Saturday 10 March 2012

Message to Strombo: don't criticise the coffee, you'll be old and weak someday!

Canada's Genie Awards: a brief. hour-long, succinct, confusing show. Gender bias, age bias reigned supreme. Depend upon young writers for this!

Not all awards were presented on-air. Like, whatever!
Ice-skating on the stage behind a scrim. Creative, distracting, as I lost the message of the movie score. Great to highlight Canadian talent, mind you, but what do they have to do with The Arts?!

It was different than the big US award shows. It did highlight Canadians and I'm glad to hear about  films that get little media coverage in Canada.

The show featured Canadian films we have little chance of seeing in theatres, not that I can stand visiting a theatre these days. Noise, people chatting as if they are in their living rooms, answering phones, checking their Crackberries which shine like the full moon in the dark cinema.

Andrea Martin, more my generation, who had to run off early for a gig, was meant to co-host with George Mark Paul Stroumboulopoulos. I was deeply disappointed. A woman, with wrinkles and experience, who will stand up to the whippersnappers, and would hold her own. Gigs are tight these days. My actor son, Jesse Martyn, has a small part on Episode 6, Season 2, of The Killing, but gigs have been slow since 2008, and Canadians are hard-pressed to find those who will invest in The Arts.

Unfortunately, the other females in my middle-aged group, were caricatures of real women. The Twitter buzz was similarly derogatory. Deb McGrath and Sheila McCarthy from CBC promoting the swag. Where is the dignity that women deserve in surviving in Canada as an actress?

Known as @strombo on Twitter, he's one of the CBC Tweet Twots, who seem to have time do do a job, report on a  scene by scene basis on life, and share 7854 tweets with 210,000 followers! I cannot stand the play-by-play reporting in the latest trials, where journalists send 140 character messages of each little detail. Information overload.

Stroumboulopoulos is someone who appeals to the cheeky 30-something crowd, the 40-somethings who wannabe, and the 20-somethings who are gonna be, for when you are 30 you've got the world by the tail. Edgy, punchy, he's one of the better educated dudes on the air. He hosts The Hour at 11 p.m., which is a bit late, and too ADHD, for me. I used to watch, and found he has values, appreciates smart guests, cares for Canada and Canadians. I had high hopes.

Unfortunately, there are many in Strombo's generation, he was born in 1972, who aspire to be one of the younger folk and appeal to them in their own way. This means age-bashing.

Hence his message to 70-somethings on the Genies, a snippet...


Of course, people in my generation don't know what a computer is, let alone a Tweet, iPhone, or QR Code!* Not that we learned how to use them at work, when we shared them with 2 or 3 colleagues!
Not that we did the piloting of computer-generated report cards (me - 1991), or were on the ground wave of National Capital Freenet.
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QR Code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and large storage capacity compared to standard UPC barcodes.

2 comments:

Linda said...

Whether or not I am familiar with the news you present, I always appreciate the time and effort you put into delivering your opinions.

Kay L. Davies said...

Why, that little whippersnapper. I was using computerized equipment when he was a toddler.
I think this video is the most I've ever watched of him, Jenn. A friend of mine told me about sending him an e-mail and receiving a reply (my friend is a couple of years older than I am) and that was the first time I'd ever heard of him.
We're funny about TV. We record the things we want to see, including Rick Mercer and his endless re-runs, but not young George S.
When my husband isn't home, the dog and I watch Home and Garden TV.
I'm glad we didn't watch the Genie Awards.
K