So, Pac has the opportunity to be brutalized by a better fighter, and lose his all of his marketability, or to retire in a dead heat for the best pound for pound boxer/fucking baby who bankrupted the IBF (mark those words.) He's not stupid, Clottey is going to be an anticlimactic retirement party for a damn good fighter. KO 1:30 into the second round.
But the glass is half full. We've got at least two seasons of 24/7 to watch. Pacquaio Clottey debuts March 6th. Were gonna get Mayweather Mosley in early April. Pac Clottey is gonna be as boring and one sided as the match. Mayweather Mosley shows some potential. Rodger Mayweather hasn't murdered Floyd Sr (yet), Mosley's wife just left him, Shane Jr. will presumably at the camp.
The ever vigilant HBO isn't gonna stay around to kick the dead horse. 24/7 has transitioned to Nascar . Late last year I wrote a paper on how and why 24/7 functions. I thought I would throw it up here while its still relevant (and because Simmons' blog about T-Woo is better than mine.)
Transforming Men into Actors
HBO’s 24/7 as a docusoap.
The last 20 years have not been easy for the sport of boxing. Before our very eyes Mike Tyson, the sports biggest draw and best talent, made a tediously slow transition from world-class athlete to circus sideshow. In 2003, Lennox Lewis retired as a unified champion in the sport’s most popular division. From 2003 to 2008, a brash young welterweight named Floyd Mayweather belittled, then pummeled, anyone who dared to challenge him from the lightweight division, all the way up to the junior middleweight division, before retiring as pound for pound the greatest fighter in the world. Boxing’s apparent lack of talent, and the soaring popularity of mixed martial arts fighting, had all but dealt a technical knock out to a sport that had for centuries been one of the most popular in the world.
Then something happened. In 2008, HBO began promoting fights with a unique five-episode season of a show called 24/7. The first four episodes of the show grant viewers an all access pass into the lives and training camps of the fighters, leading to a finale where the two men fight each other for twelve three minute rounds in an enclosed ring, only available on pay per view. The ratings of boxing matches again began to soar.
It is the intention of this paper to prove that a transformation of a sporting event into reality television show has recaptured America’s interest in a sport once on the verge of collapse. I intend to show this with the following points:
1. HBO’s 24/7 fits perfectly into the docusoap subgenre of reality television.
2. By choosing to emphasize character of boxers and the people they keep around them HBO has created the perfect reality show.
HBO’s 24/7 fits perfectly into the docusoap subgenre of reality television.
The first imperative of a genre critique is usually obvious. You must find the genre your text fits into. When examining 24/7 this task is not so straightforward. It can be argued that 24/7 fits the sports documentary genre of reality television. This argument is proved false in a close examination of the actual show. I examined three seasons of 24/7, looking for examples of the importance of actual sport in the show and found few. A montage shown at the beginning and end of the show features boxers training. A brief period in each episode is devoted to showing you the inside of the training camp. Besides this, there is an almost total lack of sport inside the show. The producers instead chose to focus on developing the characters of the boxers and the people that they keep around them.
It can be argued that the four episode arcs of 24/7 leading up to the fight are 30-minute commercials: nothing more than advertisements for a pay per view event. In her book, The Looking Glass World of Non Fiction TV (1987), Elen Rapping says:
Most commercials include elaborate dramatic situations and characters. They are miniature melodramas where the narrative and imaginary combine to promise fulfillment. The typical forms take by ads, the people shown, their problems and the solutions offered are all in keeping with the larger messages of TV programming.
24/7 to a tee. But the show is on a subscription cable channel that does not include advertisements as part of its business plan. And the text runs for 30 minutes, not 30 seconds. Beyond that, if the show is a series of four commercials to advertise a finale then what is Survivor? Or Big Brother? Or the Bachelorette? In a sense, all episodes of reality shows are advertisements for the show’s finale. Yet they are not considered commercials, it is just a convention of a genre, and a convention of television itself. 24/7 is not a commercial.
In 24/7 both fighters are contestants competing for a large cash prize and a coveted belt. Does this make the show a quiz/game show? Toni Johnson-Woods writes in her book Big Brother:
One of the oldest forms of reality TV is a show in which people compete for prizes, the game/quiz show. The game show is a constant and its variations are endless. Recently individuals as teams compete, in other shows physical skills help.
While is a good fit to the text, I am arguing that 24/7 is not a game show. Primarily because the cash and belt that the fighters compete for is guaranteed, it would be there whether they were on 24/7 or not. This is a departure from other TV quiz/game shows where the prize is a part of the show. The contestants on Wheel of Fortune only get to compete for money because they are on the show and spin the wheel. The contestants on 24/7 would still be boxing for prizes even if the show didn’t exist. This removes the show from the realm of reality quiz/game shows and into the genre of reality shows.
So how about the docusoap genre? In his Television Genre Book (2001) Glen Greeber defines the conventions of a docusoap. He says the genre:
Focuses on characters, usually known by there first names and introduced by jocular title sequences. Allied to this is that docusoaps, like soaps are more interested in characters personalities than social roles or profession. Also reminiscent of soap opera is the docusoaps fast paced editing style, chopping together short sequences and alternating between a limited number of narrative strands per episode.
This sounds more promising. In 24/7 the boxers are always known by their first names. The show only uses the macho boxing nicknames that have become standard in the industry when other characters in the show refer the fighters.
Every episode of 24/7 begins with a jocular title sequence. The sequence is always a masterfully edited montage cutting between images of boxers training and the beautiful landscape that surrounds them as dramatic music plays in the background.
Is 24/7 more interested in the characters personality than their social roles or profession? Almost to a fault, move the “is” in the last sentence to after the 24/7 and it’s a gross understatement. Were I to estimate based on my current research, I would say only 1/6 of the show, 5 out of 30 minutes, shows actual boxing.
Fast paced editing? 24/7 features one of the fastest editing paces on television. Every show begins and ends with a two and a half minute montage. Then in an effort to show your four weeks of training camp in two hours, the show clips between short sequences cramming a full week of training into 15 minutes. A tally of the cuts in a single episode would no doubt number into the thousands.
A limited number of narrative strands per episode? The show employs an actual narrator. The narrator brings our attention to the stories that the show would like to develop, limited to a few narrative strands per episode.
But a number of shows use narrative devices. Why do the devices employed in this show make it a docusoap? On the subject of soap opera documentary Richard Killborn and John Izod say in their book Introduction to Television Documentary; Confronting Reality,
“What ever means documentaries engage with either the real world on an imagined one they usually have some form of narrative structure. Although it is not inevitable that they employ narrative devices it is common. And there is a reason for it. It transforms fragments of reality into an account directed at viewers.”
Were it not for the shows narrator, the shows focus would be scattered and viewers would take mixed messages from the text. When you turn documentary into soap opera, you need a narrator to help along the show.
24/7 fits perfectly into the docsoap genre. I know that this is a bold statement. Docusoaps are not about world-class athletes training to beat each other up, they are about families with an abundance of children, marine wives imposing discipline on a family of clowns, or people of a below average stature doing their best to make it in a giant’s world.
But in every docusoap there is one constant: when a camera follows subjects, and they are given monetary incentives, they are working a job. The job of being on a docusoap. Often acting in a docudrama allows subjects in the shows to quit their “day” jobs, moving the characters on the show into the realm of professional actors.
Take the aforementioned examples (John and Kate plus Eight, Wife Swap, Little People Big World). Wife Swap has a rotating cast so I will focus on John and Kate Plus Eight and Little People Big World. In these shows families give total access to their lives in exchange for payment, showing all genuine and contrives aspects of their character to the camera, and by doing so become professional actors. In his book Documentary in American Television William Bluem says:
If the history of documentary in all media reveals a thrust away from fictional recreation of human character, the process of recording life with a camera and editing the records into narrative introduce the problem of reenactment at a different level. The men who take the pictures and then order them into narrative presentation can not only invest reality with meaning other than exist in fact but in a fine sense can transform men into actors.
How is this relevant to 24/7? Because the show employs the exact same methods as John and Kate Plus Eight and Little People Big World. During the four weeks prior to a boxing match, the fighters grant film crews an all access pass into their lives. They do this in exchange for payment, in this case a fight contract with HBO. The film crew edits the reality it films into a narrative transforming the men into actors.
This seems to contradict my claim about 24/7 escaping the game show genre. But take a good look at this quote take from Gary Edgerton and Jeffery Jones’ The Essential HBO Reader (2003):
HBO says boxing is basically a sport it can call its own. It has broken down the barriers between sporting administration journalism and coverage. This is a major conflict of interest given the assumption that media has some operational independence from the public activities they cover. When the media promote and own what they report on it leaves room for major malfeasance.
In other words, HBO owns boxing. If you want to do anything with HBO you do it on its terms. If a fighter wanted to do a fight but opt out of the 24/7, he would most likely be exiled to the Showtime network, where he could spend his days wading his way through the talent pool of mailmen and cops who fight on the network. By maintaining total control of a sport, HBO has allowed itself to turn boxing, a hugely unpopular genre among young (especially female) audiences, into docudrama, a hugely popular genre among young (especially female) audiences. In the creation of this docudrama it has turned fighters into actors.
By choosing to emphasize character of boxers and the people they keep around them, HBO has created the perfect reality show.
In his book Modeling Behavior from Images of Reality in Television, Narratives, Myth Information and Socialization, Tony DeMars offers an interesting insight on the way men are depicted in reality television.
Man is depicted as a social being who must accept sacrifices for the good of the community and fight against groups that selfishly protect their own interests. If this view represents what is good in society do the preferred meanings in texts favor hedonistic or socially conscious individuals.
If DeMars’ model applies in a sense to depictions of men in all reality shows, it hits especially close to home in 24/7. The premise of the show is two men have negotiated a contract to box each other for 36 minutes, in exchange for a sum of guaranteed money, and some split of the revenue generated from people paying to watch the fight. The two men are always of different nationalities; they have different families, trainers, entourages, etc. They must accept sacrifices for the good of the community, which in this case is the country that they are representing. The sacrifice is to fight another world-class athlete, who is selfishly protecting his own interest, in this case to win a fight and go on to bigger fights with larger purses. Without a doubt, fans of 24/7 view the boxer that they are rooting for as socially conscious, and his challenger as hedonistic.
This is not the only reason that 24/7 is hugely successful as reality television. In every show there is a huge emphasis between connections in nuclear and extended family, the student teacher relationships between boxer and trainer, and of course an exploration of the boxer’s entourage as extended family. In preparation for this paper I examined three seasons of the mini series, 24/7: 24/7 Pacquaio Hatton, 24/7 Mayweather Marquez and 24/7 Paqiaio Cotto.
Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez and Miguel Cotto were certainly costars in the segments that they appeared in, but faded into the background when they lost their matches to boxers who were much better than them. At this point the ever-evolving series stars two welterweights. The first is Floyd Meaweather, a lightening fast counter-puncher from Grand Rapids Michigan. Floyd has a huge mouth and a 40-0-0 record to back it up. The other fighter is Manny Pacquaio, a southpaw from General Santos City, who has spent the last decade brutalizing anyone who dared step in his path through some seven weight classes and 50 victories. In the next section of the text I will show how 24/7 functions as a reality show.
Were someone to counter my argument, there is no doubt that he or she would say that boxing is a sport fought by minorities, for the entertainment of old white men. The person would argue that boxing has no place in prime time television, reality television or any television genre besides sport and sport documentary. Two men in a ring with gloves attempting to inflict pain on each other is barbaric. But fighting and even boxing have long held a place in prime-time television. Nina Liberman says in her book Living Room Lectures (1995)
My Three Sons, Leave it to Beaver, Father knows Best and The Donna Reed Show feature episodes in which the teen son is encouraged to fight. In a 1955-1956 episode of Father Knows Best “Bud the Boxer” Jim urges Bud to take boxing lessons to defend himself against a high school bully. He takes Bud to the YMVA enrolls him in boxing lesson and sees to it that he becomes a champ. In this program fighting is seen not as the domain of youth but as the domain of men.
So here we see that the theme of boxing has had a place in prime-time television for at least the last 60 years. But the shows mentioned above fall into the genre of situation comedy, not reality television. Since boxing itself is reality, is it possible to create a reality show around it? The answer is yes. It has become obvious that it’s possible to create a reality show around anything (Ace of Cakes, Pawn Stars). So the real question to be answered by HBO was how can a successful reality show be made around a fight? The answer of course is a successful reality show can be made around a fight by incorporating elements of soap opera. Dorothy Hoboson says in her book Soap Opera (2003)
Audiences love soap operas. They are constantly at the top of the ratings and they command respect and loyalty, even through the inevitable troughs which every soap opera experiences. Audiences may stop viewing when their patience is exhausted but they return when the produces remedy the shortcomings. What it is about the genre that can keep audiences over weeks months and years of a production?
Ms. Hobson spends the rest of her chapter answering her query. The constants in soap opera are an emphasis on race relations, forbidden love, round characters who are both good and bad and complications between nuclear and extended family.
So lets take this apart. In the three episodes I used for the study, race was magnified to add to the identity of opponents. Ricky Hatton is an Englishman, Juan Manuel Marquez is a native of Mexico City and Miguel Cotto is Puerto Rican.
Both Hatton and Marquez have settled close to their parents in their city where they grew up. Their position as a native of a country they inhabit is plays a large part in the unmasking of their persona. English punk music by The Clash and the Sex Pistols are played ad nauseam during Hatton’s screen time. Without exception, Reggeton music introduces Marquez in every on screen appearance. The two are seen eating foods of their region, For Marquez; only Mexican fare and Hatton; fish and chips. Both men are avid soccer fans, Hatton gives the quote “I was born in Manchester and I’ll die in Manchester,” in episodes one, three and four of Pacquaio Hatton 24/7. Marquez speaks only in Spanish. Hatton’s gutter English, spoken through a thick muddled accent, is sometimes impossible to understand.
These men aren’t products of their country; they are their country (or at least edited to be perceived this way.) The way the show portrays them one can’t help but to think that their entering the ring has more to do with patriotism than monetary desire. How can you miss your country fighting for you?
Miguel Cotto, is a bird of a different feather. He too is introduced to Reggeton music and shown eating “Pico’s,” a kind of Puerto Rican Barbeque, on three separate occasions. Cotto is not above delivering hokey quotes about making his nation proud. However he differs greatly from Hatton and Marquez. First of all, he refuses to address the camera in Spanish. He speaks Spanish only to his father and his monolingual trainer, Joe Santiago. Of the six camps examined in this paper, Cotto is the only one who directs his own as a totalitarian dictator. With the exception of a 30 second clip of Santiago responding to a quote from Freddy Roach and a 15 second clip of Miguel Cotto Sr. (Cotto JR.’s father) talking about a rift in the family, no one in the camp is allowed to address the cameras in Spanish.
In the latest season of 24/7, Cotto went so far as to relocate his training camp from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Tampa Florida, a mandate that his trainer and uncle, Ricardo Cotto, refused to cede to. Cotto wanted to relocate so much that he fired Ricardo and hired 32 year-old Santiago to train him. National identity is not as important to Cotto as it is to Marquez or Hatton.
Yet HBO does nothing to denote this lack of importance in Pacquaio Cotto 24/7. It fact it does the opposite. Every time a shot cuts to the Cotto camp, it is literally prefaced with an image of a Puerto Rican flag. Why do the producers of 24/7 choose to downplay a lack of national identity instead of showcase a desire to move to a different country? A fighter with his own preferences, struggling to acclimate to a new culture, is a more interesting fighter than the one who is settled into an improvised region because it’s the only thing he knows. The answer is 24/7 like other soap operas relies on a formula. In his book Watching Race (1995) Herman Grey says:
In a medium such a television, program makers and networks almost inevitably turn to formulaic and predictable stories to get them through a series run when ideas can be difficult to generate. It is simply easier and more efficient to rework new variations on an old theme.
What better way to generate an audience that to have an entire country rooting for one fighter? By reworking the theme of local and national identity, the one theme that is imperative in generating huge ratings in sporting events HBO is guaranteeing itself huge ratings.
Granting that national identity plays an exaggerated role when comparing 24/7 to other soaps, lets take a look at the role of family schisms in the show. Like Cotto, Floyd Mayweather fired his trainer after an argument the men were unable to reconcile from. In this case the trainer was a loud, boisterous, former welterweight contender, often mentioned as a candidate for greatest trainer of all time, Floyd Mayweather Sr. Father and son parted ways un-amicably and Mayweather Junior hired another member of the Mayweather clan, his uncle Roger, to train him. Floyd Sr. went on to train a host of top rank fighters, including Oscar De La Hoya, for a fight against his own son.
In Mayweather De La Hoya 24/7 Floyd. Jr. completely shuns his father. Floyd senior says only “we haven’t talked in seven years.” Two years later, in Pacquaio Hatton 24/7, Sr. is contracted to train Ricky Hatton. When a taco bell employee asks him about his son, he says, “we haven’t talked in nine years.”
In the next season of 24/7 (Mayweather Marquez episode 1) fans of the show are shocked to see father and son playing Cee-lo for a hundred dollars a roll on Mayweather Jr.’s pool table. The camera and Mayweather Sr. both catch junior cheating by excitedly snatching the money off the table on a roll he actually lost (a forgivable offense in this game of confidence.) An argument ensues, terminating only after Mayweather showers his father with hundred dollar bills.
The viewers are left to wonder how, and to what extent, the men reconciled while the narrator fills us in on their checkered history. Finally we get a close-up shot of Mayweather, Sr, as he says: “Sometimes you have to break up to make up. Things are better the second time around.” Jump cut to Mayweather Jr. who gives us an even vaguer quote, “me and Pops had some things to work out.”
But the feud is far from over. In Mayweather Marquez, Roger and Floyd must co-exist. Milking the drama for all its worth, the crew of 24/7 brings up a quote from a small Grand Rapids Michigan newspaper where Floyd said that Roger “wasn’t doing a good job managing his son.” The aftermath transgressed as followed, Floyd Jr. asks Floyd Sr. what he told the newspaper. A normally outspoken Floyd Sr. says “I didn’t tell them nothing.” Cut to the crew explaining the situation to Roger Mayweather who says “Fuck Floyd.” When prodded for a more articulate explanation of his feelings Roger says “Floyd don’t know nothin’.” Roger and Floyd Mayweather do not talk to, or even look at each other, for the rest of the series.
To an inexperienced observer of 24/7, it would appear that the show was shying away from drama to focus on sport. If you have ever seen an episode or even a short clip of the show, you know that this is not the case. The story of the reconciliation will be the focus of a major narrative strand in Pacquaio Mayweather 24/7. Like any good production team the men behind 24/7 have bided their time, saving the best stories for the show that will have the most viewers. Yet another convention borrowed from the soap opera genre.
If the Mayweather clan serves as the antagonists in this series, then without a doubt Manny Pacquaio and Freddy Roach are its heroes. Manny Pacquaio started boxing at the age of 14 to help feed his family. In the 17 years since he first gloved up, and presumably beat his opponent to a bloody pulp, he has risen through seven weight classes, compiling a stunning 50 victories and more championship belts that anyone in history. He genuinely loves the Philippines. While he owns residences in LA, and Las Vegas, yet he still spends as much time as possible in the house (turned compound) he grew up in. In Pacquaio Cotto Pacquaio actually refuses to leave General Santos City while Hurricane Kestena devastates his surroundings.
Freddy Roach is the long time trainer of Manny Pacquaio, and one of the more interesting stories in the show. He got his start as a trainer when Mickey Rourke decided to hang up his acting shoes, and pick up a pair of boxing gloves. Roach whipped the notorious bad-boy/actor into shape. After an undistinguished professional career, Rourke retired and donated his West Hollywood gym to Roach.
Pacquaio came to Rourke seven years ago as a “good fighter with no right hand.” In his seven years under Roach, Pacquaio has developed a serious right hand, and has beefed up from 116 to 144 pounds. During his rise in weight class he met no real challengers, and now holds a legitimate claim to both the title of best pound-for-pound fighter alive, and best pound–for-pound fighter in boxing history. He constantly reiterates the point that everything he has he owes to his “master,” Roach.
Roach has been a godsend to 24/7, adding real drama to a show where drama sometimes seems superimposed. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2005, Roach always says he doesn’t know what he would be doing outside the ring. It becomes obvious that this is not a sound byte, when you the show gives the viewer a front row seat to observe Roach’s body being ravaged by the disease. As the series progresses, it becomes harder and harder to watch Roach, who becomes less lucid, and more difficult to understand.
Then we have his star pupil Manny Pacquaio. Pacqaio is everything the producers of 24/7 could ask for. He loves his country and his country loves him back, giving him a huge fan base. He is humble and soft-spoken but fiercely competitive and perhaps the greatest boxing talent the world has ever seen. While he seems to value his family to an extent, he always puts his work first.
Upon close examination of the episodes of 24/7 featuring Manny Pacquaio, there are some inconsistencies between the way that the producers and the narrator portray Pacquaio and his actual actions.
While we often see other boxers interacting with their wives and his children, we only see Paqiao with his staff and Freddy Roach. We never see any of Pacquaio’s four children, and only get glimpses of his wife. Also absent from the show are Pacquaio's mother and father. Their brief cameos are a stark contrast to the extended roles that other fighter’s mothers and fathers play in the series.
Despite this, the show’s narrator talks constantly of Pacquaios mother, father wife and children. Pacquaio’s family and extended family are often shown in montages. The producers do this to paint Pacquaio as a family man, even though he is a workaholic. It’s hard to cheer for an athlete you know is a bad husband and father.
In 24/7 Pacquaio is panted as a tough as nails competitor who will do anything to win a match. The narrator always talks about how hard he is training, and his incredible work ethic. Again Pacquaio’s actions on 24/7 contradict this. In episode one of Pacquaio Cotto 24/7, Pacquaio is shown swimming in a 15-meter pool. After swimming for about 20 meters he stops abruptly and yells “ITS TOO HARD.” Ignoring the encouragement of his team, Pacquaio exits the pool. In episode two of Pacquaio Cotto 24/7, Pacquiao tries to quit on a running work out. After some jibing from his conditioning trainer, he finishes the last segment of his workout by running up to his trainers face and yelling “FUCK YOU ALEX.” Pacquaio’s work ethic does not appear particularly strong, despite his producer’s effort to use a narrative strand that shows him as a tireless trainer.
In episode three of the series, Pacquaio refuses to leave General Santos City even as a hurricane damages infrastructure to the point where it may not be possible for the fighter and his entourage to leave. Roach essentially has to quit, and fly back to the US on his own to get Pacquaio to the United States. In this same episode, Pacquaio runs into a problem trying to fly his dog to the US. He throws up his hands and abandons his 10 month-old puppy at the airport. These incidences are glanced over, but real fans of the show are being willfully obtuse if they are able to ignore the fact that Pacquaio is a prima donna.
By creating a family man with an unparalleled work ethic willing to be molded by trainers the producers of 24/7 have forged themselves a hero, and a very marketable docusoap.
Like with other reality shows, producers have doctored footage to create elements of soap opera in a sports documentary. Creating heroes, villains and complex webs of relationships has paid off for HBO time and time again. Boxing expert Dan Rafael tells us that Mayweather Marquez sold approximately one million pay per view packages at 50 dollars a piece, Pacquaio Hatton sold approximately one point five million pay per view packages at 50 dollars a piece, Pacquaio Cotto sold approximately one and a quarter million pay per view packages at 50 dollars a piece. Home box office could never hope to come close to these figures without the popularity generated by 24/7. By turning boxing into a docusoap HBO has turned a sport on the verge of collapse back into one of the most popular sports in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment