Weeds: Sick Entertainment?
At the end of 2004, Showtime announced that the 2005 mid-season programming for its pay-per-view cable channel would start to include a “quintessentially premium” show called “Weeds.” This (then new) show was hyped as revealing "the dirty little secrets that lie behind the pristine lawns and shiny closed doors of homes in the fictional town of Agrestic, California."
The plot of Weeds revolves around a suburban widow who sells marijuana to support her two children. The production company envisions the show as having a kind of “edge that audiences are clamoring for.” As of today, Weeds is still on the air, and Showtime viewers are regularly tuning in to watch the adventures of the entrepreneurial non-hero/non-villain protagonist, Nancy Botwin, played by Mary-Louise Parker.
The creator of Weeds, Jenji Kohan, said the idea for the program came from “shows with those kinds of anti-heroes who were deeply flawed.” To research how to write such a show of her own, Kohan went “looking for some sort of criminal activity…[and] around this time in California, a medical marijuana initiative had just been passed and a lot of people were talking about it…[Kohan] found it amazing how everyone either had a stoner in their family or they themselves were the stoner in their family and had stories to tell about their dealers. Everything else came out of that, really, and Weeds was a one-line pitch to the network: ‘Suburban widow, pot-dealing mom.’”
Because Kohan believes that medical marijuana is a kind of “criminal activity” performed by the “stoner” (whom “everyone” knows) and their “deeply flawed…dealers,” Kohan “in no way” wants “to become a spokesperson for the marijuana community.” Instead, Kohan asserts that marijuana is “just a device we use to tell our stories.” To Kohan, Weeds on Showtime is about “the freedom to say what we want.” But, as Kohan observes, such freedom comes with a price: “We sacrifice some of the money we’d make working for the commercial networks…I don’t have a swimming pool.”
Kohan may be (maybe) sacrificing money—or, at least, a swimming pool—by having created Weeds for Showtime; however, Kohan’s “freedom” to “use” the medicine of approximately 300,000 Californians has not appeared to detract from the bottom-line of Showtime’s parent company, CBS Corp. In 2005, CBS Corp reported a gross profit of $14,536,400. This corporation—whose holdings include (but are not limited to) entertainment giants like Showtime, Aaron Spelling Productions, inc., B.E.T., C.B.S., Country Music Television, inc., Infinity, M.T.V., Nickelodeon, Paramount, United, U.P.N., V.H.1., and Viacom—manages to make enough money to pay its C.E.O. an annual salary of $22, 824,272; its C.F.O., Treasurer, Secretary, and an Executive Vice President an annual salary of $6,382,294; its counsel and two other Executive Vice Presidents an annual salary of $2,922,022; and its controller, counsel, two other Executive Vice Presidents, and a Division Officer an annual salary of $2,242,322. Additionally, the eleven directors of CBS Corp all make $17,351,343, respectively.
Check the math; that’s $259,195,897 dolled out to 24 people who (on average) get paid $710,125.75 each day. Some of this money comes from the proceeds (or profits) from their supervision and management of Showtime’s Weeds and, as such, these figures reveal the true “dirty little secret” behind Weeds. Rather than being the kind of “edge that audiences are clamoring for,” Weeds is really the same old story—i.e., economic exploitation of the plant, Cannabis sativa, L. Ironically, those people who actually provide medical marijuana to the sick and dying are punished for making a few thousand dollars; hardly the profits yielded by Weeds.
Given the status of the law throughout most of this country—wherein the well-to-do (white) tend to avoid criminal penalties for marijuana, while the poor (non-white) tend to suffer them—those persons who profit from marijuana owe a moral debt to those who do not. This means, among other things, that Kohan is a “spokesperson” whether she wants to be or not. Maybe she should encourage CBS Corp to establish a foundation to help those who unjustly suffer the criminal justice system for the medical use of marijuana and related activities. How’s this for a “quintessentially premium” one-line pitch: poets taking responsibility for their storytelling?
Kenneth Michael White is an attorney and the author of “The Beginning of Today: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” and “Buck” (both by PublishAmerica 2004). Visit www.thebeginningoftoday.com for more information.
The plot of Weeds revolves around a suburban widow who sells marijuana to support her two children. The production company envisions the show as having a kind of “edge that audiences are clamoring for.” As of today, Weeds is still on the air, and Showtime viewers are regularly tuning in to watch the adventures of the entrepreneurial non-hero/non-villain protagonist, Nancy Botwin, played by Mary-Louise Parker.
The creator of Weeds, Jenji Kohan, said the idea for the program came from “shows with those kinds of anti-heroes who were deeply flawed.” To research how to write such a show of her own, Kohan went “looking for some sort of criminal activity…[and] around this time in California, a medical marijuana initiative had just been passed and a lot of people were talking about it…[Kohan] found it amazing how everyone either had a stoner in their family or they themselves were the stoner in their family and had stories to tell about their dealers. Everything else came out of that, really, and Weeds was a one-line pitch to the network: ‘Suburban widow, pot-dealing mom.’”
Because Kohan believes that medical marijuana is a kind of “criminal activity” performed by the “stoner” (whom “everyone” knows) and their “deeply flawed…dealers,” Kohan “in no way” wants “to become a spokesperson for the marijuana community.” Instead, Kohan asserts that marijuana is “just a device we use to tell our stories.” To Kohan, Weeds on Showtime is about “the freedom to say what we want.” But, as Kohan observes, such freedom comes with a price: “We sacrifice some of the money we’d make working for the commercial networks…I don’t have a swimming pool.”
Kohan may be (maybe) sacrificing money—or, at least, a swimming pool—by having created Weeds for Showtime; however, Kohan’s “freedom” to “use” the medicine of approximately 300,000 Californians has not appeared to detract from the bottom-line of Showtime’s parent company, CBS Corp. In 2005, CBS Corp reported a gross profit of $14,536,400. This corporation—whose holdings include (but are not limited to) entertainment giants like Showtime, Aaron Spelling Productions, inc., B.E.T., C.B.S., Country Music Television, inc., Infinity, M.T.V., Nickelodeon, Paramount, United, U.P.N., V.H.1., and Viacom—manages to make enough money to pay its C.E.O. an annual salary of $22, 824,272; its C.F.O., Treasurer, Secretary, and an Executive Vice President an annual salary of $6,382,294; its counsel and two other Executive Vice Presidents an annual salary of $2,922,022; and its controller, counsel, two other Executive Vice Presidents, and a Division Officer an annual salary of $2,242,322. Additionally, the eleven directors of CBS Corp all make $17,351,343, respectively.
Check the math; that’s $259,195,897 dolled out to 24 people who (on average) get paid $710,125.75 each day. Some of this money comes from the proceeds (or profits) from their supervision and management of Showtime’s Weeds and, as such, these figures reveal the true “dirty little secret” behind Weeds. Rather than being the kind of “edge that audiences are clamoring for,” Weeds is really the same old story—i.e., economic exploitation of the plant, Cannabis sativa, L. Ironically, those people who actually provide medical marijuana to the sick and dying are punished for making a few thousand dollars; hardly the profits yielded by Weeds.
Given the status of the law throughout most of this country—wherein the well-to-do (white) tend to avoid criminal penalties for marijuana, while the poor (non-white) tend to suffer them—those persons who profit from marijuana owe a moral debt to those who do not. This means, among other things, that Kohan is a “spokesperson” whether she wants to be or not. Maybe she should encourage CBS Corp to establish a foundation to help those who unjustly suffer the criminal justice system for the medical use of marijuana and related activities. How’s this for a “quintessentially premium” one-line pitch: poets taking responsibility for their storytelling?
Kenneth Michael White is an attorney and the author of “The Beginning of Today: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937” and “Buck” (both by PublishAmerica 2004). Visit www.thebeginningoftoday.com for more information.
posted by Kenneth Michael White | 9:05 AM
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