There’s no doubt that the cinematically beautiful ad stood out among the animal tricks, movie trailers, sexism, and slapstick comedy of the Super Bowl’s typical offerings. The 120-second ad aired at halftime, costing Chrysler $12.8 million during the most watched television program of all time. It skillfully combines sound track, motion (they’re selling cars, after all!), and lighting to grab the audience’s attention and emotions. The ad begins with Eastwood walking off a football field as if to the locker room at halftime. He compares the Super Bowl’s halftime to the current economic downturn in the United States, suggesting “we’re all scared ‘cause this isn’t a game.” The ad’s visuals of American landscapes fade to industrial images of work as Eastwood recounts how the people of Detroit “almost lost everything.” Functioning as metaphorical football coach, Eastwood uses Detroit as a metonym for the US by comparing Detroit’s supposed revival to the nation’s current struggles, stressing that “Motor City is fighting again.”

At the commercial’s midpoint, the images of working class people and neighborhoods give way to brighter, optimistic images of American people, and a swelling soundtrack. We’re told that Americans survived tough times in the past because we “all rallied around what was right and acted as one.” The music stops and the camera focuses on Eastwood’s worn, rugged face. He snarls in his gritty, Dirty Harry voice: “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world’s gonna hear the roar of our engines.”

In the days since the Super Bowl, the ad has been praised, parodied and panned. Political conservatives have attacked the ad, suggesting that its use of “halftime in America” is a thinly veiled reference to Obama’s campaign for a second term, a move they claim is promotional payback for the corporate bailout money the Obama administration gave Chrysler and GM (they fail to mention that the bailout was a Bush initiative). These allegations seem a bit odd given Eastwood’s very public alignment with libertarianism, and the ad’s obvious reference to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign ad “Morning in America.”

What the buzz around this ad overlooks is its ideological message: by comparing US citizens to Super Bowl players, Chrysler artfully ties an aggressive nationalism to working class pride and automobiles. Its warning that in the past “the fog of division, discord and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead” instructs Americans to stop asking questions about how the move from an industrial to a service economy has impacted American workers, and how we got into this financial mess in the first place. Its visuals suggest that protests for better treatment and pay are holding back the US, and its soundtrack stresses that “all that matters is what’s ahead.”

Though to some it may seem commonsensical to use sports metaphors to describe our economy and cast our supposedly inevitable return to world dominance in antagonistic terms, we should question how this 2-minute ad unites visuals, audio, and ideology, and why it chooses to do so in these terms. Eastwood’s presence in the ad makes it easy to forget that Chrysler is the halftime coach here, and the company uses images of Detroit and the working class to implore workers to drop their demands, “pull together,” and rebuild their faith in industry and big business. Eastwood says our focus should be on “winning,” but winning what? Dominance in the global marketplace may be “winning” to US companies, but it does not guarantee security to American citizens.

Fiske skillfully uses Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to remind us that victories are never inevitable and power is always up for grabs. In this sense, it’s always “halftime in America.” I don’t need Chrysler’s pep talk to feel hopeful that the United States will rebound from these difficult economic times, in part because I find hope in movements like Occupy Wall Street that seek to unravel the discourses of globalization, progress, and corporate entitlement that have largely dismantled national support for workers’ rights. After too much time spent ruminating on Chrysler’s ad, I am more certain than ever that television criticism and ideological analysis are crucial components of the social change we need to move through this crisis–and believe we must continue to use them on every televisual text, no matter how big or small.

As Antenna begins a new series devoted to feminist media studies, I want to consider what it might mean to have such a series and why it might be necessary. You see, in my way of thinking about media studies and, more specifically, about television studies, feminism is not just an approach one might take. It’s kind of the point.

I recognize that this way of thinking about media studies may be limited, and that television studies in particular has changed somewhat in recent years. But I think it is worthwhile to consider how and why I might have this perspective and how and why the field has changed to make feminism a perspective to choose, to take on (or, presumably, off) at will.

To be trained in media and cultural studies, with a focus on television studies, in the 1980s and 1990s (as I was) was a feminist enterprise. The humanistic study of television at that time was heavily indebted to cultural studies, especially British cultural studies and its politicized view of media culture. This perspective understands all media and culture as sites of struggle over power. This power may at times take on conventional political-economic forms but it also includes the negotiation of social position and identity, matters we might more typically associate with feminism. I hope it is no stretch to say that this feminism is one not only concerned with gender as a locus of struggle but also sexuality, race, class, age, nation, ability, etc., all of which are inevitably intertwined with one another, and with gender. The question of gender is particularly significant in the study of television in the U.S., in that the medium’s primarily domestic location, its blatant commercialism, and its propensity for “lowest common denominator” programming are traits that have connected it historically to the feminine (as well as to the underclass). That a substantial body of television scholarship has focused on the feminization of the medium, and on soap opera as a feminized product of that feminized medium, also established the centrality of gender and a feminist approach to the study of TV. Television is a feminized medium, thus the very act of studying it, of taking it seriously as a space for meaning making and social struggle, is a feminist act.

Except that so much has changed in the media landscape, in the social positioning of television, and in dominant constructions of feminism and femininity, that this foundational belief has been challenged. With convergence, “television” is much less clearly bounded, media of all kinds have been digitized, and new institutions, technologies, and experiences have expanded what “media” may mean. As Michael Z. Newman and I argue in our book, Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status, these developments have been crucial partners to the cultural legitimation of the medium both within and outside the academy. Now, some television programs are seen as art, some television technologies are seen as high-tech and cutting edge, and some television viewers are seen as discerning tastemakers. This emerging cultural discourse puts the discussion of television, both academic and otherwise, onto different terrain, associating some dimensions of TV with the masculine and the upscale, even as the feminized and denigrated standing of the medium persists and the social hierarchies upon which these categorizations have been built continue to thrive.

The changes in and around television have been accompanied by social and political shifts that may also make it seem as if matters of cultural struggle, particularly over gender, are in the past. Central here is what many have labeled postfeminist culture, a new, hegemonic common sense that assumes that because various social movements have accomplished some of their goals (feminism, to be sure, but we can also consider post-race or post-gay rights perspectives similarly), that the work of such movements is done. A “post” perspective thereby assumes that inequalities no longer exist, and any mention of them—or of the movements that strive for justice in their name—take us backward, doing more harm than good. That postfeminist culture has become dominant alongside processes of legitimation and convergence has made it even more difficult for a feminist and politicized media studies to be the assumed norm. Postfeminist perspectives combined with the masculinizing discourse of legitimation may seem to evacuate feminist concerns from the study of TV—a troubling notion, to say the least.

What, then, might a feminist media studies series of blog posts offer us? For one, it might remind us of the terms that have motivated and animated television, media, and cultural studies. My hope is to see questions of gender and the other categories of identity with which gender intersects directing the questions we ask and the analyses we offer. This may mean talking about representations of women, or women working behind the scenes, or women users and audiences. But the kind of foundational feminist media studies I am championing understands feminism more broadly than this. It encompasses the gendered address of various media, the gendering of media in popular and industrial discourse, and constructions of masculinity alongside those of femininity, as well as a limitless number of other questions that take on the intersectional nature of social identity and power. Together, such inquiry insists upon the vital relevance of feminism for media studies, now, and always.

Why do I hate the Grammys so?  In large part because the Recording Academy, the name used by the organization that presents the annual telecast, purports to speak for the music industry writ large.  It doesn’t.  There isn’t a music industry, there are several parallel and unequal music industries.  The Recording Academy limned out one of these parallel industries this year when they eliminated almost half of their awards, including a substantial number that presented Grammys in more “ethnic” categories, including several Latin awards, large and growing potential audience or not.

The Grammy Awards celebrate the big Music Industry, the one that has the lock on radio formats and televised singing contests, and that still manages to move lots of hard copies of recorded products. I could call it mainstream, but I think it’s an idea of mainstream more than a material mainstream. Or, I could call it the “residual” music industry, but there are ways in which it is still dominant, at least in theory.  The Grammy Awards are one of the ways that it maintains that fiction.  Throw a big, glossy celebration on television, feature bands that people like me wouldn’t know if they stopped us on the street and gave us a special performance, allow a controlled amount of crossover from one of the parallel music industries (sorry, Justin Vernon, that you showed up to receive your award at all kind of cancels out your reluctant acceptance speech), and call it Music’s Biggest Night. This year it kind of worked, as the telecast drew its best ratings since 1984.  But the show may have drawn that audience only because of the death of one of the self-proclaimed Music Industry’s most representative artists, Whitney Houston, the day before.  That, and the hype about Adele, who as predicted swept the Grammy table, taking home six of them.

For a while it seemed like the broadcast was hastily re-engineered into a Whitney-fest, squeezing in “Grammy moments” featuring Houston.  The evening’s host, LL Cool J, led the audience in the Staples Center and presumably, those at home, in a prayer for Houston.  Many artists and presenters said kind words about Houston throughout the evening, and Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” was moving and for a program riddled with overblown (Nicki Minaj) or underthought (whatever that dance tribute to Don Cornelius was) routines, nicely conceived.

Overall the program felt like a transmission from 1984 or 1985, before digital technologies ravaged the Music Industry’s bottom line, but with modern set design and technological trickery.  In this vision of 1984, wife or partner abuse hadn’t yet emerged as an important social and cultural problem, so the Recording Academy presented us with three appearances by Chris Brown, even as his victim, Rihanna, participated in the proceedings.  In this 1984, rock, or rawk, still rools!  Especially Brooce!  Bruce Springsteen opened, singing a populist anthem about how “we take care of our own.”  Perhaps he should write a check to the many musicians in one of the parallel music industries who are living without healthcare, or otherwise scraping by. I stopped counting after the four shots of Paul McCartney and his wife in the first ten minutes.  James Brown, er, Bruno Mars followed dressed for the Apollo even further back, circa 1964.

As much as I don’t want to, during this telecast I found myself agreeing with Simon Reynolds.  Retromania has taken over music, there’s nothing new going on.  Then again, in the Grammy’s Music Industry, there’s no retromania because the record-selling/reissuing oldsters haven’t gone away.  The list of aging performers included what’s left of the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, Paul McCartney (twice), the Foo Fighters (twice) and Tony Bennett.  Several very bland newer bands, reminding me of some of the white mainstream of the 1980s (remember Christopher Cross, anyone?) also performed.  Country was represented in several rather conservatively staged numbers, and yet another Taylor Swift diss of Kanye West (a no-show). Oh, Bonnie Raitt was half of a too-short tribute to Etta James.  In this parallel universe represented by the Grammy Awards, women don’t rock or do much beyond dance and dress up as smurfs in bondage gear (yes, I’m talking about you, Katy Perry).  Or they do the obligatory “I’ve reached the point in my career in which I must take on the Catholic Church” number (Nicki Minaj) that seems de rigeur for every pop artist in since Madonna in, you guessed it, the mid-1980s.

Unless they’re Adele.  I like Adele, and Rolling in the Deep is the rare ubiquitous song whose enduring earworm is not at all annoying.  I like her look, and the fact that she’s zaftig and proud of it. Her sound is at the same time a throwback and contemporary.  It’s a true crossover, much like Houston’s 25 years earlier.  And it sells lots and lots of records.  As deserving as she is, I fear that Adele’s coronation as the new Queen of Pop could decrease the volume of other, more adventurous, more diverse voices on the pop scene.  (Scepter or not, Lady Gaga was a non-presence at this year’s awards.) Then again, the Grammy’s celebrate those who still move large quantities of recorded product, and that more than any other agenda will continue to drive their award ceremony for years to come.  I don’t think I’ll be watching.

1. While movie industry revenues are down, one study finds that BitTorrent piracy isn’t responsible, at least for US box office declines, and the media conglomerates overall have had a good decade. Winter box office numbers are up, even as the average price of a ticket got slightly cheaper.

2. MGM is attempting yet another comeback with a new infusion of credit, while Disney is trying to take on India next. But I’m sure what you really want to know about is what Lionsgate is up to: its president of production is leaving in March and is being replaced by new partner Summit’s production chief.

3. Netflix agreed to wait 28 days for Warner Bros. DVDs, but Redbox has balked at that, while Disney is working out options. Redbox is now the largest DVD renter and continues to grow, as DVDs aren’t quite dead just yet despite Netflix’s best efforts. VOD is clearly the future, though, and some studies show VOD has even bigger revenue potential without windowing than with it. The VOD take for Bridesmaids has been big, but many are most surprised just by the fact that Universal released the numbers on it.

4. Kickstarter is grabbing a lot of attention lately, even just within 24 hours: it was a presence at Sundance, has helped two projects reach $1 million in pledges, has facilitated funding on a wide array of projects, and has the potential to change the gaming world. And you know it’s a good model when a new competitor, Crowdtilt, has popped up already.

5. Barnes & Noble is fighting with both Microsoft and Amazon, but it has to get in line alongside many others in regard to the latter, as other booksellers have joined in to not carry Amazon-published books, Goodreads is abandoning Amazon, and one state after another fights to pry taxes out of Amazon. With the taxation seeming inevitable, Amazon is moving forth with plans for brick-and-mortar stores. It should chat with Barnes & Noble about how well those are doing lately.

6. Some artists worry that digital music is ruining sound quality, but more are worried about it, or more specifically digital  music services, ruining their profits, and Paul McCartney has accordingly pulled his music. (Now where will we find “Silly Love Songs” when we really need it?) Sister Sledge and others are taking Warner Music to court over missing digital sales revenue, while the iTunes Match service could be a big money maker for indie musicians.

7. Though game and console sales continue to drop, gaming in general has greatly risen as a pursuit over the past few years, as mobile and online gaming have spread, and the Kindle Fire looks to be a pivotal new outlet for that. One thing that hasn’t declined is politicians getting undie-bunched over violent video games, while a few gamers are voluntarily choosing non-killing games.

8. Printing out a year’s worth of Facebook status updates would require 11.5 billion sheets of paper. Printing out a year’s worth of complaints and concerns about Facebook would probably take 15 billion. But luckily there aren’t too many examples of people shooting their laptops or, for Pete’s sake, each other over Facebook.

9. Google and Facebook are removing content in India due to religious censorship warnings, while the Iranian government is pretty much just blocking the whole internet to keep content it doesn’t like inaccessible to its people. In regard to piracy, the UK is testing out new protection measures, while Europeans are planning protests against limitations.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past two weeks: New Netflix Rival, Liz Lemon Problem, James Murdoch’s Fall, Amazon Plans, Ellen Stays, Internet Viewing Rising, Youth Spectatorship, News & Twitter, House Ending, Cable Beats Broadcast for Politics, Apple HDTV Specs, Super Bowl Stuff, ABC-Univision News Channel, Seeing Smash, Revolution Ratings, Race & Cable Ratings, Sky Developments.

Before the Super Bowl aired this past Sunday, host network NBC aired this gem of a promotional video.  (Go ahead and watch it if you haven’t already, or again.  I’ll wait.)

As Josef Adalian notes, this type of rousing “all hands on deck” campaign used to be de rigeur for networks from the 1970s to the 1990s, but its use here highlights what I see as one of NBC’s greatest strengths, and also its potential weakness.

To my mind, this number beautifully sums up what sets NBC apart from its broadcast competitors: the sense that all the folks at NBC are really just one big, happy family.  Even in the face of lagging ratings (they’re in a tie for fourth with Univision, at last count), an inability to find a hit, and faint praise for their entertainment chairman (“when you’re heading up the last-place network, the only direction to go is up”) who concedes that the network “had a really bad fall,” audiences, advertisers, and investors alike are still intrigued by the peacock network.  But why?

In part, I would argue, it’s due to NBC’s lasting image–and one they continue to bank on–evidenced in the “Brotherhood of Man” spot.  NBC still seems like the broadcast network of yore, one more closely resembling the Hollywood studio system than contemporary niche-marketed television.  The sort of place where everyone looks sort of familiar, because you’ve seen them (likely on another NBC series) before.  The sort of environment in which you can imagine the network’s stars getting together for lunch, or cracking jokes together in the hallways. This is not a new strategy, of course–one can recall with relative ease the “Must-See TV” crossover nights of the 1990s, and the fact that NBC stars of the era tended to move on to…other NBC series.  Seeing Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett move across the weekly schedule feels like part of the NBC legacy, ultimately, and knowing that so many current NBC stars are actually friends behind the scenes works to cement this notion in audiences.

Or maybe it’s because NBC is so firmly associated with New York’s 30 Rock (the place, not the series).  From The Today Show to Brian Williams’ Rock Center to the eponymous series, Rockefeller Plaza has become the physical and emotional home of the network, with the result that it’s not difficult to imagine Kristen Wiig, Jimmy Fallon, Ann Curry, and Bob Harper dancing around outside the building.  All of this combines to delight audiences, prompting tweets like, “NBC shows singing Brotherhood of Man gave me chills! I love this so much!” and “This is what my dreams look like.”  And, perhaps my personal favorite, “Guys remember that time all the best NBC shows got together and sang Brotherhood of Man and I basically died? Me too.”

But NBC’s reliance on this image might be its albatross rather than its saving grace.  As Myles McNutt has argued here on Antenna, the network’s reluctance to move beyond its own legacy is actually holding it back.  As Jason Mittell pointed out to me when I posted the video to Facebook, the fact that “Brotherhood of Man” is centered so firmly around 30 Rock (the series, not the place) overestimates the series’ popularity.  Indeed, the poorly rated series proves the point, exemplifying NBC’s “we’re all friends here” sensibility in the form of longtime NBC-friendly personalities (Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan) while overlooking the fact that the show (and the network) are in some fairly serious trouble according to traditional metrics.

Nonetheless, the video reveals what I see as the fundamental strength of the network–the fact that, as the song goes, these stars truly are “proud to be…right here on NBC.”  The song’s actual lyrics in that moment are “proud to be…in that fraternity,” which I would contend is also an apt metaphor for the insidery network.  And as thrilled as the stars are, many audience members are equally happy to see them hanging out together enjoying one another’s company.  As one Tweeter commented, “Now this is a frat I’d pledge.”  Indeed.  And the network is banking on the fact that our desire to join the party will keep us coming back as they struggle to regain a spot at the top.

What does Madonna’s half-time performance mean? It might mean progress. That a female pop singer with a decades-long career is at the center of such masculinist spectacle instead of a big-tent rock band is still worth mention. Of course, we’ve seen pop stars play the half-time show. Britney Spears, N*Sync, rapper Nelly, and R&B singer Mary J. Blige performed with Aerosmith for Super Bowl XXXV, though I find it upsetting that “Walk This Way”—a song Rick Rubin pushed on Run DMC—is still deployed as an anthem for generic intermingling. But Super Bowl XLVI began with Kelly Clarkson belting the national anthem, which suggested that female entertainers’ presence on the stage was welcome and not noteworthy unto itself.

Madonna isn’t even the lone viable female performer, or at least not the only substitute for Janet Jackson. Björk might be too much of a niche artist, but she has no problem captivating Stephen Colbert’s audience or delivering a riveting performance at the Olympics. If Beyoncé weren’t on maternity leave, she’d strap on gold shoulder pads and charge the field with her all-female band. Women dominate pop music. A number of them project Madonna’s sense of drive and self-possession, which may better reflect of the spirit of athletic achievement than a group of guitar-slinging white dudes. Pete Townsend doesn’t know how to be a star like Tom Brady does, but Madonna either wrote the playbook or stole it.

But what is Madonna’s performance about? Her dense semiotic play always makes that question too daunting to answer. I have no idea why “World Peace” was displayed in lights at the end of her performance, though it contradicts the gladiator regalia, which is entirely in keeping with Madonna’s politics. I recognize that performing “Like a Prayer” was a loaded moment, but only if you knew that her Pepsi ad was pulled from the Super Bowl because of the song’s supposedly blasphemous music video. But I liked seeing her dance with an army of warrior women, many of whom were women of color. I liked seeing her crack wise with her queer-coded male dancers. I liked seeing her stick her tongue out with (at?) LMFAO. And I especially liked seeing her fumble a dance step on a set of bleachers and strut past the moment in stiletto boots like it was nothing.

Yet I have trouble working through Madonna’s collaboration with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on “Gimme All Your Lovin,” the lead single off her forth-coming album MDNA. To some extent, including these transnational pop stars—Minaj is from Queens by way of Trinidad, M.I.A. grew up in England and is of Sri Lankan descent—helps destabilize the notion of a home team. This was further illustrated by the rappers’ uneasy pairing of cheerleading uniforms with ethnic headdresses. As a football non-fan, I didn’t see as strong a sense of regional pride that I saw mobilize around the Saints and the Packers in previous years. Neither Eli Manning nor Tom Brady seems to represent their teams’ geographic location so much as function as tradable branded commodities.

Ultimately, I encounter the same problem that bell hooks articulates in her 1992 essay “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister”. I want to read Minaj and M.I.A.’s participation as progressive and recognize their agency in this participation. But Madonna’s model of liberal feminism so centralizes the blonde white woman who profits from patriarchal power while two female rappers of color hold pom poms for her. This is especially surprising, given Minaj’s fascinating vocal play and “sea-parting” cameo in Kanye West’s “Monster”.

M.I.A. is also a scene stealer. Her confrontationally pregnant Grammy performance with West, T.I., Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne still feels revolutionary to me. As a fan, I’m fascinated and troubled by how negative reception of her subaltern signification intensifies as she gets further away from an imagined Sri Lanka. What is she getting at with the video to “Bad Girls”? Is it a response to Beyoncé’s “(Girls) Who Run the World” refracted through the ugly American Orientalist materialism that sunk Sex and the City 2 and reframed by the women the film condescends against? Maybe.

However, I did like that Madonna performed with Cee-Lo instead of simply providing a platform for him. Yet I wonder whose performance  we were watching. M.I.A. prompted NBC and the NFL to speak out against her for raising her middle finger. Flipping the bird may have been an empty gesture, especially after she apologized for it. But what is perhaps even more telling is that Madonna hasn’t responded.

Some of those failed Comedy Central shows have attempted to create comedy with a satiric edge more akin to Dave Chappelle than Tosh’s frat-boy humor. Unfortunately, those shows have done a lousy job of it, amounting to uninspired clones. Chocolate News was the “Black” Daily Show; of course, Mind of Mencia was the “Latino” Chappelle’s Show. But these exhibited none of Chappelle’s talent for comically exploiting audience anxieties about race and identity politics, which, it turns out, is more difficult than it looks. However outrageous his sketches might be (the first episode featured Clayton Bigsby, “Black White Supremacist”) Chappelle was doing some complicated cultural work, making meaningful comedy if not outright satire for an audience that was “post-PC” not because it dismissed identity politics, but had largely internalized them.

I’m not sure what the success of Tosh.0 tells us about the “post-PC” status of the Comedy Central audience—at least I can’t speculate on it right here at the moment. But I am anxious to continue to watch the latest program to follow Tosh.0, Key and Peele, which appears to be tentatively picking up the mantel of satiric sketch comedy that Chappelle abandoned, largely due to his concerns about what meanings audiences were making from it. But if the premiere episode of Key and Peele is any indication, it will do so in a much more restrained way. That premiere contained nothing so shocking as Chappelle’s Clayton Bigsby, and one reviewer, in fact, described the duo’s comedy as “genteel.”

What I thought was both interesting and funny about the show was how almost every segment centered on the performance of identity. When Key and Peele appeared onstage after the opening segment, they immediately told the audience they were both biracial, and made jokes based on the notion that they routinely “adjust our Blackness” depending on the company they are in. Although the first of these jokes was that they do this to terrify white people, the segment ended by suggesting that the “Blackest” performances occur when “white-sounding-black-guys” get together. Rather than keeping the focus on race, (and this is wise given the 18-34 male demo) most of the segments focused on the performance of masculinity. In the cold-open, the two “man/Black up” their phone conversations to save face in front of one another; in another, they recount to each other arguments with their wives or girlfriends, culminating in calling them “Bitch,” but always in supreme fear they will be caught doing so. A recurring bit in the show parodied Lil Wayne in prison, where he becomes very self-conscious about putting on his tough guy act.

For my money, the best segment of the show had actually been circulating on YouTube prior to the premiere, and already has an ancillary Twitter feed: #obamatranslated. That segment featured Peele doing a spot-on impression of Obama while Key serves as his “Anger Translator.” The lines for Peele’s Obama must have come verbatim from an assortment of his real comments, but Key’s impassioned and physically animated translations (such as shouting “I am not a Muslim” through a megaphone when the Tea Party is mentioned) served as the kind of catharsis, for me at least, that I’ve been wishing to get from a caricature of the president but no one (including Fred Armisen) has been able to get a good angle on Obama. It takes two, apparently.

Maybe Chappelle’s Show was a program for the Bush era, when it took something really significant to shock and it felt good when it did so. And maybe Key & Peele is a show for the Obama era, not because—like Obama—its stars are biracial or “genteel,” but because culture that intentionally shocks has become so mundane. The comforting reassurance of the sitcom has morphed into every episode Family Guy meeting its quota of “bad taste” by offending enough different “interest groups” that audiences are sure none of it can actually mean anything or matter to anyone. And however much South Park’s creators might like us to believe there’s a qualitative difference between the comic irreverence of Family Guy and South Park’s satire, I have to confess that what had once seemed to me an air of indignant outrage, now seems more like studied insouciance.

There are some things that should remain shocking. A congressman shouting “liar” at the president, for example. The suggestion that there is actually a “War on Christmas.” The fact that Mitt Romney is worth more money than the previous eight presidents combined. I hope Key & Peele choose to satirize this stuff, because I’ll be watching, and I hope some of the Tosh.0 crowd sticks around and does so, too.

The ATM metaphor seems to originate with a comment made by Lori McPherson, the executive vice president of global product management for Walt Disney Studios, during a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2012. In her discussion of how consumers might grasp the idea of cloud storage, McPherson remarked that ”The exciting thing for content in the cloud is any consumer who has used an ATM machine should intuitively understand what it is now.” McPherson, of course, is arguing that our familiarity with interfaces that enable us to conduct transactions also allow us to grasp how accessing movies and TV shows online might work. We know that we can go to virtually any ATM and obtain cash and conduct many other basic transactions.

Screenwriter John August expanded on this metaphor in a blog post that, in many ways, helped me to rethink some of my own assumptions about digital delivery. As August points out, this early experimental stage of cloud distribution might be compared to the first generation of ATMs, which introduced a number of “bugs” that banks and software writers needed to work out. August points out that initially some ATMs would take your card while others wouldn’t, and some demanded longer PINs than others, initially making it difficult to adjust for some consumers. I would add that we should also consider the degree to which consumers had to be “taught” to accept the practice of conducting transactions without the presence of a banker. Users had to be assured that an ATM transaction was as “real” as one completed by a person, which is probably why so many ATM networks were anthropomorphized (my bank featured Tillie the Teller). The issues of cloud ownership continue to be perplexing for many consumers who want the tangibility of physical media. But eventually consumers adjusted as ATM interfaces became more standardized, and Tillie was retired (and her bank has been swallowed up twice by even bigger banks).

August raises some other interesting complications. First, is the fact that money is “fungible.” All $20 bills are essentially equivalent, but movies are not identical, and one network or delivery service may have the movie you want, while other services don’t. As digital catalogs remain incomplete, I think this will be an ongoing problem. The backlash against Netflix over the last year has been due in large part because their streaming catalog features only a limited portion of our cinematic history and excludes most new releases. August describes this term as an industry need for differentiation. Each piece of hardware (or interface) needs to offer features that differentiate it from its competitors.

August goes on to argue that the ATM metaphor can help us to understand the ongoing struggle between the consumer’s desire for standardization and the industry’s need for differentiation and uses this conflict to illustrate why some early forms of digital delivery, including UltraViolet, seem likely to fail. As August implies, the confusion about digital copies leads consumers to feel uncertain about digital lockers and other unstable platforms like UltraViolet. These points all seem relevant to me, but I think that August’s exploration of the ATM metaphor could be taken even further, especially in light of some of the current complaints about banking. First, it’s not quite true that our ATM cards work “anywhere.” When my family was traveling abroad, some of our ATM cards didn’t work in Spain, forcing us to use others. Although there may have been other factors at play, it’s worth considering whether and how geography will matter in these new forms of cloud storage and distribution. More crucially, banks charge fees if you go outside of your “network” and, in at least one instance, sought to charge users a monthly fee just for using a debit card. Once we have paid for movies that are on the cloud, how will ownership of those movies be defined? Finally, what sorts of information are we providing to the media industries when we make these online rentals and purchases?

Mark Andrejevic’s recent Antenna post, in which he discusses the new regimes of privacy in the era of digital delivery, answers at least some of these questions. As Andrejevic points out, companies are allowed to collect vast amounts of data on these online purchases, and our digital trails–through tweets, Facebook updates, Netflix reviews, and purchases–often mean that consumers are doing much of the work of data compilation for these companies, practices that August associates with the term “targeted messaging.” Andrejevic acknowledges that users are, for the most part, voluntarily sacrificing their privacy.

The digital multiplex opens up any number of possibilities for distribution and storage models. As John Calkins of Sony observes, these delvery systems may provide a new home for special features and interactive media. But I think we are well served by thinking about the intersections between digital delivery of movies and ATMs, about the fantasies of personalization, convenience, and ubiquitous access, as well as the real costs of these new delivery models.

Whatever the reason, this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony crystallized its role during awards season: it’s a semi-insular, half-sober, self-congratulatory vocational celebration that embraces the paradox of a union made visible through millionaires.  The show kicked off with a strange example of this paradox as John Cryer, Demian Bichir, Emily Watson, and Jim Parsons proclaimed “I am an actor.” They were celebrating their profession while simultaneously seeming to argue against some unseen attack on their chosen field, surrounded by opulence but implying labor solidarity.

More than anything else, that which sets the Screen Actors Guild Awards apart from its red-carpeted brethren is its union celebration, a narrative that seemed especially emphasized during this year’s ceremony. At its base, the Screen Actors Guild is a professional union with a mission to “enhance actors’ working conditions, compensation and benefits and to be a powerful, unified voice on behalf of artists’ rights.” The first half of that mission statement sometimes gets lost in the much more visible second half, but this year’s awards emphasized the Guild’s efforts for working actors (not just the stars seated in the audience) with a “note of appreciation” to all the branches of the Guild, called the SAG story. In the video presentation that played during the first half of the ceremony, brief scenes from a variety of (mainstream, Hollywood, and critically-acclaimed) movies featured local actors and the big name directors who lauded their work. Ben Affleck described his Boston actors as “so perfect and so real” and Robert Redford speaks of two Georgia actresses who were “right on” with their characters in The Conspirator. The air of authenticity hangs heavy over this segment until the final “local” actor appeared: “Mike Tyson, Las Vegas.” The implications of this apparently comedic turn are unclear but seem to speak to this idea of the SAG awards having it both ways: movie stars and labor solidarity. Admittedly, I haven’t watched the SAG awards every year, but the union themes seemed especially pronounced this year, a year in which labor unions across the country faced threats and recalled strength from solidarity. SAG even created a number of brief videos affirming their support of labor last April, one of which I’ve included below.

1. One analyst is telling the Hollywood studios to defy exhibitor objections and make early video-on-demand releases of theatrical films happen. Funny or Die likes that idea so much, it’s making Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie available online even before it hits theaters. One theater chain has boycotted One for the Money not because of distribution objections; they’re mad that Lionsgate made a Groupon deal for tickets. (Just when you thought Lionsgate might not make an appearance in WAYM for once, boom, there it is.)

2. Distribution deals at Sundance have been modest but steady, as buyers forge on despite few of last year’s deals paying off. A partnership between a digital exhibitor, Cinedigm, and a veteran distributor, New Video, looks to make possible multi-platform deals for indie films, and there’s even now an automated way to submit indie films for distribution consideration. (Bonus link: Sundance awards were handed out last night.)

3. Independent films snagged 60 Oscar nominations (though you’ll see in the comments section of that article a debate over what qualifies as independent), but the French indie film Declaration of War got snubbed. Given Fox International’s new strategy of investing in foreign films made for their local markets, it seems the major studios could horn in on the foreign language film category someday soon. Once again, there won’t be many women at the Oscars for producing, directing and writing awards, as 2011 was a dismal year for female employment behind the camera. The imbalance is even worse in trailer voiceovers.

4. Tablet and e-reader sales are soaring, and about one-third of Americans own some form of e-reader now. And while e-book sales growth has been slower than many predicted, e-book lending is surging. While this seems to spell death for bookstores, some indie bookstores are growing, and African-American independent bookstores in particular illustrate that relationships with the local community are crucial to survival.

5. Musicians are increasingly objecting to streaming services carrying their music, though a Sony exec insists they don’t hurt download sales. Either way, we may end up seeing distribution windowing of music soon, and it will also be interesting to see where the RIAA’s lawsuit against ReDigi will go, as ReDigi insists it’s legal to buy and sell pre-owned iTunes music files.

6. Nintendo’s got some challenges ahead: Wii-related sales are plunging, the 3DS isn’t selling, and no one seems to know what the Wii U even is, plus the next Xbox will well surpass the Wii U in performance. Meanwhile, Microsoft managed to make a whole theme park out of the Kinect.

7. McDonald’s’ attempt to encourage #McDStories on Twitter went awry, but the #littlestories campaign has apparently gone smoother. More profoundly, an homophobic hate group’s anti-gay hashtag got brilliantly hijacked. Soon, the power of hashtag trending and hijacking will be available to right-to-left language users.

8. Comcast is tops in broadband speed, but has given up on the wireless business, while telecom companies are dumping DSL. A “Super Wi-Fi” network now exists in North Carolina using old analog TV spectrum (thus it’s technically not wi-fi) to send signals across a further range, but its future prospects are in question thanks to the spectrum bill in Congress.

9. Google seems determined to violate its traditional “don’t be evil” standards lately: the company has been accused of poaching Apple employees, conspiring with Apple and other companies to keep wages low, facilitating illegal pharmaceutical websites, misrepresenting its privacy policy and trampling on privacy rights, and detrimentally limiting access to the Google Maps platform.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past two weeks: Social Growth, NAB Criticizes TWC, Stealing Downton Abbey, Leno Complaint, Netflix News, More Netflix News, Defending Episodic Viewing, Live & Streaming Audiences Diverge, TV Nudity Clause, Modern Family Placement, Fans Affect Revenge, TV Everywhere Revenue, Piracy Fight, Prime-Time GH, Letterman Booker Fired, NBC’s Flaws, New TV Analysis Site.