Word: shapiros
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...PRODUCTION'S faults frustrate rather than irritate the viewer because Shapiro's basic failure is not taking fuller advantage of the virtually new medium he so provocatively explores The conventional camera work, reminiscent of television's own too frequent artlessness, occasionally detracts from the experience of watching the show exactly as it detracts from the experience of watching television. A film essay to the music of "Gimme Some Lovin'" is a particular victim of such ordinariness. Fortunately only a few jokes are predictable in the same...
Occasionally, Shapiro's unremitting emphasis on sexuality falls flat, blunting once or twice an otherwise deft satirical job. The sexual overtones of a naked couple's encounter with a fascist Smokey the Bear defuse what could have been a more powerful swipe at the authoritarianism embodied even in the symbol of our national parks...
This question of balance springs from a tension in Shapiro's work, a tension between ideals of consistently hilarious comedy and of valid political and social commentary. Perhaps the two most insightful portions were the ones which tended least to be bombardments of gag lines, in particular, a mock anti-drug program and another "message from the President" on riots in Detroit. Richard Beltzer, who plays the President as well as other roles, delivers his philippics with a devastating sense of timing...
OTHER SCENES, perhaps funnier, evoke laughs because they--and the audience's sensibilities--ignore significant aspects of the issues at hand. For all Shapiro's revelations on the underlying sexual message of commercial television, he exploits women for laughs just the way advertisers exploit women for sales. It is likely that the audience, laughing at a newsclip of a press conference at which the President fondles Shapiro, in drag, as India's woman prime minister, felt subconsciously self-satisfied at having not been offended by Groove Tube 2's breach of conventional taste. It is not likely they would have...
Given these reservations, Groove Tube 2 is exciting, not just in its own right, but as a tantalizing hint of what the video medium may yet produce. Rick Steiner, the owner of Video Theater, who, like Ken Shapiro, began his involvement with films as a child actor, is part of a small group hoping to produce a show for the fall. Much work is also being done by students who find that video is relatively inexpensive and that video theaters and festivals are springing up around the country. Popular reception of the new medium as presented in theaters has been...