"croissant-munching, latte-sipping": instances of misconceived media-class self-loathing ITT

Also seeing references in 1960s congressional hearings, via Google Books:

SENATOR ALLOTT. But excuse me, Mr. Driver, I don't have my correspondence here on this but on this same subject, I am just as interested as you and the chairman or anyone else is in seeing that we don t get into the situation that we were in after World War II where we had universities setting up courses in underwater basket weaving, and all this sort of thing.

MR. MONK. Chicken sexing.

So, it seems to partially reflect an elite anxiety, post-GI Bill, about the opportunities for more people to get college degree through new types of institutions/programs/curricula.

At my college (which is the east coast iteration of Piedie’s one) the ‘underwater basket-weaving’ dig was definitely in common use, even by the students.

lol S my ex who went to your school (we've talked about this before) did a semester at Reed because of course he did.

My dad LOVED to use the underwater basket weaving thing when I was an English/creative writing major.

Weaving a basket underwater would actually involve a pretty good set of useful skills.

A course on underwater basket-weaving was genuinely on offer at Reed College when I was a student there back in 1990.

'Evergreen is harder than other colleges! You have design the curriculum, you even have to grade your own papers'

I took a few classes that could easily have been put into that umbrella- "Ability and Disability in German Film and Literature"— but perhaps unsurprisingly, these courses were often incredibly rigorous and taught by profs who knew their shit. (I went to midwestern version of Reed, fwiw)

xxp I remember my father as well referencing underwater basket weaving, snickering under his breath

There was 'rocks for jocks' (geology 101) and 'clapping for credit' (music appreciation)

haha! i taught music appreciation for a while and it was extraordinarily fun

the light of my life at the time. if i am being honest

I bet that class was so fun both to teach and be a student in.

It really was. It was an honor to be given the opportunity and I’m glad I made the most of it. Haters can take their share elsewhere! It’s a great class if you need a humanities credit and have a teacher who doesn’t sleepwalk through the semester.

share - * hate

big reveal is that underwater basketweaving was being taught for the benefit of Navy SEALS undercover as liberal arts college students who were using the skills learned therein to swim up to enemy ships frogman style and attach timed charges to the hulls with a swiftly woven basket

when will we understand that everything is an op, everything has always already been an op

There was 'rocks for jocks' (geology 101) and 'clapping for credit' (music appreciation)

I forget what the actual course was but it was "math for liberal arts majors" - the professor walked us through everything using a TI-82 and then gave us all of the questions that would be on the tests in the exact order. He bragged about having 90% of his students get As, dude was awesome.

Then I took him for stats which should theoretically have been a real class but it was pretty much the same. I appreciate a professor who knows he's teaching things that only exist to fill in requirements.

re: Rocks for Jocks, I took an amazing course to fulfill my science requirement: "Volcanism 101." It was a class entirely about volcanos. Never thought I'd have so much fun in a geology class!!

Did you get to make a model with a baking soda/vinegar eruption?

i took an intro electronic circuits class which had a reputation for being easy. some people called it “shocks for jocks”. reader, i found it one of the most difficult classes i had ever taken.

geology is cool af, I took one course on the geology of the US’s national parks which was awesome, and another general geology course taught by someone who owned their own excavation company

the actual zero-value classes are obviously in the business school

(my partner is a fibers prof; she can't swim though)

Did you get to make a model with a baking soda/vinegar eruption?

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, January 31, 2024 2:26 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, but one of the jocks made a scale model of a volcano for a research project and "erupted" it in class.

I, on the other hand, found lots of archival footage of Nyiragongo and showed some wild footage of the lava lake at its center. Nyiragongo is the coolest active volcano, I think.

Ever look at something and just think to yourself: "how did we ever get to this point in humanity"? pic.twitter.com/xGvlzwmSLn

— Bang Average 3rd Cat (@BangAverageCat3) February 21, 2024

(the jrm tweet, obv)

the man never drank a glass of full fat milk in his life

we know where he gets his from

What he'd do is, he'd get his nanny to drink it, then (is violently ejected from the internet)

wtf is chad milk and how am I not supposed to assume that it is cum?

It is, cum hard and drink.

"MID IS NOT the mediocre TV of the past. It’s more upscale. It is the aesthetic equivalent of an Airbnb “modern farmhouse” renovation, or the identical hipster cafe found in medium-sized cities all over the planet. It’s nice! The furniture is tasteful, they’re playing Khruangbin on the speakers, the shade-grown coffee is an improvement on the steaming mug of motor oil you’d have settled for a few decades ago.

If comparing TV to fast-casual dining is an insulting analogy, in my defense I only borrowed it. A New Yorker profile last year quoted a Netflix executive describing the platform’s ideal show as a “gourmet cheeseburger.”

I’m not going to lie, I enjoy a gourmet cheeseburger. Caramelize some onions, lay on a slice of artisanal American cheese and I’m happy. But at heart, the sales pitch for that cheeseburger is no different from that for a Big Mac: You know what you’re going to get."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/arts/television/mid-tv.html

i didn't actually know where to put that. but i had to put it somewhere.

Is “artisanal American cheese” an oxymoron?

Oh the actual article has a link for that phrase. I didn’t click. It didn’t seem exciting enough…

can you even corn syrup in cheese

https://media1.tenor.com/m/FjRhkdAaI48AAAAC/art-is.gif

that whole damn article should have been one sentence: Art is anal cheese. boom. you're done. everything you need to know about television.

can you even corn syrup in cheese

it's called Velveeta you philistine

Good article

so the article is saying that the underlying motivation for both Five Guys AND Ted Lasso being capitalism results in both products having the same satiating-but-unsatisfying affect?

makes sense. you're selling a brand, right? the taste is secondary. starbucks very definitely doesn't make the best coffee. doesn't matter. i watched 4 episodes of SEAL Team the other day. there were very few suprises. other than that John Dahl directed one of the episodes. not that you would have known that an honest to gosh movie director had made it. SEAL Team not that far off in quality from David Mamet's SEAL team show. Popeyes definitely an improvement over Wendys though. and more satisfying. maybe even a cut above MID as far as fried chicken goes.

i disagree with that article though. i'd rather have smoothly entertaining programming than bad cable t.v. programming. i would rather watch 4 hours of Suits than 4 hours of horrible reality t.v./old Wipeout episodes/killer nanny exposes. i watch FBI while cleaning records at night sometimes. even though Jeremy Sisto is in it and he in a constant reminder of how much i hated him and his sister on PRESTIGE television show Six Feet Under.

"IS a constant reminder"

enough time as gone by. Jeremy Sisto isn't that horrible character anymore. we have moved on. i mostly watch it for the moments when Sela Ward gets all serious like a teacher i have a crush on...and if that's MID than brother i don't want to be PRESTIGE.

The article seems to omit basic foundational critique of television … idk what this person studied in college… but the structure of television (modeled on radio) is to be ongoing… to be something you can fold laundry to because it’s a constant companion… the streaming technology has actually changed to “go back to the roots” as it just goes to the next episode seamlessly (it used to stop iirc … ?)

There's no possible system of tv production that's going to consistently make The Sopranos or The Wire. Those are exceptional shows. The fact that most things are mediocre is definitional. The question to me is whether the current system even allows an occasional Sopranos or Wire to emerge, and I'm concerned it doesn't, although I'm not sure why. I wonder if it's a bit like what I've heard described as the problem with SNL, i.e. it used to be *the* place to go for a comedy writer, but by the 2010s there were way too many other places to go and the talent was dispersed. Maybe there are too many "mid" shows for there to be a handful of truly great shows.

According to my brother, who is sort of in "the industry" -- there's also just a pretty bad atmosphere for talent/quality now even though the strike is over. Lots of sitting on cash, pulling shows, shelving stuff after it's been made. Pullback after a glut, perhaps, awaiting consolidation, hoping AI will work some magic that it probably won't. I don't totally understand it. But I do suspect that there will be consolidation among streaming platforms and a reduction in the number of things made.

I think for a while the thing was that prestige TV became such a concept that a lot of stuff that was as trashy and low quality as anything from the old cable days would also get a prestige sheen just by virtue of being a streaming show or hourlong drama. I don't know that that's still the case though.

at some point cable television just became a nightmare. in the 90s it was actually kinda fun in a wild west sorta way. i have VHS tapes where i just channel-surfed thru the weirdest terrain of local public/christian/weird movies/music videos/bizzare infomercials/etc. people would try all kinds of things to get cable eyeballs. and networks weren't immune to it. the morning/afternoon blocks especially were just mayhem. soaps and shouting. i get live t.v. for my dad via Hulu and other than the news or sports its all a faux-streaming deadzone. just space-filler until prime-time or the news or some awards show or sports thing. its no fun at all to watch 4 hours of reality game wardens with tons of commercials. streaming is a godsend. even with some commercials. Tubi is the wild west now but someone will tame it eventually. all those weird Roku movie channels i get. they're just nuts as far as content.
i just feel: why complain about content being less-than-the-sopranos when everything lives forever. you'll never see all the good stuff that already exists if you are really into t.v.-watching let alone all the MID stuff. also people don't need to get too nostalgic about old bad shows. most of them were truly bad. even as novelties you don't need to watch most of it. i honestly have no idea how they are making so much stuff now. its a LOT of hours. did i read some article where they are actually running out of actors in some place like Sweden because they have to make so many crime shows for Acorn and Britbox and Netflix? maybe it wasn't Sweden.