Archive for March, 2007
Put a Little Serotonin in Me
David Golumbia, University of Virginia — March 16th, 2007|
I could scarcely be more ambivalent about the internet's potential to democratize media very much, let alone to aid political democracy. Internet enthusiasts too often act as if the public had no way to respond to, discuss, or interpret media until computers provided tools for users to "roll their own," while it seems clear to me that the opposite has always been the case. We are people first and media consumers and users second, and we have always had a lot of freedom to use, interpret and resp [...]
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41 Shots
Dan Leopard, Saint Mary’s College — March 15th, 2007|
This excerpt from the video 41 Shots (2000) by media artists/activists Sherry Millner and Ernest Larsen suggests that the possibilities of television as a cultural form are hardly exhausted by what pours out of the cable and the satellite dish. While Millner and Larsen’s formal aesthetics may evoke some versions of the music video, their use of these aesthetics for a content of resistance summons an intellectual commitment that seems lacking in most big tube media.
Those old dead theorists [...]
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The Road Home, the Tourist Version
Vicki Mayer, Tulane University — March 14th, 2007|
Once again, the city of New Orleans can rely on amateurs to promote tourism through cheap tapes of cheap thrills on Bourbon Street. This one is actually clever in its stupidity. I assume the song is what wins this YouTube submit a "warning" for content but the promise of "Hot Drunk Girls Flashing Boobies and Hooters" is never delivered on. Like all Mardi Gras videos, this video succeeds as free advertising for the city that officially denies its existence. One commentator promises to come do [...]
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Racism, “Realism,” and High School Sports
Dave Parry, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communications. University of Texas at Dallas — March 13th, 2007|
This clip is taken from the opening of a recent episode of Friday Night Lights. The episode concludes with the black players walking off the field in protest over what this coach has said. Of course, there is more to this clip than what fans saw as a "PC" agenda or unrealistic story, for Friday Night Lights is part of what we might call a multiply mediated text: there is a film Friday Night Lights, and both it and the television series are based on a non-fiction book of the same name. While th [...]
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BollyWood for the Trees
Vamsee Juluri, University of San Francisco — March 12th, 2007|
Does America get it right when it looks at Indian cinema? This Simpsons episode shows detail (e.g. Kannada shop signs) and orientalist-"apocalyptic" fantasy (Homer going Marlon Brando)—but the punch-line here is the Hindi movie song. Fun dominates when the West glances at "Bollywood," but is this trapped by an expectation of otherness? What "Bollywood" seems to suggest to the West is nothing more than a "form," with the "content" remaining invisible. The Simpsons, Moulin Rouge, Shakira, even B [...]
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Whiteness and Transcultural Sketch Comedy
Walter Metz, Montana State University — March 7th, 2007|
In Summer 2004, I taught whiteness studies at Berlin’s Free University. I found German students better able to grapple with historical complexity (particularly of the Nazi past) than their American counterparts, but poorly equipped to assess the contemporary political landscape. For example, the German attitudes toward Turkish guest workers closely mirror American attitudes toward Mexican immigrants. Racism is indeed still at the surface of German culture, as evidenced by ProSieben's Bullypara [...]
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Bad science. Bad, bad science.
Craig O. Stewart, Old Dominion University — March 5th, 2007|
Neat and tidy boundaries between public and scientific discourse get all blurry in the context of social controversies—perhaps especially those surrounding sexual orientation. Do-it-yourself online videos along with blogs have created new opportunities for political activists to critique 'bad' science and for scientists to rebut misappropriations of their work by political activists. The video posted here, by Daniel Gonzales of Ex-Gay Watch, takes on a study by Robert Spitzer on "reparative th [...]
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The Best of the Worst of Star Search
Patrick Burkart, Texas A&M University — March 2nd, 2007|
Here is a collection of video clips submitted to a major TV network by individuals seeking a chance to appear on the TV program "Star Search". Other programs had featured on-air talent competition, but Star Search may have been the first to solicit video submissions from viewers. One can only guess how the screeners of these clips felt about the typical Star Search viewer after witnessing countless hours of the kind of tragic delusion and pathology captured in these submissions.
The arrangeme [...]
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“Gay or Just ‘Gay’ on the Sarah Silverman Program”
Kyle Nicholas, Old Dominion University — March 1st, 2007|
They've been described as "geeky," "schlumpy," and, in the words of their creator, "big, orange and gay." Brian (Brian Posehn) and Steve (Steve Agee) are the distinctly different 'gaybors' on the Sarah Silverman Program. It's no surprise that the way Silverman portrays homosexuality on her program is controversial. She mines some gay bit in every episode. At one point she decides she’s gay, then pouts when her friends laugh at her: "As a lesbian, I resent your laughter." And of course, when sh [...]
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“A Trek for Our Time”: The Continuing Relevance and Resonance of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Allison McCracken, DePaul University — March 19th, 2007