For an upcoming column on the new (or maybe old) pretentiousness, I am seeking examples where the name of a job pretentiously exceeds the modest parameters of that job. For instance, receptionist becomes, and I kid you not here, assistant public interface facilitator. I’m also seeking examples of people taking huge offense on little or […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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]