Self-referentiality is a staple of 30 Rock's satire. Yet, I almost needed a "drop" and a spinning top to resurface from this live episode's multi-layered meta-humor.
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Chai Boys, Nipples and “Breaking”: Meta-Humor on 30 Rock
Mr. Draper’s Wild Ride: “Tomorrowland” and Mad Men’s Season in Review
As Mad Men's fourth season comes to a close, we look back on what Antenna contributors have had to say, and how it reflects on the eventful finale.
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What Do You Think? The Chilean Mine Rescue
The rescue of a group of Chilean miners this week has become a media phenomenon. We want your opinion on it all.
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Anti-Social? The Classic Aesthetic of The Social Network
The biggest fiction in the popular press about the film dubbed "the Facebook movie" is that it is, in fact, about Facebook.
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A Practical Magic: Christine O’Donnell’s Invocations of Witchcraft
By now you've surely heard the news: Christine O'Donnell is not a witch. Merely scoffing at her response to this brouhaha, though, means passing up an opportunity to understand how she constructs herself and her appeal as a righteous outsider.
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“Those Kinds of Shenanigans”: Mad Men’s “Blowing Smoke”
This season, Mad Men, and its mad men and women, have been on a quest to redefine what advertising is, dramatizing the radical changes that the field underwent during the 1960s.
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Simpsonic Business as Usual?
Last night, the Banksy-directed opening credit sequence “couch gag” for The Simpsons took us into the sweatshop behind the franchise. As executive producer Al Jean noted, “This is what you get when you outsource.”
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What Are You Missing? Sept 26-Oct 9
Ten (or more) media industry stories you might have missed recently.
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The Much(?) Anticipated Return of Caprica
Despite an appealing sense of inevitable narrative momentum, a long but more importantly uncertain wait makes it hard to feel excitement and anticipation for the mid-season return of this Battlestar spin-off.
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Over the Rainbow: Selling the National Lottery in Post Celtic Tiger Ireland
In a cultural climate in which many now pick up a newspaper or turn on the nightly news with a strong sense of foreboding, a distinctive new ad has appeared in cinemas, run before every feature film I’ve gone to see in recent weeks.
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Glee as Integrated Musical (Finally!)
“Grilled Cheesus” is one of the few Glee episodes to not only establish, but also to play with, the opposition between dream world and real world in the musical.
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End of an Era: NBC Post-Zucker?
Zucker never managed to balance a love for the potential of television with a love for the bottom line. Indeed, his job description only expected the latter, but the great ones have managed to do both.
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Back from the Brink: The Return of Don Draper
In "Chinese Wall," barriers between personal and professional lives continue to erode, and Mad Men's men begin to wrestle with these costs.
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Report From: Flow 2010 (#2)
Given that Erin so eloquently captured the buzz of the scholarly conversations this weekend, I’m going to focus on some of the roundtables that I found most intellectually stimulating.
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Report From: Flow 2010
The ability to facilitate dialogue not only within roundtables, but among them, seems to me the greatest strength of the Flow conference model.
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Arthur Penn and Live Television Drama
Director Arthur Penn, who passed away last week, is best remembered for his Broadway plays and Hollywood films, but his impressive work in television's live anthology dramas has been neglected.
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