Archive for February, 2007
The Bonds of Brotherhood
Louisa Stein, San Diego State University — February 13th, 2007|
The early episodes of Supernatural (WB/CW, 2005-present) suggested a war-on-terror like vision of good versus evil. The show's premise: two macho boys and their father fight the forces of evil to avenge their mother’s death. However, what seemed at first like a simplistic morality play has evolved into a study of moral ambiguity and the slippage between self and other. In the first excerpt, believing himself to be on his way to becoming a demon, Sam begs his brother Dean to kill him should he [...]
|
 |
The “N” Word
Tim Havens, University of Iowa — February 12th, 2007|
This skit from the second season of Chappelle’s Show (2003-2006) encapsulates many of the pioneering aspects of the show’s treatment of racism in contemporary America. In particular, it represents perhaps the most sustained televisual rumination to date on racial slurs: who can use them, under what conditions, and to what effect. Given the recent uproar about Michael Richard’s racist tirade at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles and the media fallout that surrounded it, it seems that debates [...]
|
 |
Going for the Jugular - Jack Bauer Unites a Nation
Jennifer Holt, University of California, Santa Barbara — February 9th, 2007|
Jack Bauer is back for Day 6 of ‘24’ as a somewhat broken man after two years of being tortured in a Chinese prison. However, he has emerged with his sense of patriotism and commitment to fighting terrorism intact, even after being abandoned and sacrificed by the President himself “for the good of the country.” This clip of Jack eluding his captors– part Hannibal Lechter, part LOST BOYS – offers one of the most graphically violent prime-time displays on broadcast television. In ligh [...]
|
 |
Kumaari
Arvind Rajagopal, New York University — February 8th, 2007|
A Dutch tulip field is the setting for expressing a love that dares not speak its name at home - the love that an orthodox Tamil brahmin male feels for a woman from his own background. Here is an antique passion and a form of repression that seems more comic than tragic, given that global capitalism is supposed to put love within everyone's reach. The music and words are lyrical (due to Vairamuthu and HarrisJeyaraj), while the acting brings out the satirical element of a chaste brahmin declaring [...]
|
 |
You don’t know Hollywood
Amelie Hastie, University of California, Santa Cruz — February 7th, 2007|
These episodes of Batman (“The Entrancing Doctor Cassandra,” 1968) and Charlie’s Angels (“I Will Be Remembered,” 1977) eerily predict Ida Lupino’s disappearance from film history. But not only is she largely forgotten as Hollywood film and television star: the films she directed, co-wrote, and co-produced are also barely known and rarely circulated.
Here her invisibility in history is visibly marked: the self-proclaimed “world famous alchemist, occult science practitioner, and [...]
|
 |
Erased Video: A Comparative Analysis of The Forgotten and Rabbit Hole
Walter Metz, Montana State University — February 6th, 2007|
Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2006 Broadway play, examines a couple’s response to a child’s death when a husband discovers his wife’s accidental erasure of their late son’s only videotaped images. In this clip, from Joseph Ruben’s The Forgotten (2004), Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) discovers that videotape of her son, purportedly dead from a plane crash, has been similarly erased.
Rabbit Hole is a realist drama about traumatic loss; The Forgotten offers science-fiction abou [...]
|
 |
Take Me Away From Your Leader
Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University — February 5th, 2007|
The Mooninites—a proud race of two-dimensional assholes sporadically compelled to visit New Jersey and instruct a young wad of meat in the sacraments of adolescent deviancy. Through the liturgical conventions of invasion sci-fi, domestic sitcoms, and primitive gaming technologies, Ignignot and Ur draw their impressionable ward into the world of smoking, drinking, shoplifting, pornography, arson, and the precise comic timing of bird flipping. Distributed as lite-brite totems across nine Ameri [...]
|
 |
Bant Singh can still sing
Jyotsna Kapur, Southern Illinois University — February 2nd, 2007|
Posted on YouTube, this unforgettable video-letter by Sanjay Kak and Anurag Singh sears the brain. Here, Bant Singh, a lower-caste peasant activist, sings of rebellion from a hospital bed where he is recovering from a brutal attack. An image such as this, which does not fit mainstream celebrations of India’s “globalization,” might, without context, reinforce its Otherness and the need for even greater “globalization.” Bant Singh, however, speaks of being part of the same struggle as [...]
|
 |
Pirate Media
Tara McPherson, University of Southern California — February 1st, 2007|
Rent a movie lately and get stuck watching the MPAA’s anti-piracy video? You know, the one with the jazzy editing that begins "You wouldn’t steal a car?" and goes on to remind you that buying or downloading 'pirated' media is illegal? It's pretty hard to miss: it's been plastered on to the front of hundreds of thousands of DVDs and you can't skip through it.
But perhaps you're one of the lucky few who have popped in a DVD and come across the pitch-perfect parody by the folks at youwou [...]
|
 |
Targeting the Pink Dollar
Joshua Green, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Comparative Media Studies — February 14th, 2007