If the development of a symbiotic relationship between actors and products in reality television is the casting director’s responsibility, then who is excluded by Absolut Vodka’s sponsorship of RuPaul's Drag Race?
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Archive for December, 2012
An Absolut Drag
Django Unchained As Post-Race Product
Django Unchained functions as a product of post-race logic that paradoxically deals with a culturally specific thematic--slavery--while making the central storyline so universal slavery functions as a terribly horrific backdrop for a love story.
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Archiving Blackness: The DVD and Cultural Memory
Flipping through the post-Christmas sales, I'm reminded of how the TV show on DVD has become an ubiquitous part of our culture. But it's those series or seasons of shows that are not for sale that tell a narrative of what's worthy of archiving within our popular culture and collective memory.
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A Merry Queer Christmas: Queering Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph was created when gayness as identity was rarely represented on screens, instead shunned off into the shadowy world of coded meanings waiting to be activated by knowing readers or “appearing” as semiotic excess waiting to be queered through the practice of camp.
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Star Trek into (Fandom’s) Darkness
If Star Trek was once a foundation for the idea of taking fans seriously, then today it might simply be a sad commentary on fandom’s token function within the industry, another form of “crowdsourcing,” a destructive marriage based on the contradictory feelings of mutual dependence and contempt.
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What Are You Missing? Dec 9-23
What Are You Missing? links back on 2012.
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Crowdsourcing as Consultation: Branding History at Canada’s Museum of Civilization (Part II)
As the Canadian Museum of Civilization transforms into the Canadian Museum of History, it seems that meaningful conversations about historical issues that are actually formative of Canadian culture are less compelling than the $25 million incentive that comes with the tunnel vision of the Ministry of Heritage.
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Crowdsourcing as Consultation: Branding History at Canada’s Museum of Civilization (Part I)
Canada’s sesquicentennial is eagerly anticipated by Canada’s Conservative government, which is planning a series of commemorative events. The trouble is, these events are contrived to commemorate the Conservative government far more than the nation’s glorious (or inglorious) pasts.
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On Radio: Driveway Moment
The Abigael Affair crystallizes the challenges of NPR’s campaign to re-create itself as a fully modern and digital multi-platform news, information, and culture channel, while maintaining its distinctive affective character.
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Nick Moms vs. NickMom
Nick Jr.'s new NickMom lineup fits with its brand but ends up missing the mark with a core segment of its audience, highlighting the ambivalence surrounding contemporary representations of motherhood.
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Report from the Atlanta Media Industries Forum
Christine Becker attended a media industry forum at Georgia State University and left with thoughts about challenges for both the media industries and academia in Atlanta.
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Feminist. Media. Criticism. Is. (Part 2)
A manifesta for feminist media criticism.
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Feminist. Media. Criticism. Is. (Part 1)
I want to do what I can to help keep this thing—feminist media studies—going for as long as it’s needed. I want to be the feminist media scholar I want to see in the world.
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What Are You Missing? Nov 25 – Dec 8
Ten (or more) media industry news items you might have missed recently.
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Episodic: What Games Learned From TV
While episodic gaming is a new frontier for how developers make games, it is perhaps an even larger divergence in terms of how we play games.
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