FRONTLINE “Battle for Haiti” | Sneak Peek 2: Rogue Cops & Corrupt Politicians | PBS
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iPad
There are no words for how I feel about this. Well, one word: Fabulous.
more about "YouTube – Mad Tv – IPad", posted with vodpod
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I found a new show!
It’s called Spaced, starring Simon Pegg (of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) and Jessica Stevenson. Very Funny. About two nerds who pretend to be a couple to get an apartment. Lots of great editing and writing.
Available on YouTube.
Watching now…
Filed under Fun, Television
Annals of Culture: Something Borrowed: newyorker.com
“Annals of Culture: Something Borrowed”: from the New Yorker.
As self-exploration of Malcolm Gladwell’s “plagiarism” of Dorothy Lewis’ autobiography, and perhaps, her life. But what do we really mean when we talk about plagiarism– how do we own words and the meanings behind them?
Hope to use this article in class, a fascinating story.
“At the request of her lawyer, Lewis sat down and made up a chart detailing what she felt were the questionable parts of Lavery’s play. The chart was fifteen pages long. The first part was devoted to thematic similarities between “Frozen” and Lewis’s book “Guilty by Reason of Insanity.” The other, more damning section listed twelve instances of almost verbatim similarities—totalling perhaps six hundred and seventy-five words—between passages from “Frozen” and passages from a 1997 magazine profile of Lewis. The profile was called “Damaged.” It appeared in the February 24, 1997, issue of The New Yorker. It was written by me.
Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property. In the past thirty years, copyright laws have been strengthened. Courts have become more willing to grant intellectual-property protections. Fighting piracy has become an obsession with Hollywood and the recording industry, and, in the worlds of academia and publishing, plagiarism has gone from being bad literary manners to something much closer to a crime. When, two years ago, Doris Kearns Goodwin was found to have lifted passages from several other historians, she was asked to resign from the board of the Pulitzer Prize committee. And why not? If she had robbed a bank, she would have been fired the next day.”
Filed under Fun, Scholarly Pretensions
My Ex-Boyfriend, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert just posted this video on Twitter asking “Why isn’t American TV ready for this?” Roger, we are breaking up.
From the moment the woman’s butt appears on the screen, her race and sex, her body, become a metaphor for the perfect beer. Hello? Ready? I mean, is this not just old beer=sexy woman+race? Isn’t this just every beer commercial only worse? And from Hungary– known for its progressive racial politics.
Maybe Ebert was being ironic, but his Twitter followers sure weren’t:
sashaundercover RT @ebertchicago: Why isn’t American TV ready for this? http://j.mp/5ncSCv / It is. Minority of wingers have nothing to do but complain.
I hope you were being facetious, Roger Ebert.
Filed under New Media, Television
Post-Feminism, Dollhouse, and Me
So I’ve proposed and been accepted to the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association annual conference, presenting my paper “The “P” Word and Postfeminism in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse”. Here is my proposal abstract:
“Dollhouse is cancelled, eking out just two seasons on Fox before its untimely end. Fans mourn the loss of another Whedon-esque show, but the problematic representations of gender found on the show have not been addressed. I propose that the elision of even the word prostitution on the show, never clearly addressed by Whedon or Fox, led the show to articulate a postfeminist discourse. My conference proposal is an effort to understand where Dollhouse went wrong and how Whedon, who was so lauded by feminists for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ended up creating a show with such troubling implications. Using Angela McRobbie’s landmark exploration of postfeminism in “Postfeminism and Popular Culture,” I analyze the struggle for control between Fox and Whedon, the use of Eliza Dushku’s body in promotion of the show, as well as the deliberate removal of any direct reference to prostitution or rape in the writing of Dollhouse. With this analysis, I intend to show that the end product, while not initially intended by Whedon or actress and producer Dushku, used Whedon’s feminist credentials to justify a postfeminist text in the most troubling sense. The postfeminism of Dollhouse brings into question both Whedon’s self-reflexive feminism, as well as implying that the show’s end was the direct result of its ambivalence to one of Whedon’s largest group of supporters: women.”
I’ve been thinking further about this paper, which is a fairly strong condemnation of the show, at least the first season. But in the second season, we see the main character begin to take control of all the identities she’s been “implanted” with. She works hard to fluidly move from one implanted identity to another, using each to her advantage (from assassin to housewife).
Something resonates with me about that movement, shifting personalities within one person. I am a different person for each friendship, relationship, job, and class that I am in. This isn’t always easy. Sometimes I find myself acting, literally acting, for someone else, so much so that I’m not sure who I am anymore.
Post-modern identity, loosely defined, finds that people like me, of the current era, are disjointed as the result of increasingly globalized, politicized, and commodified identities. I’m a Midwesterner, an American, a global citizen, a feminist, a hipster, a product of white priviledge, a daughter, a woman who likes Doctor Who and bright pink nail polish. All at once. Sometimes it feels like these identities are exclusive.
And beyond that, what does it mean that I, who profess to be a feminist, readily become wifey in a long term relationship. That despite my knowledge of gender’s cultural construction, I long to be able to bake and clean and wear nice dresses so that people will see me in just the right way.
Home for the holidays, I again notice that my parents, who grew up in the fifties, became humanists and feminists in the sixties, and had tenure in academic institutions by the eighties, bring out in me a desire to be the dutiful (feminine and responsible and empathetic) daughter. There’s nothing wrong with this. And yet there is, because it doesn’t quite fit with who I am at other times.
And so I think back to Echo on Dollhouse and I find really profound Whedon’s conceptualization (through a sci-fi narrative) of the disjointed nature of human, and maybe particularly female or post-modern, identity. It is sometimes so painful to know that I must constantly change myself to please others, that written on my body are my attempts to shape myself to the the desires and needs of others.
The idea of a woman like Echo, who can use these multiple identities, bring them all under her control, use them for her own desires, is hopeful. She can use all of these people she has been to become one person, for herself. And maybe so can I.
Filed under Personal, Scholarly Pretensions, Television
SNL Digital Short – Blizzard Man
more about “Andy Samberg – SNL Digital Short – Bl…“, posted with vodpod
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The end is nigh…
I feel like maybe I’ve said that before. End of term. I’m finishing grading and applications, so I don’t have much new content.
Check out the links on my blogroll– all worth checking!
Also for something really messed up, check out Fox’s Virtual Eliza Dushku application, a promotional tool for Dollhouse.
I need to change the title of my blog. Suggestions?
For your viewing pleasure:
