MediaCommons

So thus begins season 6 of Lost. I give “LA X”  two big thumbs up (one in 2004 & one in 2007!), but to read why, you need to go over to Antenna, a newish online venture out of my graduate alma mater, University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Media & Cultural Studies program. The goal of Antenna is to have brief posts by a range of authors on interesting new developments in the world of media, prompting conversations and community. I’ve happily agreed to write about Lost’s final season there, so be sure to subscribe to its feed for many great voices on a range of media.

While that post focuses on issues of narrative and fan expectations, I wanted to offer some additional commentary on how Lost’s ratings successes or failures are being discussed.... read more »

I drove out to UC Irvine with the kids to catch the Video Dada show (“dealing with intersections of video, art, and the internet.”) Martha Gever, the show’s curator, was kind enough to also drive out and chat with me after. The show puts into action and on to the wall many of the concerns I’ve been expressing here about video art on YouTube by transforming curating into the “real” (video) art practice and allowing YouTube work to become art by surrounding its 300 unruly videos with to-be-expected large-screen, flat, chic monitors. Importantly, Gever also provides thrift store couches and also on to the wall, big, scrawled messy handwritten quotations from media/cultural theorists as varied as Marcel Proust, Geert Lovink, and Virginia Heffernan. Without their raucous, ugly YouTube pages to frame them (ads, other videos, comments, tags) the projected videos looked pretty, like nothing other than honest to goodness video art in all its varied polyphony: cut-up, hand-painted, home-video-like, music-video-inflected, found-ads, and so on. It was that frame that did it, making art out of madness: slick screen, black box, curator’s stamp of approval. The wall demands respect, as does the hushed room with guard. And, unlike YouTube, the quotes create context.... read more »

Like most people, my attention in recent days has been directed toward the earthquakes in Haiti and their aftermath: the rescue efforts, the struggles to survive, and the discussions of how to rebuild.  But although I find myself following the story attentively, I have been unable to shake my frustration with the exploitative coverage seen on U.S. television, both on national and cable news stations, and the lack of historical context offered in many of the stories we get.  Much of this has to do with the “liveness” of the story, the fact that the crisis is unfolding in real time, but as Melissa Click points out, once the initial crisis wears off, it is questionable whether the news media will continue to cover the story and provide vital historical background that could provide better information about the country’s political and economic history, details that are essential in garnering support for providing foreign aid.... read more »

Last summer, I was invited as a keynote presenter for a conference on serial form at the University of Zurich – I blogged previously about the conference and my presentation. Now the conference organizers are publishing the proceedings, translating all of the English papers into German. Since I spoke off an outline, I needed to write up the whole essay, which involved a lot of updating and rethinking in light of my recent Lost rewatch, taking most of my non-grading work time in December and early January. Below is a draft of the essay, entitled “Serial Boxes: The Cultural Values of Long-Form American Television” – as always, any feedback is welcome!

... read more »

The lists for best films, TV shows, and music of the decade have already begun, but what about paratexts? What have been the best extratextuals of the 00s?... read more »

It’s been an odd fall for this blog – despite a tremendous surge in page views (prompted by my posts on running a faculty search at Middlebury), I’ve had virtually nothing to say about television (or much else, due to the time spent on that search and other administrative & teaching tasks). Hopefully the next couple of weeks will rectify that, as I join the throng of TV critics posting Best Of lists for both the year and decade, spread out over a few posts.... read more »

One of the most exciting parts of Planned Obsolescence for me has of course been the open review process we’ve been conducting at MediaCommons; it’s been fantastic getting speedy, focused feedback from scholars already invested in new digital modes of communication. And NYU Press has been extremely supportive of my desire to test out that review process, to see how it might affect the ways I revise, and the ways the project is received.... read more »

My book on paratexts is finally out: Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Paratexts. ($22, but I see Amazon’s selling it for $14.85. That’s cheaper than a season of Two and a Half Men on DVD! What are you waiting for?). I thought I’d give some tasters of it with a selection of paratexts. The cover, obviously enough is above.... read more »

Over the course of the last year I’ve been very excitedly following the developments at the University of Michigan Press, as the press became an academic unit housed within the library, and then developed a very forward-looking collaborative strategy called MPublishing, bringing together the strengths of the press and the library’s digital publishing services group.... read more »