Category Archives: Popular Culture

Unmaskings

Posted on June 23, 2006 by Timothy Burke

One of the interesting things about the most successful super-hero films to date is the relative extent to which they discard the convention of the secret identity while trying still to play with the fetishistic character of masks and costumes. … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 14 Comments

Middlebrow Video Game Criticism

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Timothy Burke

Unfogged links to a Chuck Klosterman essay in which he asks why there isn’t more mainstream video game criticism in various newspapers and magazines. I’ve thought about this issue myself. There’s a huge difference between what a magazine like Entertainment … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Popular Culture | 9 Comments

Kaavya Viswanathan, Christopher Paolini, and Remixing

Posted on April 28, 2006 by Timothy Burke

The first few examples that I read of Kaavya Viswanathan’s alleged plagiarism, I thought, “Well, that’s not so bad, or that a bit ambiguous.” Then I saw more and more examples and the ambiguity went away. Nor, like just about … Continue reading →

Posted in Intellectual Property, Popular Culture | 11 Comments

Seers of Suburbia

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Timothy Burke

The double-irony of the Atlantic Monthly’s April 2006 letters page replies to Caitlin Flanagan’s take on the alleged “oral sex epidemic” among America’s teenagers was pretty intense when I got around to reading it this week. I didn’t comment directly … Continue reading →

Posted in Domestic Life, Politics, Popular Culture | 24 Comments

Battlestar Galactica Season Ender

Posted on March 14, 2006 by Timothy Burke

Avert your eyes if you haven’t seen it yet! Reading over some of the fan sites, especially the official forum, it’s amazing to see the stark division of opinion on the episode, with about half loving it and half really, … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 4 Comments

History of the Future, Spring 2006

Posted on January 11, 2006 by Timothy Burke

Week 1 January 16/18 The Construction of Time Overview of course Lecture: Time and the Future in Human Societies Film clips Week 2 January 23/25 Millennialism and Eschatology in Medieval Europe Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium The Book … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 15 Comments

The Consequences of Representation

Posted on December 21, 2005 by Timothy Burke

John Holbo was kind enough to pick up on my posting about tropes for my Image of Africa course this semester and add a new item, a really interesting one: the extent to which imaginative fictions feel comfortable inventing countries, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

Pop Culture Roundup

Posted on December 19, 2005 by Timothy Burke

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the film itself. I was a bit surprised: the movie felt oddly flat. Perhaps because it suffered from the same problem that the first two Harry Potter films had, an overly literal approach … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 4 Comments

Department of Bad Ideas

Posted on October 21, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Maybe in any event the United States would have ended up isolated at UNESCO’s latest attempt to put global popular culture under the thumb of state sovereignities, but the Bush Administration’s earlier contempt for all multilateral processes hasn’t made it … Continue reading →

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Geekout

Posted on September 11, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Some things that are on my geeky mind: 1) Avatar is just damned amazingly good. Kid-equipped people should be making it preferential viewing. Non-kid people should also consider watching. The episode that really convinced me it was the kind of … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 9 Comments