Archive for the ‘Not Quite TV’ Category
Toy Story 3 and Serial Pleasures
On the eve of the Oscars, one of many award ceremonies that I’ve grown tired of watching, Inside Higher Ed posted an interesting little feature asking film scholars to weigh in on Best Picture. While I varyingly agreed, disagreed, and laughed at their points, I was shocked that none of the seven academics mentioned the […]
Filed under: Animation, Film, Narrative, Not Quite TV | 3 Comments
Tags: toy story
The other day a friend of mine Tweeted about the misuse of Marshall McLuhan in discussing the role of Twitter in recent political uprisings like in Egypt. As I often do, when I hear mention of Marshall McLuhan, my thoughts turn to one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite films, Annie Hall: […]
Filed under: Media Studies, New Media, Not Quite TV | 7 Comments
Tags: annie hall, global village, mcluhan, twitter
The following post is only tangentially about television, being about the state of academic publishing as seen through the lens of one essay of mine (which happens to be about the television show Veronica Mars). So if you read this blog primarily for television thoughts and are not interested in the politics of academic publishing […]
Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Media Studies, New Media, Not Quite TV, Publishing | 22 Comments
Tonight in my Television & American Culture course, I screened Buying the War, an excellent Bill Moyers PBS feature detailing how the press allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Bush administration to enable the fraudulent war in Iraq. (If you haven’t seen it, check it out online.) The screening reminded me of this piece […]
Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV | 3 Comments
Name one thing…
I write this on a day I’ve awaited for eight years: the final day of the George W. Bush presidency (also known as the Dick Cheney Vice Presidency). It’s hard to fathom how much has transformed over the past eight years, and thus I believe that Bush’s tenure will be regarded as one of the […]
Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV | 14 Comments
Tags: bush, presidency
Best of 2008
One of the great gifts of having a blog is the opportunity to spout off opinions as if they are truth. And the end of the year is the time for bold opinions that quantify the previous year, often in multiples of ten. I thought about offering a TV Top Ten for the year, but […]
Filed under: Film, New Media, Not Quite TV, Television, TV Shows | 6 Comments
Tags: 30 rock, Battlestar, breaking bad, bsg, celtics, chuck, colbert, daily show, dark knight, death cab, dj earworm, dr. horrible, friday night lights, gta4, Lost, middleman, portal, pushing daisies, rachel maddow, radiohead, red sox, the bad plus, the office, The Wire, true blood, tv on the radio
In 2004, my lifelong Red Sox fandom came to fruition, with a unprecedented sense of contentment and peace after years of suffering. That lasted around a week, until Bush was reelected, offering a stomach punch to my other lifelong allegiance to progressive politics. For a native New Englander, these two events were uncomfortably related, the […]
Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV | Leave a Comment
Tags: baseball, election, red sox
Anonymity and its Discontents
Over the past week or so, the Middlebury College campus has been abuzz about the new site Middlebury Confessional. The site is part of a chain of Confessional sites that started at my alma mater, Oberlin College – this article outlines some of the controversies surrounding other incarnations of the sites. I’m quite interested in […]
Filed under: Middlebury, New Media, Not Quite TV | 4 Comments
Tags: confessional
One of the things I’ve found myself doing more and more lately is talking to junior faculty and new PhDs about the job market and career options. I enjoy such conversations, mostly because it allows me to vicariously experience the exciting possibilities tied to starting a career, with none of the attached uncertainties and risks! […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Not Quite TV, Teaching | 13 Comments
Tags: faculty, liberal arts
A tenured blogger
Apologies for the lack of content here over the past month. I could claim solidarity with the writers’ strike, but it’s a combination of lack of time and lack of inspiration of anything to say that warrants carving out a moment to post. Until now – while it might not offer any great insight or […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Not Quite TV, Teaching, Vermont | 17 Comments
Tags: tenure
As you might have heard, Dumbledore is gay. Or at least so says J.K. Rowling. I’m less interested in how this impacts our understanding of the world of Harry Potter, the relationships between Albus & other characters, or even the cultural controversies surrounding the series that this announcement has already inflamed. What interests me more […]
Filed under: Books, Fandom, Narrative, Not Quite TV | 30 Comments
Tags: authorship, fan fiction, Harry Potter, Lost, sexuality
Raftman Fandom
I have a particular interest in narratives about popular culture fandom. In part it’s for teaching, as I like to show films like High Fidelity and Almost Famous that dramatize how fandom matters in people’s lives. But I also find them generally compelling when done well, as the dramatic power of the intense affective relationship […]
Filed under: Fandom, Not Quite TV | 1 Comment
Tags: comics, raftman, short films
Just TV 