Discovery Channel at BM 2005

[joel the ornery]

Hell, they had to fight the cops from stealing the gate money one year!

excuse me?

cite, please?

[eticket66]

Not to be inflammatory, but here's some reviews from people who *do* think the show sucks:

http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com ... try3601925

The issue isn't really about this show per se, Randy.

The issue is about BMorg's media policy (or in the case, lack thereof) relevant to their 10 principles.

The issue is about BMorg selling media rights for an “undisclosed amount” on one hand, and the promoting “participation, gifting economy, volunteerism and non-commercialization” on the other hand, which undeniably gives an appearance of a double standard.

Hey Tanja, I appreciate your summary of the platform, and you probably know I'm pretty familiar with your position. I agree with some, perhaps even the majority of it, but feel there are some inconsistancies with how commercial media has been defined, or not, on the website and on eplaya - particularly how some aspects are demonized while others are seemingly given a free pass. I also know where the line has been drawn in this regard from earlier discussions here - I'm just not in agreement.

And, I know you're saying the nature of this show isn't the main point, but keep in mind I was asked for a review so it was deemed relevant for purposes of this discussion. There are plenty of positive reviews around too if one takes a moment to check. I encourage you to watch the show if you get a chance (I know you don't watch TV so that may be difficult). If you do ever see it, I'd lay odds that you won't like it based on your preconceptions, but you'll have a personal frame of reference for your opinion, which to me is more influential than a link to a negative review. I'd rather hear it from DaBomb's brain rather than an unknown writer, ya dig?

BTW, I like the website, but I found it hard at first glance to locate your specific goals. I'm pretty sure I know what they are, but others may find it a bit convoluted. Can you maybe craft your *own* mission statement on the front page, with specifics about media policy? Just a suggestion.

Cheers,

- Randy

[DaBomb]

BTW, I like the website, but I found it hard at first glance to locate your specific goals. I'm pretty sure I know what they are, but others may find it a bit convoluted. Can you maybe craft your *own* mission statement on the front page, with specifics about media policy? Just a suggestion.

Thanks for the compliment Randy. Much appreciated.

As for the Mission Statement and Recommended Media Policy, perhaps you didn't actually read the site, because it is there.

Here ya go:

MISSION STATEMENT


To assist the BMorg in collaborating together with the Community to make wise choices for the good of the Burning Man Project.

To assist the BMorg in cooperation with the Community to begin and continue a dialogue for the purpose of fostering communication and understanding between the Project and the Community.

To create a means for open and direct two-way communication between the Community and the Project.

To make the experience of Burning Man one in alignment with our highest values of radical self-expression, self-reliance, community-in-action, and the gift economy.


To focus the Community's energy to impact positively on the Burning Man Project by deflecting energies that is sapping the Project's vitality into more positive directions.

We strive to give voice and empowerment to every person that participates, and in so doing, assisting the Community to reflect and expand its own highest standards for art, self-reliance, self-expression, decommodification, communal effort and civic responsibility.

We serve to give the Community a voice to speak back with authority to BMorg resulting in a positive dialogue and accountability.

To preserve and uphold the Burning Man Project's "10 Principles" and to watchdog against the erosion of these principles.

Oh, and here's the Proposed Media Policy too:

The Community's Recommended Media Policy

The Community of Burning Man, in congruence with its highest values encourages and allows only that media at Burning Man which is utilized by private individuals for their personal, non-commercial use, and by nonprofit documentarians or filmmakers seeking to expand the experience of the burn by interpreting it through the lens of an artist. All filmmaking should occur whenever possible with the consent of the filmed, and the filmmakers are expected to be true participants in Black Rock City as burners, participants and filmmakers. Any and all proceeds from films should be returned to Black Rock City in the form of transparent gifts to the BMorg, funded art by the Community, or charity to the world at large.

Thanks for asking.

[DaBomb]

Hell, they had to fight the cops from stealing the gate money one year!

excuse me?

cite, please?

Joel, I think he meant 1997. (I think...not sure...Chai?)

Here's the deal:

1997 was the year that almost wasn't for Burning Man. The event moved from the Black Rock Desert to Hualapai flat and the Fly Ranch. To find more about this move read the Spring Newsletter article "Back to the Beach." There were political problems with Washoe County, and a fee for fire and sheriff's protection was levied at $350,000. Press reports of County Commissioner meetings made it seem as if the event wouldn't happen, ultimately affecting ticket sales. To make matters worse, 100% of gate ticket sales were impounded at the gate by the sheriff's office to cover those costs. They never made their take and were onsite until Saturday afternoon. When the dust settled, there were only 10,000 participants and Burning Man was $200,000 in debt.

That year they were asking people at Exodus to help bail them out. I don't know the exact terms but if you gave BMorg a certain amount of money, you would get a lifetime pass. A friend mine gave them the money and now has one of those lifetime passes. I don't know how much they were asking for, but apparently they did raise the money and the event continued. I'll have to confirm this with him, but I *think* they were asking like $300, something like that.

Oh, and the cite for the above referenced is:
http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1997/

[Zulegoona]

And the Clerics shale have judgment and final say over all actions and thoughts determining if they conform with the fundamentals of the 10 precepts,... uh ok....................

[DaBomb]

More like Matthew 21:12:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves.

(KJV)

[Zulegoona]

Oh I see your doing gods work,.. fundamentalists of any stripe are all about the same.

[DaBomb]

I hear ya, brother.

[bdongray]

I've covered this over on tribe. I'm glad you posted it here too, Chai. The more people who are aware of this is better for the community.

http://losangeles.tribe.net/thread/7d1f ... 80&r=10025

It goes against the core principles of BM to do this and they have sold us out from under in so doing. They have compromised their values in order to make a buck and to get some free publicity for the event. And they're using our art to do it.

Perhaps its true, as a friend of mine within BMorg has told me, nobody is getting rich by putting on this event. But it's also true that this event is not headed by a bunch of starving artists either. I believe it's run by a intelligent and well meaning individuals who need to understand that the community makes the event. Not the other way around.

I have not posted in eplaya for quite a while (I'm now a tribe guy), but I feel this issue is important, as well as tickling my dislike of hypocrasy. The problem is that this has happened already, so I'm not sure what solution we want?

[eticket66]

Thanks for the compliment Randy. Much appreciated.

As for the Mission Statement and Recommended Media Policy, perhaps you didn't actually read the site, because it is there.

Thanks. I think I was clicking around so quickly I thought it was bmorgs mission statement, or maybe I saw theirs but not yours. In any case, it's pretty clear. As for me, I'm going to write them a letter instead, which agrees with much of what your petition says, but stops short of limiting media to personal or non profit use only. I don't feel that strongly about that, as you can probably guess. Besides, it runs counter to my master plan of a burning man worldwide satellite pay-per-view event allowing underpriviledged burners everywhere to vicariously attend while lining the pockets of the LLC.

[DaBomb]

LOL...

[joel the ornery]

impounded is WAY different than stealing.

get a dictionary.

[Chai Guy]

impounded is WAY different than stealing.

Did the money belong to the sheriff? NO, it didn't. Taking something that does not belong to you is stealing. Calling stealing something else does not make it something else. It's still stealing.

[joel the ornery]

impounded is WAY different than stealing.

Did the money belong to the sheriff? NO, it didn't. Taking something that does not belong to you is stealing. Calling stealing something else does not make it something else. It's still stealing.

to impound: take temporary possession of as a security, by legal authority

to steal: take without the owner's consent

<heavy sigh>

[Kinetic IV]

http://www.m-w.com/home.htm

They agree with Joel's definitions but do so with a much longer definition.

[Chai Guy]

to impound: take temporary possession of as a security, by legal authority

to steal: take without the owner's consent

And by what legal authority did they have to seize that money Joel? That's my question. Because someone has a badge and a gun that makes them right? Because someone sitting on a city council seat decides it's so?

http://www.burningman.com/whatisburning ... ech_3.html

LH: If anybody wants to give us five, five hundred dollars, they are lifetime Burning Man. They can come forever.

Bet you guys wish you would have been there to give Larry that $500 (though as DaBomb said, we know someone who got it for $300).

[joel the ornery]

to impound: take temporary possession of as a security, by legal authority

to steal: take without the owner's consent

And by what legal authority did they have to seize that money Joel? That's my question. Because someone has a badge and a gun that makes them right? Because someone sitting on a city council seat decides it's so?[

actually, yes... a legal charter somewhere in Nevada empowered the LEO...

what fucking "LA-LA" land do your reside in?

oh yeah, the People's Republic of California.... where if you don't like the results of your own election, you can recall the fucking elected officials. (another gargantuan error in liberal thought and action)

the legal authority for those LEO is granted by the voter's of Nevada.

they (the residents of Nevada) live there, we (Burning Man) are just fucking visitors... so be nice, clean up after yourselves and maybe Nevada and BLM will let you come back and fucking play.

i am dumbfounded that you would question the LEO's legal authority or who fucking gave them legal authority.

buy a fucking civics book and read it.

IN-FUCKING-CREDIBLE.

[Kinetic IV]

Ouch.
Slap, slap, slap, SLAP!
OUCH!

Shameless plug: Alibiris sells used civics books cheap.

Mr. Ornery's civics class is now dismissed. Did anyone learn something today? Yes I think they did! But we'll see when the rebuttal hits.

[joel the ornery]

you know, i imagine i come off as pretty fucking mean spirited when i go off as i did previously...

Chai's response was the first thing i read after climbing out of bed 5 minutes earlier... (sort of illustrates the exceitement in my life)

please allow me to re-focus the discussion on "impounding" versus "stealing" with a couple of sentences as examples.

"The Nevada Highway Patrol arrested a drunk driver and impounded his vehicle."

"The Nevada Highway Patrol arrested a drunk driver and stole his vehicle."

now if we accept Chai's belief that the two words are interchangeable, the two sentences say the same thing... and if we go further with Chai's questioning of LEO's authority... "what right did the Nevada Highway Patrol have pulling the drunk driver over in the first place?"

well, the great people of Nevada decided to give the LEO their authority... and since i am visiting, not living there... i have to respect their (the people of Nevada) wishes by being a law abiding citizen... for the most part, or don't get caught... and if i do get caught, i don't intend to whine about it, here or anywhere else.

Chai, i know you are a great guy, firm in your convictions... yet, regarding this whole "impound vesus steal" issue, you are off the mark.

[Chai Guy]

Joel,

I've been researching this and haven't been able to come up with any cites that support what I recall being told by Larry Harvey in a speech shortly after this happened. Basically, as I remember it, the sheriff didn't have a warrant or the proper legal authority to impound the gate money.

Again, I can't state that as a fact because I can't prove it, and honestly I wasn't there. For the sake of arguement however, let's say that they did have a warrant and all the paper work was in order. That still does not make it right. Just because the government does something does not make it legal. Do you understand that Joel? Do you understand that the government sometimes does things that are illegal? Do you realize that sometimes people who have a badge and a gun are wrong?

Imagine if you owned a business and the cops busted in and started "impounding" all of your $ because of taxes that you would owe in the next quarter. Not only do they "impound" all of your $$ but they take an additonal $50,000 that they later return because they apparently made a mistake in estimating the amount of taxes you would owe. Ponder that for a moment.

I have to say that this is offtopic from the discussion of the Discovery Channel issue, for this reason, I'm not going to comment anymore about this specific issue. Joel, I'll offer you a parting shot but I'm not going to respond to it. Please realize that my silence is my attempt to get this discussion back on track and allow people to weigh in on this subject. If you would like a response from me, I would be glad to continue this conversation in another thread or in private email.

Thanks.

[joel the ornery]

For the sake of arguement however, let's say that they did have a warrant and all the paper work was in order. That still does not make it right. Just because the government does something does not make it legal.

yet exclaiming that it is illegal doesn't make it so.

Do you understand that Joel? Do you understand that the government sometimes does things that are illegal? Do you realize that sometimes people who have a badge and a gun are wrong?

yes, yes, yes.... however, more times than not, LEO do exactly what the law requires of them, no more, no less.

i. too, will end this thread drift, however, i am won't continue it privately either. i would hope in the future that when drawing conclusions, correct or otherwise, we all use the lesser broad brush.

[ravenluv]

it's always fun to see how much drift occurs in a subject by the fifth page.

adding my two-tenths of two cents to the original subject matter...

i see this debate as an outgrowth of the issue of how much to promote bm to the general public. bm is not, nor should be, an exclusionary event. but not having an official policy of exclusion does not neccesitate inviting everyone or otherwise telling everyone where the 'party' is at.

hmmm....maybe we should call it a parti, as a way of focusing on the need to participate.

anyhoo, i've learned that i can't possibly convey to others anything remotely complete about this event. it must be experienced firsthand. yet, i do not believe it should be experienced firsthand by everybody. thus, i tend to be selective in convincing people that they should go. my beef with the discovery channel venture is that it cannot come close to portraying the true spirit of the event. worse yet, that woefully incomplete portrayal is to be shared with thousands of people who are likely to misinterpret what little they see.

i felt things were going too far last year when i ran into a middle-aged woman in a salvation army store in the middle of america and she said "oh, isn't that where all them people get nekkid?" it was impressive that she had heard of it, but it was clear that she didn't see it primarily as an arts festival.

of course, that leads to the issue of what spin the discovery channel will put on what they see. will they talk up the arts festival aspect, or will they focus on the liberal social atmosphere? the sad thought is that the answer is whatever gets more viewers; not what best serves the future of the event.

i won't be able to decide whether it's a good thing or a bad thing until i've seen the program.

as for the issue of 'selling out', i think it's inevitable that the event and the real world will overlap and mimic each other to some extent. has no one else noticed that bm has its own corporate logo and heirarchy? yet, i agree completely that any moves toward selling out should be attentively monitored and discussed.

now, if only i had some REAL power....

[Zulegoona]

From an Interview with Larry Harvey
By Darryl Van Rhey 1998


LH: By too popular I suppose you mean will we become pop culture, become commodified, turned into some sort of product that's hawked on TV? That's really the fear, isn't it? It amounts to a kind of superstitious dread. Listen, we're a populist movement. We need to communicate with people. How do you suppose half the people who come to the festival hear about it? We do very little paid advertising. Pieces in the press or shows on TV are merely magnified word-of-mouth. Who is saying these messages are a substitute for immediate experience? It used to be feared that we'd become too big. Again, you see, there's this tendency to equate anything on a large scale with mass society, but I think we've laid that ghost to rest. Last year, in 1997, we had our largest attendance and our greatest publicity, but the event was more participatory and interactive than ever before. Obviously, we're communicating with people. Everyone complains about the media, but no one does anything about it. Why look at this so passively? We should have more faith in ourselves. It's time to believe that we can change the world.

http://www.burningman.com/whatisburning ... win_3.html

[Chai Guy]

From LA VIE BOHÉME - a lecture by Larry Harvey at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, February 24, 2000:

We have become a nation of posers. It's not a life that's lived or shared, but an imitation of life, a kind of commercial for self. It's as if we ourselves are now TVs and broadcast images. America is now wealthier than at any other time in its history, yet all around us and within us a feeling of lurking anomie persists. The spread of materialistic values has contributed to a moral coarsening and a growing cynicism in our country. Within a manipulative world all motives seem venal, all efforts illusory. But at a deeper level, it is the commodification of imagination itself, the moral passivity, the social isolation, the angst that is generated by living in a solipsistic world of fraudulent satisfactions that is producing the greatest evil. Critics call for better values. Yet to even entertain a moral value one must first be someone in a world beyond one's self. The vital here and there of spiritual experience is disappearing from our world. The world, in some nauseating fashion, no longer appears to belong to itself."

-- Larry Harvey

http://www.burningman.com/whatisburning ... a_vie.html

[geekster]

Yet to even entertain a moral value one must first be someone in a world beyond one's self.

I have never heard it put as clearly as that.

[Don Muerto]

oh yeah, the People's Republic of California.... where if you don't like the results of your own election, you can recall the fucking elected officials. (another gargantuan error in liberal thought and action)

A) Allowing the electorate to recall the elected sounds like democracy to me. In many parts of the world democracy is considered liberal thought and action, those are the parts you don't want to live in.

B) It was the Conservatives who engineered the recall of a weak Democratic governer so they could elect an inexperienced, but flashy, movie star. "Gargantuan error" indeed.

[Chai Guy]

I have not posted in eplaya for quite a while (I'm now a tribe guy), but I feel this issue is important, as well as tickling my dislike of hypocrasy. The problem is that this has happened already, so I'm not sure what solution we want?

Well, even though the Discovery Channel filmed at Burning Man, Maid Marian still has to sign off on the finished product. We still have an opportunity to convince her not to.

Last week we apparently crashed Andie Grace's email box when we sent her 49 petitions (we think Spanky should look into increasing her account size). Because we don't want to disrupt her work we asked Andie how we could go about getting her these petitions. One solution we offered was to hand deliver them to her wearing a tutu, and she chose that option so that's what we're going to do.

We're still arranging for a date and time for it to happen, but rest assured that I will personally hand deliver each petition sent in to http://www.savebrc.org to Andie Grace while wearing a tutu.

If you happen to disagree with us, you can still sign the petition in FAVOR of the Discovery Channel, and we promise to deliver those messages as well. You may also submit any dissenting opinions for publication on www.savebrc.org , we are encouraging everyone to weigh in on this subject.

Here's another quote from Larry on media:

"We lead lives that are deadeningly passive. Everyone is sorted out in a seperate stall, like cattle in a feed-lot. Every time anything like real culture is produced by a creative community it's expropriated and flogged in the media and turned into a cliche - it used to be six years, now it's six months it's getting down to six weeks." --Larry Harvey

[geekster]

Well, here's the thing ... I wouldn't want to sign either in favor of or against the petition because I don't know what Discovery Times has produced. It might be fantastic, I might like it, I might think it is a perfect portrayal of the event. I might think that everyone on the planet should see it, or I might think it just plain sucks. Besides, what good is a petition anyway? When did Burning Man become a democracy? Well it sort of is, you vote with your ticket but beyond that, it seems almost a little, uhm, pretentious to believe that it would have any impact. In a way, you are leading people to believe that they have an amount of control that they don't have. What if the petitions are round-filed right after you walk out the door? People will get upset. They will get upset because they were led to believe they had some input. The org didn't lead them to believe that, you did. But back on track ...

It seems you are not interested at all in the content of what they have produced, just that they were allowed to attempt to produce anything at all. I don't share that feeling. I see burning man itself as a work of art produced on a blank canvas of playa. That someone wants to capture it in a unique way and show it to people doesn't bother me if it is done in a way that presents the community in a tasteful way. I don't mind having been a little tiny piece of that art, which each person is the moment they walk in the gate, like it or not. I anjoy going there. But I don't feel any sense of ownership of what the event "is". The event is what it is and it was different for me than it was for my campmates. My experiance was unique and so was yours.

I am of the position where I will defer to the org. It is their event overall. My event is just a tiny little subset of theirs. I am like the lower left hand corner of the big picture. If they like what is produced and allow Discovery Times to show it, fine with me. If it wrecks the event in the future because it was shown, then I won't go. I don't feel any need to protect the event at any particular state of it's evolution. Next year will be different and five years from now will be way different. I can either lament that it wasn't like the first time, or I can approach each year as a new experiance. I don't see how attempting to control what a producer of a documentary does enhances my experiance. Besides, just because they work for a big company doesn't mean that the people involved, the photographers, the videographers, the sound people ... probably see themselves as artists in what they do. I wouldn't mind seeing their work. I wouldn't make a decision until after I saw it. But nobody asked me to place my stamp of approval on it, so I will defer to the people that have been placed in a position to stamp it.

Basically, it's none of my business.

[geekster]

And I thought of one more thing. I came to the conclusion that the most likely viewers of the documentary will be burners, former burners, their friends and their family. Because we are probably going to be the only people that even know that A: Discovery Times exists (it's a different channel than Discovery Channel) and B: A documentary of Burning Man is being shown. My wife and kids watch a fair amount of TV. We have watched Discovery Times exactly zero times. We have seen exactly none of their shows. I never even heard of them until this row. My guess is that the percentage of the US population that will see the production will be closer to 0% than to 1%. It seems like a small issue to draw such a pronounced line in the sand over.

ADDED: Many more people are going to see Malcom in the middle, American Dad and other caricatures of the event. I don't think it is wrong for people to get a chance to see a more accurate portrayal of it.

[Chai Guy]

Geekster,

Thanks for sharing your opinion. That's all I'd like to do here is to spark a conversation about this issue.

And I thought of one more thing. I came to the conclusion that the most likely viewers of the documentary will be burners, former burners, their friends and their family. Because we are probably going to be the only people that even know that A: Discovery Times exists (it's a different channel than Discovery Channel) and B: A documentary of Burning Man is being shown.

If you added up all the attendance figures for every Burning Man from 1986 until now you'd get "roughly" 250,000 people (obviously some of those people have been more than once, so the actual total number of people who have been to the event is going to be less than that).

The Discovery TIMES Channel currently has 36 million subscribers.

The U.S. Population is 297,290,195

So the Discovery Times Channel has the potential to reach roughly 8.25% of the U.S. Population.

It may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things but it's about 144 times the number of people who have ever attended the event since 1986.

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
http://www.azcompuguy.com/polyparadise/history.htm
http://corporate.discovery.com/brands/d ... times.html