Snit sez: They need a new name for a new gen. GenX=those born between 1961-1981 or so.
>I wonder what percentage of people age 18 to 34
actually watch these shows.
>What about Friends or Seinfeld? Or World Wide
Wrestling which always does
>well in the ratings - witness Jesse Ventura. What
about minorities?
"they" don't care about minorities, only people with lots and lots of disposable cash. well i should qualify, the do care about certain kinds of representations of minorities insofar as it will foster multiple readings of media texts. And, in any event, Friends and Seinfield are essentially the same thing only in this case a band of peers=family=community.
>The breaking up of the family unit and the
neighborhood, for the most part,
>is the result of Capitalism. Marx's indictment of
modern bourgeois society
>holds up even at the top of the business cycle:
People have to freeze their
>feelings for each other to adapt to a cold-blooded
world. In the course of
>"pitilessly tear[ing] asunder the motley feudal
ties," bourgeois society
>"has left remaining no other nexus between man and
man than naked
>self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.'" It has
"drowned" every form of
>sentimental value "in the icy water of egotistical
calculation." It has
>"resolved personal worth into exchange-value." It has
collapsed every
>historical tradition and norm of freedom "into that
single, unconscionable
>freedom - free trade."
Yeah well it is also the case the the demolition of the 'modern family' and 'the community' also serves capitalism well, ey? Provides entirely new sources of labor and new demands for products and services. The pomo family for pomo capitalism. Just as the modern family served as a 'haven in a heartless world' tightly binding people to capitalism and allowing them some safe, warm haven where they might recoup their energies in order to battle yet again in the cold calculating world of the market. Something to fight for, as it were. Now what? Capital offers
work-as-family-as-community, work as haven from
dysfunctional families, from failed communities.
>
The article said:
> The top television
>shows among Nexus viewers -- Ally McBeal, ER and The
>Practice --
>demonstrate how the "family" show is moving out of
>the home and into the
>workplace.
Not esp. 'new' : Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Barney Miller, MASH, Cheers. The popular work-family shows of the 70s developed and marketed to young, educted urbanites. Of course, nostalgic family shows were also popular: Happy Days, the Walton, Little House on the Prairie.
>Throw a "house" party. Many Nexus generation
>employees may be moving out of
>their "night club" years and are looking for a
>replacement. Nexus-run
>companies look for almost any excuse to have their
>own version of a house
>party.
As a former caterer, I'll say that this shift was precipitated, in the US anyway, by the change in tax laws. Companies can no longer easily deduct the cost of banquets held at the Holiday Inn for employees, but they can easily deduct the cost of an in-house banquet
Arlie Hochschild's _Time Bind_ details this new mgmt ethos and its consequences. The corporation is clearly a *total institution* if anyone ever doubted it for a minute. Why she got so much flak for this book, I dunno. It's pretty clear that she's not castigating *people* for their decisions, but rather corporations for exploiting people's vulnerabilities
SnitgrrRl