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His Name is His Name: Marlo and I
[spoiler-free]. Thanks to the tip-off from Jason Mittell, I braved the wind and a long line forebodingly underneath a pigeon fly-over to see three of The Wire‘s stars today. The billing promised Seth...
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Malawian Media Consumption, Part I: Film
I am now back from Malawi, where I’ve been for the last month. It was a fantastic trip. I’ll spare you the long, rambling travelogue here, instead focusing on Malawian media consumption. I’m...
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Authoring the Candidate from the Paratextual Margins: Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin
This coming week, I’m off to the Flow Conference in Austin, TX. I’m on a panel about women in comedy, and my primary interest lay in discussing women in animation. But I’ve been wanting to talk about...
View ArticleSave the Cheerleader, Vote Obama?
I’ve been amused by two recent political ads, one including Gossip Girl stars/adverbs Blake Lively (Serena) and Penn Badgely (Dan), and the other with Heroes’ Hayden Pannetiere. Celebrities making...
View ArticleOpie for Obama
Yet another celeb endorsement video using the actors’ characters as the centerpiece. In the midst of the McCain campaign’s insistence that Obama isn’t like you, isn’t a “real American,” isn’t from a...
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WWKD: What Would Kermit Do?
Okay, so to summarize, we have endorsements for Obama from Clair Bennet from Heroes, Dan and Serena from Gossip Girl, The Fonz and Richie Cunningham from Happy Days, Opie and Andy Griffith from The...
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Deposing Boston Legal
Last night marked the penultimate airing of ABC’s Boston Legal. Before its finale next week, I thought I’d offer some thoughts about the end of a series that has proved so compelling yet also...
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Jay at 10: Bad for Business, Good For TV?
By now, you’ve likely heard that Jay Leno will be taking over a third of NBC primetime next year. Most of the reaction I’ve read is along the lines of David Bianculli’s, that this will be “good for...
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Banking on One Pony: The New Girl, Last Man Standing, Ringer, Whitney
Four of the new shows’ advertising, promos, and paratexts have been pretty much dedicated to a simple message: our show stars this one person. It’s a risky move, since you’re banking on the audience...
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Is Mad Men Feminist? Ask the Paratexts
~~ ~~ In this post, I want to continue to examine the role that paratexts can play in setting the politics of a text. I’ll do so by asking the seemingly simple question of whether Mad Men is feminist....
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