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Monday, Good lord. Where did January go? Oh, yeah -- I hacked it up with the rest of my lungs. Never mind. Instead, let's talk about me. I've been extremely annoyed by something recently -- we pay for the Sky satellite service out of England so that we can watch English-language programs. Now, Sky offers three movie channels -- Sky Premier, Sky MovieMax, and Sky Cinema.
She jumps off the jewel. They all do. The cloaks join, turning into a rippling movie screen, and you realize that they're pulling down the screen while they fall. All very nice and stylish. The camera then pulls back, and each woman turns into a shower of sparks that go out as the Sky Premier logo appears on the screen. Now, I can't fault the special effects at all -- in fact, I didn't really notice what was being portrayed on the screen at first because the teaser looked so nice. And then, something occured to me -- um, what was happening to those women after they finished pulling down the screen? Were they actually supposed to incinerate like that? I know it's all done with SFX, but the special effects portray a group of women who are ostensibly jumping to their deaths (since they burn up once their job is done) in order to bring the viewers a movie. That's creepy. It implies that these women are disposable, committing suttee in the name of Sky Premier. And there's nothing that indicates these are imaginary creatures -- no wings or funny ears or anything that distinguishes them as non-human (not that I would approve of a non-human flinging herself to her fiery death in the service of Rupert Murdoch, either). These are regular women, dolled up in pretty clothes, that pitch themselves into space to drag down a film screen and then flame out. Um, no. That's not cool. Then I thought, okay, maybe I'm just being too sensitive. So I asked Tina what she thought about the teaser. She said that she'd noticed the same thing, and that it was really starting to bother her. So that's at least two women who don't think this is an appropriate message to see every time we watch a movie on that channel. There are a number of different ways the shot could have been resolved -- the women could have simply continued to fall out of frame (not great but acceptable, and it would have stayed in character with the commercial spot which features a woman in free-fall trailing a golden veil), or flown back up behind the screen (my personal preference), or landed on something -- a cloud, a passing mallard, whatever. It's the fact that they burn up that's so damn wrong. And yes, I will be writing Sky about this. Then again, considering the source, I shouldn't be surprised. |
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The
teaser for Sky Premier is what's bugging me. It starts off as a panoramic
shot into a golden cloudscape with an appropriately swoopy soundtrack.
In the foreground, you can see a line of women (made up of a range of
racial types, all very PC) stretching off into the distance. Each woman
is standing on a giant jewel floating in the clouds, looking serenely
into the sunset. As the announcer describes what's going to be broadcast
next, there's a closeup of a woman's shaded face in soft focus, and then
she spreads her arms and grows a glowing cloak. And then--