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The Big Issue : Edition 441
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THe Big issue 13 – 26 sep 2013 43 MEDIA I recently pIckeD up a newspaper and began flicking through it. It was just to pass the time. I thought nothing of it. After about five minutes a strange feeling was flowing over me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t feel anxious. I wasn’t yelling at the paper. No obvious bias or agenda or phoney outrage. I felt relaxed. No, wait...I felt happy. What the hell was happening? I was reading my local paper. Not ‘local’ as in my city; ‘local’ as in my suburb and the few surrounding it. It’s a paper that can only be described as a couple dozen pages of pure positivity. I live alone in a block of flats full of other people who live alone. When EvEry wEEkEnd, thErE is an article in the paper about an actor with a film coming out, whose eyes gaze into the middle distance while he taps his coffee cup nervously with his index finger in a manner that belies the charm for which he is renowned. Or something. At some stage, the article will pose the question: “So who is he really? Push beyond that charming exterior and you can’t help but wonder if he isn’t more like the social misfit he plays so convincingly in his upcoming film The Charming Misfit Returns.” The rest of us are a bit confused by acting. How do they kiss each other passionately on screen and have it be ‘convincing’ without falling in love on every job they ever do? How are they so evil in a TV show that people feel compelled to shout at them in the street (it happens, apparently), when in real life they do charity work, have families who adore them and never hurt a fly? How does that work? TELEVISION MY TYPE CAST NEWSPAPERS THINK LOCAL Actors who perfect a certain performance often find themselves typecast. Michael Caine, for instance, will always play the role of ‘Michael Caine playing a person of serious import whose words should be heeded’. One of the characters in Parks & Recreation (the most recent series of which has finished on free-to-air TV) is called April Ludgate. She is droll and sarcastic – so much so that it has become a cliché from which you can sense the writers desperately plotting an escape. Aubrey Plaza, who plays the role of April, has announced that she will be starring in an upcoming movie as a peppy girl who is “focused and determined and Type-A, like a people ask me if I’ve met any of my neighbours, I half jokingly suggest the main reason we all live alone is because we don’t want to talk to anyone. Simply flicking through my local paper reminded me of the community I am surrounded by. Local traders, local sports clubs, local schools and childcare centres. It must have been like this a long time ago, before we could wake up in the morning, flick through a few websites and learn about every main event that has happened, is happening and might happen around the globe. There would have been a time when you were only concerned about what was happening on your doorstep because that was the only thing that affected you. Or at least you had to wait three months before trouble arrived via boat. cheerleader almost”. I immediately made a mental note to see the film in order to witness this miracle. It’s difficult to imagine. Our TV screens are full of people stuck in roles they’ve made successful, from which they may never escape. Ray Meagher holds the Guinness world record for longest-serving actor in an Australian TV series for his role as Alf in Home & Away. After 25 years in the role, can you imagine him doing anything else? And, I know this isn’t an ‘acting’ job, but surely Ellen and Oprah get sick of playing the roles of Ellen and Oprah. Surely Ellen dreams of starting her show not with a shuffling dance but with a death metal air-guitar solo. Maybe sometimes Oprah wants to run with Oprah: the Uninspired Hour. Just her on a couch eating Twisties and talking about the people she works with and the stupid things they say in staff meetings. Against type is my favourite type. I’d watch the Oprah one for sure. by Lorin Clarke (@lorinimus) Ray MeagheR: the actoR with one face the Guardian website recently reported the healthy state of regional papers in the UK despite the regular catcalls that print is dead. Maybe it’s a case of papers pinpointing their audience instead of striving for the greatest reach possible. Papers that aim to please everyone have perhaps ended up pleasing no one. That’s what I adored about scanning my local news. It referenced the things I know, the things I do and the things I regularly see. And there’s something to be said about the upbeat nature of it all. You won’t find screaming headlines in this neck of the woods. I haven’t quite got to the stage where I’ve knocked on the door and introduced myself to my neighbours, then sat down to talk about local issues as reported in our local paper...but I’m building up to it. by Michael Chamberlin
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