culture

I've been enjoying the Going to the Show project of the University of North Carolina, which documents the moviegoing experience of the the early to mid-twentieth century. The movie industry sparked some new ways people enjoyed leisure time, and had a profound influence on popular culture. This site has many interesting articles about how and where people enjoyed movies, and some of the changes they brought to contemporary life.

One aspect hadn't occurred to me before: how might the moviegoing experience had been different in the pre-civil rights, Jim Crow era of rigid racial separation of all aspects of life in the Deep South. I knew that many films were edited to remove entire sequences with black performers, and that black patrons were usually forced to sit in hot balconies that were entered differently than the rest of the theatre. Read more »

Most people have figured out that Time's "person of the year" has little to do with reality and everything to do with marketing, so I hate to even bring it up. And I hate having to nail it down to one person, because there are so many wonderful things being done in both big and little ways, by so many interesting and driven people. Here are a few that deserve recognition, in my book: Read more »

Television is much less restrictive about language than it was a generation ago. It is not uncommon to hear words that never would have been used in polite conversation in days past, even on the commercial channels. Cable and Premium channels are even worse; HBO seems to have a minimum quota of vulgarities per hour, usually quite gratuitous in their usage.

Let's go back about forty years ago, to an utterance that most found shocking and unbelievably vulgar, given its context, even though none of the words used we objectionable by themselves, it was just the way they were used.

And even then, it was disgusting only if you let your mind put two and two together, and come up with some rather vulgar imagery. As Frank Zappa put it, "What's the ugliest part of your body? I think its your mind." Read more »

I recently watched all three seasons of Deadwood in some marathon viewing sessions. Man, what an outstanding series, merging real-life personalities with a fine narrative.

One of the things that struck me was the use of profanity. One of the rules for HBO seems to be that the word fuck must be used at least ten times an hour; I guess they feel it differentiates themselves from dull old network TV, but it usually comes off as an unnecessary affectation to me, as most people I know don't talk that way, or think it is the mark of a cultured person. But when you're talking about life on the frontier in the 1870s, it seems appropriate, and adds to the authenticity. Read more »

A fascinating way of dealing with enemies and unpleasant subjects; represent them as big eyed, cute little girls. This is the way of moe comics, a Japanese cultural phenomenon I read about in an excellent article from io9 (highly recommended).

Do these stories trivialize political issues and problems, or do they make them accessible to generalized debate by putting a softer face on them? I go with the latter view, especially since comics are the modern day court jesters; they have the freedom to have a little fun with their subjects while at the same time driving home moral lessons. Read more »