King casts off the surreal dregs of his rulership and surrenders to the inevitability of death, to be particularly well served by having Gillian Jones (Queen Marguerite) cease the theatrical vocal projection of her icy haughtiness and drop to a quiet warmth amplified via throat mic to lovingly guide the King to the moment of release.

Many details of this play passed by my memory, because it is more an occasion to experience than a story to analyse. There are deeply felt moments of shock, outrage, pathos and disgust amongst the absurdities and jokes, but the gale sweeps by so rapidly on to the next deconstruction of the King that each can hardly be absorbed. It is the totality of the demonstration of the futility of raging against death that lingers, and the visual delights of certain interactions on the stage.

The current season (Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, June 9-July 29) is sold out, I believe. I don’t know the plans for further touring of the play, if any. But this is one of the best performances I have seen in years, not just for Rush’s celebrity and ability but for the attention to detail in every aspect of the production. Catch it if you can.

Filed under: performance

“Well, fancy that!” Of The Day

Australia’s own Annette Kellerman, swimming champion and inventor of the women’s one-piece bathing suit, starred in the first ever million-dollar Hollywood film (which of course means that the title of the Esther William’s biopic “Million Dollar Mermaid” now makes so much more sense).

The film was “A Daughter Of the Gods” made in 1916, which used thousands of extras, elaborate sets and over 40 miles of film in its production for a final cut that ran for 180 minutes. The film was hugely controversial because Kellerman appeared naked. No known copies of the film survive.

Kellerman is one of Hoyden About Town’s banner hoydens.

Filed under: history, performance

A tigtogtip

When watching Blade Runner on DVD, having torrential rainfall on the roof as an addition to the soundtrack adds a certain frisson.

Whatever happened to Rutger Hauer, anyway?

Filed under: performance

Hell yeah yippiekayyay!

I saw the trailer for Die Hard 4.0 this evening, while waiting to watch Noise (which was excellent, and more of that anon).

The stunts highlighted are delightfully over the top, and Bruce Willis looks older but harder and meaner, which is perfect. Unless the film gets really really bad reviews from people who liked the first three (OK, liked the first two at least) I will be going to see this, hoping that the interval between the third and fourth films is down to Willis saying over and over again “this script is crap, bring me something less embarrassing and then maybe I’ll think about it”. One can hope, right?

Anyway, I was reminded that the fabulous Kung Fu Monkey had this video-link on his blog a few weeks ago. This captures exactly why I will be going to see 4.0 (despite the fact that numbering it like that is pretentious faux-geekery that should put the film execs responsible next in line to the marketing department of the Sirius Robotics Corporation).

Noise could not be less like the Die Hard oeuvre. It’s about a cop, but that’s where any similarities end.

Filed under: performance

Nelson Muntz, cue in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Sick of illegal fly-posting for concerts and other events in your neighborhood?

Sick of having to pay higher rates because of the expense to council in cleaning it up?

Try the solution that Glasgow Council came up with: pay council workers to slap “Cancelled” stickers on the illegal posters instead! Then sit back and watch the event promoters have to deal with confused ticketholders for days while new ticket sales grind to a halt.

A spokesman said it was hoped the move would send fans into a panic and bring chaos to the Rock Ness phone lines.

Colin Edgar, the council’s head of PR and marketing, added: “We expect that it will cause real difficulty for the advertisers.

“If the ordinary folk who have bought tickets think it is cancelled, they can get in touch with the promoters.

We want the life of the promoters to be made difficult and for fans to call them.

“If a member of the public is distressed, we regret that.

“However, the people who should be apologising are the people who are paying people to illegally fly-post the city centre.”

Cue the Wah-ambulance as the concert promoters say that the council is “mean-spirited”: poor babies.

Filed under: Politics, crass, music, performance

Discuss

Tom Cruise: the male Paris Hilton

(hat tip for proposition to Elizabeth, via mailing list)

Filed under: celebritism, performance

A middle-aged woman with a hammer

makes teenage boys very twitchy.

All I had to do was hammer in one nail into the timber frame of a prop for the high school musical on the weekend and I had a helpful young man offering to do it for me. I declined at first and hammered in the next nail but he was still hovering there, so I gave in. The men envied me my rapid acquisition of an apprentice who volunteered rather than being drafted.

At least he couldn’t take the power drill away from me, no matter how hard he twitched. Only the adult volunteers are allowed to play with those.

The off-the-beaten-track pro-am boxing match in the horse sales yard next door added a surreal touch to the frame-building. Why do I have a feeling that a not insignificant portion of the audience may have been prominent, or at the very least colourful, Sydney racing identities?

Filed under: Sociology, education, fun, performance