All of us living in Egypt, Cairo for us, experienced first hand the Fantastic Revolution culminating January 25th with Mubarak stepping down.
I have never witnessed a group of younger adults organize so quickly, and thoroughly. I mean in all aspects from citizen neighborhood protection groups to getting medical supplies and doctors to Tahrir Square during dark violent days, to cleaning Tahrir square better than it ever was in my 20 years living here. Congratulations to Egyptian youth, you all get top marks.
The thrust of my message is - come and visit us any persons wanting to travel to Egypt. It is safe in all areas, and all touristy things running normally. For Sharm El Sheik and Hurghada (they never had any problems for tourists even during protests) there are some great deals.
Want any first hand advice - leave a comment or Contact me.
By the way - Egypt is a golfers paradise now.
Fun in the Sun and Sea awaits you - this is the best time of year - not too hot or cold.
If in Cairo, and fancy some chat with local expats, beverage and food at outlandish cheap prices come and see us at ACE Club in Maadi Digla.
RAI ITA Feed Eutelsat W3A (7E)11126 H 6666 3/4 key: 10 00 00 10 00 00 01 01 ------------------------------------------------- [ SKY SPORT 24(ITINFI CH8) & JSC SPORT FEED ] Eutelsat W2A 10E 11134 H 5064 | Biss | SID in HEX:0001 | KEY:12 34 56 9C AB CD EF 67 ( Durant les Match de Foot ) ------------------------------------------------- [ NBC Syfy Russia ] Eutelsat W2A @ 10° East 11166 H DVB-S2/8PSK 3616 2/3 | Biss | SID in HEX:0190 | Key:30 AE 49 27 36 24 37 91 ------------------------------------------------- [ NBA TV ] TURKSAT 3A (42.0°E) 11054 H 30000 5/6 | Biss | SID in HEX:0007 | Key:B8 A3 3E 99 1F 80 BC 5B ------------------------------------------------- [ Premier League HD ]Eutelsat W2A (10.0E) - 11305.00 V - DVB-S2 (8PSK) - 30000 5/6 | Biss | SID: 0006 | KEY:DC D4 98 48 ED 68 34 89 ------------------------------------------------- Liverpool FC TV Apstar-2R @ 76.5° East 3840 H 27500 3/4 SID:0001 HEX Key::12 34 56 9C 12 34 56 9C -------------------------------------------------
From 6am on Friday 4th March and running until 6am on Monday 7th March
ESPN, ESPN HD, ESPN America and ESPN America HD will be available to all Sky TV viewers.
(The wording says "Sky Viewers", so I would assume this means those who have a Sky subscription, and this offer will not be available to "freesatfromsky" viewers...but you never know!)
Dish Network offers over 250 HD channels, some that come with various packages, others that can be purchased. When you have a Dish Network dish installed to your house there are so many advantages for you and your family. HD Free For Life will really make you smile.This post will answer some of the reasons to order a Dish Network dish.
According to Canoe.ca,the company, which is currently in front of the broadcast regulator seeking approval of its purchase of CTV, is said to be pursuing V to gain additional French-language content as it battles with rival Quebecor for market share in this province.The purchase of CTV would give Bell ownership of RDS, which has exclusive rights to broadcast Canadiens games.
However, according to the website, Bell wants to enhance its portfolio of French language stations even farther. Mirko Bibic, Bell's vice-president of regulatory affairs, has said the company would not make another major acquisition before its purchase of CTV received approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
V, formerly TQS, is owned by Montreal-based company Remstar Diffusion Inc., and has struggled financially for several years. Remstar bought TQS in 2008, a year after it had filed for protection from creditors. Reached yesterday, Bell spokesperson Marie-Eve Francoeur said the company would not comment about the report.
3net, the joint venture television network from Sony Corporation, Discovery Communications and IMAX Corporation today announced that DIRECTV will be the first distributor to launch 3net, the 24/7 3D network, beginning February 13, 2011. 3net will initially be available to millions of DIRECTV customers across the country. Even though 3net's initial audience via DirecTV will be less than 100,000 potential viewers, the 3D television network from Discovery Communications, Sony and IMAX has garnered "huge interest" from advertisers in running three-dimensional spots.
3net will go live at 8:00 PM ET on DIRECTV (channel 107) with a primetime slate featuring world premieres of new, one-hour, native 3D original programs CHINA REVEALED and FORGOTTEN PLANET, in addition to the world 3D television premiere of INTO THE DEEP 3D. Throughout February, the network will offer an unprecedented rollout of original 3D series and new program debuts every night at 9:00 PM ET.
3net will deliver compelling, native 3D content to the marketplace and thus serve as a critical driver for consumer adoption of in-home 3D entertainment. The partnership's commitment to the emerging 3D market is historic, with plans for the channel to offer viewers the largest library of native 3D entertainment content in the world by the end of 2011.
"Today's announcement marks the culmination of a dynamic collaboration, and we are very proud of what has been accomplished in the seven short months since the network began its development," said Tom Cosgrove, 3net's President and Chief Executive Officer. "DIRECTV is the leader in meeting consumer demand for video entertainment and has clearly been an industry innovator in 3D. We are proud to partner with DIRECTV on this historic launch and bring compelling, original 3D programming and key content from our partners to DIRECTV subscribers across the country on a 24/7 basis."
DirecTV, the first affiliate for 3net, is primed to debut the network on Sunday, Feb. 13, at 8 p.m. Eastern. DirecTV has 19.1 million U.S. customers, but of those only "tens of thousands" currently have compatible 3DTV sets to watch 3D programming, according to the satellite operator.Cosgrove, acknowledging the relatively small audience size, said 3net will sell ads using a mix of sponsorships and CPMs. "We're finding ways to work with the advertisers," he said. A lot of these guys have already created 3D commercials."
"Quality 3D programming is vital to the success and increased adoption of the technology, and with industry leaders like Discovery, Sony and IMAX making a commitment to this category, it is clear that 3D is here to stay and is only going to get better," said Derek Chang, executive vice president, Content Strategy and Development, DIRECTV. "We are excited to be the first distributor to announce the launch of 3net and we look forward to continuing to provide our customers with the largest and most compelling 3D programming lineup available."
"The broad availability of high-quality, native 3D content is a critical step towards consumers fully embracing 3D," said Rob Wiesenthal, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sony Corporation of America. "Beginning February 13, a deep and diverse array of great 3D programming will be available in the home 24 hours a day. 3net is an important element in our strategy to maintain a leadership position in all things 3D."
"Discovery's business strategy has always focused on delivering groundbreaking content through new platforms and technologies. The launch of 3net represents a giant leap in our march to bring audiences the closest-to-real viewing experiences," said David Zaslav, President and CEO, Discovery Communications.
"3net brings together three global brands with a single mission -- to deliver premium 3D entertainment experiences to audiences in the comfort of their own homes," said Richard L. Gelfond, CEO of IMAX. "We are proud to embark on this new venture with Sony and Discovery, and we believe that our popular library of breathtaking IMAX content is in great company with the range of compelling programming from our partners."
Starting in April, 3net plans to beginning running 3D ads. Cosgrove declined to identify advertisers that may be in the mix but said 3net has had discussions with movie studios, automakers and consumer packaged goods companies.Early research suggests that advertising is more effective in 3D. ESPN -- which ran ads from Sony, Gillette and Pixar on its 3D network during the 2010 World Cup -- found that ad recognition grew from 83% in 2D to 94% in 3D and likelihood of intent to purchase rose from 49% to 83%. Moreover, ad "likeability" jumped from 67% to 84%.
However, by TV standards, the number of people who are able to see 3D ads today is miniscule.
Still, it could be many years for 3D television to become as widespread as HD -- if, indeed, it ever comes close. In 2010, consumer electronics companies reported disappointing sales of 3D sets, which require viewers to wear specialized glasses.
Cosgrove declined to comment on how much 3net's partners are investing in the network or when he expects it to break even.Discovery, which is handling distribution on behalf of the 3net JV, is continuing to have carriage discussions with other distributors, a company spokeswoman said.He estimated up to 6 million 3DTVs will ship in 2011, up from a little more than 1 million at the end of 2010.
Why have so many been signing up for satellite TV by Dish Network? People have been falling in love with satellite TV service like never before. Many of these new subscribers once had cable TV service but decided to switch to satellite. The DISH Network Corporation said in December of 2009 that it had now gone over the 14.3 million mark for U.S. households that used their service. What is it that so many Americans see in satellite TV technology that they weren't getting from their cable TV company? This post will try to answer some of those questions.
CBS Action frequency change CBS Action has changed it frequency to 11222 H 27500 2/3
Vintage TV frequency change Vintage TV has changed it frequency to 12523 H 27500 2/3
Sky box users will not have to do anything as the Sky boxes iwll automatically update. Freesat box users may have to perform a scan to update their channel list. "Generic" satellite reciever users will have to perform a scan
Platform Applications- Iphone Applications Discover how to create iPhone apps easily with no programming experience and learn from some of the top iPhone app developers to get your app created and sold in App Store.
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V 030B00 C1 FC3C5F15D7A0B437; ChainArray V 030B00 0B 7C6A2428C020023B163E4FE024FF5D9D ; TNTSat V 030B00 E1 A79AC0DBEC9C9251D1915F058862AF26 ; SurEncryption Key V 030B00 E2 439726EBB6A939A456C05FF6AA606C43 ; HD SurEncryption Key V 030B00 T1
1: Add a "Normalized 2d motion vector" pass in render setting, and set normalized 2d motion vector > Render Pass Parameters > Max Pixel Diap. (your render images width size, but 1024 is max), Filter is ON!
2: In render setting > Motion Blur > Motion offset to 0
DISH Network is the first to have BabyTV in the USA.
DISH Network, announced the launch of BabyTV, a channel offering 24 hours per day of commercial-free programming dedicated to babies and toddlers, into its Spanish-language suite of packages, DishLATINO. DISH Network is the first pay-TV provider to offer the channel in the U.S.
“DISH Network is proud to be the exclusive provider of BabyTV, a channel that delivers 100 percent original programming in Spanish featuring an abundance of baby- and toddler-specific learning and entertainment content not offered by any other channel,”
'Charulata' is a 1964 Bengali film by Satyajit Ray based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore. The story takes place in the nineteenth-century during the period of what is called 'The Bengal Renaissance.' Western thoughts of freedom and individuality are ruffling the age-old calm of a feudal society. Charulata's husband, suited, bearded, pince-nez-wearing Bhupati is inspired by the gospels of Mill and Bentham, by ideas of freedom and equality. He spends his feudal wealth and all his waking hours on the propagation of these through 'The Sentinel,' an enterprise which is destined to flounder by the very fact of the single-minded idealism of its editor. But the winds of change are not only stirring him; unknown to herself, his good Hindu wife, conveniently childless, is no longer capable of treading the beaten path of the ideal woman who wants nothing of life but her husband's happiness.
She longs for his company and is bored with his attempts to supply diversions in which he is himself not involved. One of these diversions is her husband's cousin, Amal, who is served to her on a platter by the trusting husband as her friend, philosopher and guide. In him she finds one with whom she can share her thoughts and on whom she can bestow her affection. Slowly, unknowingly, the relationship turns into one of sexual love. When Amal realizes the nature of his feeling for her, he flees into marriage and exile in England. Bhupati, who sees in her grief only an innocent affection, suddenly comes face to face with the truth when she breaks down on hearing of her beloved's marriage, unaware that her husband had come back into the room.
Tagore's short story finds the husband departing at the end to be the editor of a newspaper a thousand miles away. Charu wants to go with him because she cannot bear the prospect of living with her memories in the desolation; he will not take her with him because the company of a wife who is constantly thinking of another will be too much of a cross to bear. He weakens when he sees her plight and offers to take her along; she reads his thoughts and decides to stay. Tagore thus ends on the symbol of a clear break. Ray, perhaps more realistically, freezes them to a state of eternally suspended animation.
The pattern of relationships within the traditional joint family in Bengal is often as complicated as within a whole society - particularly between men and women. Side by side with taboo relationships, there are others which are indulged by tradition up to somewhat vague boundaries of decorum. For a young wife, one of the husband's younger brothers (or cousins) would often turn out to be a special favorite and her relationship with him could well be one of mock love-play without attracting disapproval. The word in Sanskrit for husband's younger brother literally means 'second husband'; on the other hand, there is no word for 'cousin' in most Indian languages - they are all brothers. Ritualistically, therefore, the husband's younger brothers and cousins are vaguely placed in a sort of 'second husband' position, ready to take his place, as it were, but never actually doing so. Even today, it is an ambiguous relationship, made up of brotherly affection often overlaid with tinges of sexuality.
It is in this context, and the context of the gradual liberation of women from feudal slavery - in which Tagore played a very important part - that the content of Ray's 'Charulata' is best understood. It is a context that Ray's film takes for granted for its Indian audience.
Ray had misgivings about the subject even while making the film. How would society take this probe into an area of unspoken internal adjustment mechanisms? Devi's gentle pointer at the price of superstition had come to grief at the box office; if the Freudian undertones in the father-in-law's outlook on his son's wife had been understood, there might have been a minor riot. Indeed there were murmurs on the release of 'Charulata'; but they died down when Ray's triumph came in the enormous critical and box-office success of this film. As I was coming out of the theater, I saw a shriveled old woman, barely able to walk with the help of two young men, wipe her eyes with the end of her sari. Some inner chord in her had been touched.
The secret of her identification with an otherwise uncomfortable theme lay in the state of innocence of the characters who enact the drama of 'Charulata.' Their lack of conscious knowledge of what is happening inside them gives them a certain nobility of innocence; it is in their awakening that their tragedy lies. Amal, the younger man, is the first to realize the truth; for Charu it is an imperceptible movement from the unconscious to the conscious in which it is difficult to mark out the stages; for the husband, it is a sudden, stark, unbelievable revelation of truth. All three wake up, as it were, into the twentieth century, the age of self-consciousness. The rhythm of the unfolding is so gentle and true that there is no sense of shock even for the conservative Indian, although Ray's film is as daring for the wider audience as Tagore's story was for the intelligentsia of its day.
'Calm without; Fire within' was the title of an essay by Satyajit Ray in 'Show' magazine, in which he found the distinguishing trait of oriental art in the 'enormous reserves of power which never spilled over into emotional displays.' I had returned from Europe the very day I went to see 'Charulata' for the first time and still remember the shock of realizing how deep currents of sexual love can be conveyed without two people touching hands. Had Ray made a film about forbidden love which did 'spill over into emotional displays,' violent explorations of each other's personality through sex, not only would the Indian audience have rejected it, but the film would have lost much of the reserves of power held in check which it constantly suggests. It is the sudden breaking-out from this restraint which gives the scene of Charu's collapse on the bed on having news of Amal's marriage, with the impassive Bhupati dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief after he has witnessed his wife's grief, its emotional power.
The fire within smolders most of all in Charu herself; she is the only one of the three who has no crisis of conscience. Bhupati feels guilty for not having devoted enough time to her, and blames himself more than others for his predicament; Amal realizes that he was about to betray the trust of his cousin and benefactor and beats a hasty retreat. Charu alone never turns back on her passion. Her eyes are tranquil and without accent until the swing scene where she dimly senses within her, for the first time, the onrush of a forbidden love. Then suddenly, they go dark, and the pupils shine (a simple trick of make-up and lighting) like a tigress's. And a tigress she remains, albeit a chained one. In her reconciliation with her husband there is no sense of guilt, only a recognition of reality.
There is a passage in the Tagore story ('Nashtanir' or 'Broken Home') which reads: 'Perhaps Bhupati had the usual notion that the right to one's own wife's affection does not have to be acquired. The light of her love shines automatically, without fuel, and never goes out in the wind.'
In words like these, which are interjected here and there in the story, Tagore sums up the condition of women in a feudal society. Ray had already touched upon it in 'Mahanagar' ('The Big City') and recorded the hesitant winds of change. In both films, the instrument of change is provided by an unthinking husband who takes his wife for granted and cannot see her as an individual. In 'Mahanagar,' the instrument is the job which is to give Aroti a brief but lingering taste of economic independence; in 'Charulata,' it is the cousin (brother) who opens Charulata's young mind not only to the joys of literature, but to those of a youthful companionship which she cannot have with her husband. In both, the husbands are theoretically modern but in practice unable to foresee the consequences of their action in disturbing the status quo of their homes - so preoccupied are they with the man's world. Of a woman's new urge for a happiness of her own making, both are blissfully unaware. The position is re-stated more weakly in 'Kapurush' ('The Coward') which could well have been called 'Charulata Revisited.' It finally freezes her in her condition of awareness of freedom which she cannot have - freedom to earn her own living, to love, and to be somebody in her own right. It is through her failure to achieve these things, in a society which has still not changed enough, that we become aware of a woman's urge towards them. Although the development is not precisely that of a trilogy, the three films do hang together, and have a substance which Ray's films lying between the Apu trilogy and the three essays on woman do not have (nor does the film that follows them - 'Nayak,' 'The Hero').
It is in 'Charulata' that both the statement and the art reach their height. For the first time since the trilogy, Ray has something different and important to say, and says it really well. It is, to me, his masterpiece since the trilogy. In a classically Indian fusion of decoration and expression, its miniature-painting-like images acquire an autonomy and poise. Its rhythm, gentle as in all Ray's films, never falters, and Ray's own musical score, competent and interesting in previous films, for the first time becomes a major instrument in making the statement of his film. Its title theme (variations on which recur in the film) is derived from the melody of a composition by Tagore. The words of the song are so apt for suggesting the restlessness in Charu's mind that one would think it was the words which made Ray think of this particular derivation. (Incidentally, Tagore wrote some 3000 songs and for most of them composed the tunes himself.) Another musical motif in the film is taken from a Scottish tune which Tagore had earlier used as the basis for a song sung in the film by Amal and Charu together. It is the first Tagore motif that makes the predominant impression, as memorably as the folk theme of 'Pather Panchali.'
The exquisite period flavor is Ray's own, and distinguishes the film from the story, in which Tagore takes it for granted. The sunlit garden, the swing, the embroidery, the floral motifs on the doors and the walls, the horse-drawn carriage, the evocative settings created by Bansilal Chandra Gupta are, however, more than exquisite decorations; they frame the action and set it at a distance - the distance of contemplation.
[This review was written by Chidananda Das Gupta and published in Film Quarterly (Vol. 21, No. 1., Autumn, 1967, pp. 42-45). 'Charulata' can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube here.]
It is being reported that some of the TV channels in Spain, on the digital TDT TV system, will, on or around the 1st March, will be changing their frequencies.
TDT is the Spanish version of the UK Freeview TV service, and allows the reception of around 30 to 40 SPanish digital TV chanels via a TV aerial.
This should not pose any real issues, but may require you to perform a rescan on your TDT
One of the most asked questions that I have been asked in the last few weeks is "Can I use my Sky card in Spain? I heard on the news the EU says I can!"
A lot of these questions have been asked since it was reported in the last few weeks, that a pub landlady in the UK in in court for using a non Sky card in the UK for watching live UK football in her pub,and that the EU has rules that you can
DISH Network is offering an all-access pass to the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup in HD. Here's the full release:
The ICC Cricket World Cup, held every four years, will be co-hosted in the sub-continent by Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, and features a 14-nation pool competing for the title. The event opens with Bangladesh playing India on
Feb. 19 and will conclude with the championship match in Mumbai on April 2.
DISH Network will offer the tournament in HD on Pay-Per-View for its satellite customers as well as distribute the Cricket World Cup in SD through its recently launched IPTV service, DISH World, which allows customers to access DISH Network programming without the need for a satellite dish. Matches are available on a live and
The music which came to be called salsa developed out of Cuban dance genres - especially the son, 'guaracha' and 'rumba' - which had evolved into a cohesive set of commercial popular styles by the 1920s. By the 1940ss, these genres, as promoted by RCA Victor (which monopolized the record industry in Cuba) enjoyed considerable international appeal, and Latino communities in New York had come to play an important role in the evolution of Cuban music. Puerto Ricans had so eagerly adopted Cuban music for decades (especially since the introduction of radio in 1922) that they had come to regard such genres as the 'son' and 'guaracha' more or less as their own (generally at the expense of indigenous genres like 'plena' and 'bomba'). Meanwhile, since the 1920s, New York City had become the scene of a lively dialectic blending and competition of diverse grassroots Latin American musics and commercialized version thereof. Many Cuban musicians had come to base themselves in New York City, where, together with Puerto Rican bandleaders like Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez, they established New York as a center for the music that would eventually come to be labelled 'salsa' by the record industry.
The Latin music record scene in New York had been monopolized, or more properly, oligopolized, by RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca until the early 1940s. As was the case with 'race records' of black American music, the domination of these three Anglo corporations had tended to limit the diversity and quantity of Latin records. However, during World War II a variety of factors led to a decline of the near-total hegemony enjoyed by these so-called 'majors' in the field of ethnic and minority musics, such that smaller independent record companies ('indies') were able to enter the market and service the demand for specialized markets in a more creative, responsive and energetic way. These factors included: the majors' abandonment of minority music as a response to wartime shellac shortages; the advent of magnetic tape and 45 RPM records, which lowered record production costs sufficiently for smaller firms to enter the market; the increasing purchasing power of minorities, including work-class Puerto Ricans; the AFM (American Federation of Musicians) boycott of the majors in 1942 and 1947; and the rise of BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) which relied considerably on non-traditional (especially black and Latin) popular musics in the wake of the ASCAP ban on radio broadcasts of their own mainstream popular music in the early 1940s. Within the realm of black American music, these factors led to the emergence of indie labels like Sun, Phillips, Chess and Atlantic, the growth of which contributed significantly to the rise of R&B and, later, rock 'n' roll. In the Latin music scene, such record industry developments, together with the dramatic increase in migration from Puerto Rico during the 1940s and the big-band 'mambo craze' of the 1950s, facilitated the emergence of independents like SMC (1945), Tico (1948), Alegre (1960), and others. These labels, as suggested by John Storm Roberts in The Latin Tinge (1999), specialized in Cuban-style dance music and the syncretic mambo which Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Machito and others had fashioned, primarily in New York City, a point further developed by Salazar in 'The Pioneers of Salsa' (Mambo Express 2/15, 8/89). The competition between the majors and the indies formalized the dialectic opposition between corporate hegemony and grassroots 'authenticity' within the record industry.
In the latter 1960s, Cuban dance music in New York City underwent a transitional period of reorientation and redefinition. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 had ruptured commercial and touristic ties with the USA and to some extent spoilt the glamorous and idyllic image of Cuban music that the major record companies and the tourist industry had sought to promote. After such a harsh reminder of socio-political realities in the Caribbean, the multinational corporations that had been involved in Cuban-style music largely withdrew. More significantly, a distinct social identity began to coalesce on New York's Hispanic barrios, as Puerto Ricans and other Latinos came to perceive themselves as confronting a shared urban experience of social, political and economic alienation and marginalization, a point developed by Cesar Rondon in El libro de la salsa: Cronica de la musica del Caribe urbano (Caracas: Editorial Arte, 1980, p. 20). Cuban dance music, both as performed live and on record, began to play an increasingly important role in expressing, mediating and shaping the emergent barrio identity; thus, the advent of the new label 'salsa,' however commercial in inspiration, can be seen to some extent as legitimate insofar as the music it denoted acquired a new social significance and operated in a milieu substantially distinct from that of its Caribbean parent. To the extent that its texts mirrored their social context, salsa could be seen as continuing the tradition of its predecessors, the Cuban son and rumba, whose lyrics frequently dealt with local neighborhood event. The lyrics of the pre-salsa Cuban son remained rooted in local experience even in the genre's commercial, mass-mediated stage. Most of Arsenio Rodriguez's sones, for example, refer to specific individuals or local events familiar to the composer and his contemporary local peers. What distinguished salsa was that the neighborhood has now East Harlem rather than, for example, Havana's Guanabacoa suburb.
The growth of salsa as a vehicle of social identity was inseparable from its development as a commercial entity. Indeed, the more salsa flourished, the more it was subject to the pressures of the corporate music industry. Some of these pressures - toward standardization, stylistic conservatism, and absence of socio-political content - operated in direct opposition to the grassroots attempt to use the genre as an expression of barrio identity. (A similar tendency in the recording companies developed with regard to rock music, as noted by Simon Frith in Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll[New York: Pantheon, 1981, p 153].) Thus, the development of salsa can be seen as an ongoing dialectic between, on the one hand, the Latino community's attempt to shape salsa as its own subcultural expression, and, on the other hand, the tendency of the commercial music industry to glamorize, decontextualize, and depoliticize the music as a bland and innocuous dance music - as ketchup rather than salsa.
The latter tendency, in salsa as well as as other musics, is particularly marked in the case of large, corporate record companies, as opposed to smaller, independent firms, which are generally more reflective of grassroots aesthetics. It may be appropriate at this point to clarify further the distinction between the so-called majors, who control their own distribution and marketing as well as production, and the independents, who produce records but generally market them via separate distribution companies or, very often, arrangements with the majors. The indies suffer several disadvantages in their competition with the majors. Distribution is by far the biggest problem, but in addition to this, indies have such limited capital resources that they are easily ruined by a few failed records. Paradoxically, due to cash flow problems, a blockbuster hit can also bankrupt an indie if it is unable to meet sudden demand for a particular record. Disc jockeys are often reluctant to play indie records, especially since the independents cannot afford the same sorts of promotion, miscellaneous perks, and, in many case, payola offered by the majors. Hence, the indies tend to be small companies which cater to specialized markets, with whom they are more in touch on ta grassroots level than are the majors. The majors can afford to take risks, but they generally avoid doing so; rather, they prefer to wait until a group or artist has made a name on an independent label, and then they buy that act from the indie, thus letting the indies bear the cost of research and development. (While complexity of industry accounting renders calculations of profit margins difficult, if no meaningless, it may be roughly estimated that a typical record produced by a major currently costs about half a million dollars, including promotion, and has to sell around 70,000 copies to break even, while an indie can produce a record for $10,000 and make a profit by selling only 2000 copies). The indies tend to be owned not by large corporations, but by middle-class or in some cases even lower-middle-class entrepreneurs. The indies, accordingly, are intimately rooted in their local, ethnic markets and can be responsive and faithful to those markets in a way which the majors are either unwilling or unable to be. In Sound Effects, Frith (1981, pp. 138-50) provides further discussion of the differences between indies and majors, and Frederic Dannen, in his Hit Men (New York: Times Books, 1990) discusses payola in the contemporary recording industry.
In the 1960s, recording of Latin dance music in New York was largely in the hands of a few indies, especially Tico-Alegre and Coda Records, as observed by Pablo Guzman in 'Siempre Salsa!,' in The Village Voice (25 June 1979, p. 92). In 1964, Jerry Masucci and Johnny Pacheco, the gifted leader of a thoroughly traditional Cuban-style ensemble, formed another independent label, Fania Records. By 1970, through a combination of creative marketing (including popularizing the term 'salsa'), aggressive signing of local bands, and responsiveness to the growing significance of Latin music, Fania had surpassed its established competitors and had come to dominate Latin music recording in the city. In this initial period, Fania, as an energetic, dynamic indie, remained vitally in touch with 'Nuyorican' barrio life and did not hesitate to promote 'salsa' as a dynamic expression of that subculture. Song texts by Willie colon, Felipe Lucian and others dramatized barrio alienation and aspirations. Album covers expressed similar themes, as with Ray Barretto's 'Que Viva la Musica,' showing Barretto emerging in chains out of a conga, looming over the Manhattan skyline, and reaching for the sun. Most explicitly, perhaps, Fania produced a 90-minute promotional film, 'Nuestra Cosa' ('Our Thing') contextualizing salsa and its exponents in their Nuyorican milieu of barrio squalor, transplanted traditions, and cultural revival. In El libro de la salsa, Rondon (1980) further discusses the early Fania years.
The period 1971-75 was the creative and financial zenith for salsa and for Fania Records. Despite the appearance of a few more innovative salsa indies, (TR, Montuno, Coco, and Cytronics' Salsoul and Mericana), Fania, with 80 percent of the market, dominated the field, and according to Guzman (as cited above, 1979, p. 92) enjoyed such growth and virtual monopoly that it came to operate more like a major record company than an indie. In fact, Alegre was by this point leased to Fania. Accordingly, as Cesar Rondon has documented, Fania's management chose increasingly to divest salsa of its barrio ethos and to market it as a typical American pop music industry product, i.e. glamorous, decontextualized, depoliticized, standardized, and aimed at the homogeneous mass audience rather than a local, marginalized one.
Hence, Fania promoted several (largely unsuccessful) 'crossover' LPs aimed at reaching Anglo audiences. Much of the remaining Fania output - especially the records of Johnny Pacheco and Celia Cruz - was devoted to reiteration, however tasteful, of the traditional-style Cuban son, in the vein of the Sonora Matancera (a Cuban group) of the 1950s. Aside from crossover ventures, Fania seemed to have forsaken innovation for standardized, reliable formulae, and chose to celebrate a mythically idyllic Cuban past rather than to continue confronting barrio reality in all its complexity. The contrast became most explicit in another Fania promotional film, 'Salsa' (1973), aimed Anglo audiences and ignoring problematic barrio culture and Cuban roots by implying that salsa came directly from African to New York City recording studies. Through such propaganda, salsa and Cuban dance music in general were decontextualized and dehistoricized to the extent that many listeners thought them to be modern New York creations. Rondon (1981) observes, for example, that Pacheco's liner notes (e.g. 'Pacheco y su nueva tumbao') led many listeners to believe that he was the inventor of the charanga ensemble (which had been in vogue in Cuba for 50 years). Meanwhile, innovative, jazz-oriented salsa (like Eddie Palmieri's) and provocative songs which embraced and confronted barrio culture (like those of Ruben Blades and Willie Colon) were largely confined to the margins of the record industry, and came to be avoided by commercial radio stations. Thus did Blades' remarkable 'Juan Pachanga,' with its innovative instrumentation and sensitive text portraying the desperate emptiness of machismo, appear originally only on the failed fusion LP 'Rhythm Machine.' Palmieri, meanwhile, won Grammy Awards five times in spite of his low profile on commercial radio.
Despite such policies, Latin radio had been actively contributing to the popularization of Latin music in New York since the early 1930s. Cuban dance music - including live broadcasts from clubs - had been broadcast on stations like WJZ and WMCA since as early as 1932-34, and continued in subsequent decades to be played in short programs on PIX, WOVZ, WOR, and other stations. In the late 1960s the owners of Tico Records and SMC, in accordance with the customary promotional practices of the times, started buying air time on radio stations to promote their recordings, as noted by Max Salazar in a 1990 interview, a point also noted by Oscar Hijuelo in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (New York: Farrar, Strout, and Giroux, p. 154). From 1947, the 'Tico-Tico Show' hosted by Art 'Pancho' Raymond and, later, Dick 'Ricardo' Sugar, on the English-lannguage station WEVD, attracted audiences from both Latino and Anglo communities, as did the shows by other English speaking disk jockeys (e.g. Bob 'Pedro' Harris on WJZ and 'Symphony Sid' on WEVD). It was not until 1961, however, that WADO was established as the city's first fully Spanish-language radio station (or 'SLR'). While WADO, from its inception, made some efforts to orient music programming toward the city's various ethnic groups, according to WADO's station manager Danny Ortiz (from a May 1990 interview), Cuban style dance music, and what came to be called 'salsa,' never received much iarplay on WADO, due primarily to the personal antipathy for the genre on the part of the stations' owner, Nelson LaVerne. By the late sixties, however, Jerry Masucci was buying air time on stations WBNX in an energetic and remarkably successful promotion campaign to make stars out of Fania's upcoming performers. Purchase of radio air time has since become too expensive for most indies, however, and the majors prefer to promote musics other than salsa.
[This essay is extracted from a longer work by Peter Manuel entitled 'Salsa and the Music Industry: Corporate Control or Grassroots Expression?,' which was published as Chapter 8 in Manuel's edited collection Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives (University Press of America, 1991, pp. 159-80).]
The little giant blueberries are actually blueberry plants that promise to produce bowls and bowls full of blueberries each and every week. In fact the commercial says that they will allow you to have a 'blueberry festival all season long'. These blueberry plants are sold as an As Seen On TV (ASOTV) product through one of the biggest ASOTV Companies around, Gardeners Choice. They can only be purchased via the Internet and as first glance seem to be quite an awesome product at a great price.
Are These Blueberry Plants A Good Deal Or A Scam?
I wouldn't quite call the little giant blueberry plants a scam but the company that sells them is big into the ASOTV market and they do a great job at marketing theirs product in order to get buyers all hyped up and excited. In fact, their commercial for the blueberry plants is actually a big deceiving because it implies that you are getting something very different than you actually are. When watching the commercial you get the feeling that you are getting large mature blueberry plants that will provide you with an instant supply of blueberries when in fact you are getting tiny little plants that have been growing for only a few months and are fare from producing blueberries.
How Much Do They Cost?
The little giant blueberry plants can be purchased for $10 for either two or three plants (depending on what special they are running) but this isn't the final price. The final price includes roughly $5 shipping per plant so that means a standard or will cost you $20 or $30 depending on how many plants you order. When doing your order the company offers you all sorts of bonus blueberry plants and other fruit and vegetable plants. All of which run at about $5 each plus $5 shipping per plant. These plants are still a good deal if you are willing to wait a year or two to get a good supply of blueberries but if you add other plants when ordering don't be shocked to see an order total (which they don't know until you order is complete) of $50-$75.
Is There Really Anything Special About These Blueberry Plants?
The little giant blueberry commercial claims that their blueberry plants have been specially designed and discovered by scientist but I haven't found this to actually be true. The plants they offer are often referred to as 'highbush' blueberry plants which are some of the easiest to grow but they aren't anything special that can't be found at most blueberry farms and maybe even a local plant store in your area.
The Little Giant Blueberry BottomLine
Growing your own blueberries is a great idea but we aren't so sure that you should purchase these plants. If you want to get the absolute cheapest plants around then the little giant blueberry plants are good ones to consider but most people want their plants to start producing blueberries faster and if you are one of them you should check out the legit blueberry farms online. At these sites you can get plants as young as a few months to ones that are 2-3 years mature, meaning you will get a good blueberry crop right away. Of course these mature plants won't be $5-$10 per plant, they will be $30 or more. In the end these plants aren't a scam but they do follow the typical overly optimistic line that you get with ASOTV products. If you do decide to order them just be sure to remember that you will get charged a lot for shipping and if you decide to cancel your order after the fact the company will probably make it a pain in the butt for you to get it cancelled.
The little giant blueberries are actually blueberry plants that promise to produce bowls and bowls full of blueberries each and every week. In fact the commercial says that they will allow you to have a 'blueberry festival all season long'. These blueberry plants are sold as an As Seen On TV (ASOTV) product through one of the biggest ASOTV Companies around, Gardeners Choice. They can only be purchased via the Internet and as first glance seem to be quite an awesome product at a great price.
Are These Blueberry Plants A Good Deal Or A Scam?
I wouldn't quite call the little giant blueberry plants a scam but the company that sells them is big into the ASOTV market and they do a great job at marketing theirs product in order to get buyers all hyped up and excited. In fact, their commercial for the blueberry plants is actually a big deceiving because it implies that you are getting something very different than you actually are. When watching the commercial you get the feeling that you are getting large mature blueberry plants that will provide you with an instant supply of blueberries when in fact you are getting tiny little plants that have been growing for only a few months and are fare from producing blueberries.
How Much Do They Cost?
The little giant blueberry plants can be purchased for $10 for either two or three plants (depending on what special they are running) but this isn't the final price. The final price includes roughly $5 shipping per plant so that means a standard or will cost you $20 or $30 depending on how many plants you order. When doing your order the company offers you all sorts of bonus blueberry plants and other fruit and vegetable plants. All of which run at about $5 each plus $5 shipping per plant. These plants are still a good deal if you are willing to wait a year or two to get a good supply of blueberries but if you add other plants when ordering don't be shocked to see an order total (which they don't know until you order is complete) of $50-$75.
Is There Really Anything Special About These Blueberry Plants?
The little giant blueberry commercial claims that their blueberry plants have been specially designed and discovered by scientist but I haven't found this to actually be true. The plants they offer are often referred to as 'highbush' blueberry plants which are some of the easiest to grow but they aren't anything special that can't be found at most blueberry farms and maybe even a local plant store in your area.
The Little Giant Blueberry BottomLine
Growing your own blueberries is a great idea but we aren't so sure that you should purchase these plants. If you want to get the absolute cheapest plants around then the little giant blueberry plants are good ones to consider but most people want their plants to start producing blueberries faster and if you are one of them you should check out the legit blueberry farms online. At these sites you can get plants as young as a few months to ones that are 2-3 years mature, meaning you will get a good blueberry crop right away. Of course these mature plants won't be $5-$10 per plant, they will be $30 or more. In the end these plants aren't a scam but they do follow the typical overly optimistic line that you get with ASOTV products. If you do decide to order them just be sure to remember that you will get charged a lot for shipping and if you decide to cancel your order after the fact the company will probably make it a pain in the butt for you to get it cancelled.
It just keeps getting better! Dish Network channels now include Sirius Satellite Radio stations free. As long as you subscribe to Dish Network's America's Top 200 or higher you'll get over 60 Sirius Satellite radio channels free. This package is being offered now for only $39.99/month with your price locked in for 12 months!
Find out about the current Dish Network offers and pick out what you need the most. If you love sports, you will fall in love with the Top 200 package. I've listed the Sirius satellite channels and categories here for you. Dish Network Channels - Sirius Satellite Radio:
DISH Network Statement on U.S. District Court Order to Lift Stay:
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- DISH Network L.L.C., issued the following statement today concerning the most recent U.S. District Court order: "We are pleased that the court granted our motion to lift the stay in our patent infringement action against TiVo. The patent in this case withstood two re-exam petitions by TiVo seeking to invalidate it. We look forward to the trial."
Dish Network TV has become an increasingly popular choice among consumers who want more than the basic local stations or what greedy cable TV operators have to offer. Is Dish Network TV the right choice for you?
DISH is popular because there are so many choices as to not only channels, but also various packages that you can select in order to get a wide variety of entertainment. Even the most picky TV viewer can most likely find a combination of channels that will satisfy their every need.
The Trobriand Islands are usually assumed to be well known, thanks to the research of Bronislaw Malinowski and numerous subsequent anthropologists. But in spite of the abundant documentation of other cultural components, the music of the area had been little studied and is almost inaccessible aurally to listeners outside of Papua New Guinea. Therefore, the film 'Kama Wosi' ('Our Songs' in Kilivila language), shot in 1975 by Les McLaren and released in 1979, was a very welcome addition to knowledge of this area. What immediately strikes the viewer familiar with Malinowski's photographs of Trobriand life from 1915-1918 is that few things seem to have changed in 65 years. Even traditional music had not been supplanted by string bands, as the opening credits reveal: 'Although some music was performed expressly for the film, it still functions integrally to Trobriand society.'
The commentary of the film relates basic information concerning the socio-political system, gardening, magic, intersexual relations, kula trade, and religion. Each of these subjects is illuminated by the music - either through its contextual importance to the topic being discussed or through the relevance of the song text. For example, the discussion of the kula trade is followed by songs performed at various stages during the voyage, as well as songs with textual references to kula canoes and concern about success during the trade. Kilivila texts can be very complicated metaphorically, as can be seen by examining annotated translations (as in, for example, those done by Baldwin 1945 and 1950, and also by Kasaipwalova and Beier at the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in 1978). Undoubtedly some of this was lost in translating song texts for the film, but the translators did a good job in conveying some idea of the poetry involved.
No attempt is made to conceal the fact that a camera is filming and that the people being filmed are aware of this. Such honesty can be an effective technique. Two young men sit on a veranda. One of them is carving an intricate design on the handle of a drum. While carving, he speaks to the filmmakers, and, ultimately, to all outsiders: 'Carving is nothing special - what are you taking pictures for? Day and night, day and night - taking pictures for nothing. You take these pictures and take them away - what about us? People will laugh at us.' 'Don't worry about him... I think that's their work. They go and get their pay.' 'I'll do this carving. I'll spoil my design.'
A variety of songs are presented throughout the film. The majority are those known as wosi baku, which are composed on numerous topics and sung while walking in the bush or sitting in the village. Quite a few different solo singers are heard, ranging from a very young boy telling how perfectly he will dance, to well-known singers. In fact, the people of the Trobriands have great respect for singers and composers. Sebwagau is one of the most famous. In June 1981, when I showed 'Kama Wosi' at the government headquarters of Losuia and at Tukwaukwa Catholic Mission, both in the Trobriands, everyone present knew Sebwagau, although his village was not nearby. In the film he sings a newly composed song about a caterpillar, asking it not to eat his taro. His song was learned by the audience from these showings. Additionally, wosi moyovau (kula songs) and valam (mourning 'cries') are heard. Regarding the latter, as in many parts of Papua New Guinea Trobriand Islanders do not classify their mourning as 'song,' even though poetic texts are included. Rather, it is considered a type of crying.
In the Trobriands, as in many other parts of Papua New Guinea, songs are much more important than purely instrumental music. We do, however, hear some examples of the latter, particularly the loloni, an end-blown flute made of a papaya branch. The distal end is alternately opened and closed to produce the corresponding overtone series.
At the end of the film, a portion of a choreographed usu mwaya dance called Bwetayobu is presented. The dancers (kasa), who are all male (and do not sing), wear women's skirts (doba) and hold pandanus streamers (biyala). They dance in a circle around drummers (towaisi kaisosau) and singers (towosi or tokaiwala), a group collectly known as kepou. Two sizes of drums are used: katuneniya (a small drum, which signals changes of dance movements) and kaisosau (a larger drum, which provides a rhythmic back-up to the katuneniya). The mweki (literally, 'go with') dance is commonly presented at national festivals on 'culture days,' although it has only developed in the Trobriands within the past 30-35 years. Boys hit their buttocks and both boys and girls thrust forward their pelvises while chanting sexually explicit texts. Mweki is disliked by elders, not because of its overt sexual references, but because it lacks the seriousness and poetic metaphors of other music. (Information contained in the three preceding paragraphs is the result of fieldwork undertaken by the Music Department of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, 1974-1981.)
'Kama Wosi' suffers a bit from scenes included to conform to a Westerner's fantasy of the idyllic tropics, but they do not tarnish the overall sensitivity of the presentation.
[This is is an edited version of a review by Don Niles of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Boroko, Papual New Guinea. It was originally published in the journal Ethnomusicology (Vol. 26, No. 3, September 1982, pp. 505-506). Although Niles used a 16mm print and transcript to write the review, the film is now available on DVD from Documentary Educational Resources in the US and from Ronin Films in Australia. Further information on Melanesian music and the music of Papua New Guinea is available here.]
Pub landlady vs Premier League and TV Broadcast rights across Europe
But a UK newspaper (not owned by News Corp!) suggests what I suggested a few days ago.
The EU, based on the verdict in a few months time by the ECJ, has a simple choice. Sell TV rights on a country-by-country basis, or a pan-European basis.
It could be that thre European court opts to creating a
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Sky Atlantic is available on Sky channel 108. Sky Atlantic is availabel to Sky subscribers only. Sky Atlantic is available in Spain. Sky Atlantic is NOT available to Freesat or Freesatfromsky (or Freeview as some satellite instrallers incorrectly call it!)
Sky Atlantic frequency (for Standard definition) is: Frequency: 12285 Polarisation: V Symbol Rate: 27500 FEC: 2/3
The handling of American Indians and American Indian subject matter within the context of commercial U.S. cinema is objectively racist at all levels, an observation which extends to television as well as film. In this vein it is linked closely to literature, both fictional and non-fictional, upon which may if not most movie scripts are at least loosely based. In a very real sense, it is fair to observe that all modes of projecting concepts and images of the Indian before the contemporary American public fit the same mold, and do so for the same fundamental 'real world' reasons. This essay will attempt to come to grips with both the method and the motivation for this, albeit within a given medium and examining a somewhat restricted range of the tactics employed. The medium selected for this purpose is commercial cinema, the technique examined that of stereotypic projection. The matter divides itself somewhat automatically into three major categories of emphasis. These may be elucidated as follows. We are all aware of the standard motion picture technique of portraying the Native American with galloping pony and flowing headdress. We have seen the tipi and the buffalo hunt, the attack on the wagon train and the ambush of the stagecoach until they are scenes so totally ingrained in the American consciousness as to be synonymous with the very concept of the American Indian (to non-Indian minds at any rate and, unfortunately, to many Indian minds as well). It is not the technical defects of the scenes depicted here - although often they are many - which present the basic problem. Rather, it is that the historical era involved spans a period scarcely exceeding 50 years duration. Hence, the Indian has been restricted in the public mind, not only in terms of the people portrayed (the Plains Nations), but in terms of the time of their collective existence (roughly 1825-1880).
The essential idea of Native America instilled cinematically is that of a quite uniform aggregation of peoples (in dress, custom and actions) which flourished with the arrival of whites upon their land and then vanished somewhat mysteriously, along with the bison and the open prairie. There is no 'before' to this story, and there is no 'after.' Such is the content of 'They Died With Their Boots On,' 'Boots and Saddles,' 'Cheyenne Autumn,' 'Tonka Wakan' and 'Little Big Man,' to list but five examples from among hundreds. Of course, commercial film has - albeit in many fewer cases - slightly expanded the scope of the stereotype. The existence of the peoples of the Northeast receive recognition in such epics as 'Drums Along the Mohawk' and 'The Deerslayer.' The peoples of the Southwest have been included, to some extent, in scattered fare such as 'Broken Arrow,' 'Fort Apache' and 'Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here.' The Southeastern nations even claim passing attention in efforts such as the Walt Disney Davey Crockett series and biographical features about the lives of such Euroamerican heroes as Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston.
The latter deviations from the Plains stereotype - which has assumed proportions of a valid archetype in the public consciousness - drives the timeline back some 75 years at most. A century-and-a-quarter selected for depiction is hardly better than a fifty-year span. Further, it should be noted that, costuming aside, literally all the geographical/cultural groups presented are portrayed in exactly the same manner. The point of the historical confines involved in this category is that indigenous people are defined exclusively in terms of certain (conflict and demise) interactions with Euroamericans. There is no cinematic recognition whatsoever of a white-free and autonomous native past. Similarly, no attention is paid at all to the myriad indigenous nations not heavily and dramatically involved in the final period of Anglo-Indian warfare. U.S. audiences know no Aztec, Inca or Anasazi parallel to 'Cleopatra,' 'The Robe' or 'Ben Hur.' Small wonder audiences view the native as some briefly extant, mythic and usually hostile apparition. As a consequence, the public perception of the historical existence of Native Americans is of beings who spent their time serving as little other than figurative pop-up targets for non-Indian guns.
Nor is there an abundance of films attempting to deal with contemporary Indian realities. In effect, the native ceased to exist after the onset of the reservation period of the Plains peoples. This is evidence by the fact that the author could find only two films listed - biographies of Jim Thorpe and Ira Hayes, both starring Burt Lancaster - released prior to 1980 which featured the indigenous experience after 1880 in any meaningful way at all. As to current events, well... There's always the Billy Jack series: 'Born Losers,' 'Billy Jack,' 'The Trial of Billy Jack' and 'Bill Jack Goes to Washington' (the latter, thankfully, was shelved before release), utilizing the vehicle of an ex-Special Forces mixed-blood karate expert to exploit the grisly mystique of 'Shaft' and 'Superfly'-type superheroes (or anti-heroes, if you prefer). The result is a predictably shallow and idiotic parallel to the Batman TV series.
The single (lackluster) attempt by Hollywood to equal for American Indians what 'Sounder' and 'Lady Sings the Blues' have achieved for African-Americans was rapidly withdrawn from circulation as an 'embarassment.' So steeped in cellular myopia are filmdom's critics - so full, that is, of their own self-perpetuating stereotyping - that they panned the characters in 'Journey Through Rosebud' as 'wooden Indians.' This, despite the fact that most Native Americans viewing them ranked them as the most accurate and convincing ever to come from the studios. Possibly, other films of the stature of 'Journey Through Rosebud' have been made but not released, in effect doing nothing to alter the time-warp involving American Indians in film. A result is that the US mainstream population finds itself under no particular moral and psychic obligation to confront the fact of Native America, as either an historical or topical reality.
An Anishinabe (Chippewa) friend of mine visited the Field Museum in Chicago. While examining the exhibits of American Indian artifacts located there, she came across an object which she immediately recognized as being her grandmother's root digger, an item the museum's anthropological 'experts' had identified and labeled as a 'Winnebago hide scraper.' She called the mistake to the attention of the departmental director and was told that she, not the museum, was wrong. 'If you knew anything at all about your heritage,' he informed her, 'you'd know that the tool is a hide scraper.' My friend, helpless to correct this obvious (to her) misinformation, went away. 'They never listen to the people who really know these things,' she said later. 'And so they never understand what they think they know.'
The above sad-but-true story is not unusual. It serves to illustrate a pattern in Euroamerican dealings with indigenous people which extends vastly beyond the mere identification of objects. In terms of commercial cinema and acting, the problem may be considered on the basis of 'context' and 'motivation.' Put most simply, the question of context is one in which specific acts of certain American Indians are portrayed in scenes devoid of all cultural grounding and explanation. From whence is comprehension of the real nature of these acts to come? The viewing audience is composed overwhelmingly of non-Indians who obviously hold no automatic insight into native cultures and values, yet somehow they must affix meaning to the actions presented on the screen. Scenes such as those presented in the John Ford 'classic,' 'Stagecoach,' are fine examples of this stereotyping approach. Thus, the real acts of indigenous people - even when depicted more-or-less accurately - often appear irrational, cruel, unintelligent or silly when displayed in film.
Motivation is a more sophisticated, and consequently more dangerous, consideration. Here, a cultural context of sorts is provided, at least to some degree, but it is a context comprised exclusively of ideas, values, emotions and other meanings assigned by Euroamerica to the native cultures portrayed. Insofar as indigenous American Euro-derived worldviews are radically and demonstrably different in almost every way, such a projection can only serve to misrepresent dramatically the native cultures involved and render them nonsensical at best. Such misrepresentation serves two major stereotyping functions. Since the complex of dominant and comparatively monolithic cultural values and beliefs of Eurocentrism presently held by the bulk of the US population are utilized to provide motivation for virtually all American Indians portrayed in commercial film, all native values and beliefs appear to be lumped together into a single homogeneous and consistent whole, regardless of actual variances and distinctions.
Given that the cultural values and beliefs extended as the contextual basis for motivation are misrepresentative of the actual cultural context of Native America - and are thus totally out of alignment with the actions portrayed - the behavior of American Indians is often made to appear more uniformly vicious, crude, primitive and unintelligent than in cases where context and motivation are dispensed with altogether.
A primary device used by Hollywood to attach Eurocentric values to native acts has been to script a white character to narrate the story-line. Films such as 'Cheyenne Autumn,' 'A Man Called Horse' (and its sequels), 'Soldier Blue' and 'Little Big Man' exemplify the point. Each purports to provide an 'accurate and sympathetic treatment of the American Indian' (of yesteryear) while utterly crushing native identity under the heel of Euroamerican interpretation. To date, all claims to the contrary notwithstanding, there has not been one attempt to put out a commercial film which deals with native reality through native eyes.
This third category is in some ways a synthesis of the preceding two. It has, however, assumed an identity of its own which extends far beyond the scope of the others. Within this area lies the implied assumption that distinctions between cultural groupings of indigenous people are either nonexistent (ignorance) or irrelevant (arrogance). Given this attitude regarding the portrayal of Indians in film, it is inevitable that the native be reduced from reality to a strange amalgamation of dress, speech, custom and belief. All vestiges of truth - and thereby of intercultural understanding - give way here before the onslaught of movieland's mythic creation.
The film 'A Man Called Horse' may serve as an example. This droll adventure, promoted as 'the most authentic description of North American Indian life ever filmed,' depicts a people whose language is Lakota, whose hairstyles range from Assiniboin through Nez Perce to Comanche, whose tipi design is Crow, and whose Sun Dance ceremony and the lodge in which it is held are both typically Mandan. They are referred to throughout the film as 'Sioux,' but to which group do they supposedly belong? Secungu (Brule)? Oglala? Santee? Sisseton? Yanktonai? Minneconjou? Hunkpapa? Those generically - and rather pejoritavely - called 'Sioux' were/are of three major geographic/cultural divisions: the Dakotas of the Minnesota woodlands, the Nakotas of the prairie region east of the Missouri River, and the Lakotas of the high plains proper. These groups were/are quite distinct from one another, and the distinctions do make a difference in terms of accuracy and 'authenticity.'
The source material utilized to create the cinematic imagery involved in 'A Man Called Horse' was the large number of portraits of American Indians executed by George Catlin during the first half of the 19th century and now housed in the Smithsonian Institution. However, while Catlin was meticulous in attributing tribal and even band affiliations to the subjects of his paintings, the film-makers were not. The result is a massive misrepresentation of a whole variety of real peoples, aspects of whose cultures are incorporated, gratuitously, into that of the hybrid 'Indians' who inhabit the movie.
Nor does the dismemberment of reality in this 'most realistic of westerns' end with visual catastrophe. The door to cultural reduction is merely opened by such devices. Both the rationale and spiritual ramifications of the Sun Dance are voided by the film's Eurocentric explanation of its form and function. Thus is the Lakota's central and most profoundly sacred of all ceremonies converted into a macho exercise in 'self-mutilation,' a 'primitive initiation rite' showing that the Indian male could 'take it.' It follows that the film's Anglo lead (Richard Harris) must prove that he is 'as tough as the Sioux' by eagerly seeking out his fair share of pain during a Sun Dance. Just bloody up your chest and no further questions will be asked. How quaint.
This, of course, paves the way for the Harris character to become leader of the group. The Sioux, once they have been reduced to little more than a gaggle of prideful masochists, are readily shown to be possessed of little collective intellect. Hence, it becomes necessary for the Anglo captive to save his savage captors from an even more ferocious group of primitives coming over the hill. He manages this somewhat spectacular feat by instructing his aboriginal colleagues in the finer points of using the bow, a weapon in uninterrupted use by the people in question for several hundred generations, and out of use by the English for about 200 years at the time the events in the film supposedly occur. But no matter the trivial details. The presumed inherent superiority of Eurocentric minds has once again been demonstrated for all the world to witness. All that was necessary to accomplish this was to replace a bona fide native culture with something else.
The technique employed in 'A Man Called Horse' is by no means novel or unique. Even the highly-touted (in terms of making Indians 'the good guys') Billy Jack series could never lock in any specific people it sought to portray. The Indians depicted remain a weird confluence of Navajos and various Pueblos, occasionally practicing what appear to be bastardizations of Cheyenne and Kiowa ceremonies. All the better to trot them around as props for every non-Indian fad from the benefits of macrobiotic cookery to those of Aikido karate.
It is elementary logic to realize that when the cultural identity of a people is symbolically demolished, the achievements and very humanity of that people must also be disregarded. The people, as such, disappear, usually to the benefit - both material and psychic - of those performing the symbolic demolition. There are accurate and appropriate terms which describe this: dehumanization, obliteration or appropriation of identity, political subordination and material colonization are all elements of a common process of imperialism. This is the real meaning of Hollywood's stereotyping of American Indians.
It should be relatively easy at this point to identify film stereotyping of American Indians as an accurate reflection of the actual conduct of the Euroamerican population vis-a-vis Native America in both historical and topical senses. North American indigenous peoples have been reduced in terms of cultural identity within the popular consciousness - through a combination of movie treatments, television programming and distortive literature - to a point where the general public perceives them as extinct for all practical intents and purposes. Given that they no longer exist, that which was theirs - whether land and the resources on and beneath it, or their heritage - can now be said, without pangs of guilt, to belong to those who displaced and ultimately supplanted them. Such is one function of cinematic stereotyping within North America's advanced colonial empire.
Another is to quell potential remorse among the population at large. Genocide is, after all, an extremely ugly word. Far better that the contemporary mainstream believe their antecedents destroyed mindless and intrinsically warlike savages, devoid of true culture and humanity, rather than that they systematically exterminated whole societies of highly intelligent and accomplished human beings who desired nothing so much as to be left in peace. Far better for their descendants if the Euroamerican invaders engaged in slaughter only in self-defense, when confronted with hordes of irrationally bloodthirsty heathen beasts, rather than coldly and calculatedly committing mass murder, planning step by step the eradication of the newest-born infants. 'Nits make lice,' to quote US Colonel John M. Chivington.
Filmdom's handling of 'history' in this regard is, with only a few marginal exceptions, nothing more or less than an elaborate denial of European/Euroamerican criminality on the American continent for over the past 350 years. Implicitly then, it is an unbridled justification and glorification of the conquest and subordination of Native America. As such, it is a vitally necessary ingredient in the maintenance and perfection of the Euroempire which began when the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Hollywood's performance on this score has been, overall, what one might have legitimately expected to see from the heirs to Leni Riefenstahl, had the Third Reich won its War in the East during the 1940s.
As the Oneida comedian Charlie Hill has observed, the portrayal of Indians in the cinema has been such that it has made the playing of 'Cowboys and Indians' a favorite American childhood game. The object of the 'sport' is for the 'cowboys' to 'kill' all the 'Indians,' just like in the movies. A bitter irony associated with this is that Indian as well as non-Indian children heatedly demand to be identified as cowboys, a not unnatural outcome under the circumstances, but on which speaks volumes to the damage done to the American Indian self-concept by movie propaganda. The meaning of this, as Hill notes, can best be appreciated if one were to imagine that the children were instead engaging in a game called 'nazis and Jews.'
That movieland's image of the Indian is completely false - and often shoddily so - is entirely to the point. Only a completely false creation could be used to explain in 'positive terms' what has actually happened in the Americas throughout centuries past. Only a literal blocking of modern realities can be used to rationalize present circumstances. Only a concerted effort to debunk Hollywood's mythology can alter the situation for the better. While it's true that the immortal words of General Phil Sheridan - 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' - have continued to enjoy a certain appeal with the American body politic, and equally true that dead Indians are hardly in a position to call the liars to account for their deeds, there are a few of us left out here who might be up to the task.
[This is a slightly edited version of an essay written by Ward Churchill that originally appeared under the title 'Fantasies of the Master Race: Categories of Stereotyping of American Indians in Film' in Churchill's 1992 book Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians (Common Courage Press, pp. 231-241; revised edition published in 1998 by Clear Light Books). The book also includes his review of 'Dances With Wolves' that further highlights the inherent white supremacy of Hollywood cinema. Broader issues of the depiction of Native Peoples in American history were previously addressed by Robert Berkhofer in The White Man's Indian (Vintage Books, 1979) and Angela Aleiss explores the topic at length as it pertains to cinema in her recent book Making the White Man's Indian (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005).]
