An Embarassment of Bitches.

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. - Clive Barnes

Someone I made the mistake of "doing it" with for a brief period of time said to me that Ricky Gervais was in effect, doing people a disservice by not making more episodes of The Office (UK). Which to me was as bad as pulling the cane out from under a little old lady and then beating her to death with it. Gervais- and his co-writer and c0-director Stephen Merchant, who this person did not even factor into that statement thereby showing his lack of knowledge upfront- chose to produce a limited product because they wanted to create something that left us wanting more, as life often does. The fact that, overseas, a series is 6 episodes a season, was to this person some sort of let down. He said Gervais owed it to his fans to continue the series and was wrong not to go past the 12 episodes and the final movie-length special. He then said Gervais could have made a lot more money had he done at least 20 episodes. He boasted and bragged about how this series should have been done to make him happy, versus appreciating what was there and what the artists themselves had put out. It was beyond ignorant and it made me very, very sad.

I wanted to throw up in my mouth, punch him, and run. Instead, I nodded while his mouth moved to further enunciate his continued braying, while in my head I hummed the theme song to "227" just long enough to get him to shut up and take off his pants. After all he did serve one purpose. But I digress.

The above italicized statement, culled from a Quote of the Day RSS feed (gross) sums this whole embarrassing experience up perfectly. Art is not created to please you all the time. It's created to express something that the artist wanted to share, a vision. If you get it, great. If you don't, why criticize it and try to amend it to your taste? I don't understand when critical thinking gave way to bastardization and flat out ignorance, where we comment on a performance as if it's anew product we've not been enticed to buy. But I for one am sick of this...and I need to date smarter men.