The Media on My Mind: Adventures in Pop Culture: The Letter Killeth

Read the latest installment of The Media on My Mind, Adventures in Pop Culture: The Letter Killeth, at Clinical Psychiatry News. Here’s a sample:

It’s been said that academic rivalry is so vicious because the stakes are so small. For instance, psychoanalytic film theory occupies a tiny niche of a tiny niche of analytic and film scholarship. Yet the denunciations of some practitioners of this arcane discipline are so virulent that it seems the critics would eagerly consign film theorists to rack, thumbscrew, and flames.

I once hoped that narcissistically driven jealousy wouldn’t be encountered among academics who spend their lives searching for profound philosophical and spiritual truths, and probing the central issues of authentic, ethical being in the world. Like – well – theologians.

Nah.

Joseph Cedar’s film, “Footnote,” is situated in the hermetically sealed world of Talmudic scholarship…

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The Media on My Mind: On-Screen ‘Hunger Games’ Found Wanting

Read my column on Clinical Psychiatry News, The Media on My Mind: On-Screen ‘Hunger Games’ Found Wanting. Here’s an excerpt:

Philosophers since Plato have portrayed utopias – earthly paradises crafted and led by the best of the best. Science fiction mainly favors dystopian hells over utopian heavens. In story or film, dystopian futures may be precipitated by natural disaster or alien attack. In recent years, they’ve been emerging from our assaults upon the planet or each other.

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The Media on My Mind: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (Part 2)

My April column for Clinical Psychiatry News is up. Read it here: “The Media on My Mind: The Housewives of Beverly Hills (Part 2)”

My last column traced the history of soap opera, from its origins in depression-era radio to its reinvention as a lucrative pop culture phenomenon on daytime network TV. By the 1990s, TV soaps had developed a unique milieu and narrative style. They typically featured wealthy families, friends, and wannabe outsiders. Plots proliferated into infinity, brimming with juicy marital scandals, flagrant sexual acting up and out, the ubiquitous tang of incest, and really great clothes… [more]

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The Media on My Mind: The Housewives of Beverly Hills (Part 1)

My March column for Clinical Psychiatry News is now online. Read it here: “The Media on My Mind: The Housewives of Beverly Hills (Part 1)”

I propose to interpret Housewives as a reinvention of the dolorous domains of past radio and TV soap opera, for these fame- and celebrity-obsessed times… [more]

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