Comedy Central has long courted young men with disconcerting portrayals of women, but several of its programs this spring provide small indications of a different politics of representation.
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Archive for February, 2014
“Mother Daughter Sister Wife”: Gender on Comedy Central
Olympic commercials: A quick lesson in corporate ownership
it’s not enough to talk about individual companies trading in on the Olympics: many of the corporate sponsors are making money off of other companies making money off of the Olympics
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A “Look Back” At What Exactly?
My Facebook "Look Back" video was so curiously curated, uneventful, and unrepresentative of how I perceive my Facebook use that I’m still thinking about it weeks after it was generated.
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Sucks to Be Ru: America’s new Russian Other
The unending string of hilarious #SochiProblems and daily stories of government gluttony have positioned Russia as a sort of shadow version of the American Way of Life.
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Julie D’Acci on the Emergent Qualities of Sublimating Circuits
Does circulating information influence, inflect, or inhibit material relations in empirically verifiable ways? And do strategic interventions in the super-structural sphere actually promote sustainable social effects?
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My TV Valentine: Big Block Sing Song
"Part Flight of the Conchords, part sincere, part ethnographic in their understanding of how kids’ heads work, and funny, relaxing, and ear-wormy, they are my favorite thing on television."
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A Love That Can’t Be Denied: Disney’s Muppets
I always thought I would remain a Muppet curmudgeon, raving about authenticity and the good ol’ days of Jim Henson Muppet Mania. But it turns out I’m just a fool in love, unable to deny my heart what it wants: more Muppets.
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Bring a Guest: Hall in the Ideological House
Memories of the late Stuart Hall.
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Television that I Love: A Valentine to Unpredictable Melodrama
Sometimes love surprises us; I never thought I’d love Sons of Anarchy.
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“She Loves You”: The Beatles, Girl Culture, and The Ed Sullivan Show
The Beatles appealed to girls through familiar and comforting girl-group discourse, but they also became the “bad boys” who worried parents. Such rebelliousness, however, was managed through androgyny, not conventional masculinity.
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Bollywood, Hollywood — Trollywood?
Somewhere in the British/American relationship, a distinct genre of television has originated, which I propose to call “Trollywood.”
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What’s a Two Year-Old Girl To Do (or Watch)?
On the heels of some binge-viewing, Jonathan Gray discusses Disney Junior’s three female-centered original series
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Fort McMoney: Media for the Age of Oil
Melissa Aronczyk discusses Fort McMoney, an interactive web documentary designed to raise awareness of the conflicts among industrial, political and environmental interests in the development of oil.
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