What does HBO's deal with Sesame Workshop mean for Cookie, HBO, PBS, and their audiences?
Read more »
Current Events
Sesame Street’s New Landlord
A Very Uneasy Death: Social Media and Cecil the Lion
The reactions to Cecil the Lion's murder on social media illustrates how it is not only possible but essential to fight for justice and against exploitation on multiple fronts.
Read more »
Walling the Garden and Putting the App into Apple Music
Tim Anderson muses on Apple Music providing a walled garden of goods that, though they could not have imagined it to be successful, sounds great and has nothing revolutionary about it.
Read more »
Unpacking Rust, Race, and Player Reactions to Change
This spring, game designers of Rust courted controversy by assigning players unchangeable, racialized avatars. Adrienne Shaw unpacks how game design helped produce some of that player outrage.
Read more »
David Letterman: So Long to Our TV Pal
Bradley Schauer argues that David Letterman’s brilliant late night talk show career would have been a nonstarter in today’s television landscape.
Read more »
The Wire, Freddie Gray, and Collective Social Action
Why hasn’t The Wire, which showed us how structural racism and an abusive police department defines black life in Baltimore, translated into collective social action? Why are there only thousands in the streets? Where are the millions of fans of The Wire? And why aren’t they supporting black folks in Baltimore?
Read more »
The Peabody Awards and Dialogic Declarations of Value
Media and cultural studies is right to be concerned about singular, monologic declarations of value, but there’s something to be learned from the Peabodys’ mode of deciding upon value dialogically.
Read more »
“Aren’t We Such a Fun, Approachable Dynasty?”: Clinton’s Presidential Announcement, Cable News, and the Candidate Challenge
Chuck Tryon examines the reception of Clinton’s announcement video to explore the role of cable news in producing election coverage that sidesteps questions about how candidates will actually govern.
Read more »
The Jinx as Vigilante Documentary
Supporting vigilante documentary as an acceptable approach to seeking "justice" is a potentially dangerous trend.
Read more »
Why NBC’s The Wiz Makes Sense Even As It Doesn’t Make Sense
Alfred Martin asks why NBC turned to The Wiz over The Music Man as its next televised musical in this particular historical moment?
Read more »
Mario is Mobile!: Or (Nintendo’s Platform Panic?)
Nintendo's move into mobile gaming signals a shift in strategy, but one carefully articulated in order to—for now—maintain the company's gaming philosophy.
Read more »
On Tim Burton’s Dumbo
Last week's announcement that Tim Burton will direct a remake of Disney's Dumbo is a reminder that in Burton's career we witness the convergence of the aesthetic logic of allusionism and the corporate logic of franchising.
Read more »
What to Make of the Historic Net Neutrality Win
The FCC’s new Open Internet rules are a major come-from-behind victory for net neutrality. How in the world did this actually get done? And what exactly happens now?
Read more »
Selma, “Bloody Sunday,” and the Most Important TV Newsfilm of the 20th Century
The most consequential TV newsfilm of the 20th century records the beating of voting rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. It led directly to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act. With the 50th anniversary commemorations of “Bloody Sunday,” network and cable news channels...
Read more »
The Walking Deadwood? The Western and the Post-Apocalyptic Tale
Can The Walking Dead be read as an unconscious desire to return to the frontier, or a cautionary warning about the destructive path of the modern world?
Read more »
