Word: amerika
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THIS WEEK IS SHAPING UP TC be one of those rare periods when the citizens of a country engage in some serious self-reflection. The United States is settling its collective butt into a huge national armchair to ponder the possibilities presented by the ABC mini-series, Amerika, and patriots everywhere are swilling wine coolers and buying cars in celebration of President's Day. Aside from these nationalistic excesses, though, Dewitt has noticed several movies now playing that attempt to engage the viewer in the greater questions of life. Do we exist in a world that conforms to some sort...
...course anyone who has sat through a few of the 14 1/2 hours of the demented fantasy knows that it doesn't do any of those things. Amerika's promoters bill the show as a depiction of American life in 1997, 10 years after a bloodless Soviet coup. Yet on the tube, the show is more of an intimate look at the personal lives of Milford, Nebraska's hard-driven, over-sexed residents. In one of its most subtle political commentaries so far, the show depicts--from a variety of salacious angles--the hips of Robert "Spenser: for Hire" Urich...
...watching this schlock? Because it's a glitzed-up version of the trashy garbage Americans watch every week anyway. So why, then, are people so worked up about Amerika...
...Amerika can't be taken seriously. It shouldn't be. That the United Nations is threatening to sue ABC for "misuse" of its logo only lends legitimacy to the network's racist tripe. The shrill indignation of the show's critics has the same effect. Post-episode forums on the show's "significance," which draw on "experts" whose expertise is just a wisp below the Phil Donahue standard, don't help either...
Those calling for time to run "counter-programming" only further the dangerous impression that Amerika's farcical mix of geopolitical and romantic drama deserves to be taken seriously. Predictably, the most appropriate response to this explosive drama is a yawn...