Category: Critical/Cultural Studies
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The Selling of Scientology
Blink and you missed it, it seems. For this past Super Bowl XLVIII, the commercials, as always, were a draw and a source of conversation and controversy. And while everyone is talking about Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” ad, and the right-wing reaction against it, a different ad caught my eye. Here we have another attempt by The…
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The Bonkers Exorcist II: The Heretic
To use the words of my partner, this movie is just bonkers. Continuing the reporting of our initial thoughts on the Feminist Tensions in Exorcism Cinema, we come to the sequel to the horror blockbuster that started it all, The Exorcist. Coming out four years after the blockbuster that supposedly scared audiences into sickness and shock, Exorcist…
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Adventure Time, BMO and the Networked Self
Chris Olson wrote this initial take on the representation of BMO in the cartoon series Adventure Time for a class paper. In the paper he argues that BMO\’s representation in the series demonstrates the fluidity and hyperreality of identity and the idea that we come to develop our sense of self via our interactions with our online…
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The Demon Within: Tensions in Exorcism Cinema
This year, while concluding the virtual world television project with Pooky Amsterdam and continuing projects on gender and media engaging (such as My Little Pony and cross-gendered media engagings), I will also be working with Christopher J. Olson on a number of projects. One of the new ones is a consideration of the representation of women and feminist discourses in…
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Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Female Sexuality in Spirited Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Coraline
Christopher J. Olson presents his MPCA 2013 Conference talk on the portrayals of girls exploring their emergent sexuality in the coming-of-age stories Spirited Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Coraline. The films’ depictions of the girls’ experiences present positive representations for girls to embrace their agency, their sexuality, and their identity. via Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Female Sexuality…
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“Let me in or I’ll get physical”: Virtual bands, Vocaloids, and the Networked Self
So for my first official post, I thought I would share this short paper that I wrote for a class on New Media and Culture, taught by Dr. Paul Booth at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. The paper looks at how virtual bands and vocaloid performers represent what Zizi Papacharissi refers to as the networked…
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Superheroes of Religions, Legends
As originally first reported for the Clearance Bin Review, and as a preparation for the panel I am on this Wednesday night, November 6th, at Dominican University, I wrap up my three part series on superheroes (part 1 and part 2) with this entry, in which I attempt to answer this question: do religious figures and the heroes of…
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A World of Superheroes
As a lead up to a panel I will be on about superheroes and religion, I am reprinting here a series originally created for Clearance Bin Review. This series focuses on one of the current driving forces in American pop culture: superheroes. In the previous article, I focused on working out just what exactly is a…
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The Problem with Vigilantes
I have to rant. About Zimmerman. About superheroes. About our culture. I was at the gym this morning, on the treadmill, and the wall-mounted televisions were set to a channel called Cozi TV, a channel that is all about syndication and showing you the television programming you grew up on — the kind of stuff…
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