Media

I had lived in one place for years and suddenly moved--twice in two months. This meant losing touch with things one took for granted, automatic transmissions, ten-lane expressways, some of my books, and my beloved piano. In contrast, certain little possessions in a different context now recommend themselves to my attention. For example, the Nick Heyward CD now in my (well, the company apartment's) player. That's Nick Heyward. You know.

And now that bicycle hours are shortening rapidly due to Earth's rotational tilt from its orbital plane, not to mention due to Netherlands weather's reverting to its soggy mean: certain media call attention to themselves.

I actually get mail now. The first conclusion is that junk mail must be the same everywhere. Bills are the same, though here rather than writing a check and mailing it to who billed you, you just write your bank account number on the bill, sign it, and mail it to your own bank. And after only 5 weeks in the apartment, the local Gemeentehuis changed my huisnummer without notifying the Vreemdelingenpolitie. An international incident, you'd think.

The radio here is hopeless, as in most places.

Though I can read Dutch pretty well now, the newspapers seem to be written in a kind of impenetrable (not to write obfuscatory, he chuckled) vocabulary, such as in America is reserved for medical advice, subpoenas and war justifications.

It is in television that, God help us, each culture most luridly exposes itself.

The only American channel here is CNN, but most of the day it's Brits in an American studio. One of CNN's problems is that they spend so much airtime with leaders and trailers and adverts for other programs and intros and program changes that there remains perhaps 5 minutes per hour of actual content. All filler and no nutrition, unavoidably reminding one of American...no, do let's stay on subject.

British TV: could you guys turn down the RED? Yes, yes, we applaud your hiring the color blind, but must you employ them as Art Directors? Geez, if I watch BBC then look away, for a few minutes everything else around me seems greenish. And while you're at it, could you do something about your announcers' speech impediments? Roh-eeeeeet-eoouuww. Some mornings I can even comprehend the Dutch stations better, and that is just too sick.

Dutch television first struck me--a more apt wording than you could know--through the jaw-dropping short nightly program Meekijken Gewenst, which I reviewed in -->THIS<-- previous blogpost. The Dutch-language networks of the Netherlands and Belgium are just more or less like US networks but without the ADD symptoms.

MTV Nederlands: a Dutch channel of American videos, Dutch commentary and commercials, and a few Dutch rap videos. Yes, Dutch rap. And it's good, really good. No, I have not lost my mind, and don't turn your computer off--this is actually interesting. Angry Dutch rap actually works. First you need a bit of background. Look, now and then a Dutch song or video does break into regular play. But there is something extremely strained in a sincere and emotional love song sung in the world's least romantic, most phlegmic language that induces by turns laughter, embarrassment, and an unreasoning flight reflex. It's just so inappropriate, like a blustery war song sung in sign language, or a protest song sung by Swiss children. It just does not work. Mr. McKuen was wrong: the medium isn't the message, but OK the medium can indeed cripple the message. But back on subject...in the right rhythmic mouths, the percussive and grinding consonants of Dutch are a revelation, a very worthy rival to any English. The most remarkable example to me has been the fierce and yet hilarious video Je moet je bec houwe, which even without Dutch lessons one can translate as "You gotta shut your trap." Forget the rappers' best attempts at South LA hand motions, forget these white boys' jerking around spastically as criminals newly hanged, the horror-movie hairstyles, and even the 1650 A.D. rooflines passing by as they shout down at you from the bed of their pickup truck now hilariously stuck mid-song in one of Amsterdam's famous traffic jams--this thing actually works. When I've seen it, I can't wait to see it again. It is dead on, and there are other Dutch jam and rap videos that are nearly as good. Forget trying to pour honey all over a language spicy as chili. Go for the bite, the spice, the real enchilada.

Another even more pleasant surprise is the RTV N-H channel: Radio-TV Noord-Holland. A marvel. It is so gratifying to watch, so beautifully designed in its every detail that I have been known to turn it on and watch, like a cat watching a videotape of birds, knowing nothing of the programming except--it's beautiful. Far from a flowery, painterly beauty you might be thinking of; much more a tremendously refined, extraordinarily well-paced, thoughful layout of everything from the weather bites, to program leaders and trailers, to the talk shows. The second most beautiful TV channel I know. So OK, Dutch advertisements are crude enough to remind you of rural Arizona public-access TV, but they can't help that I suppose. And otherwise I just want to say: RTV N-H, thank you. We notice.

NLTV-5 is wholly ordinary...EXCEPT for the wordless, explosively funny, quick-as-a-blink ID shots reminding you that you are watching "5". The channel's logo is simply a bold 5 with two half-circles about it, as though stencilled. Now, each ID shot begins with 5 differently colored "5" logos on a black background, but within a second something odd is obliged to happen. In a favorite, five little "5" logos are bobbing, but one disappears and the others scurry off the screen's sides, when up pops only the top half of a Great White "5", which cruises leftward and then rightward, reversed--to mock-scary music of course. In another, the little "5" logos mime a car race, to ill effect within 5 seconds. These perfect jewels come on without warning, and ambush you with such wit and clarity and shock value--I live for these things. I fear all my neighbors hear my occasional outbursts when I have 5 on.

OK. Can someone tell me why every single program on the Civilization Channel is about weapons? Civilization? Weapons? I am not making this up.

And at the end of my Casima cable channels lies...surely the most beautiful, visually refined TV channel in existence: TV5. Its visual effects seem so casually perfect. Of course this is all calculated--but how do the French manage this level of cohesion, in which the screen at each moment is tantamount to a work of art, yet in which each visual element is in harmony with the rest of the channel's programming, all day long--and yet not distracting from the content? Having spent a couple of years in art and photography classes, I admit to being impressed of course by their camerawork and layouts, but also more than a little intimidated. I can imagine TV5 screenshots somehow taking a place in museum displays of Art of 2003. And it's happening in real-time, 24 hours per day. My, if American viewers were exposed to anything like TV5, we could expect (or at least hope) that a lot of the US's current crop of computer-obsessed Art Directors would shortly find themselves in the rain holding hand-scrawled cardboard signs.