August 23, 1999
What’s Hip? - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
In the September issue of Talk, Manuela Hoelterhoff has a column called Cultural Concierge. Snazzy title, if I do say so myself. Anyways, in the column she writes a very, very high brow article on the Argentinean tenor, Jose Cura. In the right hand side of her page, 92 for those of you who must know, she has a 25-point list of things that she deems are hip, hip in 1999, hip for those who give a damn and hip for the WASP’s who this mag is geared for.
Here are some of the hip things in life, that are worth dissection... Matte hair, what ever the hell that is, it sounds pretty east coast. Vietnamese food, I guess those of us in Vancouver are used to that, but I’m noticing that instead of saying, ‘Let’s go out for Chinese,’ people are more prone now to saying, ‘Let’s try that Vietnamese place on...’. Old money is on the list, I would assume nouveau riche, isn’t as applicable as before. James Gandolfini, the mob boss on The Soprano’s is hip, as well as Emmy nominated. Yoga, well that’s always hip to get into, again sounds very New York. One name on the list, deemed by Ms. Hoelterhoff as hip is, Jay Mohr. He’s a twenty-something actor who we all remember as the guy who screwed Tom Cruise in, in Jerry Maguire and Scott Wolf’s buddy in Go. He’s heading on to the small screen this year in a new sitcom called Action.
Action hasn’t debuted yet, but it is already getting a lot of attention. It looks good and the premise sounds great. Following the success of the ever-best, Sports Night and The Larry Sanders Show, Action is set in Hollywood. It’s has Mohr playing a no-nonsense producer named Peter Dragon, who has already been compared to movie guys like Joel Shumacher. It is the first network sitcom that will have swearing (bleeped out though). Swearing, in terms of four-letter words usually left to the shows on cable. In my recent commentary, from August 18th regarding violence and how to curb it in the media, I brought forth a suggestion that sex could be the factor to bring down violent behavior. Well this season on network television, yes I said network, not cable, sex and lots of it are coming to a television set near you.
Action is one of those programs, the others I’ll look at when I do the TV season preview. It features a high amount of sexual entendre and innuendous references. One where a man will drop the towel to reveal an, “anaconda”, another where there is reported dealings with a prostitute, in a most graphic of nature. Ally McBeal and Dawson’s Creek, in the last couple of seasons have had their plots and storylines revolve around, you guessed it, sex. It all started back in 1994, when David Caruso gave network television it’s first look at an ass, on NYPD Blue. Cable shows like The Sopranos and Sex and The City, have featured nudity, but then again they’re cable. They’re eroding network viewership, that’s why this year shows like Action and Now and Again, which will feature nudity. Another show, Manchester Prep, will push the teen sex envelope further.
Is this good for the state of television? I would hope. With this new onslaught of charged programming, it all means that television is growing up. Some in the Christian or righteous areas of our populations will want these shows castrated, but I think if our most powerful mediums grow, we will too. Maturity, should be our default instinct, not censorship.
Behind, the sex, of course is the artists rendition of art. Sex and The City, for example, is a very well written and funny show. It’s what its title says it’s about, sex and the city, the city being New York City. It’s brash and realistic, I’m sure that that’s how life is like in the Big Apple. With Action making its debut, well find out if down and dirty makes the hip cut in our culture and at the same time, we’ll also see just how big those apples are.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .