viz.

Image Credit: Fanpop.com

An incessant struggle for dominance. A never-ending vigil against opposition. A fierce match of razor-sharp wits. A game, one might say, of thrones. Wait, no. I meant a game of feminism.

Image Credit: Personal Screen Capture from Amazon Prime

BBC's ongoing show Sherlock is a present-day adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's nineteenth-century detective stories, and it gleefully delights in its modernity by incorporating new technology and polishing up old visual tropes associated with the rationally-minded crime solver. Whether it's confronting viewers with just how resistant Sherlock himself is towards the popularity of his infamous deerstalker or transforming a first-person narrator's short stories into fodder for a personal blog , Sherlock 's self-referentiality invites its fans to think about the implications of these alterations. The alteration of the media used to tell the tales of the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes also introduces some arresting issues. If Sherlock's deductions were shrouded in mystery or only available to readers through Holmes's own explanations, the show actually allows viewers to “see” the detective's thought processes by stylistically superimpos i ng text onto the show's images.

Image Credit: Breaking Gifs

I simply cannot resist a good topical tumblr. Of course, the orienting rhetorical principle of tumblrs like textsfromhillary (inspired by a single Reuters photo of the Secretary of State checking her smartphone on a C-17) or geraldoinahoodie (created in response to Geraldo Rivera's comments on the Trayvon Martin case) is undoubtedly kairos, and, as we might expect, these sites are often abandoned as quickly as they are generated, leaving nothing but a flurry of self-referential entries that lose their meaning the further they become removed from their rhetorical moment. As the creators of textsfromhillary assert in their final post, "As far as memes go – it has gone as far as it can go. Is it really possible to top a submission from the Secretary herself?"

Image Credit: Pat Suwalski

To continue my discussion of real cities represented as futurescapes on film, this week I’ll be talking about the much-loved sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica. The series, a “reboot” of the less critically-acclaimed series of the same name from 1978, was filmed and aired from 2003 to 2009. Instead of solely relying on special effects to create a future city called Caprica in the show, the series’ creator, Ronald D. Moore, decided to use a real-life glittering city on a bay. In Battlestar Galactica, Vancouver is the future. And the future is now.

Video Credit: Youtube.com

I recently encountered Annenberg Media’s program series, entitled “Invitation to World Literature,” and was pleased to find a television show dealing with literary texts. This presentation of the Odyssey (one episode within a series ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the 1,001 Nights) is surprisingly rare on television—a medium relatively resistant to literature (if we discount the tested format for 19^th c. novels and the "mini-series"). While much of the literature studied in colleges never ends up on television, Salman Rushdie has recently explained to the UK Telegraph that the writing in contemporary television far exceeds that in film (where literary themes are currently in vogue). As an instructor and consumer of English literature, I wondered— how might television possibly adapt or introduce a literary 'canon'?

Now that our national gladiatorial spectacle has ended, we turn to the obligatory analysis of the major media event. How many Packers can get injured in a single season? Why, exactly, are the Black Eyed Peas popular? And, most importantly, what about the commercials? Rather than discuss which ones are the funniest, depict the most animal cruelty, or objectify women the worst, I'd like to discuss what seems like an odd coincidence: many of the car commercials use different visions of the past to sell their product.

Mercedes: Diddy

Image Credit:  Hulu

Glee’s return last night to television with their new episode “Hell-O” not only served to get my students excited this morning before class, but also demonstrated the utility of using rhetorical concepts to analyze the musical genre.  In this unit of my class my students are considering how kairos informs musical performances.

Image Credit: Screen Capture from JamieOliver.com

Most Americans who recognize Jamie Oliver (most of whom are probably foodies or Food Network fans) remember him as the hip, charming, engergetic host of "The Naked Chef" at the end of the last decade. The intervening ten years have not noticeably reduced his energy, charm or verve, but they did bring him a wife, four children and a cause. I mention his family because families--first in the UK and now in the US-- are at the heart of the telegenic Brit's adopted cause. Oliver's new show (officially premiering tonight under the name "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution") is part of a broader, trans-atlantic, multi-platform effort to change the way children and families eat. Oliver targets school lunch programs and home cooking as key sites of potentially revolutionary practices. His advice can (somewhat reductively) be boiled down to two words: cook something. More about food, families, schools, television, the internet and boyishly-handsome good looks after the jump.

Image Credit:  Spring Awakening

This weekend I happened to attend a performance from the Broadway Across America’s tour of Spring Awakening, which was incredibly enjoyable.  The show, based on Wedekind’s 1890s play, deals with issues of teenage sexuality, rebellion, depression, and even abortion.  Spring Awakening does a very good job in its staging and design of making the connection between teens of the 1890s with teens of the 2000s.  

Mad Men, AMC’s show about the advertising industry in the early sixties, returns for its second season this Sunday. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a fascinating look into the way in which products are packaged and sold to consumers, as well as the racist, sexist advertising culture of the time.

In conjunction with the premiere, AMC has described the process behind the ad campaign for this new season.