The Ten Most Awkward Moments In “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving”
Peppermint Patty tells Charlie Brown to “just save me a drumstick and the neck.” No wonder she wants to keep “these intimate details” between the two of them. Snoopy has a boxing match with the lawn chair. The only possible explanation for this is that one of Charles Schulz’s girlfriends thought it would be funny, and told him so during one of their ice-rink hand-holding sessions. A dozen toasters appear out of nowhere. Between their overabundance of kitchen appliances and their overstuffed garage, the Browns...
Six Things You Learn About Advertising From the 2013 British Arrows Awards
Douchey stereotypes still sell. Multiple spots for AXE and related products rank, and rankle. AXE, we learn, will help you screw “your brainy girl” (you can stay awake through obscure plays), “your party girl” (you can dance all night), and “your flirty girl” (eventually she’ll flirt with a woman and you’ll end up with a threesome). The spots are technically well-done, if this is the post-ironic media landscape, I’ll have irony back, please. Social media are becoming high-stakes. One honored spot informs viewers that a...
Five Reasons Why Ms. Frizzle Is Obviously a Weasley
1. She’s a ginger. The most notable thing about the Weasley family aside from a) the fact that they can do magic and b) they’re, like, super poor, is their fiery red locks. Valerie Frizzle is inarguably of this clan, unless the color settings on your TV are all janky. 2. She’s magic. Yeah, I know. These first two are kinda obvious. Ms. Frizzle is a red-headed wizard lady. I promise these get more interesting. 3. She drives an enchanted vehicle. Molly Weasley had no...
Should You Be Watching MTV This Summer? We Rate What’s On
Catfish: The TV Show MTV is known for reality, not documentary. But the difference is getting slimmer: Both types of shows are typically Steadicam footage, voice over, and interview segments. In reality shows, the subject is the egos of the actors (or competitors, or judges). In documentary the subject is conceptual, a message from the journalist about something of interest. Catfish: The TV Show is the spiritual successor to the documentary film-making of the old Current TV, and probably the best documentary series on TV...
Evil Genius/Idiot Genius: What it Means to Be a Straight, White Male
I am a straight, white, young male. My demographic is far from underrepresented in the media, and because of that it’s treated as the default setting for the human race. I’m happy to notice that today’s television has more black/female/gay leads than ever before, and there’s reason to keep positive about the state of social equality, but there’s obviously still a ways to go. As a Default-American I’ve always felt pressure to conform to a very regulated lifestyle, particularly in the academic and corporate settings,...
6 Reasons Why You Could Read Vampire Stories as Metaphors for Being Gay in an Intolerant Society
The idea that vampire stories could be cloaked narratives about homosexuality first occurred to me when I read M.T. Anderson’s Thirsty, where parallels between being a vampire and being gay are quite overt. Vampirism hits these characters at puberty, and carries with it both sensuality and feelings of dread/shame/secrecy that made the similarity impossible to miss. It is an intriguing metaphor – and I’m definitely not the first person to point it out. Here are some of my observations – there are probably a lot more...
Talking Points on the New Arrested Development
1. Non-Linearity Each episode of the this season of Arrested Development is a piece of a puzzle for a larger story that makes more and more sense the more of them you see. Is this an experiment that the writers undertook to take advantage of the unique platform that is Netflix, and the fact that people often mass-consume a show in one or a few sittings? Did Arrested Development do this on a smaller scale in former episodes – and is that one reason why it was canceled,...
