Caroline Ho
Arts Editor

 

TT scalping has plagued
consumers for well over a hundred
years, and we continue to scratch our
heads at the government’s inefficiency
at dealing with the problem.

Ticket scalping is the practice of
buying tickets to later resell them at a
higher price. The origins of the term
supposedly come from the practice of
literally removing the scalps of enemies
to collect and sell—obviously a very
painful process for the victim, comparable
to the unpleasantness of having to
buy tickets at a marked-up price.

In North America, the problem
has been around since the 19th century
when speculators would buy up a lot of
tickets for theatre productions, operas,
and other entertainment shows only to
resell them on the black market, to the
dismay of would-be attendees. Even in the
late 1800s, many people were suspicious
of the idea that theatre managers were
colluding with speculators to withhold
tickets so they could be resold at
inflated prices. Some individual states
in the US started passing anti-scalping

brief history of ticket a9 ;

legislation in the late 1800s and early
1g00s—but the US also imposed federal
regulations banning these state laws on
the grounds that they unconstitutionally
interfered with private industry.

Ticket scalping continued to
be a growing source of controversy
throughout the 2oth century. In court
cases, newspaper editorials, and in front
of all kinds of entertainment venues,
people debated the legitimacy of the
practice. Some argued that governments
should not have the power to regulate free
markets by banning scalping, and pointed
out that it was often more convenient
for consumers to buy from scalpers at
slightly higher prices than to line up
for hours to buy a ticket themselves;
many others protested the unfairness of
third party brokers making such a huge
profit. The issue only grew alongside
the proliferating industries of music,
theatre, professional sports, and more.

Then the popularization of the
internet introduced a huge host of new
problems to ticket scalping. As soon as
consumers could purchase tickets online
without having to physically wait in line,
buying became a lot more accessible and
convenient—and so did resale. Soon

A surprise hit

> ‘The Boss Baby’ film review

Jerrison Oracion
Senior Columnist

kkk

I its opening weekend, the highly-
anticipated Ghost in the Shell

was beaten out by The Boss Baby

(both released by DreamWorks

Pictures), making The Boss Baby

the first surprise hit of 2017.

Initially, I was not going to watch it
because it did not look appealing to me.
When I saw a commercial for the film
and found out that Alec Baldwin plays
the baby in it, I thought that it looked
interesting. While the film did well in the
box office, I wondered if it was great. So
I went to the theater and saw it in 3-D.

Based on the book by Marla Frazee
(yes, it is based on a book), Timothy
(Tobey Maguire) tells his daughter about
a time when he was young and the worst

 

possible thing happened: He had a baby
brother. When young Timothy (Miles
Christopher Bakshi) finds out that the
baby (Baldwin) talks, the baby tells him
that he works for a company called Baby
Corp and he is on a mission to find out
why people are loving puppies more than
babies. This leads them undercover in
Timothy’s parents’ workplace at Puppy
Co., and at the same time, Timothy learns
that having a brother is a great thing.
Alec Baldwin is great as the Boss
Baby, and he fits the role very well. There
were a lot of jokes in the film that were
very vulgar, so the film could be funnier
for adults than for children, though this
film is a children’s film. The jokes were
as vulgar as the jokes that Alec Baldwin
says on the new Match Game (still on
ABC). The film’s heavy use of the Beatles
song “Blackbird” created the funniest
joke of the entire film: When Timothy
tells Boss Baby that this is the song that
his parents sing to him before he goes to

Have an idea for a story?

M arts@theotherpress.ca

enough scalpers were using bots that
automatically bought tickets in bulk as
soon as they were released for online sale.
The ticket resale site StubHub was
founded in 2000, and within a few years
the company was making millions of
dollars, and becoming embroiled in
several legal battles with professional
sports teams. Another major online
reseller, TicketsNow, was established in
1999. StubHub was sold to eBay for $310
million in 2007, and TicketsNow was
bought by Ticketmaster shortly after.
Ticketmaster had already been a major
headache for consumers because of its
“convenience fees” charged on top of
ticket prices, but its direct involvement in
the resale market fuelled the controversy
and accusations of monopolization
even further. The company has faced
threats of legal action in Canada and the
US over the practice of automatically
redirecting buyers from Ticketmaster to
the marked-up prices on TicketsNow.
This isn’t to say that online reselling
is always bad, because a lot of the
time you can find tickets for similar
or even cheaper prices than primary
vendors. Reselling becomes a problem
when bots buy up all the tickets the

sleep, Boss Baby responds with, “So, your
parents are Lennon and McCartney.”
The world of the film is unusual
because it takes place in the present
day, though it still looks like the 1960s.
Timothy’s imagination is similar to the
flashback sequences in Kung Fu Panda.
The 3-D in these sequences add more
depth to the scenes, and there are 3-D
effects throughout the film that will
make you wish that you had seen it
in 3-D if you chose to see it in 2-D.
Overall, The Boss Baby did not wow

 

 

(¥ Music Technology grads present work in

portfolio show
(¥ How to get a head
(¥ The optimism of ‘Star Trek’

And more!

very minute they're released, leaving
none for fans. Another issue is when
artists themselves withhold significant
portions of their tickets to sell to fans
who pay for early access or to secondary
vendors directly, which is done by a lot of
artists including Celine Dion, Coldplay,
Kanye West, and countless others.

With the problem so prevalent, one
might expect governments to take more
action to curb the practice, rather than
the pitiful efforts that have taken place
in Canada, where resale is regulated at
the provincial level. Although Quebec
has laws making ticket resale illegal
and Saskatchewan bans it under some
circumstances, most other provinces—
including BC—have no laws against the
practice. It used to be illegal in Ontario,
but in 2015 the provincial government
tweaked its laws to allow resale under
certain conditions. Recently, discussion
of the practice of scalping flared back
into the headlines with the Tragically
Hip’s Man Machine Poem tour last year,
when tickets across Canada were sold out
almost immediately, all thanks to scalpers.
Despite the outrage from consumers
and the many people in all affected
industries, the issue remains unresolved.

BORN
LEADER

Dir At WA ME

Photo courtesy of Dreamworks

me that much. Most of DreamWorks
Animations recent films are not that
great story-wise, including Trolls
(which does have a great theme song
by Justin Timberlake). But the studio's
next film Captain Underpants: The
First Epic Movie (also based on a book)
could be great, though I question the
casting of Harold and George with
adult voice actors instead of kids.
While Boss Baby has a lot of
funny jokes, if you do not like too
much vulgarity, do not see this film.