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December 31, 2003

2003 MLA Round-Up

I'm nearly recovered from my adventures on the left coast just in time to start thinking about spring semester in specific detail. The temporal dislocation associated with air travel and the self-indulgence of dining out are still taking their toll (and of course I'll be attending a New Years party tonight).

First, the food was wonderful. I ate lots of seafood, and especially enjoyed all the yummy sushi I ate. Probably my favorite was a roll with salmon and thinly-sliced lemon on the outside (unfortunately I can't remember the restaurant). Good stuff, though.

Despite all of the usual professional requirements that come with MLA, I enjoyed catching up with old friends and had a chance to meet several bloggers for the first time, including Steven Shaviro and Kathleen Fitzpatrick.

It was the first time I'd met someone I knew only through blogging, and while I didn't feel terribly self-conscious about it, especially after George's positive experiences meeting other bloggers and my own experiences (at least once, quite positive) meeting people through online dating services, I did feel a certain degree of nervous anticipation. I think George is right when he says that

sometimes the richest exchanges are the ones that happen face-to-face, and those are the very exchanges that are absent from the epistolary record. And so it is with blogging.
I also had the good fortune of meeting up with several old friends from my recent (and not-so-recent) gigs at Georgia State, Purdue, Illinois, and Georgia Tech. It's nice to see the progress that many of my friends and colleagues have made over the years, and I look forward to continuing those conversations in future MLA conferences, if not in the blogosphere.

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December 30, 2003

Back in the A-T-L

Just returned from the MLA conference in San Diego where I had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting several of the people whose blogs I read. Right now, after a long flight, I'm very tired, so I'll save the details for later. Possible continued light blogging as I begin gearing up for spring semester (which starts one week from today at Georgia Tech).

Posted by chuck at 9:11 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 26, 2003

Sounds, Images, and Words

A few things I've been listening to, watching, and reading in recent days:

I'd also like to address the ongoing discussion between "Winston" and the Wordherders (who as George illustrates are far from a group of "incestuous Marxists"), in part because I feel like the issues that have been raised (regarding conversations between conservative and liberal and/or leftist academics) are important and deserve my full attention, but MLA is a more pressing concern right now.

Posted by chuck at 3:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

MLA Blogger Meetup

Like George (and lots of other folks--too busy packing for permalinks), I'll be attending the MLA conference in (hopefully) sunny San Diego, and I'd enjoy meeting up with fellow bloggers. Other than having a blog, I'm hopelessly stuck in the early 1990s--I still don't have a cell phone. I will be staying at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina if you want to contact me. I should also have email access at charles dot tryon at lcc dot gatech dot edu.

Posted by chuck at 1:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 24, 2003

Dirty Trackback Tricks

Like everyone else, I've received my share of comment spam, most of which gets zapped by the MT blacklist, but tonight I noticed that I've been getting trackback spam, calling card companies that have been linking to my site for no apparent reason.

I assume this helps their page rank in some way, which annoys me just a little. I also can't figure out where on their page they've linked to my site. Is there anything I can do to short circuit what they're doing, just because I don't really want some calling card company to profit off linking to my blog?

Posted by chuck at 12:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 21, 2003

Marxist Literary Critics Are Stealing Our Jobs!

Via George, I came across Winston's Diary, a blog by "a job seeking graduate student [of literature] who will remain anonymous until tenured, rejected, or so sick of academia that I leave it." Winston, as George points out, discusses his concern about the "dreaded Theory question" at MLA interviews, implying that this question essentially amounts to a subtle way of determining a candidate's political leanings. Winston then notes that his conservative tastes will prevent him from getting a job:

According to “the rules,” potential employers aren’t supposed to be able to ask you about your politics. But, given the highly politicized nature of theory, how can the theory question not constitute a question about politics? If I start talking about I. A. Richards’s influence on my work, I reveal myself as a literary conservative. And if I talk about A. C. Bradley’s influence on my reading of Shakespeare, I think that makes me a literary paleo-conservative. Whereas if I mention Foucault, or Said, or Derrida, I’m a fellow traveler.
Leaving asied the fact that hundreds of capable job candidates (with a variety of political leanings) will not get jobs this year because of tight market, Winston's arguments seem to follow a familiar, recognizable pattern that tends to simplify what English professors do in a remarkably politicized way. Reducing Foucault, Derrida, and Said to political equivalents neglects some of the political differences between these thinkers (yes, I know that Said was inflenced by Foucault, but there are certainly differences).

Winston's entry on the MLA program also engages in some of the same scare tactics. He carefully selects three panels (out of several hundred) in order to illustrate his claim that MLA has become too politicized. Winston's major point is that none of these panels appear to be about literature or language, which is, of course, a major assumption given paper titles such as "Writing the Self: Reading United States Imperialism" and "Merely Reading: Cultural Criticism as Erasure of Labor" (my emphasis), which both appear to have at least something to do with language. Don't they?

Posted by chuck at 12:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 20, 2003

What to Get Your Media Mogul for Christmas

Everyone's favorite right-wing propaganda machine just got a little bigger and a little more powerful. The FCC approved NewsCorp's takeover of DirecTV in a $6.6 billion dollar deal:

The Federal Communications Commission said News Corp. must agree to arbitration to solve disputes with companies that carry its broadcast and cable channels, such as cable companies and other satellite providers. And News Corp. must treat all stations equally, not tilt in favor of its Fox broadcasting network and cable stations such as FX.
As usual, the vote split along party lines, with Michael Copps dissenting because the deal would reduce competition not enhance it and Jonatahn Adelstein voting against the deal because DirecTV would not be required to provide local channels in every market. This is too obvious for even the snarkiest comment.

Via Oliver Willis.

Posted by chuck at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Oops: Google Overkill

The unelectable meme is having some unintended conseqeunces.

Update: Problem solved. Earlier today George's "unelectable" entry outranked the GW Bush bio, but now things look about right.

Posted by chuck at 1:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 19, 2003

Memory and Forgetting

I'm in a rush right now, but I wanted to store these ideas. Anne writes about the relationships between human memory and machine memory, referring to Nietzsche's discussion of "active forgetting."

In the New York Times, artist Eric Fischl discusses the attempts to design a memorial at the World Trade Center site. He refers to his own mourning for a friend who died on September 11 and a sculpture he created that was briefly displayed at the Rockefeller Center. Fischl comments that

We need to learn how to tell the story of 9/11. After all, a memorial should be more than a marker at a grave site. It should be a narrative. Imagine if the Gettysburg battlefield were a sound and light show, or if the Alamo were a park with reflecting ponds instead of the remains of the old structure. Narratives help keep the meaning and significance of great historical events vital. They inspire us in their retelling. They reinforce our resolve.
I don't have the connection I'd want to make in mind. Maybe the connection isn't really there and I simply wanted to remind myself to return to these two interesting texts.

Update: Fabio's post (which Anne references and I just glanced at) looks really interesting. More later.

Posted by chuck at 12:39 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

December 18, 2003

Tru Calling Again

I'm still enjoying Tru Calling, the Fox show about a medical student who takes an internship at a morgue and discovers that she is able to repeat the same day over again in order to prevent murders or accidental deaths from taking place. My original interest in the show grew out of my work on representations of time travel in popular culture.

The show is still captivating me, enough that I may want to write about it for a conference paper or journal article (or, obviously, The Book). Not quite sure what I want to do with the show just yet. The fascination with death, especially the death and rebirth of young (usually under 30) people is obviously a major part of the show, and that's probably one of the areas I'd want to address. Of course almost all time travel focuses broadly on "second chances," on being able to correct past mistakes and thus produce a "problem-free" existence, but Tru Calling seems to complicate that desire, at least a little--to the extent that Tru lives in one temporality and all of her friends and family live in another.

More importantly, for my work, I want to think about how television might treat time travel in ways that are unlike film. Is there something about the medium of TV that produces different kins of time-travel narratives? Is there something about the seriality of TV that lends itself more or less readily to these kinds of narratives?

The other question I've been entertaining: Tru Calling consistently, and often very subtly, makes reference to other time-travel or time-fantasy texts. This might be a coincidence, but both Tru and Phil Conners (the weatherman who repeats the same day endlessly in Groundhog Day) use a waiter in a restaurant dropping a tray full of dishes to convince friends that they are repeating the same day. There are a few other references (I'm blanking right now), but I've been quite impressed with this aspect of the show as well.

Posted by chuck at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 17, 2003

Movies About Teaching

After watching the infrequently seen Blue Car last night and with the Julia Roberts vehicle, Mona Lisa Smile (MLS), coming soon to several hundred theaters near you, I've been thinking a lot about "classroom movies," films that focus on the teaching profession in some way. I haven't seen MLS, and likely won't (Julia Roberts' presence in the film negates any enthusiasm I'd have for seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal), but essentially MLS focuses on Roberts' teacher coming to an all-girls school in the 1950s and encouraging her students to challenge social norms. Essentially, it's Dead Poets Society with women (at least that would be the pitch; the relationship between the films is certainly more complicated). It's cool that these films celebrate learning the humanities, and not just as an end, but as a means for questioning socially expected roles (marriage and family in the case of MLS), but quite honestly, I really don't like these kinds of films, or how they characterize the classroom experience. I can't quite pin down why. It could be the star personas of Robin Williams (who plays in another feel-good classroom film, Good Will Hunting) and Julia Roberts. It could be that the films limit how our profession is understood, or what becomes identified with good teaching (having your students stand on a desk or kick soccer balls while reciting Romantic poetry). I'm honestly not sure.

I do have some mixed feelings about Blue Car in that it seems to repeat (Oleanna, Educating Rita, Surviving Desire, the utterly pretentious Storytelling) another version of a limited range of narratives about teacher-student relationships, especially male teacher-female student relationships. To be fair, Blue Car is the only example I can recall where the film is told by a feamle writer-director, explicitly through the eyes of the student. I actually do like several of these films (especially Rita, which is actually a very complicated film), so hopefully I don't sound too dismissive here. I know this abuse of power is an important topic, and I also know that films need some form of tension, but I am troubled by the limitations on how our profession is represented. So, I'll turn the floor over to you, my readers.

Which films about teaching do you like? Which ones do you loathe? Why?

If I get some comments, I'll tell you my favorites....

Posted by chuck at 12:58 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Blue Car

I just watched the compelling coming-of-age film, Blue Car(IMDB), written and directed by Karen Moncreiff.

Blue Car focuses on Meg (Agnes Bruckner), a reflective high school student facing a difficult family life of divorced parents, a mother who has a lousy job and leaves Meg to care for her younger sister. Meg finds some release from these difficulties while taking a creative writing course with Mr. Auster (David Strathairn), a charismatic teacher who begins to show an interest in her work, siezing upon her memories of her father leaving her mother which she associates with the image of a blue car in her writing. He offers Meg encouraging feedback, telling her to "dig deeper."

Viewers see quickly that Auster is drawn to Meg's vulnerability, and he begins creating situations in which the two can be alone together, building an intimacy between them. Auster pushes Meg to enter a national poetry contest, creating a situation in which they can share lunch alone in his classroom in order for her to work on her poetry. He gives her a ride home from school when she misses the bus. He leaves chocolate wrapped to look like a blue car. He reads a section of his novel that we later learn he cribbed from Rilke (I didn't recognize the lines), but for most of the film, Auster avoids acting on his sexual impulses (in this sense, the film uses Strathairn's restrained persona very effectively).

But the film is more than a cautionary story about predatory teachers who take advantage of emotionally vulnerable students. Instead, the film seems to address the complexities of growing up under difficult circumstances, and her teacher's behavior is just one of many crises Meg faces over the course of the film. In general, this is a solid, serious film that deserves a much wider audience, and it left me wanting to discuss it, and the questions it raised, with others who have seen it.

By the way, Miramax's marketing of this film was rather disappointing. Rather than portray the film's themes effectively, Miramax chose to use a lurid cover showing a teen girl from the neck down wearing a Lolita-type outfit (unlike anything Meg ever wore in the film) with a soundbite comparing the film to American Beauty. Instead of marketing the film on its many strengths, they go for cheap thrills. I actually resisted the film for several weeks because of this cheap packaging.

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December 16, 2003

Captured Saddam Action Figure

He's like GI Joe, but with an "Ace of Spades" t-shirt... In what must be an action-figure speed record, Herobuilders.com has put a "captured Saddam" action figure for sale. I don't have much else to add here, but the accessories designed to "embarass your action figure" (sold separately, naturally), a little pink dress and an S and M outfit are just strange.

Posted by chuck at 8:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mysterious Object at Noon

I just watched the fascinating experimental Thai film, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Weerasethakul, who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, based the film's structure on the Surrealist concept of "the exquisite corpse," which weez described a few weeks ago.

In the film version, Weerasethakul asked Thai townspeople (usually people living in the country with little knowledge of film) to tell part of a story during three years in the late 1990s. The basic situation involves a disabled boy and a teacher who visits him daily in his house because he is unable to travel to school. She leaves the room for a moment and then doesn't return, worrying the young boy. The narrators often struggle to add to the story. Sometimes they backtrack, filling in missing details and making connections with Thailand's past. Others enthusiastically plunge the story forward, adding magical or unexpected details, many of which the director re-creates with amateur actors.

Because Mysterious focuses on these stories, the film is essentially about the filmmaking process itself. Mysterious is a low- (more like no-) budget film, using an amateur crew and cheap film stock and cameras, and in fact, the camera actually broke irreparably during the film's final shot (which, for some reason reminded me of Wim Wenders' The State of Things). The film also takes a subtle shift towards the end as the director's own interests and tastes change, making the film, at least in part, a documentary about the filmmaker himself.

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December 15, 2003

SMS Ruins Suspense Films

A few months ago, I linked to an Independent article reporting that movie executives were blaming instant messaging for the poor box office grosses of summer blockbusters. Essentially the executives were insisting that Hollywood has always made crappy blockbuster films, but now, because information travels so quickly (via IM, cell phones), today's crazy kids are warning their friends to avoid schlocky films. Thus the colossal tanking of The Hulk (Ang Lee sounded like a good idea at the time) and the Charlie's Angels sequel (this film never sounded like a good idea to me).

Looking back, I may have been giving the executives too much credit. This kind of desperate spin usually comes from someone trying to save his or her job. I do think it obvious that information travels more quickly now, and that it will effect how movies are marketed, distributed, and eventually made, which I think will continue to emphasize bigger and bigger opening weeks....

But while I was reading The Desi Flavor this afternoon, I came across another effect of SMS (short message servicing, for techno-lites like me) on film spectatorship: apparently, veiwers of Bollywood films are spoiling the suspense by SMSing the endings to their friends and colleagues. The Times of India has the story (which you probably shouldn't read if you're planning to watch Kal Ho Naa Ho). But the SMS trend has affected several popular Bollywood films:

The trend, of course, started with the suspense-thriller Gupt, where fans got a strange kick out of revealing the name of the killer. That was followed by the romantic triangle Deewana Mastana, where senders were keen to let others know who bags the heroine in the end. The craze really grew with Sanjay Gupta's Kaante, where SMSs flew thick and fast about who the traitor was. luckily, it worked in favour of the film because there were rumours that the producers themselves were sending conflicting messages to create more confusion.
Not sure I have much to add here, but I'm intrigued by this confrontation between film and SMS, and this confrontation seems especially profound in Bollywood films that tend to be longer, often with melodramatic plots.

Then again, just imagine if your friend had "messaged" you the twist in The Crying Game...

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December 13, 2003

Prescient Student Analysis

This week's Guardian has an article, which asserts that "we are all nerds now," and notes the shift from Revenge of the Nerds encouraging viewers to embrace their inner nerd to the current celebration of "nerdiness" in American Splendor and the concluding film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

One of my student groups here at Georgia Tech in their group blog on "college movies" made a similar point several weeks ago, especially in Ayyad's discussion of Nerds being very much a film of the 1980s. Of course, as my students point out, at a university like Georgia Tech, almost everyone has learned to embrace his or her "inner nerd."

Posted by chuck at 4:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 12, 2003

Google Bombs

I agree with George, Jesse, Daniel, and Kieran. This guy is unelectable. Totally unelectable. Completely unelectable. Unbelievably unelectable. Unelectable on so many levels.

The Google Game is alive and well.

Note: Just in case, I changed the title slightly to avoid the uninetnded effect George experienced of becoming the number one Google hit.

Posted by chuck at 8:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Cinemania

I just rented the documentary film, Cinemania (IMDB), which is about a group of intense New York cinephiles who spend their entire days watching countless films in various theaters around the city.

Their interest in film borders on pathology, with the cinephiles refusing careers or what might be called a "normal life" (on character even cultivates a high-fiber diet in order to avoid worrying about having to miss scenes from films because of an untimely visit to the bathroom), but the cinephiles are not treated with condescension. As the filmmakers themselves comment:

What interested us about these people was the degree to which their love of film has seemed to eclipse all other concerns in their lives.
What makes the film work is the filmmakers' generosity towards their subjects and the unabashed honesty of the subjects themselves.

All of the cinephiles have their idiosyncracies: one cinephile, who graduated with honors from Berkeley, identifies himself as a philosopher and loves European art cinema (the filmmakers now have a blog that prominently features his reviews). Others are obsessed with the running time of films or with obscure stars. Several of them are unable to watch films on video, while one viewer wants to get a cell phone so that he can call the projectionist's booth to ensure that the films he watches are projected properly.

Many of these cinephiles are also collectors. Roberta, the one female cinephile, collects programs, cups, and all sorts of promotional memorabilia, worrying that her collection will be lost if/when she is evicted from her apartment. Another collects soundtracks on vinyl even though he doesn't have a stereo. Others spend their inheritance or their unemployment checks buying books. Another keeps journals listing every film he has seen. The sense of the cinephile as collector is what struck me the most about the film. Even attending films so frequently (at minimum 3-4 films per day) is essentially a version of collecting experiences. In this sense, I'm thinking about collecting as a means of controlling one's experiences, of providing them with a sense of meaning or order, specifically within a world that is chaotic and disorienting (there are sevral shots of the spectacular space of Times Square that might reinforce this reading).

Hmmm...I lost the end of this review and I'm too tired to re-create it, but I found the film's treatment of the obsessive practies of these cinephiles to be really quite interesting....

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December 11, 2003

The Station Agent

The Station Agent (IMDB) focuses on the emotional struggles of Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), a midget dwarf (he chooses that term over the more PC "little person") who works in a model train shop in Hoboken. Fin is completely fascinated by trains and immerses himself in a train-hobbyist community with his boss and friend, Henry. Whe Henry dies, Fin inherits an old rail depot in the small town of Newfoundland, New Jersey, and with the shop due to close, chooses to move out to the depot.

Fin moves out to Newfoundland in part to isolate himself as much as possible from the world and from the uncomfortable stares he receives when he walks down city streets. He knows that every time he goes out, he'll face some kind of snide remark or the stares of others, but he reluctantly becomes involved in the lives of several of his neighbors, including a friendly and gregarious hot dog salesman, Joe (Bobby Cannavale), and an artist struggling with the end of her marriage, Olivia (Patricia Clarkson). Eventually Joe's charms begin to draw Fin out into the world and the three people begin to connect and break through their feelings of isolation. They begin to share meals, and the subtle use of banjo music by Stephen Trask and the understated cinematography (which makes good use of the long-derelict depot and other abandoned spaces) combine to create a contemplative tone in which the characters can talk and, sometimes, sit together without having to make conversation.

It would be easy to trivialize this kind of plot, to make the film merely about Fin's height, and while it's a major issue in the film, Station generally avoids taking the simple way out, other than in a scene in which Joe has finally persuaded Fin to meet him in a local bar. When Joe doesn't arrive, Fin begins drinking heavily and becomes conscious of a couple of townies staring at him and whispering under their breath. Fin's reaction seemed out of character and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the film (the following sequence seemed equally implausible). But for the most part, I think the film manages its emotional resonance without descending into something falsely sentimental.

Patricia Clarkson (who co-starred in David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls, which George and I both liked) gave an outstanding performance as Olivia, but Peter Dinklage carries the film, giving Fin just the right amount of aloofness throughout, while gradually warming to the new community that builds around him. The film is generally paced nicely, allowing the characters to develop gradually, but without offering any form of artificl resolution. In fact, when the final scene of the film comes, I felt vaguely disappointed, as if I'd become attached to the characters, wanting to know more about where their stories would lead.

Posted by chuck at 10:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Kal Ho Naa Ho

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I had my first ever Bollywood experience tonight. I went with one of my colleagues to see Kal Ho Naa Ho (IMDB).

After a delicious dinner at Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant, we headed out to the 'burbs for the movie. I knew that Bollywood films tended towards melodrama and that they usually (always?) have several musical sequences, but I'm not quite sure I was prepared for the emotional roller coaster ride this film provided. The story is narrated by Naina, a twenty-something Indian woman living in New York. She and her best friend, Rohit (in full metrosexual mode), banter back and forth, but Naina, still emotionally scarred by her father's suicide, is closed off to love. Soon, the charming Aman (played by Bollywood star Shahrukh Kahn) arrives and Naina relaxes, losing her bookish eyeglasses and letting her hair down. Naina slowly begins to fall for Aman, who is dying of an unexplained heart disease, and the film then traces the romantic comedy and the family melodrama.

What I found fascinating about this film was the treatment of sexuality. There are several scenes in which the fashion conscious Rahit and the playful Aman are caught (by someone who appears to be his maid) in scenes of homosocial bonding. These scenes cause the maid to faint in shock. These "homosocial" moments are generally contained by the end of the film, but the ways in which the film plays with this tension really struck me. Of course, because of the way in which the "competition" between the two men over Naina is framed, Naina essentially loses her agency in choosing which man she'll marry.

In general, the film's ambivalence about New York also stuck with me. Early in the film, Aman performs a Hindi version of "Pretty Woman" on a New York taxi in front of an American flag, and the opening shot of the film incorporates the Statue of Liberty, but this celebration of New York becomes a little more muted as the film progresses. There is certainly an American Dream subtext to the film (both Rohit and Naina are seeking MBAs at the "University of New York").

I'm also somewhat surprised by my own investment in the narrative. For whatever reason my emotional defenses weren't quite as strong as they might have been had I been watching an American film. Still trying to think through that aspect of my experience, but maybe I need to see a few more Bollywood films to see if my experience of them changes.

Kal Ho Naa Ho (roughly "There May be No Tomorrow") was playing at Galaxy Cinema, a suburban Atlanta movie theater that specializes in international cinema, especially Bollywood films. Galaxy Theater, was reviewed a couple of years ago in a Creative Loafing article, which presents many of the difficulties of sustaining a cinema showing mainstream international films, including the problem of competing with pirated copies of even the newest films. It also notes the fascinating population shifts in the Atlanta suburb, Norcross, that have created a market for mainstream films from Third World countries.

I'm way behind on my film reviews, but hopefully in a few days, I'll catch up....I actually really miss writing about movies here, so I'm going to try and get back to it soon.

Posted by chuck at 1:32 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

December 10, 2003

Blog Surfing Can Cause Unexpected Flashbacks

Via Adrian Miles, I just came across Byron Hawk's blog. I met Byron, now an assistant professor at George Mason, about five or six years ago at a Popular Culture conference in San Antonio, after which we attended "Heavy Metal Fest 1997" at the White Rabbit.

For a number of reasons (including Heavy Metal Fest 1997), this was a particularly memorable conference. San Antonio had some of the best restaurants I've ever encountered during a conference (especially all the local places just a short walk from the over-commercialized Riverwalk). And in an odd coincidence, memebers of the Orlando Magic basketball team were staying in the conference hotel....

Posted by chuck at 2:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 9, 2003

Uncovered

Okay, so I'm a little distracted today, but while I was taking a break from grading students' blog portfolios, I came across this article on Salon about the Moveon.org-sponsored parties for screening Robert Greenwald's documentary, Uncovered. Greenwald's film, which I haven't yet seen, traces the deceptive language that many leaders in the Bush administration used to convince the American public that Iraq had weapons of mass distruction.

I can't comment on the film just yet, but I'm intrigued by the skill with which Moveon.org was capable of coordinating this mass screening. According to the article, there were approximately 2,600 screening parties on Sunday alone, a rather large number for an hour-long documentary film. Greenwald compares this number to the 4,000 screens on which blockbuster films are released, which does seem a little misleading (blockbusters screen several times a day, often to a large, packed theater), but I think it's another useful illustration of Moveon.org's ability to facilitate the networking of progressives.

Posted by chuck at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Grading Marathon

I'm back in grading mode and currently looking at my students' blog protfolios. So far, I've been very impressed with the work they're doing in terms of analyzing their writing and the significance of blogs both within the class and within the public sphere in general. I think most of my students really "got it." More later, when I've finished grading a few more blogs.

Posted by chuck at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

If You Squint Really Carefully, You Can See Me...

Via Get Real, this cool visualization service for localfeeds, the syndication service that tracks weblogs. Check out my neighborhood or try it yourself.

Posted by chuck at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cool Stocking Stuffer

I think this new action figure speaks for itself.

Not quite as cool as the action figure I found on e-bay a few months ago, but pretty close.

Posted by chuck at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 8, 2003

Birthday

I turn 33 today.

It's one of those birthdays somewhere in the middle. It's not a clear milestone like 29, but something in between.

Because my birthday is in December, it always falls both near the holidays and at the end of the semester, which sometimes makes my birthday feel like an afterthought. But for some reason, I've been anticipating this birthday for a long time, much longer than normal. I don't think it's because I feel partcularly old (I don't). Instead, it feels more like curiosity about how I'd react this time around (I'm not quite sure why--maybe because it has been a rather eventful year).

And I have to say it has been a satisfying year. I've accomplished a fair amount this year professionally. I'm learning more about myself as an academic, a teacher, and a human being. I've made some great connections and seen other friendships flourish. I've really struggled with birthdays in the past, so it's kind of nice for one to feel, well, about right.

Of course, tomorrow I could change my mind.

(Edited slightly a few hours after the original post.)

Posted by chuck at 12:46 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

December 7, 2003

Blogs, Angels, Bowling, and Dean

For some reason, I'm having a difficult time putting my thoughts together for this entry, but while I was reading the New York Times Magazine online this morning, a few of the questions I've been contemplating the last few days began to coalesce, but in order to get there, I'm going to have to take a bit of a detour....

After turning in my paper on blogging, I downshifted into the self-critical mode that I often experience soon after completing a paper. This self-critique centered around my reading of Chris Wright's article on weblogs and mainstream media, and I was left asking questions about whether or not blogs could create political change.

In the course of these reflections, Francois reminded me that blogs allow writers to develop a much deeper consideration of the quotidian, which as he points out, is a highly political gesture.

These thoughts were still with me this morning when I woke up and read the Times. I started with the article by Samantha Shapiro on the Dean phenmoenon (David Weinberger blogged about the article a couple of days ago, but it happened to be in today's edition of the Times). As Weinberger's reading of the article points out, one of the strengths of the Dean campaign has been its ability to create community among formerly disaffected and alienated people through networks that are modeled (as campaign strategist Joe Trippi explains) on the Internet itself.

Shapiro's article refers to Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone, which argues that civil society was breaking down as people become more disconnected from each other, their communities fragmented. Trippi then points out that technologies such as Meetup.com, which the Dean campaign has used very effectively, provide this sense of connection or community that has been lost.

One fault with the article: it doesn't acknowledge in enough detail the perception that Dean's campaign primarily targets middle-class whites who have easy access to the Internet (I do think Dean's policies very clearly support working class interests, but that's another issue), but in general, as a Dean supporter, I found Shapiro's reading of the Dean campaign's success to be very encouraging.

After reading this article, I clicked over to Jesse Green's excellent article, "When Political Art Mattered," which focuses on the 1980s art designed to promote AIDS awareness. Green's article appears to be loosely tied in to the broadcast of the HBO film, Angels in America (IMDB), directed by Mike Nichols from Tony Kushner's play (an according to almost all accounts, an incredible--and no doubt relevant--adaptation).

In the article, Green provides a historical overview of AIDS-related art since the mid-1980s, from the famous "Silence=Death" posters to more recent and mainstream texts such as the TV show, Will and Grace. With middle Americans are clamoring for their Queer Eye makeovers (symptomatic, I think, of a cultural desire for transformations of all kinds), it's easy to suggest that images of homosexuality in the media have become domesticated, it also points to the success of the political art of the 1980s, including the AIDS quilt and group such as Act Up, in changing the consciousness of millions of people about the AIDS crisis during a time that is perceived to be uniformly homogeneous. The posters and billboards that originally defined the spirit of this movement, of course, were not "museum pieces" in the standard sense, but were meant to be a part of everyday life, an art of the streets, so to speak...

Green concludes with a reference to a new project that I found utterly amazing, the Act Up Oral History Project, coordinated by author Sarah Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard. In these films (some clips are available online), Act Up activists reflect on their experiences as activists. The cinematography takes a simple "no frills" approach, with a static camera arranged in middle-close-up capturing the stories as the people narrate them. It looks like a beautiful project, and the subjects of the documentary are given the freedom to reflect on their experiences without too much intrusion: If the camera were closer, I think it would have felt invasive; if there was nondiegetic sound/music, the film would have felt overproduced.

How to tie all of these loosely connected threads together, I'm not sure. I want to suggest there is some kind of montage effect in place, a relationship between the Dean campaign's Internet-based techniques for transforming everday life, for getting people involved in challenging the political, social, and economic status quo and Act Up's political-art techniques for raising AIDS awareness, for combatting an administration that even refused to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic. I want to make that connection, and I think the transformations I'd like to see could learn from the successes (both partial and monumental, in my opinion) of the political art of the 1980s, but I'm still not sure how to get there from here.

Posted by chuck at 2:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Eyedrum Fundraiser

As promised, I attended the fundraising event at the Eyedrum. I enjoyed the music quite a bit, and there seemed to be a good crowd when I was there from about 8 to 11 PM.

The artwork was quite impressive. I especially enjoyed the work of Laurel Beddingfield, Bryan Schellinger, Angel Ros, Mandie Turner Mitchell, and Gabriel Benzur (unfortuantely, I can't find links to a lot of the work I saw tonight). In general, though, the vibe at the Eyedrum was very cool, and it was a great opportunity to get to know the work of some local artists.

Posted by chuck at 1:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 6, 2003

Saturday Afternoon Fog/Jill Walker at Brown

I'm still recovering from a rather late night last night, specifically a lovely potluck dinner with several of my colleagues (my contribution? George's "easy summer recipe," naturally), so this entry serves more as an "external memory" reminder.

Via Kairosnews: Like Clancy Ratliff, I wish I could have attended Jill Walker's talk on blogging at Brown University. Like Clancy, I'm intrigued by Jill's concept of network literacy. I also share some of the privacy concerns that both Jill and Clancy have raised.

In my first semester of using weblogs, I'm also discovering that the best learning expereinces weren't planned, although sometimes, it took me a while to come to terms with the experience.

In other news, my parents are taking me out for dinner tomorrow to celebrate my birthday (which is actually on Monday), and I'm trying to decide where we should go. Any suggestions, Atlanta readers?

Update: I've been craving Mediterranean food, so I've decided on Mazza. Meanwhile, I'm still feeling a little foggy....

Posted by chuck at 3:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Cool Local Event

This is kind of last minute, but for any Atlanta readers (I know you're out there), The Eyedrum, a local non-profit art and music space, has a fundraiser today (December 6, starting at 3 PM), featuring art, live music and other cool stuff. I know one of the artists involved, and his work is very cool and definitely worth checking out, and the Eyedrum (currently facing a major rent increase) could really use the support.

Check it out. This means you. Go. Now.

Posted by chuck at 1:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 4, 2003

Ten Blogs That Shook the World

I've had a chance to read the article I mentioned yesterday, "Parking Lott: The role of Web logs in the fall of Sen. Trent Lott," and the writer, Chris Wright, does make a strong case that blogs were instrumental in turning up the heat on Lott after he praised the segregationist politics of Strom Thurmond. I'm still inclined to use a little caution about how crucial they really were in this case (which puts me in the rather strange position of agreeing with the ubiquitous Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, on something), but I'm willing to grant Wright's point.

I'm still struggling with my own questions about the instant publication associated allowed by blogging, because as Jason puts it, "the effect of immediacy is to accelerate and harden opinion." I'm not sure I'm artciulating anything new here, but for me, reading some of the "high-profile" blogs feels a little bit like listening to talk radio: a charismatic figure stirs up people's frustrations and fears by linking to a news article or bit of information. Then a feeding frenzy takes place, with dozens of other bloggers quickly linking to this story or adding their comments, creating the noise effect I was talking about yesterday.

Weez is a little more optimisitic about the possibility of finding a "melody" in the midst of all the noise. I don't quite know where I'm going with these thoughts. Right now, it's a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, a feeling that some of the same patterns that already exist in the mainstream media (a small number of powerful voices drowning out the thousands or millions of less powerful voices) are manifesting themselves in the blogosphere.

I don't have a conclusion here, just a few thoughts that have been hammering at me over the last few days, feelings of ambivalence about the overall effects of the weblog concept of time.

Posted by chuck at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Teach Your Children Well

I keep trying to get out, but they keep pulling me back in. Just one day after swearing off high-profile blogs (more on that later), I came across a story on Atrios that will be interesting to educators at all levels.

According to the Portland (Me) Press-Herald, Gary Cole, a 7th grade public school history teacher, is suing his school district, claiming that he was barred from teaching about non-Christian religions and civilizations. The prohibitions are due to a strict curriculum supported by a "a small group of fundamentalist Christian individuals" who complained about it to the school board.

Having been raised by cool, smart (and liberal) fundamentalist Christian parents, I know that all fundamentalists aren't inclined to be so doggedly (or even dogmatically) anti-intellectual, but reducing the schools' curriculum into something so narrow that students have little opportunity to learn about anything other than themselves is incredibly dangerous. I'm struggling with this entry because I often find it difficult to discuss this part of my background, but this unwillingness to understand other cultures is dangerous and needs to be confronted.

Allen, of "The Right Christians," broke the story and in the comments you can find email addresses for all of the major players.

Posted by chuck at 12:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 3, 2003

Blogs That Matter

I originally planned for this to be a quick "link and comment" to an academic article on blogging and the news media, but some of the ideas suggested by the article's premise have touched a nerve.

First the story: I just came across what looks like an interesting acdemic article on the role of weblogs in bringing down Trent Lott after he praised Strom Thurmond's segregationist policies. The article, available in PDF, was published in gnovis, a peer-reviewed communication, culture and technology journal out of Georgetown.

I haven't had a chance to read the article just yet (so the following comments aren't intended as a response to the author's arguments), but I'll try to offer a reading of it later. I do think that online communications (whether blogs or Moveon.org) were instrumental in resisting the outrageous attempts by the FCC to further deregulate the media, but I have to admit, I'm a little suspicious of the hype about blogs as political tools right now. I'm not sure that blogs can have the direct political effect that I'd originally hoped, especially given the ways in which, as Jason J points out (in a post that's pretty ancient by blogosphere standards), the blogosphere tends to organize itself into "echo chambers." I think the "echo chamber" dynamic holds up more in the widely-read blogs, but my original optimisim that weblogs could serve as a kind of independent media is fading fast.

Some of my pessimism could be self-critique or self-reflection after finishing my article on weblogs, but I've found myself feeling resistant to reading more overtly political weblogs lately. I think my lack of interest grows out of this "echo chamber" dynamic, the sense that very few political blogs are doing anything new with the medium. I think this distaste might grow out of the sense that some bloggers almost compulsively blog every story that comes across the wire, often without adding much of a reading of the story (and, quite frankly, I'd rather have my Krugman straight, no chaser).

I do think the potential of using weblogs as a means of building community is worthwhile, and perhaps the echo chamber can be used to positive effect (a la Howard Dean's campaign blogs), but the noise is really drowning out the signal right now.

Posted by chuck at 9:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 2, 2003

Mission Accomplished

No, really....I just sent off my paper for the "Into the Blogosphere" collection, and not to sound smug or anything, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I couldn't have developed the ideas in this paper without the help, suggestions, and ideas of many of my regular (and even irregular) readers, so consider this entry a small way of saying thanks.

Posted by chuck at 5:25 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Clark Kerr Dies at 92

One of the most important figures in American eductaion, Clark Kerr died yesterday at 92. I knew Kerr best as the chancellor of Berkeley in the 1960s who frequently clashed with the leaders of the Free Speech Movement, but Kerr was also instrumental in creating California's multi-tiered university system, aided by the increasing number of students attending college on the G.I. Bill.

Posted by chuck at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 1, 2003

[grid::brand] The Infinite Regress of Branding

I've been thinking about my contribution to the grid blog on the "BRAND" for a few days now. Like Anne, I had to resist the temptation of writing about Stewart Brand.

I can't help indulging in some word play using the word brand, calling attention to the fact that "brand" not only denotes "a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or manufacturer" but also "a mark formerly burned into the flesh of criminals...a mark of disgrace" (both definitions thanks to the American Heritage Dictionary). But perhaps that connection is a little too obvious in a post-Starbucks, post-Nike world.

I also weighed referring to an article I came across in the Georgia State University alumni magazine about a study co-authored by GSU marketing professor, Naveen Donthu, arguing that single consumers may cope with loneliness by identifying with BRANDS. The suggestion is single poeple can compensate for their feelings of isolation by connecting with a box of Tide Detergent or a jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter. But the empty promise offered by these products, by te images attached to these products (the product will never satisfy the need it creates), is only part of this dynamic. Consumers identify with products for a variety of reasons (Richard Ohmann's fantastic work, Selling Culture, is one good example among many).

All of these defintions are at least partially right. BRANDS offer something familiar and safe in an unstable and sometimes isolating world, but at the same time, the BRANDS themesleves seem to contribute to this instability (the "IKEA Boy" jokes in Fight Club capture this sentiment nicely). I've reflected on those arguments that BRANDS offer imaginary solutions to real problems many times.

And, yet, when I think about the BRAND another image comes to mind: an image of infinite regress, a vertiginous image that always unsettled me when I was a child: the Land O' Lakes BRAND packaging with the Native American woman holding a package of Land O' Lakes butter with an image of a Native American woman holding a package of Land O' Lakes butter with an image....

When I was a kid (around six years old as I recall), I remember standing in the grocery store, staring at the packaging, and trying to see deeply into the image, trying to see how many levels of packaging I could contain inside my young brain at the same time. It was (and is) a captivating image, simultaneously pure surface and infinite depth. For whatever reason, we never bought this paricular BRAND, but I think seeing the package in the bright lights and wide ailses of the local Safeway (rather than in our cramped kitchen) is partially what gave the image its power.

I'm not sure I can say anything about the BRAND that hasn't already been said; in fact, the BRAND, like the Land O' Lakes packaging, seems to resist any final explanation....

Thanks to Ashley for suggesting the grid blog. Perhaps the coolest part of this project is that I now have had the opportunity to explore many other blogs that were previously unfamiliar to me.

Posted by chuck at 9:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack