I don't like showing up this late on the blog, but due to factors including
* class;I'm only getting around to blogging now.
* getting what must be my fourth cold in two months;
* what can only be described as the Unfortunate Incident of the Apple Juice in the Nighttime, which has rendered my space bar completely inoperable;
Sorry.
Here's some stuff to look at it:
* Lord of the Rings as Property Law.
* Alternate universe baseball.
* Alan Kirby on the death of postmodernism and the birth of pseudomodernism.
Postmodernism conceived of contemporary culture as a spectacle before which the individual sat powerless, and within which questions of the real were problematised. It therefore emphasised the television or the cinema screen. Its successor, which I will call pseudo-modernism, makes the individual’s action the necessary condition of the cultural product. Pseudo-modernism includes all television or radio programmes or parts of programmes, all ‘texts’, whose content and dynamics are invented or directed by the participating viewer or listener (although these latter terms, with their passivity and emphasis on reception, are obsolete: whatever a telephoning Big Brother voter or a telephoning 6-0-6 football fan are doing, they are not simply viewing or listening).* The Valve, re: Deadwood, The Wire, and The Sopranos: What interests me is that, whatever their differences, all three of these shows elicit our sympathy and concern for brutal and violent people, mostly male, operating outside the law. What’s that about?
* Infinite Thought announces a new competition: "Down with Existing Society!" These are the terms:
Each and every one should express in a succinct manner his or her rationally hostile feeling about the current state of affairs.I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to put together an entry right now, but if I did I'm certain it would probably have a lot to do with our sympathy for brutal and violent people, mostly male, operating outside the law.
Or else, you know, this:
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