Young people began public radio more than three decades ago, but for the ensuing generation they failed to properly recruit new listeners and producers. Today, public radio is constructed with a bifocal glass ceiling of 50-somethings. Blunt Youth is one of several important projects to stop squinting and see the problem clearly, putting young voices behind the mic and looking for young ears.
Ironically, "My Life as a Criminal" scores higher in revealing its older subject, the mother, than the juvenile criminal of the title, Mark. With Mark's mom, the piece achieves something that radio excels at and which is hard to fake, especially to media-savvy young listeners – genuineness. "You walk through the house and look in his room and everything's there. But him."
After a radio verite open though, Mark's portions of the feature are littered with the detritus of the old CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter's Theory of Moments, "moments of feeling, moments of visceral emotion – no matter how manipulative," Ron Rosenbaum points out, that "have become the signatures of broadcast news and a certain kind of TV-magazine show".
The TAL-soundtrack, the overamped ax (jail door slamming), the evident reading of a script by the subject ("I started doing intense work on my addiction, which brought up hopelessness, anger, and hurt from past traumas." -- who talks like that?) subtract from rather than reveal Mark's humanity.
I've worked in a jail (though not a prison) and I know there's far more to Mark than comes across in this "Moment", notwithstanding his arresting suicide recitation.
The problem may well be more the result of form, a standard 4-1/2 -minute feature, than the potential of the content. If public radio is to avoid the downward slope of reality TV, memoir must have more raison than, "But it's true". Story and resonance are still the prime directives, regardless of age.
Mark does provide revelatory passages where he opens up and gives up a piece of real boy. "You come in here, your world stops, ya know?" Yeah. That's the genuine place where Mark's story needs to start.
Review of My Life as a Criminal
Geo Beach
Posted on January 27, 2005 at 01:45 PM
Young people began public radio more than three decades ago, but for the ensuing generation they failed to properly recruit new listeners and producers. Today, public radio is constructed with a bifocal glass ceiling of 50-somethings. Blunt Youth is one of several important projects to stop squinting and see the problem clearly, putting young voices behind the mic and looking for young ears.
Ironically, "My Life as a Criminal" scores higher in revealing its older subject, the mother, than the juvenile criminal of the title, Mark. With Mark's mom, the piece achieves something that radio excels at and which is hard to fake, especially to media-savvy young listeners – genuineness. "You walk through the house and look in his room and everything's there. But him."
After a radio verite open though, Mark's portions of the feature are littered with the detritus of the old CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter's Theory of Moments, "moments of feeling, moments of visceral emotion – no matter how manipulative," Ron Rosenbaum points out, that "have become the signatures of broadcast news and a certain kind of TV-magazine show".
The TAL-soundtrack, the overamped ax (jail door slamming), the evident reading of a script by the subject ("I started doing intense work on my addiction, which brought up hopelessness, anger, and hurt from past traumas." -- who talks like that?) subtract from rather than reveal Mark's humanity.
I've worked in a jail (though not a prison) and I know there's far more to Mark than comes across in this "Moment", notwithstanding his arresting suicide recitation.
The problem may well be more the result of form, a standard 4-1/2 -minute feature, than the potential of the content. If public radio is to avoid the downward slope of reality TV, memoir must have more raison than, "But it's true". Story and resonance are still the prime directives, regardless of age.
Mark does provide revelatory passages where he opens up and gives up a piece of real boy. "You come in here, your world stops, ya know?" Yeah. That's the genuine place where Mark's story needs to start.