Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

      Magazine seems to be a medium which keeps evolving. Recently printed media world just introduced a new magazine concept: free magazine – a magazine without a price, located for grabs only in special places.
     Is the magazine business is such a lucrative one? So enables much innovation going around? The answer might come as a bit of a surprise.
     The margin of magazine business is so small. Without advertisement, there would in fact be no margin at all, but significant losses. This is how it really is in magazine world – at least according to one resouces. Advertisement is what saves the magazine medium from drowning. The price on the cover merely cover the printing costs.
     If advertisement is what really pays the bill and revenue from given prices is insignificant, then why not put most of the content as advertisement spaces and lose the price tag? This is what the free magazine people did. They put the entire burdern of costs to the advertisers, and in return make most of their pages as advertisements. In essence, the magazine is turning into a big catalogue.
     Is this ethical? To sell magazine as product advertisements? They say there is nothing ethical these days, especially when it comes to surviving. The reality simply said, without selling out, you can’t pay in your bills.
     It is even more ironic when one realize that most money actually came out of and get into corporations. A free magazine who wants to pay for their expenses and costs waits the corporation to churn out advertisement cash for them. The consumer who didn’t have to pay the magazine “pay” to the corporation by way of buying the corporation’s product. So, instead of having money flows: consumer – magazine, now money flows: consumer – advertising corporation – magazine. Corporation is becoming the intermediary, especially in terms of cashflows. What is afraid of is: since the corporation become an important stakeholders of the publishing companies, what if the content reduces its idealistic qualities and become only full of the interests of the advertiser companies?.. this could just of course be a overfearfull thinking, but imagine the possibility, when the magazine is under the power of corporations, then of course the corporations would press all the magazine potentials to reap profit, especially when the sacrifices to do that is only soft and incalculable things like ethics and idealism.
     The worry above may not be a reality, but building a buffer against total dependency of advertisers is always good – at least for times when advertisers interests in free magazine decline. Building a price tag is maybe one small way to do this. It bridges direct connection of cashflows between the reader and the journalist/publishing companies, without the money ever have to enter and leave corporations. This allows certain (financial) dependency of the publishing company. A price tag is a small form of buffer against total dependency of advertisers.
     Apart from the emerging reign of advertisers companies, other thing is also worth noting: the costs involved in printed media is still enormous compared to the purchasing power and market size of its market. This explains the minute margin. The heavy burden of the publishing companies to cover costs forces them to “sell around”. The consequence of “selling around” is of course the reduction of dependency, especially to the advertisers. Dependency in turn leads to reduction of real content, and more to commercial content, producing in the end thick magazines consists mostly of advertisements. Again, the question is again ethical: is it ethical to have magazine all filled up with commercials as in a catalogue?
      The problem of huge publishing costs turn our heads toward the internet. The internet is revolutionary because it introduces medium for publishing with very little costs. Moreover, it is interactive (requires user to participate more in browsing the page), can involve movies and sounds, and easily updatable – what more could a reader want? (the complain of course is that internet pages are not printed pages, therefore untouchable and less portable). Apart from its unprinted medium, the internet is a direct threat to magazines. its low cost publishing remains its winning factor. If magazines do not lower its publishing costs (I think this is unlikely, since paper prices will increase due to usages of wood is more controlled), or offer some other new breakthrough to overcome internet’s winning points, then there could be a big possibility where magazines will perish from the face our media world.

CONCLUSION

     Magazines should not be depended too much from advertisers companies, since this will deprived them from the independence much needed in the world of quality journalism. Second, magazines should innovate new ways to overcome internet’s major winning points, otherwise general public preference of internet over magazines may threat the very existence of magazine medium.

      Thousands of people crept slowly and calmly into wembley stadium’s 50k+ capacity’ gate. Pressing themselves together, they let their individuality walls go down for this day to celebrate a coming of a king-band to town – Oasis.
     Liam showed up belatedly as usual after the whole band came out on stage. It is presumably a deliberate act to show to the audiences who the real star of the show was. As he enters, his fingers kept forming a familiar shape: the peace sign. He walks in his proprietary style also familiar in the way of walking of certain primal mamalia, i.e. monkey. His mouth was blabbing lividly, as if inciting someone to fight him. This is the act people waited for - the return of the rampant rock king who knows no respect to nobody.
      I was his big fan: the rampant fan of the rampant king. “fuck off you arseh***s” he said to the audience, as I mimic him too, at least quietly. His attitute was just right for me. Those cheeky elders with those cheeky manners was just too much hipocricy to take, and Liam set the right behavior for us, the rebels, to face these sickening, profoundly political-in-every-way individuals which we called “orang-orang tua”. To the rebels, they are the menace to our existence, the pain in the neck.
     But time has passed. I am no longer the rebel who fight against the “orang-orang tua”. I am transforming, little by little, into “orang-orang tua” themselves. I am now, almost formally, a part of the whole hipocritic culture itself, where, sadly, idealism crumbles and business rules as usual. I am moving away from the Liam and his way of life.
     It’s natural. That’s the least I can think of about our difference. We are increasingly becoming very different people. Liam wasn’t always living near the center of this hipocritic world. He was a bricklayer once for god sake. He was the lowermost layer of the industrial society in terms of income-achievement. He is happily secured in his bar along with his bricklayer friends, drinking carelessly most of the time, singing his Manchester City football team anthem, without ever having to think, let alone do, diplomacy or business or all those activities where hipocricy is firmly understood to be a part of. He was, some might say, a common people, with little education, living simply, just to survive every single day. Even though now he’s rich, he still never had those experiences of living in the business world, in which people often times have to kiss assess or being smart, without they liking it even a bit. He just never got the chance to do something he doesn’t like. And that’s why his tolerance is few. That’s why brute is what comes out of him to the surface. As far as his job concerns fortunately, this bruteness is what is most needed to become a real rock star, whose essential job is not just to entertain, but to inspire and remind people to “break the rule”. Life for Liam is never complicated. His life doesn’t keen on difficult thinking, manouvered diplomacy, let alone political venture. His was just cut out from that sort of tricky activities. And this, exactly this, is what serves as the intersection where he and I must part.
     In less than 2 weeks, I have to plunge myself straight into the business world. Where being assy-kissy is essential, where the tolerance of considering some bullshit things essential is essential, where bullshit things have to be lived in, discussed excitedly about, and, even more sadly, put a lot of effort into a lot. I am increasingly forced to neglect my own passion, to take responsibility of bigger roles, as a man of family, as a good citizen, etc. I am adapting myself to the pressures of life, which, whether one like it or not, often pay no respect to one’s identity nor passion, but solely to his ability to be a labor of economy – the true hipocritical act of the human life.
     Liam is going toward the mike. As usual, he stationed himself firmly under the tall microphone. He started to cross his arms at the back. With a swift movement, his mouth closes to reach the mike, body a bit bent and legs forming an O. With his head tilted upward below the mike, he looked like he is in a hanging-crackers eating contest where he’s not supposed to touch the crackers. Noel said that that gesture was a mechanism to help him face his guts when facing those thousands of fans. I looked at this always with a smile. The days of imitating Liam had passed. But I still remember it and cherish it quite religiously. It’s just a phase of my life I had to go through. The feeling is the same like when you see your old house where you used to live in before you. You know you love the house, but you also know you can’t ever live in it again.
Farewell my Gallagher buddies. Keep on being an icon for the rebellers and the rebellers to come. This rebel still respect you so much. And when the time come, when the burden of capitalism has pressed so deep above me, I know I’m gonna need you and this I am very sure of it.

There is nothing conceptually better than Rock N Roll - Lennon

       Can you proof something that you only have faith in? That’s the main question that pushes the story of the 2 hour fiction flick Contact. Jodie Foster played alongside Matthew McConaughey in this film. James Spade and Angela Basset were there, and also a host of other rather unfamiliar yet nevertheless great cast of characters. Robert Zemeckis wore the captain’s helmet behind the camera. The story was made from a novel by Carl Sagan.

      A movie of this sort doesn’t come often. I couldn’t keep my eyes of the television set for almost the whole duration, except of course for those annoying moment when I have to go the loo. The dialogues are amazing, the scenes, especially the space shots, are incredibly vivid and realistic, and the characters.. they are just so powerful as if each character himself can be turned into a movie of his own.

      I can help but feel respect to the director Robert Zemeckis in this film. He crafted the work so well, I can’t help being captivated by every scene he produced. The plot, I tell you, is amazing. Suspenseful to the very end, if you just loose 5 minutes at the start, or at the end, then you’ll lose a big puzzle that might just give clues to this movie’s unpredictable conclusion - that end factor you love that makes you discuss the film zealously with your friends when you just got out of the cinema. Personally i just can’t help thinking, in movies like these, how smart the director was. He was just basically many steps in front of us in every way. In the explosion scene in which the suicide bomber blew the “machine” that Jodie has to ride on, Zemeckis had given numerous clues in the earlier part of the film about who the bomber was. If you pay attention very well, then you’ll know who this guy was and what was his motive and intention for being there. These clues was given very smoothly that when I watched him for the first time, I thought he was just unimportant part of the scene, but actually, later on, he will be an essential character of the story. Or, the part in the end where Jodie’s whole experienced was being questioned and doubted, Zemeckis made every proof available from the beginning that the whole experience could exactly be it, just a delusion, while, in fact, we watched the whole show and witness ourself that it wasn’t – heck, it even made me questioned my judgement myself. In short, Zemeckis was just supernatural in this movie. Brian de Palma, handling the ultra-intricate first Mission Impossible film, was perhaps, in my view, the only real contender to him in terms of intricacy.

     Most importantly, this fim, which tells the story inside a life a scientist (Foster) who long to prove alien exists, in the process, points out the most paradoxical fact human has struggle with for centuries: that God do exists, we can feel it, yet there is no way we can prove it.. This is the core of the film for me, at least. The film shows why we can’t always proof something, yet we know what we see or hear or feel is completely TRUE. The film corroborate our understanding about this problem by way of bringing up a character who has based her whole life on proofs and facts and placed her in a situation where she has to present to the audience something she knows really true but without any proof nor fact.

      The mindblowing morality about this film is human often can know something is true without being ever able to proof it. And this is what happens when we think of our divine creator, our supreme being, God. God is something we can feel and we know true, but yet there is no direct proof to support it. Watching this simple concept evolves into a tangle of stories, powerful characters, vivid pictures and realistic sounds is such a delight to see and what made this Zemeckis/Sagan flick will still be intriguing and unique compared to many other ubiquitous hollywood flicks that had graced our cinema screens from time to time.