Transform Me, Please…
by: Tara McPherson / University of Southern California
I have to confess that the chance to ‘look ten years younger’ in ten days has its appeal.
Interview: Jason Reich, writer on The Daily Show
Chris Lucas / FLOW Staff
by: Chris Lucas / FLOW Staff
Jason Reich: “I think that part of the reason what we do is so frequently perceived as ‘liberal’ is because we’re talking about the news, and these days, the people making the news are, by and large, conservatives…”
Domestic Reality TV
by: Allison McCracken / DePaul University
I have finally found a reality program that I can watch without cringing with embarrassment for the participants and/or becoming enraged at the producers. Not surprisingly, it’s trailing in the ratings and on the brink of cancellation.
Putting the ‘Syn’ into Synergy
by: Eileen R. Meehan / Louisiana State University
I beat the Rugrats to Paris by two years. In December, 1998, I was on an Air France flight from Houston to Paris. Rosy-fingered Eos was rising over Europe and our French flight attendants were distributing breakfasts. In the middle of the tray was a large container of applesauce whose foil cover was emblazoned with the faces of the Rugrats plugging their first movie.
Global Advertising Data SOX-ed up
by: John Sinclair / Victoria University, Melbourne Those of us with an orientation towards political economy and an interest in how the advertising industry propels media development have lost a lot of wind from our sails with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was passed by U.S. Congress in July, 2002. The purpose of the Act is to protect investors from financial […]
Read moreBlack Zen Masters in the Dojo of Reality Television
by: L.S.Kim / University of California, Santa Cruz
Typically in reality television, the host is white – famous examples include Jeff Probst in Survivor, Ryan Seacrest in American Idol, and Regis Philbin in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? whose through-the-roof ratings jump-started the reality programming watershed. But in America’s Next Top Model, The Road to Stardom, and Pimp My Ride, the hosts are African American and already stars.
Rethinking the Digital Age
by: Faye Ginsburg / New York University
It is 2005 and the term “The Digital Age” is as naturalized for many as a temporal marking of the dominance of a certain kind of technological regime (“the digital”) as is the “Paleolithic’s” association with certain kinds of stone tools.
Women Watching Sports
by: Janet Staiger / University of Texas at Austin
I knew something had changed when I called my then-mid-70-year-old mom in Omaha several years ago on a Saturday afternoon before Christmas to ask her about clothing sizes for gifts and she responded: “I can’t talk now. Texas is beating Nebraska for the Big XII Championship.”
Going Through the Paces
by: Mimi White / Northwestern University
I have been thinking about the pace of television, and wondering if I even know what the pace of television is.
TV Legal Drama Speaks to U.S. Citizens
by: Mary Beth Haralovich / University of Arizona
In the early 1970s, Dirty Harry famously took on the issue of constitutional rights for US citizens suspected of crimes. Clint Eastwood’s cop movie launched the popular narrative enigma that would influence decades of television legal drama . . .
The Boob Tube
by: Heather Hendershot / Queens College CUNY
“It’s like Jell-O on springs!” Jack Lemmon declares as he ogles Marilyn Monroe’s fleshy derriere in Some Like It Hot (1959). Lemmon himself is in drag, and watching this film recently for the umpteenth time, I am struck again by its strange combination of heterosexual prurience and queer exuberance. I am also struck by Monroe’s plumpness.
Media Left Out?
by: Thomas Streeter / University of Vermont
Never has the need for media reform been more obvious, more urgent, or — judging by everything from Moveon.org surveys to downloads of the Jon Stewart Crossfire clip — more popular.