I sat in traffic on my way to class tonight. One of the things I will miss about St. Louis when we leave (if we ever leave, rather) is that there is rarely traffic here. There was probably an accident further up, but I couldn't see that far. While I sat in total darkness, because it was 5:30 PM and we're approaching winter, I noticed three license plates that passed by me---going the other way. Iowa. Illinois. Missouri.
I live in the Midwest. Not the West, the Midwest. From time to time, it has bothered me that we couldn't have our own name---like the "Middle" or "Plains Place." This morning, over breakfast and Blue's Clues, I read a New York Times magazine article called The Affluencer, written about a woman named Lauren Salaznick. She presides over the Bravo Media network---you know, all of the Real Housewives, Top Chef, Project Runway, and Work Out shows. I bring this up because of a statement she made somewhere in the middle of the article, which was:
"Most television producers spend their days trying to figure out what other kinds of people want — housewives in the Midwest, 17-year-old boys in the suburbs. With Bravo, Zalaznick has created for herself the luxury of making television for an audience, in effect, of her co-workers, her dinner-party guests, her successful, liberal neighbors in Manhattan's West Village. "What do all the shows have in common?" asks Fenton Bailey, a producer and longtime friend of Zalaznick's. "Lauren.""
I have to admit I liked the article, but, really, only from a clinical perspective. That is, I saw a gray-haired (seemingly fuss-free) woman wearing a fancy blouse (seemingly fussy) underneath the title The Affluencer. There isn't one ounce of me that doesn't want to know what that's about. And, so, I read it. She's an interesting lady with well-defined corners. Her interactions with others seem rather sharp, for sure, but there's no doubting her creativity or ambitious drive.
Anyway, that's an aside. I was bothered by the characterization of housewives in the Midwest, as if every woman who lives and works within a household in certain states with no ocean access is the same. Yes, we're all sitting around in pumpkin sweaters, baking cookies (with lard) in our tiny, cluttered houses, prettying up (Mary Kay) for our husbands (who work on an assembly line for less than $34,999/year). It is, in many ways, the same kind of thing I experienced when I was from the South (and I still am, of course, but now I'm also kickin' it, Midwest style). In D.C., people would get me liquored up and then crowd around, circus-style, and imitate what they identified (incorrectly) as a very Southern accent. Assumptions were made---Do you eat squirrel? Was your high school segregated? (Okay, not that, but you get the point).
And that is today's post. That's all I have to say.
1 Backseat Drivers:
thats the problem with all market research; its simply a lie. because it reduces individuals to genres, demographics, tribes - whatever the buzz word is for the grouping du jour. same thing happens to gay people; all shovelled into one sack of alcoholic, prada-buying drug-taking metrosexuals. weirdly tho', whatever people may say in retrospect, this is not how tv is made or for whom tv is made. tv is actually made by the same individuals as those who watch it. the marketting-speak is something that gets wheeled out afterwards to try and explain why one show hits and another fails. and just as you you would be insane to try and drive your car by looking in the rear-view mirror, the same thing will happen if anyone pays any attention to all the babble and jargon. none of its true. not one iota.
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