TheoryCulture has now relocated to:
http://www.jdrabinski.com
where you’ll find all posts, past and present…
TheoryCulture has now relocated to:
where you’ll find all posts, past and present…
Posted in Uncategorized |
If you have a little boy or girl, then you probably know about Thomas the Tank Engine. No, I don’t mean a character. And I don’t even mean a show. And, no, I don’t even mean a merchandise aisle at Target. I mean what becomes, so very easily, an entire way of being. What is it about trains in general, and Thomas the Tank Engine in particular, that get inside little people’s brains?
Posted in Althusser, capitalism, consumerism, ideology | Tagged children's television, Thomas and friends, Thomas the Tank Engine | 3 Comments »
I saw Wall-E a couple of weeks back. Unlike most, if not all of my friends who saw the movie, I didn’t like it very much. It was of course visually awesome and charming, for the most part, and told a decent enough story. It’s hard to “disagree” with the moral of the story, which, so far as I can tell, is that garbage is bad for the earth. And that submission to the spectacle of marketing is also bad. I got that. But I do think there is a more problematic something about the film – not a “message,” but instead something more like a presupposition.
Posted in Althusser, consumerism, ideology, liberation, Marcuse, Pixar, slate.com, spectacle, technology, Wall-E | 9 Comments »
I’ve been reading the goodbye tributes to Isaac Hayes. I lived in Memphis for a handful-plus years and have, since I was a teenager, loved Memphis music. Hi-Records has always been by far my favorite, but the Stax sound is really the only thing in Memphis that can compare. So, I read the tributes to Isaac Hayes in search of remembrance of his place in that history. But that’s not what you find.
Posted in African-Americans, racial representation | Tagged Isaac Hayes, Stax | 4 Comments »