A Rant on Hallmark Entertainment
For the most part, I like Hallmark Entertainment; I probably watch them more often than the major networks these days (which is not to say much). It produces a number of romantic comedies and seasonal movies (especially Christmas). I bet you're thinking, "What's so bad with that? What's he going to attack next: Moms and puppy dogs?"
No, I happen to like these diversions from stresses at work, etc. What I don't like are predictable storylines and certain progressive themes. Let me take as an example the film that played this weekend, one I hadn't seen before (but Hallmark heavily rotates its original movies). You have an upwardly mobile professional couple in a city; the boyfriend feels that the girl is subordinating their relationship to her career and decides to break up. (And, of course, quickly finds a girlfriend.) She decides to go visit her folks operating a country inn--where she meets their chef, and they take an instant dislike to each other. It doesn't take a genius to figure out where this story is going: you know (1) the odd couple will eventually, improbably fall in love in each other, and (2) the old boyfriend will somehow appear on the scene with his new girlfriend and eventually realize the mistake he had made in breaking up and plead for reconciliation--but she decides that she has moved on from the relationship.
But I really don't like some of the ideological themes in the stories. In this case, you have the protagonist locavore chef, constantly preaching the virtues of local produce and superior nutrition. In fact, he has been trying to buy some local farmland, but he and the owner don't like each other. Not to be a spoiler, but as a Franco-American, I love the fact that a tourtière dinner, to which the girl invites the grouchy old farmer, played a role in his change of heart about selling the land (which, of course, you knew was going to happen).
Hallmark, for some reason, seems obsessed with royalty and princesses. Maybe it's the theme that a girl becomes a real-life princess, somebody independently recognized as important. (And I'll point out that Disney has also promoted its fair share of princesses.) Even when the same lead actress played a different, holiday movie where she plays a small bakery owner who falls in love with a guy who plans to open his own hobby shop, the basic inspiration for her own love story is her parents'; she overheard her mother describe her father as her own "Prince Charming". But this country was based on a revolution against His Imperial Majesty, George III, and I instinctively recoil against an exclusive blood-based aristocracy.
But I also dislike closet forms of protectionism, like the locavore movement. And there are seemingly incessant stereotypes of "profits over people", predatory capitalism. We see large-scale companies out to drive mom-and-pop businesses, barely making ends meet, out of business, vacuuming tiny profits. (It's not that I, the first grandson of a New England owner of a mom-and-pop grocery, am not sensitive to the plight of small businesses; I know my grandfather had struggled against the economies of scale of emerging supermarkets. In part, he tried to differentiate with personal service; he would tell of opening his store in the middle of the night to accommodate a customer's request, and my uncle as a teen used to deliver orders.)
But this is a fairly narrow view of creative destruction in the global economy. I know people whose technical skills in the Internet age allow them to work almost anywhere. During my consulting career, my employers were almost indifferent where I lived so long as it was near a major airport (which is why I spent a decade in the Chicagoland area which I could book a trip to either coast within hours). People can market their products or property to more than the local community but nationally, even globally. I don't have to rely on major news broadcasts. I have worked on cross-national projects. In fact, many of the hot occupations today, like my post-academic DBA work, weren't even on the radar when I went to undergraduate school. Yes, there was a path for an information technology career, but when I took my first computer science course, I had to run the programs on a sister campus computer; I basically had 2 attempts to get my weekly program assignment to compile cleanly. Today you can learn to program on your own cheaply and almost effortlessly, with no arbitrary limitations.
I would like to see more Horatio Alger-like, win-win type stories, not these zero-sum "progressive" phone-in storylines. I know there's a market for these.type stories; maybe it's time for me to indulge my creative writing itch.
Post-Wrestlemania Thoughts
There were two major takeaways from the annual PPV signature WWE event: (1) Callaway's (Undertaker) retirement; (2) Cena's engagement to long-time girlfriend Nikki Bella..We all knew Callaway's retirement was sooner than later. He hadn't been wrestling on the weekly shows and most PPV's for years, just mostly cutting promos for his signature Wrestlemania battles. We expected him to give the honors by losing to an up-and-rising star, like Roman Reigns. But his last few battles in the ring seemed to have him physically spent, and he did not look impressive in his confrontations with Reigns leading to their battle. He looked like he had lost a step or two in the ring, and Reigns left the ring with Undertaker on his back in one encounter.
It's just that Reigns has been a problem child for WWE; WWE has been pushing him as a babyface on the audience which remains fairly unconvinced, largely booing him at every appearance, the harder WWE pushes him. This feud between Reigns and Undertaker arguing "whose yard" the wrestling ring is seemed rather narcissistic and lackluster. Whereas Undertaker did the honors, I think the rub was largely wasted; WWE still doesn't know how to push Reigns. This sets up a natural feud between the two who beat Undertaker: new champion Lesnar and Reigns.
Probably the biggest story is the emergency of returning champion Kurt Angle. In the near future, the Gold Medalist will be the new Raw general manager, but it's easy to come up with eventual natural matches like with foreign-born Rusev and Kevin Owens, where he himself can help pass the torch for a new generation.
As for the surprise engagement, it seems predictable after the fact since the Miz and his wife had been mocking Nikki Bella's pining for confirmed bachelor John Centra on the diva series. I will say that I found the Miz' promos entertaining, even the cleavage battle between the two artificially-enhanced female wrestlers
