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Apple Laptops’ “Supporting Role” in Studio 60 Won’t Help Dispel Mac’s “Liberal Computer” Image
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Original "The West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin's new TV series, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, is so far the most prominent Apple product placement player of the fall season's new offerings. The Matt Albie character (Matthew Perry) is frequently seen using a black MacBook as his writing platform, and Episode 4 began with a 17" MacBook Pro being passed around a writing room - in both cases with the illuminated Apple logos on the screen lids prominent rather than disguised, as they so often are when Apple laptops appear on TV programs.
Of course this particular Apple affinity is no big surprise, since back in 2003 Sorkin appeared in the 12" and 17" PowerBook introduction video praising Apple for the goodness of its products upon which he writes his scripts.
Interestingly, also in Episode 4, a Vanity Fair writer researching and article about the Studio 60 team played by Christine Lahti is seen using an aluminum-colored widescreen notebook, but with a lid logo I didn't recognize. I'm not sure whether it was a disguised MacBook Pro or a PowerBook, or some sort of PC lookalike.
Being associated with liberal poster boy Sorkin and a show like Studio 60 will of course do nothing to dispel the Mac's longstanding characterization as a "liberal's computer" popular among members of the entertainment industry, graphic arts communities. professional writers, and other creative, artistic types, who more often than not tend to be liberal in their political views. After all, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a self-styled liberal Democrat and former Clinton VP and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore is a member of Apple's board of directors.
However, my unscientific observation is that a preference for Macs in most cases has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with aesthetic sensibility and an appreciation for quality. The Mac offers an extraordinarily high-quality computing experience that is appreciated by lots of conservatives (me for instance) as well as liberals. Most of the Mac-users I know personally are conservatives, although it may be that I just know more conservatives, being of that persuasion myself. However, Rush Limbaugh is supposed to be about as conservative as you can get, and he is a longtime Mac enthusiast. Laureen Teskey Harper, wife of Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is by profession a graphic designer who ran her own graphic design business using Apple Macintosh computers, and is reportedly a BIG Mac fan. It's the total Mac experience that makes Mac-users - liberals and conservatives - fall in love with their computers.)
Getting back to Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, I absolutely loathed The West Wing, which became liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy in the wake of the bitterly-resented 2000 election result and a weekly wallow in the most mawkish sort of lefty sentimentalism. In the seven years it ran, I never actually managed to sit through an entire episode, although I gave it some solid tries. The impulse to heave the nearest heavy object through the TV screen always made it prudent to just change the channel.
It wasn't just the show's ultra-liberal bias (boycotting liberal bias would leave precious little to watch on television) so much as the smug, gratuitously melodramatic, self-righteous tone in which The Left Wing's preachy liberal message was presented, particularly by Martin Sheen's Josiah "Jed" Bartlet character, and who came across as even more abrasive because Sheen is very much like that in real life.
By contrast, I rather enjoyed Geena Davis's short-lived 2005 presidential drama Commander in Chief, which, despite its farther-fetched premise (there have been liberal Democrats in the White House, while the concept of the female independent occupying the Oval Office is unproven) came off as more realistic and believable in its characterizations and dialog than the West Wing ever did. Donald Sutherland's role as Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and a presidential aspirant strategically planting banana peels in the path for Davis's Mackenzie Allen to slip on was a nice piece of acting, and Sutherland, a Canadian liberal-lefty from way back, is nothing at all like his Nathan Templeton character in real life.
So, notwithstanding Commander in Chief's dutiful Hollywood fealty to the threadbare Republicans as Machiavellian conspirators and/or venal morons trope, it was pretty good entertainment, too soon gone, unlike the overbearing West Wing. No Macs though that I can recall except for Davis's Mac (Makenzie) Allen character.
I found it bizarre to see The West Wing year after year vying for top dramatic series honors with The Sopranos at the Emmy Awards, sometimes coming out on top - liberal Hollywood giving the proverbial finger to George W. Bush. I consider The Sopranos to be one of the finest bodies of work ever written and produced for television, an artistic tour de force for its author and creator David Chase. Characterizations in The Sopranos are extremely strong and (sometimes chillingly) believable, and Chase's insight into the human condition often profound. His ability to meld tragedy and comedy (Sopranos dialog is frequently downright wickedly hilarious) is brilliant. Conversely, The West Wing's characters, especially Jed Bartlet, are monochromatically wooden and just too deadpan earnest to be funny (hold that thought for a moment and I'll get back to it).
Computers are not a prominent fixture on The Sopranos. Tony Soprano and his crew tend to be old school, although Tony's thug nephew, Christopher Moltesanti - a wannabe screenwriter - is occasionally seen pecking away on a generic PC laptop. Tony's son A.J. has an iPod and an iBook. Tony drives a Caddy Escalade, so an appropriate computer for him, if he used one, might be the 17" MacBook Pro, whose 17" PowerBook predecessor has been referred to as the "Escalade of laptops."
The Sopranos, notwithstanding its "extremely course dialogue," brutal violence, and all too frequent detours into the world of firm-core pornography (which detract from its general excellence), is, oddly enough, one of the few television dramas ever that treats Christianity and Christian faith seriously, respectfully, and without patronizing sentimentality, unlike the West Wing, which gratuitously indulged in relentless one-sided polemics against a highly caricatured and stereotyped "religious right." at every opportunity. Sopranos plotlines and characters frequently raise spiritual issues that shine a spotlight on our own moral ambiguities.
A Baptist clergyman from Texas, the Rev. Chris Seay, has even explored the spiritual and moral significance of The Sopranos in his book "The Gospel According to Tony Soprano: Discovering the Spiritual Insights of Televisions Most Notorious Family" (available directly form the publisher, Relevant Books, and from Amazon.com). Seay contends that there are lots of characters like Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in the Old Testament, and that turning the scandalous men of the Bible like Abraham, Solomon, and Moses into "Mr. Rogers"-type figures robs the biblical narrative of its power. These men were deeply flawed, not unlike Tony Soprano. Abraham pimps out his wife, the matriarch of the Judeo-Christian faith, to powerful kings, and his nephew Lot offers his virgin daughter to the townspeople to be gang-raped. Solomon takes a new wife almost daily, and Moses murders a man in a fit of rage. King David has the cuckolded husband of his pregnant mistress ordered to the front lines in battle to be killed.
The Sopranos story "shines light into dark areas. It calls hidden secrets to the surface and creates a heightened awareness of the flawed state of mankind.... If viewed with an open mind, The Sopranos has the potential to teach as parable about family, love, crime and God," says Rev. Seay. "When everyone is near perfect there is no progress. No direction. No redemption. Nothing real people can relate to. It is only when a mirror is held up to reflect our own imperfection that we begin to comprehend our need for change. These flawed men and women are broken in the same ways you and I are, and therefore have something to say to us."
The Sopranos is essentially a morality play, and In a world awash with nihilism, ironic detachment, and relativism, Tony Soprano is an intensely moral man who inhabits a moral universe. His morality is not liberal morality and certainly not Christian morality, but he aspires to honor objective standards rather than subjective situational ethics. He cares about right and wrong, and believes that they exist as objective categories, though his perception and interpretation are in many respects grossly dysfunctional. In the penultimate episode of Season Two, Tony tells his psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) about a recent breakup with his Russian mistress. Tony proffers that this development should make Jennifer happy, as his impression has been that she disapproves of his compulsive womanizing. However, Jennifer bristles at this suggestion, stridently declaring that she has never judged Tony's (or by implication anyone's) sex life. But, she challenges Tony, does he think there was something wrong about the relationship? "You mean like her being twenty years younger than me, and I'm married?" Tony retorts, "What's wrong wit' you?"
The inner tensions that Tony's moral struggles impose on his life are of course the show's essential theme, built around his trying to resolve his guilt and neuroses through psychotherapy.
Relative to this, Sorkin's West Wing characters were mono-dimensional cardboard cutouts. An exemplary Sopranos vignette in either season two or three I think was a scene where Tony and an associate are outraged by a fellow diner in a restaurant at table wearing a baseball cap. Tony finally confronts the man and suggests he remove the headgear. The man first resists, quickly thinks better of it, and capitulates. Tony has not overtly threatened him, but the message has been communicated loud and clear. Other restaurant patrons applaud. Traditional standards have been restored. Tony has a bottle of wine sent to the now bareheaded man's table. You would never see a scene as subtle as that on The West Wing.
By contrast, The West Wing specialized in blunt, even ham-fisted liberal polemic against "the Christian right," rolling out the Christian caricature stereotypes and cheap shots as if off a conveyor belt. For that reason alone I was relieved to see it finally go off the air.
So when I read several months ago that Sorkin and his West Wing co-creator Thomas Schlamme were developing a new show for the 2006-2007 season based on the unpromising-sounding and too-cute theme of a Hollywood TV show about behind-the-scenes at a Hollywood TV show - both with the same name, I was not inspired to eager anticipation, and the pre-season trailers that started running in midsummer didn't help allay my jaundiced expectations.
Now, having watched the first several episodes of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, I'm obliged to concede that it's not nearly as bad is I had feared, and in fact, has its moments and has been so far quite entertaining. It's not realistically believable, and much too pleased with itself, and as in The West Wing, the characters talk too fast and don't converse so much as make serial speeches, too often while walking.
However, I find Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry much more likable and less annoying than Martin Sheen and Alan Alda, Amanda Peet is so far doing a credible turn as the "spunky" network president Jordan McDeere, and it's interesting to see "Thirtysomething" alumnus Timothy Busfield, now 50-something, back in series television in a supporting role as the fictional Studio 60 control room director and well as behind the camera directing episodes of the actual series.
Christianity gets plenty of attention in Studio 60, both in predictable (and obsessive) ridicule of the religious right, but also more interestingly in the character of Harriet Hayes, played by Sarah Paulson as one of the "big three" main stars of the fictional late-night comedy show. Harriet is presented as a committed Christian, a Southern Baptist no less who has recorded a Christian album. So far, this characterization is encouraging, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Some alarm bells went off in Episode 5 when Harriet declared she has no problem with pre-marital sex, which is not a point of view that would be endorsed by faithful Southern Baptists or the devout of any orthodox Christian denomination.
Whatever, the show has accreted a lot of critical acclaim, but has been drawing only a small audience after decent ratings for the pilot episode. The viewing public, it seems, isn't much interested in the inner workings of the T.V. industry. Another serious flaw is that so far the comedy material on the show-within-a-show hasn't been especially funny, if fact it's been embarrassingly not funny. As I alluded to above in my The West Wing critique, Sorkin and his writing team are past masters at cranking out edgy and entertaining banter, but evidently have no talent for straight-up comedy. NBC would likely be getting ready to pull the plug except for the demographics of the people who are watching, who are the ones you'd expect - the higher-income, higher-educated, conspicuous consumption types that advertisers covet (and a cohort more likely to buy Apple computers, so perhaps Apple should pony up). Consequently, Studio 60 will probably last out the initial 13 episodes contracted for, but the cast probably should be vetting out alternate employment for after the New Year.
Meanwhile, there is some good stuff in this show that you don't often see on television, like Sting playing Fields of Gold on a lute in Episode 5. Another segment that really roped me in was the genuinely witty production number parody of "The Major-General's Song" from Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" at the end of Episode Two. Some have suggested that no one cares about G&S operettas any more, and that may be regrettably true, but I say if a TV show is going to be larded with cultural references, let them be intelligent and literate ones. I'll keep watching for now, and the Mac product placement is icing on the cake.
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Charles W. Moore
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