Archive for September, 2007
Can Catwoman Challenge Patriarchy?
Michael Lecker, George Mason University — September 28th, 2007|
It was in 1940 when the character Catwoman appeared in DC Comics’ comic book, Batman #1. Since that appearance, Batman and Catwoman have been written in several mediums (film, television, novel, and comic book) as having a flirtatious and/or sexual relationship. The relationship between them is typically highly problematic because it perpetuates patriarchal beliefs about male-female relationships. However, during the 1990’s Catwoman discusses and therefore brings into the dialogue major issu [...]
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Lrn2Play Noob: Progressive Masculinity in Games
Tanner Higgin, University of California, Riverside — September 27th, 2007|
The assumption that games strictly adhere to dominant forms of masculinity has been accepted, for the most part, as a given. While it is obvious that many games do rely heavily on dominant masculinities, it would be a mistake to assume players simply accept what is suggested to them.
I have found that machinima is one of the best platforms from which to study subversive forms of gameplay. While much of machinima is merely re-cut game film that serves a promotional and boastful platform for p [...]
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“One language under…”; one language up
Hector Amaya, Southwestern University — September 26th, 2007|
On September 9th, Univision, the media corporation responsible for popularizing the view that Latinas/os (sic “Hispanics”) speak Spanish and respond well to Spanish advertising and programming, aired the first bilingual presidential debate for the Democratic Party. Two of the six candidates are fluent Spanish speakers, Governor Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, but they were not allowed to use it during the debate. In his handsomely accented Mexican Spanish, moderator Jorge Ramos [...]
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Life During Wartime: On ‘9 Scripts from a Nation at War’
Cynthia Chris, Assistant Professor, Department of Media Culture, College of Staten Island/CUNY — September 25th, 2007|
Video — as is widely known — has become, as John Baldessari once predicted, “just one more tool in the artist’s toolbox.” Indeed, Documenta XII, the 2007 version of the international exhibition of visual art that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany, included dozens of videos, by Yael Bartana, Haroun Farocki, Martha Rosler, and many others. Among the most compelling and complex was the multichannel video installation 9 Scripts from a Nation at War by David Thorne, Katya Sand [...]
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Playing with Peripherals
Ben Aslinger, University of Wisconsin, Madison — September 24th, 2007|
“It was an experience. How do we hold on to the experience?” These words – spoken by Ouisa Kittredge near the end of John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation – prompted me to start a conversation about the material, embodied elements of playing with peripherals. Breaking a joystick while playing Pole Position, running on the NES Power Pad, and calming a dog named Venus who gets nervous when one of her owners loses her balance on the dance mat are examples of how peripherals change [...]
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It’s Not TV, It’s PeePee
Walter Metz, Montana State University — September 21st, 2007|
In what might be crudely described as the arrival with a vengeance of the penis on television, HBO's attempt to salvage its ratings plummet from the brilliant but disastrous “John From Cincinnati,” the season premiere of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the series premiere of “Tell Me You Love Me” on Sunday, September 9, 2007 prominently foreground the taboo male organ. Serendipitously, Wayne State University Press has recently re-released Peter Lehman's seminal study, “Running Scared: M [...]
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The Essential Recap: Memory, Amnesia, and Anticipation in Serial Television
Derek Johnson, University of Wisconsin, Madison — September 20th, 2007|
After purchasing a television season on DVD years ago, I was immediately disappointed with the attachment of full recaps prior to each episode; why watch recaps when you have all the episodes? Similarly, when archiving off-air recordings, I once excised those seemingly redundant recaps to save disc space. Recaps like these for Lost and Battlestar Galactica, however, increasingly challenge that assumed redundancy. As Alan McKee stressed, recaps manifest their own unique textual forms, innovati [...]
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The Beauty and the Ugliness of Advertising?
Jonathan Gray, Fordham University — September 19th, 2007|
This ad confuses me. On one level, it’s a fantastic illustration of how the process of making a model “beautiful” works, and is a brilliant teaching tool, in or out of the classroom, with or without a teacher. On another level, though, it “just” represents Dove’s attempt to brand itself as the lone socially responsible corporation out there, and, for all its well-meaning, commodifies social responsibility, using it as another ad might use Che to sell hot pockets. How do we balance th [...]
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Who’s Selling Digital TV?
Joshua Green, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Comparative Media Studies — September 18th, 2007|
The FCC’s recent decision cable companies must provide analog signals until 2012 pushes back the ultimate date for the full conversion to digital once again. In doing so, it seems the FCC has provided tacit official acknowledgment the burden of converting US television viewers to digital is being borne by cable providers rather than the Networks. This is certainly the impression left by the material promoting the coming analog service switch-off. Unlike the other two large English-speaking mar [...]
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In The Cloud and Out of Synch: The Question of Asynchronous Media and Media Studies
Tim Anderson, Denison University — September 30th, 2007