(no subject)
1. Vidders are even more impressive to me now that I've spent well over fourteen hours making a 3'10 slide show set to music featuring Marlboro, Abercrombie & Fitch, Coca Cola, Al Franken, Tiffany's, Spam, McDonald's, Burger King, Sesame Street, Channel 13, FedEx, Snickers, Harrison Ford, Sting, and Akira Kurosawa. The result is lame but, I hope, entertaining on the first day of class, and anyway the students will probably feel compelled to laugh. Those of you who do this well, I bow in awe to you. At least I'll probably be a bit faster in the future, as I learned a lot about iMovie in the filmmaking process.
2. Short reviews:
Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, eds. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, & Jane Shattuc: This hefty anthology of current scholarship in popular culture is engaging, reasonably wide-ranging, and reflects an interesting mix of approaches to popular culture, from odd participant-observer stuff about thrift stores to how adolescent girls in Australia use video cameras to tell the stories of their lives. The essays on karaoke and zines both brought LJ to mind, because they raise issues of the point of cultural production: Is it to make Art? Is it to be heard? Is it to speak, regardless of who hears? What is the role of normal folk in a culture that has professionalized the production of music and other forms of art? I liked a lot of the essays; topics include: Elayne Rapping on soap operas; adult baseball collectors (the essay is a bit crude in its psychoanalysis, but still interesting); Christian chastity magazines; Stephen Duncombe on zines; Robert Drew on karaoke; Holocaust humor; Morrissey and skinheads; "As Canadian as Possible..." about Canadian TV (focusing especially on Due South, for those of you who care); popular memories of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which has excellent use of primary sources in arguing that the "Uncle Tom" we know is not Stowe's creation but that of the multiple unauthorized adaptations, some pro-slavery, that played on American and other stages. Charles Weigl's "Introducing Horror" is both a theoretical discussion of the pleasures of horror and the horrors of pleasure (sorry, couldn't help myself) and a horror story, too. I loved it. Though some of the essays skirt close to self-parody, there's very little incomprehensible theory, and that easily skipped over by going to the next subject. The only essay that I affirmatively disliked was about The Wizard of Oz as a lesbian fantasy. Not that I don't see the argument, but the style is deliberately provocative -- the author, Alexander Doty, says flat-out you're a homophobe if you disagree with his reading. This is a definite buy for anyone interested in pop culture scholarship.
Philip J. Hilts, Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation: Hilts, a NYT reporter, has produced an engaging history of the regulation of food and drugs in America. His descriptions of the scandalous situations that led to the creation of the FDA and the gradual expansion of its powers ought to make you see red -- not to mention the pictures of the women scarred and blinded by toxic mascara -- and Hilts makes a forceful case for the role of government regulation in keeping food and drugs safe and effective. Unfortunately, the story ends on a downer, with budget crunches and the DSHEA, Dietary Supplement & Health Education Act, which essentially stripped the FDA of power to regulate supplements even though most people believe that supplement claims are regulated and therefore verified. Though Hilts doesn't mention it, the DC Circuit in recent years has also attempted to hamstring the FDA's regulations on First Amendment grounds.
Richard Reynolds, Super Heroes: accommodatingly recommended this for its material on the X-Men, and since he taught a class in comic books I figure he knows what he's doing. A lot of the observations are pretty obvious if you think about them, but Reynolds is a clear writer and sometimes it's easier to nod along than do all the thinking yourself. One thing I hadn't thought about was the observation that, since superheroes function to maintain the status quo -- Tempus episodes of Lois & Clark aside, they generally don't change the world in big ways, but rather stop it from ending/changing -- they are structurally the antagonists, and the supervillains are the protagonists who initiate action. Reynolds points out that the comic companies are more protective of their supervillains' images than of their heroes. A nice quick read.
2. Short reviews:
Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, eds. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, & Jane Shattuc: This hefty anthology of current scholarship in popular culture is engaging, reasonably wide-ranging, and reflects an interesting mix of approaches to popular culture, from odd participant-observer stuff about thrift stores to how adolescent girls in Australia use video cameras to tell the stories of their lives. The essays on karaoke and zines both brought LJ to mind, because they raise issues of the point of cultural production: Is it to make Art? Is it to be heard? Is it to speak, regardless of who hears? What is the role of normal folk in a culture that has professionalized the production of music and other forms of art? I liked a lot of the essays; topics include: Elayne Rapping on soap operas; adult baseball collectors (the essay is a bit crude in its psychoanalysis, but still interesting); Christian chastity magazines; Stephen Duncombe on zines; Robert Drew on karaoke; Holocaust humor; Morrissey and skinheads; "As Canadian as Possible..." about Canadian TV (focusing especially on Due South, for those of you who care); popular memories of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which has excellent use of primary sources in arguing that the "Uncle Tom" we know is not Stowe's creation but that of the multiple unauthorized adaptations, some pro-slavery, that played on American and other stages. Charles Weigl's "Introducing Horror" is both a theoretical discussion of the pleasures of horror and the horrors of pleasure (sorry, couldn't help myself) and a horror story, too. I loved it. Though some of the essays skirt close to self-parody, there's very little incomprehensible theory, and that easily skipped over by going to the next subject. The only essay that I affirmatively disliked was about The Wizard of Oz as a lesbian fantasy. Not that I don't see the argument, but the style is deliberately provocative -- the author, Alexander Doty, says flat-out you're a homophobe if you disagree with his reading. This is a definite buy for anyone interested in pop culture scholarship.
Philip J. Hilts, Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation: Hilts, a NYT reporter, has produced an engaging history of the regulation of food and drugs in America. His descriptions of the scandalous situations that led to the creation of the FDA and the gradual expansion of its powers ought to make you see red -- not to mention the pictures of the women scarred and blinded by toxic mascara -- and Hilts makes a forceful case for the role of government regulation in keeping food and drugs safe and effective. Unfortunately, the story ends on a downer, with budget crunches and the DSHEA, Dietary Supplement & Health Education Act, which essentially stripped the FDA of power to regulate supplements even though most people believe that supplement claims are regulated and therefore verified. Though Hilts doesn't mention it, the DC Circuit in recent years has also attempted to hamstring the FDA's regulations on First Amendment grounds.
Richard Reynolds, Super Heroes: accommodatingly recommended this for its material on the X-Men, and since he taught a class in comic books I figure he knows what he's doing. A lot of the observations are pretty obvious if you think about them, but Reynolds is a clear writer and sometimes it's easier to nod along than do all the thinking yourself. One thing I hadn't thought about was the observation that, since superheroes function to maintain the status quo -- Tempus episodes of Lois & Clark aside, they generally don't change the world in big ways, but rather stop it from ending/changing -- they are structurally the antagonists, and the supervillains are the protagonists who initiate action. Reynolds points out that the comic companies are more protective of their supervillains' images than of their heroes. A nice quick read.