Few preschoolers who watch the Sprout channel’s brilliant “Snooze-a-Thon” on Christmas Eve are likely to appreciate its startling genius as a piece of filmmaking. This is neo-neo-neorealism at its finest, boldly pushing the envelope to places where even radical iconoclasts rarely go.
The most ardent minimalists wouldn’t dare demonstrate the contempt for dialogue embodied here, a choice that can be read as a statement about the modern age, so full of communication devices yet so devoid of real communication. Plenty of filmmakers spurn slam-bang action sequences, but none would champion the outright inaction of “Snooze-a-Thon,” clearly a metaphor for our lazy, indulgent times. And the numbing sameness of every single scene is nothing short of courageous, standing as an indictment of empty consumerism, political gridlock, spiritual vacuity and the general stagnation of our age.
Yes, as cinema the “Snooze-a-Thon,” a string of clips in which favorite kiddie characters are seen dozing, is a triumph. But never mind that. Will it really cause your little rotter to fall asleep?
Sprout, a channel that aims for the 5-and-under demographic with shows like “Pajanimals” and “The Berenstain Bears,” has made the “Snooze-a-Thon” an annual event, the idea being that many young children will be unable to sleep because they are too excited about the impending Christmas morning.
Beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday and continuing till 6 a.m. on Tuesday, those pint-size insomniacs, should they stir and glance at the television, will see a loop of sleeping puppets and human characters. This presumably will prompt them to realize that they too should be asleep, activate some sort of imitation reflex and cause them to conk out.
First let it be said from the parental perspective that any gimmick that gets Wibbly the pig, Olive the ostrich and especially Barney the dinosaur to shut their pie holes for an evening is deserving of an Emmy Award. But a lifetime of tossing and turning leads to a basic, premise-undermining question: Since when does watching someone else sleep make a person sleepy?
Many sleep-deprived grown-ups may find that the opposite is true. Seeing another person snooze when you can’t only enrages you, which makes it even less likely that you’ll fall asleep. Who among you hasn’t smacked a partner with a pillow because that partner was enjoying a blissful trip to dreamland while you were denied admission?
Give the people at Sprout credit for at least making an effort at a public service. And perhaps the “Snooze-a-Thon” will work on undeveloped preschool brains. For a grown-up, though, watching one Wiggle sleeping is infuriating; watching all four do it may induce apoplexy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site says that nearly 10 percent of Americans have chronic insomnia and that more than a quarter occasionally don’t get enough sleep. If you’re a TV programmer, that ought to scream, “Opportunity!” These days a network drawing 25 percent of the television audience would be considered a ratings juggernaut.
Clearly a full-time channel devoted to making adults fall asleep is what the grown-up viewing public needs and demands. Some wiseacre will say that C-Span already serves this function, but sleep is too important to be entrusted to politicians. What we want is a “Snooze-a-Thon” for the 18-and-older crowd, one based not on the misguided premise that seeing sleep induces sleep but on real-world experience.
As tensions between Beijing and Hanoi escalate over the South China Sea, Vietnamese anti-China protesters who face repeated police crackdowns are finding a new form of political expression: soccer.
"People don't feel scared playing soccer," said Phuong, the team captain, after a practice match in the capital, Hanoi.
They call themselves "No U FC" -- a reference to the U-shaped line China has drawn around almost the entire South China Sea, passing close to Vietnam, then around Malaysia and north to the Philippines, an area where potential oil deposits, strategic shipping routes and fishing rights converge in one of Asia's most combustible territorial disputes.
"FC" stands for Football Club. Or, as some players say, "Fuck China".
The team illustrates mounting resentment of China whose sovereignty claims over the stretch of water off its south coast and to the east of mainland Southeast Asia set it directly against U.S. allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also lay claim to parts.
The club was formed after police arrested dozens of anti-China protesters who had gathered peacefully almost every weekend from June to August last year. They were at first tolerated in the tightly controlled Communist country where public dissent is rare. But the authorities feared they could evolve into a wider, harder-to-control anti-government movement, said several diplomats with high-level government contacts.
Some of those arrested were accused of turning against the state. Among the protesters were intellectuals and bloggers whose anger extended well beyond Beijing to sensitive domestic issues — from a widening rich-poor divide to land evictions, police brutality and restrictions on freedom of expression.
After the crackdown, Phuong and other protest leaders met at Thuy Ta, a popular cafe near Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, to plot their next move. Police ordered the cafe's owners not to serve them. They went to another cafe, and soon that was shut down.
No U FC engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities for several months, gathering at various fields in Hanoi often only to be shooed away. They wore black-and-white soccer jerseys with a crossed-out U-shaped crest on the front. Emblazoned on the back: "Hoàng Sa", the Vietnamese name for disputed islands also known as the Paracels.
Since September, they have gathered twice a week at an artificial-turf field owned by the military, an institution the protesters say appears sympathetic to their cause. But undercover police usually keep watch.
On a recent Sunday, nearly 100 No U FC members showed up. They take pride in their diversity: one is a poet, another a banker. Their ages range from 10 to 60. Some play barefoot.
Beyond their common beliefs, they are united by something else: nearly all have been detained at some point, along with supporters such as Ta Tri Hai, a violinist in a straw cowboy hat who played folk music on the sidelines.
"We're getting stronger because of social media," said Nguyen Van Dung, a goalkeeper and protest organizer. The club has swelled to about 120 members who communicate closely on Facebook.
He criticized the government for what he sees as a weak response to assertions of Chinese sovereignty, including last month when Chinese fishing boats were accused of cutting a seismic cable attached to a PetroVietnam vessel exploring near the Gulf of Tonkin.
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