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April 27, 2005
Buddhism and Cultural Studies: Talk on MP3
As I've mentioned on this blog a couple of times, I'm growing more and more interested in Buddhism. I've meditated regularly for over a decade, and in the last couple of years, I've started reading more about Buddhist philosophy. Now, I'm starting to think through how to incorporate Buddhist ideas into my scholarship and teaching.
So, this semester, I tried an experiment: for my graduate course on cultural studies, I included a week on Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism, a collection of essays by Buddhists about the politics and ethics of consumer culture.
Last week, we had our class on Buddhism. I started by having everybody take off their shoes and sit on the floor. I talked about my own experience with meditation and Buddhism, and then addressed the relationship I see between Buddhist ideas and critical theory. After that, we had a group meditation. Since I wasn't sure of my skills as a meditation leader, I played a video hosted by Jack Kornfield, Meditation for Beginners.
Here's my talk. You can find the syllabus for the course here.
Here are a few of the meditation teachers I recommend in the talk:
Shinzen Young, The Science of Enlightenment - meditation training with a focus on the continuities between science and mysticism. For free samples of Young's meditation instructions, check out his web site. See also Break Through the Pain and Pain Relief for meditation techniques for chronic pain
Steven Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs - agnostic Zen Buddhism.
Other recommended meditation teachers: Jack Kornfield (the guy in the video), Pema Chodron, Cheri Huber, Sharon Salzberg (specializes in loving kindness meditation), Robert Thurman (specializes in Tibetan Buddhism).
A good one-stop source for meditation recordings is Sounds True.
Posted by tedf at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2005
Poetry Wars
Here's a great NYT piece on a nasty battle in the world of poetry. It's a prime example of that chestnut about the politics of academia: the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
The New York Times > Books > Surrender in the Battle of Poetry Web Sites
Posted by tedf at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
Even Cowkittens Get the Blues
Kate tried to buy this postcard on eBay, but she got way outbid. If you don't see the kittens, try opening the photo in a separate window and enlarging it.
Posted by tedf at 12:36 PM | Comments (1)
April 18, 2005
Books vs. Blogs
Steven Johnson makes a very persuasive case here for why he doesn't blog about his books as he writes them. On the other hand, as he acknowledges, other writers are experimenting with treating book-writing as an open-source project. Laurence Lessig, for example, has opened up his book Code to be collectively rewritten as a Wikki document. I haven't figured out yet exactly what relationship I want this blog to have to my books. Johnson points out that blogging and book-writing are very different activities: blogging is of the moment, while writing a book involves crafting a sustained relationship with a reader over hundreds of pages and hours of reading. But as I wrap up my first book, I feel like I could use a little bloglike urgency in my writing routine.
Academia's rhythms make Johnson's world of commercial book publishing look like a sprint. The oldest section in my book, on computer games, dates back to an essay I wrote in my first semester of graduate school, 13 years ago. I started the project itself as my dissertation in 1994 or so. I defended the diss in 1999. I took some time off, then revamped the whole thing and started sending proposals out to presses in 2003. Reviews and revisions for NYU Press have taken another two years. Now I'm finally at the stage of cover design and proofing copy edits, and it's still going to be another six months before the book goes on sale. Even after all that, it often takes years before academic journals get around to reviewing new books! As someone who's always leaned towards instant gratification over delayed pleasures, I'm amazed my head hasn't exploded yet. So forgive me if getting to see all my deepest musings on cats, gardening, and baseball posted instantly online makes me a little giddy.
Perhaps the most appealing model I've come across is the way Wired editor Chris Anderson is writing The Long Tail, the book version of his brilliant essay on how Internet technologies such as iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix encourage diversity and break down least-common-denominator culture by making less-popular music, books, movies, and so on financially viable and even lucrative. He's blogging continually about the writing process, getting feedback from his readers as he goes along.
That's what I'm hoping I can get going when I start gearing up for my next book, which will be on the politics of Hollywood movies. But first, I may need to get a few more random observations off my chest. Stay tuned for my feelings on this year's American Idol . . .
Posted by tedf at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)
Managing Info Overload
I'm grappling with a familiar dilemma. I've had a lot of fun blogging over the last few weeks, but the result has been a backlog of emails and articles I've meant to read. This week, I finally started catching up, but at the cost of the blogging.
It boils down to this: when I sit down at the computer with some free time, I have have the choice of reading or writing. Ideally, I'd flow smoothly from one to the other. But in practice, they're pretty different mindsets. I find spending a long time at the computer reading puts me in a fuzzy, passive, vaguely tense state. Writing these entries, on the other hand, tends to leave me feeling satisfied, with a sense of accomplishment.
Part of the problem is that reading online is never-ending - there's always backlog. (I start a new tab in Opera for every article I mean to read. I usually have several dozen tabs open at any one time. And I don't want to admit how many messages are sitting in my Inbox right now.) By contrast, posting a blog entry is a much more contained project - when it's done, it's done. (I force myself not to tweak entries, beyond a quick proofread.)
But when I don't keep up with my email, with the New York Times, with Salon and Slate and all my RSS feeds, I feel out of touch, and burdened by the backlog. I worry that blogging is just spinning my wheels, when I could be learning new things and catching up on my responsibilities.
Actually, I worry that the net is screwing up my reading patterns in general. On the one hand, having all this great stuff to read all the time is amazing, of course. But I find that if I don't watch out, I'm only reading ephemeral commentary - news articles, blogs - and never reading books (other than the ones I assign for classes). That's one nice part of adding book reviews to the blog, actually - it gives me another motivation to read entire books.
I can't be the only one feeling this way. I see references to blog overload all the time. A recent ad for The Washington Post on Talking Points Memo, for example, promoted a subscription as a one-stop alternative to having to keep up with dozens of political blogs. (They've pulled back on that now, presumably out of fear of offending the blog-reading audience - now they call themselves "the great complement to political blogs.")
So what's the ideal balance? How best to handle info overload? I don't know, but I do know that active is almost always better than passive, long-term trumps ephemera, and it's silly to stress out over self-imposed info-consumption expectations. So I'm going to do my best to read more books, keep writing, and accept that my online newsgathering may take a hit. And if I owe any of you reading this an email, my apologies - I promise I'll get to it as soon as I can.
Posted by tedf at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2005
My First Book Cover
Here it is!
Posted by tedf at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
A Little D&D/LOTR Humor . . .
Posted by tedf at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
Patio Container Garden, Week 2 (with Cats)
Posted by tedf at 05:55 PM | Comments (1)
The Dude, Helping Me With My Taxes
Posted by tedf at 12:33 AM | Comments (2)
April 14, 2005
Amerie's "One Thing"
This is the only thing on pop radio right now that stops me from flipping stations. It's produced by Rich Harrison, the same guy who did Beyonce's epochal "Crazy in Love." He also did the new J-Lo single, but we'll forgive him for that. Harrison's trademark is to start with a red-hot sample, crank it up in the mix, and force the vocalist to dance around it. J-Lo's overwhelmed by the sax riff in her single, but Amerie does an amazing job bouncing off the thrilling drum riff in "One Thing," sampled from an old Meters track. The mix is pretty bare bones - mostly the sample, the vocals, and a single guitar chord played once each key change. What makes it work is that Harrison lets the drums, not the vocals, take the lead. At one point, in fact, Amerie just drops out for about 30 seconds, so we can just enjoy the killer riff.
The single was featured on the Hitch soundtrack, and the original version of the video had a lot of fun intercutting between Amerie's moves and Kevin James's attempts in the film to get down. During that drum break, instead of the typical video gyrations, we get thirty seconds of James's enthusiastic fumbling. Sadly, now that Hitch is out of theaters and the song's a hit on its own, MTV Hits is playing a second version of the video without any film clips. It's still the best thing in their rotation.
Posted by tedf at 02:20 PM | Comments (1)
Flip Walk Gallery
In 2000, my buddy Gavin bought an apartment just a block away from the World Trade Center. He and his wife Jen were home on 9/11, and they raced north through the smoke with their cat, Alma. When I visited them all a couple of months later back at the apartment, the smell was still thick in the air.
Living in that neighborhood since then has been a distinct kind of challenge. Most of the retail vanished - the grocery store, the Borders, the Krispy Kreme. The future of their neighborhood has been the subject of architectural competition, international debate, and political grandstanding. And tourists hover on the corner to get a peek at Ground Zero.
Last year, Gavin began documenting part of his experience in this recovering neighborhood. Here's what he does:
In the summer of 2004, I decided to start walking around. I would leave my house and flip a coin. If it was heads, I'd go left. If it was tails, I'd go right. At every intersection, I'd flip the coin again: after an hour, I'd stop and photograph whatever block I was on.The result is this gallery. I've chosen one photograph from the end of each walk, and written up some information about where I went and how I got there. The plan is to do a hundred walks. I have a few ground rules about where I can walk and what the flips mean, but my basic rule is not to cheat: I'm surrendering my fate to chance.
As I step out my front door and flip my coin, I keep walking away from home. So far, I keep coming back.
Posted by tedf at 02:04 AM | Comments (5)
LostWorlds.org
One of my M.A. students, Gary Daniels, successfully defended his thesis today. He's the first person in the department to create a multimedia thesis project. It's a website documenting the sites of prehistoric Native American civilizations in Georgia and Florida. It includes short documentary films featuring interviews with archeologists and other experts, Quicktime VR panoramas of the sites, and 3D animations simulating the sites as they might have originally appeared. It's an ambitious and impressive undertaking. You can check out the site here. And if you're interested in visiting public Indian sites, you can check out this map of sites in Georgia, and this map of sites in Florida. For those of you in Atlanta, the Etowa mounds in Cartersville, GA are a fascinating day trip.
Posted by tedf at 01:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Science Fiction and Fantasy Media Intro Lecture on MP3
Continuing my audio series, here's the introductory lecture to my course in Science Fiction and Fantasy Media. It's in two parts. Click here for Part A, and click here for Part B.
The syllabus for the class can be found here.
Posted by tedf at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2005
From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden by Amy Stewart
When I'm diving into a new field I know nothing about - Buddhism, photography, wine, wrestling, or gardening, to take a few recent examples - I'm always looking for a certain kind of writer: an opinionated, first-person guide to this confusing new world. My model for this kind of writing is Bill James, the great baseball analyst. I'm always on the lookout for "the Bill James of wine" or "the Bill James of wrestling."
The point isn't that I want an expert to tell me what to think. Rather, I want to hear about this new universe from a distinct, coherent point of view. From there, I can develop my own perspective. I don't want an authority so much as a critical sensibility. These new subjects always teem with boggling amounts of details - the eightfold path of Buddhism, the varieties of wrestling holds, the latin names for all those flowers. I'll never learn all this stuff by trying to memorize it, and that wouldn't be much fun, anyway. Rather, what I want is to absorb the perspective of a savvy participant, so that the field as a whole makes sense to me. Once I do that, the details can fall in place over time, if I decide to stick with it.
I appear to be in the minority in this preference - most people seem to prefer the bland-to-cutesy textbook style of the Dummies guides. Guide series do have their places - I'm a big fan of the " . . . for Beginners" series of cartoon guides. When they're done right, as in the classic Marx for Beginners by Rius, those are a great way to get your bearings on a subject. The newer "Introducing . . ." cartoon series is also great. And Oxford University Press has a nifty ongoing series of "Very Short Introduction to . . . " books. The Jung books from both of the latter series have been great entry points into a massive body of work.
All this brings me to From the Ground Up, my entry point into the daunting world of gardening. I've picked up a half a dozen gardening reference books over the last few years, but all of them succeeded only in dazing me with a boggling array of disconnected tips, warnings, and factoids. What I needed was a theory of gardening that made sense to me. So I switched over from Borders's "Gardening Reference" section to the "Gardening Writing" section. I was wary, because I find nature writing often unbearably twee and smug in that Year in Provence mode. I was wary of this book too, given its sweet but very Provencial impressionistic cover painting of a front yard garden. I browsed the book over several Borders visits, each time wavering, then finally took the plunge.
It was a good call. I devoured the book over just a couple of days, and now I feel a new sense of comprehension of all this gardening stuff. Stewart writes about her first year of building a garden from scratch, as an enthusiastic but inexperienced amateur. Her tastes, reassuringly, are for wildness over rigid structure, and a few weeds and bugs over pesticidal warface. She strongly prefers organic methods, but isn't a compost Nazi when chemicals seem to be the only way to go. I don't really like her taste in vegetables - I can't stand tomatoes or zucchini - but I think I'd really enjoy hanging out in her garden.
This isn't one of those books where the putative subject becomes a metaphor for the writer's life. Sure, we learn about her husband, her beloved great-grandmother, and her two amazing cats. But the focus is always on the garden for its own sake, and that's plenty. We learn a lot about the virtues of compost, the overratedness of roses, and, in a great chapter, the lives of earthworms. (The latter subject must have really inspired her - she followed this book up with a whole book on worms.)
Stewart did have an inspired location for her garden: a rental house in Santa Cruz, across the street from an amusement park and just a block away from the beach. Gardening so close to the ocean - and to druken tourists - has its own specific challenges. And this microclimate has its own specific charms. One thing I'm learning is that gardening is always local. You can browse all these giant coffee-table books full of fantasy gardens, but what really matters is what will grow in your soil, under your sky. (That's why my next step is to start reading books specifically about gardening in the South - Tough Plants for Southern Gardens looks particularly promising.)
I'm still not sure I'll end up planting much more than my current batch of containers. Or maybe I'll just grow a huge row of something simple and useful, like mint - I really like mint. But even if I punt on this whole gardening project, I understand the gardener's worldview a little better now, thanks to Stewart.
Posted by tedf at 03:33 PM | Comments (5)
April 08, 2005
Patio Container Garden, Week 1
Posted by tedf at 08:07 PM | Comments (2)
Moby, Taking Care of Her Mobypants
Posted by tedf at 06:55 PM | Comments (3)
April 07, 2005
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema Lecture on MP3
Here's another audio post: an MP3 recording of the introductory lecture from my Contemporary Hollywood Cinema class, originally recorded in Spring '03. I've appended the syllabus below if you'd like to follow along. Since then, the course has been changed slightly, and is now titled American Film History II. You can check out the version I'm teaching this semester here.
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Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
Film 4960, Spring 2003
M/W 3:00-4:15, 204 Aderhold
Dr. Ted Friedman
Office: 738 One Park Place South
Office Hours: M/W 4:30-6:30 and by appointment
Email: tedf@gsu.edu; Phone: (404) 463-9522
Home Page: http://www.tedfriedman.com
Course Description
How do movies reflect and influence American life? How has Hollywood responded to changing market conditions and global influences? Why are so many of today’s movies so big, loud, and pushy? What are the alternatives to Hollywood’s stories?
This class attempts to make sense of the present state of American film by tracing the history of American movies from 1968 to the present. Along the way, we’ll look at the semiotics, aesthetics, economics, and politics of Hollywood movies and the independent underground.
Prerequisites
This course builds on the material covered in Film Aesthetics and Analysis (FILM1010) and History of Motion Pictures (FILM2700). I strongly encourage students to take those two courses before taking this class.
Readings
The coursepack is sold by Bestway Copy Center, 18 Decatur Street SE (on the first floor of One Park Place South). Additional readings will be distributed via the class email list.
Screenings
You are responsible for viewing the assigned film before class each week. The first required film, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, is currently playing in local theaters. After that, the Library Media Center will have a DVD of each week’s film on reserve. In addition, all assigned films are readily available at local video stores for home rental. Recommended alternatives to Blockbuster are Movies Worth Seeing (1409 N Highland; 404-892-1802) and Videodrome (617 N Highland; 404-885-1117).
Email Group
All students will be automatically signed up to the online class discussion group, hosted by Yahoo Groups. I will regularly forward Hollywood news, reviews of upcoming movies, and other useful material to the list. You’re encouraged to forward other interesting information, post your reactions to recent movies, respond to other postings, or continue any other ongoing discussions from class.
Messages can be read online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conholly, or forwarded to your email account. Likewise, you can post a message from the web site, or send it as an email to conholly@yahoogroups.com.
Schedule
Introduction
M 1/6 Introduction
W 1/8 In-class screening: selections from Saving Private Ryan
Hollywood Today
M 1/13 Read Dyer, Friedman
See The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
W 1/15 In-class screening: Behind the Screen: Hollywood Goes Hypercommercial
Flashback to 1968: A Violent Rupture
M 1/20 Martin Luther King Holiday – No Class
W 1/22 Read Kolker, Prince, McKinney
See Bonnie and Clyde (1968)
The 1970s: Hollywood Renaissance?
M 1/27 Read Ray, George
See Dog Day Afternoon (1974)
W 1/29 In-class screening: American Cinema: The Film School Generation
Blockbusters and Fandom
M 2/3 Read Jones, Jenkins, Schatz
See Star Wars (1976)
W 2/5 In-class screening: George Lucas in Love
Postmodernism and Science Fiction
M 2/10 Read Sobchack, Harvey
See Blade Runner (1984)
W 2/12 In-class screening: Science Fiction Costumes
The Politics of Masculinity in Reagan’s America
M 2/17 Read Jeffords (2 chapters)
See Salvador (1986)
W 2/19 In-class screening: selections on the making of Salvador
Take-home Midterm Due
Documentary and Docudrama
M 2/24 Read Tuchman, Kael, Moore
See Roger & Me (1986)
W 2/26 In-class screening: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
March 3-9 – Spring Break – No Class
Race and Representation
M 3/10 Read Wiegman, McKelly, Seymour
See Do the Right Thing (1989)
In-class screening: Classified X
W 3/12 Discussion
Pop Feminism
M 3/17 Read White, Faludi
See Thelma & Louise (1991)
W 3/19 In-class screening: selections from I’m the One That I Want
Queer Studies
M 3/24 Ready Doty, Simpson
See Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
W 3/26 In-class screening: selections from Off the Straight & Narrow
War and Film Today
M 3/31 Reading to be distributed via email
See Three Kings (1999)
W 4/2 In-class screening: selections on the making of Three Kings
Globalization and Hybridity
M 4/7 Read Bordwell
See Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
W 4/9 In-class screening: selections from Hong Kong films
The Indies
M 4/14 Read Kleinhans, Schamus, Biskind
See Requiem for a Dream (2000)
W 4/16 In-class screening: American Cinema: The Independents
Narrative and New Technologies
M 4/21 Read Manovich, Friedman
See Being Jon Malkovich (1999)
W 4/23 In-class screening: video games
Class Choice
M 4/28 Reading to be distributed via email
Screening to be voted on by class
The research paper is due in the mailbox on the door of my office (738 One Park Place South) by Wednesday, April 30, 6 PM.
The Take-Home Final Exam is due in the mailbox on the door of my office by Monday, May 5, 6 PM.
Assignments
The class assignments add up to total of 100 possible points. Your final grade for the class is determined by adding up your grades for each assignment, adjusting for attendance, then applying the final number to the following scale:
90-100=A, 80-89=B, 70-79=C, 60-69=D, 0-59=F
1. Take-Home Midterm – 30 points
The take-home midterm will require you to relate concepts from the readings and lectures to the films screened for class. Due in class February 19.
2. Research Paper – 40 points
You will produce a 7-9 page research paper on an American film made since 1968.
• You will write a one-page proposal outlining your topic and mode of research. We will meet in March during my office hours to discuss your proposal.
• Optional drafts of the paper can be submitted at any time in class or via email up to Tuesday, April 22. I will return each draft with recommendations for revision and expansion. If you choose, I will also let you know what grade the paper would receive if it were handed in as the final draft. You’re welcome to submit multiple drafts before the deadline.
• The final draft of the paper is due in the mailbox on the door of my office (739 One Park Place South) by Wednesday, April 30, 6 PM.
• More details on the research paper will follow in a separate handout.
3. Take-Home Final – 30 points
The take-home final will be structured just like the midterm, covering the second half of the semester. It will be due in the mailbox on the door of my office by Monday, May 5, 6 PM.
4. Film Element Observations
For every film after LOTR, students will sign up to closely observe specific film elements and report back to the class. You will observe two films, one in the first half of the semester, one in the second half. You will not be graded on this assignment, but if you miss class without advance notice on a week you’re signed up, you will be marked for an additional unexcused absence.
5. Attendance Adjustment
As Woody Allen put it, “80 percent of success is showing up.” It’s less than that in this formula, but the bottom line is that you can’t contribute to the class if you’re not there. You’re allowed one unexcused absence for the semester. After that, each unexcused absence subtracts one point from your grade total. Excused absences include medical and family emergencies. You will be expected to schedule any employment responsibilities around this class, or accept the consequences of missed classes for your grade. If you do need to miss a class, please contact me ahead of time, and make arrangements to catch up on missed material.
Policies
Re-Writes and Makeup Tests
Opportunities for revision and improvement will be available for the midterm, the presentation, and the research paper prospectus. In addition, I will look at optional drafts of the research paper submitted on or before April 22. One rule: a 24-hour cool-down period after the return of any assignment. Wait a day before coming to talk to me, and I’ll be happy to listen to your concerns and help you improve your work.
Late and Unsubmitted Papers
Late papers will be marked off by ½ point for every day overdue unless an extension is agreed upon before the due date. No work can be accepted after the deadline for the take-home final. Any unsubmitted papers will receive a 0. Likewise, any unanswered exam questions will receive a 0. So, if you answer only 2 out of 3 required exam questions, you will get a 0 on the third question.
Academic Honesty
The university’s policy on academic honesty is published in On Campus: The Undergraduate Co-Curricular Affairs Handbook, available online at http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwcam. The policy prohibits plagiarism, cheating on examinations, unauthorized collaboration, falsification, and multiple submissions. Violation of the policy will result in failing the class, in addition to disciplinary sanctions.
The Internet makes it easy to plagiarize, but also easy to track down plagiarism. Bottom line: Don’t plagiarize. It’s wrong, and it’s not worth it. There’s always a better way. Cite all your sources, put all direct quotations in quotation marks, and clearly note when you are paraphrasing other authors’ work.
Withdrawals
Students withdrawing on or before March 10 will receive a W provided they are passing the course. Students who withdraw after March 10 will not be eligible for a W except in cases of hardship. If you withdraw after March 10, you will be assigned a WF, except in those cases in which (1) hardship status is determined by the office of the dean of students because of emergency, employment, or health reasons, and (2) you are passing the course.
Incompletes
Incompletes may be given only in special hardship cases. Incompletes will not be used merely for extending the time for completion of course requirements.
Changes to the Syllabus
This syllabus provides a general plan for the course. Deviations may be necessary.
Posted by tedf at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
Guest Entry: BMN on Wrestling Lingo Applied to Life and Academia
BMN's response to my post on wrestling lingo really deserved to be an entry to itself, so here it is:
Me and my brother basically popularized using wrestling terminology to describe our entire lives amongst our group of friends. To the point now that many non-wrestling fan friends of his use the terms all the time having no idea where they came from. Other helpful terms in wrestling that can be applied to real life,"shoot" and "work" - "shoot" refers to a series of actual events that "aren't part of the storyline." (e.g. Bruiser Brody "shot" on Lex Luger by not letting any of his moves hurt and thus Luger got the hell out of there and the match didn't end as planned). "Work" refers to the storyline sometimes (as in, "it's all part of the work") but also as a verb to describe people who are TRYING to convince you that something is "not part of the script" even though it really is (e.g., Dallas Page and Buff Bagwell tried to work the wrestlers backstage into thinking they hated each other in real life but it was all to strengthen their onscreen feud).
(as used in real life) - "That couple's argument might seem like a shoot but they were just working the hosts because they wanted a reason to leave early."
(as used in academia) - "They aren't shooting with the job interviews, it's all just a work to legitimize the hiring of the inside candidate."
***
"Mark out" or "pop" - read above term about "Mark." Describes a specific event in a match that gets a major reaction (e.g's "the crowd marked out for Steve Austin's return" or "the three tables fall got the crowd to pop big time")
(as used in real life) - "Steve showed up at my party unexpected. I popped!"
(as used in academia) - "I marked out for Rob Drew's paper on Starbucks mix CDs."
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"Booker": person in charge of storylines (i.e. head writer)
(as used in real life) - "Pat is booking the road hockey tournament"
(as used in academia) - "Maryann Meyers is booking proseminar this year."
***
"On the fly booking" - meaning to not plan too far ahead of time in order to keep the audience on its toes (usually to fool the "smarts"). Eric Bischoff used it to put WCW on top, booking entire shows only ten minutes ahead of time (but it ulimately led to disorganized chaos that helped bring WCW down).
(as used in real life) - "Hey Pat, don't leave the house yet, the road hockey tournament has just been moved to Ranni St." "On the fly booking!!"
(as used in academia) - not assigning readings until the very end of each class in order to remain "topical" and/or "au courant" would be a case of "on the fly booking."
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"Getting over" - means that you are getting the reaction that you want from the audience in spades (the Rock really wasn't getting over initially but then got over so huge, he became one of the biggest stars in the business)
(as used in real life) - Brent's karaoke routine really got over with the crowd
(as used in academia) - if my paper is the best received on the panel, then I "got over" the best with the audience
***
"Heat" - Can be used in two fashions, "babyface heat" (strong crowd reaction for a good guy) or "heel heat" (strong crowd reaction for a bad guy).
(as used in real life) - Mick's got real heel heat on him right now for not showing up to the party.
(as used in academia) - if someone writes a book that seems more self-serving than theoretically promising, then they could receive major heel heat from the academic community
***
"Angle" - An event or series of events that is usually a confrontation between two or more wrestlers that intensifies a feud.
(as used in real life) - if someone makes a change in their life that's radical and gets a reaction (e.g. "Bryce just got accepted by Georgia State and is going to Atlanta in two months" :-p) then someone may react by saying "what an angle!"
(as used in academia) - an intense confrontation at a panel might be seen to further a "feud" between two discourses and thus is a good "angle." E.g. "That Appadurai-Harvey debate was a great angle! I'm really interested in where the flows vs. structure storyline is going."
***
"Comedy spot" - a series of events put in a match more for a laugh than to be taken seriously. Can be used in a flattering sense to describe a wrestler's humorous personality ("Eugene is effective in comedy spots") or a not-so-flattering sense to describe how a wrestler's style has gotten so corny and/or repetitive as to be laughable ("Ric Flair is a legend whose schtick been reduced to comedy spots")
(as used in real life) - "I put a comedy spot into my karaoke performance that got over huge."
(as used in academia) - "Arguments about false consciousness were once taken seriously but now run the risk of being reduced to comedy spots about what dupes we all are."
***
"put someone over" - Used commonly to refer to losing to someone but more subtly used to describe the act of making the other performer look good. E.g., HHH lost the match but didn't sell most of his opponents moves so he didn't really put him over. Also can describe a series of events (e.g. Goldberg's winning streak was designed to put him over as a monster).
(as used in real life) - "Hopefully you'll be able to go out with Suzie. I really put you over in the conversation I had with her."
(as used in academia) - "I used these three professors for my letters of recommendation because they're the best at putting me over" or "if you want to get in that journal, you really need to put over the editors in your paper."
***
"Turn" - to go from babyface to heel or vice-versa
(as used in real life) - "He turned heel on his girlfriend by cheating on her."
(as used in academia) - "She turned heel at the NCA convention by putting over the ICA instead."
***
"Workrate" - describes how well someone can make a match flow. E.g. Hulk Hogan was a popular character but his workrate sucked (i.e. he didn't do much to make a match look good).
(as used in real life) - I'm sorry......I'm not willing to post sex talk on a website :-P
(as used in academia) - Probably used to describe people who have become the "go to" people for quotes in the media but haven't really contributed any actual ideas to the discipline. "So and so is really over with the media but their workrate is terrible."
***
"Swerve" - to book an angle/storyline one way when it appears to be going another e.g., the fans in 1998 thought the Survivor Series would set up the Rock as the top good guy but the company swerved them and turned him heel
(as used in real life) - "We thought he was going to other bar but he showed up here instead, what a swerve!"
(as used in academia) - "Everyone thought the inside candidate was going to get the job but they hired outside the department. What a swerve!"
***
"Screwjob" - A finish with a controversial ending, often upsetting and/or disappointing the fans.
(as used in real life) - "The party turned out to be a real screwjob; they said there'd be an open bar but there was hardly any booze and they kicked everyone out before one."
(as used in academia) - "The conference was a screwjob; half of the promised presentations never happened."
***
"selling" - Making someone else's moves look good, writhing in agony when you are "hit" with something. The better the sell, the better the move looks.
(as used in real life) - "He's not selling the breakup in public because he doesn't want her to know how hurt he is."
(as used in academia) - "The chair of the department sold the challenge to his theory as the ultimate indignity."
There you have it, wrestling's "carny lingo" and how it make YOU articulate life and academics in an entirely different way. (Other examples are welcome!)
BMN
Posted by tedf at 11:03 PM | Comments (2)
Cool Wrestling Lingo Applied to Music and Critical Theory
From the wrestling blog:
[There are three kinds of wrestling fans:]mark - someone who believes it’s all real
smart - someone who knows the inside information, or thinks they do, and is too smart for his own good
smark - a "smart mark” - someone who knows insider stuff, but is still a mark at heart
I really love these hermeneutic categories - they perfectly capture something about the experience of postmodern culture. Beck, for example, is great when he's a smark, but annoying when he's just a smart. Whether you enjoy the Pet Shop Boys or not depends on whether you consider them smarks or just smarts. And watching MTV loses is pleasure when it becomes impossible to remain smarky about it, and you end up just being a smart.
I remain a mark for Hall & Oates, Debbie Gibson, and Superman. I used to be a mark for the Yankees, but that's fading, and I'm not sure I'm even a smark for them anymore. And the world of academic critical theory is full of marks who think they're smarts (Foucault obsessives, Derrida fantatics), and would be better off embracing their smarkiness (like the publisher of Judy!, that great Judith Butler fanzine of the early 1990s).
Posted by tedf at 04:19 AM | Comments (3)
April 04, 2005
Wrestlemania 21
This weekend I enjoyed two spectacles of hypermasculinity: Sin City and Wrestlemania 21. I'll get to Sin City in a later post. Tonight, let's talk about the just finished Wrestlemania.
Wrestlemania is like the Super Bowl of pro wrestling. I'd never actually watched it before this year, but I'd long been curious. Making things more difficult has always been the extensive backstory knowledge necessary to understand what's going on (wrestling has a lot in common with soap opera that way). This year, I finally had some expert help: Bryce and Shane, two long-time wrestling fans who are now both advisees.Tonight, the advisees became the advisors.
Much has changed since the last time I paid much attention to wrestling. The WWE (formerly WWF - they lost a delicious trademark battle to the World Wildlife Federation) is in a fallow period between breakout stars. The Rock, wrestler turned movie star, has only made cameo appearances at the last few Wrestlemanias, and didn't even do that this year. Stone Cold Steve Austin, the breakout star of the 1990s, is hobbled by injuries and could only do a mock-interview segment this year. Goldberg, another '90s star, dropped out of the league for a part in The Last Yard.
The current low period for wrestling really started in 2001, when AOL/Time Warner bowed out of the business by closing down the WCW, which ran on TBS and was the primary competition left to the WWE. Fans thought this would usher in a golden age, when all of the wrestling world could be united. Instead, the WWE by itself has become a stale monopoly, the Microsoft of sports. Without any competitors, they haven't been pushed to experiment and take chances to build new stars and develop new concepts. They used to poach the other leagues for the best on-air and creative talent. Now they have nowhere fresh to turn. And so by all accounts, the product has grown flat, out of tune with contemporary youth culture. Their biggest new idea is John Cena, a painfully awful white rapper who wants to be the Eminem of wrestling. Where is the 50 Cent of wrestling? The wrestling version of Grand Theft Auto? Of anime? Of Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Wrestling at its best should bounce off of the rest of youth culture, creating a deliciously cartoon version of the universe.
(I have encounted one little subculture Vince McMahon and the rest of his WWE employees should be looking to rip off: the world of Kaiju Big Battel. Kaiju is halfway between wrestling and a Ed Wood version of a Godzilla movie - the characters all wear gigantic styrofoam costumes, and the biggest hero is a giant potato named, of course, Silver Potato. If the WWE doesn't get the idea, I'm betting MTV will pick them up at some point and make them the next big thing.)
But if mainstream wrestling today is behind the times, it also has its charms. One of the things that's changed about wrestling, compared to the days of my youth, is that they make no bones about being fake any more. The announcers don't come out and say it in the middle of matches, but it's pretty much taken for granted in the behind-the-scenes WWE-produced documentary "The Mania of Wrestlemania," which I watched to bone up before the main event, and which is sculpted just like an episode of "Behind the Music." This candor about their pretense is really refreshing. It makes the whole thing feel much more playful, less self-important. It's a real nice change of pace from "real" pro sports, in fact, where ESPN acts like every college basketball game is an event of world-historical imporance, and 18-year-old pampered jocks are blown up into preposterous paragons of heroism and virtue.
Another thing that's nice about wrestling is that despite all the overt aggression, it's the one sport that's not really about the competition. The competitors know who's going to win - beneath the pretense, they're really collaborating to produce the best match, not battling against each other. Each match is more a dance than a fight.
The pleasure created by this choreography was most apparent in the first fight of the night, between Ed Guerrerro and Rey Mysterio. Both are "cruiserweights" - lighter, more agile fighters. These guys tend to be appreciated by the cognezenti, but less so by the crowds. They don't have the cartoonish physiques of Hulk Hogan and his descendants. One shame about the state of wrestling, then, is that the fighters who put on the best shows don't tend to rise as high as the behemoths who aren't limber enough to do more than stomp around. As a result, the "undercards" - the early fights - are apparently often much more interesting than the headline bouts.
That was certainly the case tonight. The battle between Guerrerro and Mysterioso (who fights in a mask, in the classic style of Mexican wrestling) was eye-opening, thrilling the way a great fight scene in a Jackie Chan movie is. Guerrerro and Mysterioso are friends and tag team partners, so they were able to collaborate in lightning-fast, stunning maneuvers. Mysterioso has one move - where he grabs a corner pole and spins horizontally through the ropes - that just blows me away. It's as cool as the scene in The Two Towers where Legolas mounts the moving horse. And that was done digitally - this was all live. So what's more "fake"?
The second match was also a blast: a six-man "ladder match." That means, literally, six men go at each other with ladders, racing to be the one to set up a ladder in the center of the ring and climb to the top to reach a reward hanging from the rafters. In this case, the reward was a briefcase containing a contract giving the winner the right to a future title fight. According to Shane and Bryce, five of the six fighters here are real pros - second-stringers with less hype but more skills than the headliners. They performed a series of impressive falls, toppling from ladders into the ring and beyond out onto the floor. A guy named The Edge ultimately won, although he didn't impress me as much as Chris Jericho (whose nickname, Y2J, seems a little stale at this point) and Christian. Last year, those two put on a great soap opera at Wrestlemania 20 (which I caught this weekend on DVD), fighting over the affections of a female wrestler named Trish. She ultimately betrayed the innocent-looking Jericho in the ring, sandbagging him to give the title to the much sleazier Christian. Sadly, nothing as juicy as that happened this year.
A third great match was between Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels. Angle is a former Olympic gold medalist in amateur wrestling; apparently he's the first Oylmpian to successfully make the transition to pro stardom. Michaels is a longtime pro wrestling veteran whose receding hairline is making his "pretty boy" image a little hard to swallow. They put on an athletic, well-paced battle of about a half an hour, rising from early grappling to escallating throws, jumps, and scuffles outside the ring. Shane and Bryce confirmed my perception that this was the highlight of the evening. Angle eventually won on a hold that forced Michaels to quit ("tap out") but that really seemed beside the point. When the outcome is preordained, who wins or loses doesn't need to be the focus of the event.
One other highlight was a Wrestlemania first: a sumo match, pitting The Big Show, billed as 7 feet and 500 pounds, vs. a Japanese sumo wrestler who's apparently a big star back home. Wrestling pundits in previews were wincing about all the opportunities for painful xenophobic schtick, but the giants ended up playing it straight - as in real sumo wrestling, the whole thing just took a couple of minutes. And they allowed the expert to win, rather than showing him up by having the American who'd never been in a sumo match before win. It was a charming, fun change of pace.
So, that's quite a few highlights. Given that it was a four-hour show, though, that left plenty of time for filler and duds. One shtick involved an "Arab" wrestler who began torturing a "comic" mentally challenged character named Eugene. Hulk Hogan burst in to quickly save Eugene (he's really getting up there, so the "fight" only lasted about 30 seconds), then spent a good 10 minutes preening for the crowd in front of a giant American flag. That was depressing on numerous levels. There was also a womens' matchup that was designed as just a titillating catfight, although the winner, Trish (the one who betrayed Jericho last year), showed real charisma and decent moves. And there was an OK battle between longtime vet The Undertaker and ingenue Randy Orton, billed as The Legend vs. The Legend-Killer. Most of the fight was nothing special, but it had a nice twist at the end - Orton's dad, a wrestler just inducted into the Hall of Fame, jumped out of the stands to help out his son, but The Undertaker tossed him out of the ring and retained his perfect undefeated Wrestlemania record.
Finally, the event ended with the biggest duds: the two title matches. The lousy rapper, Jon Cena, took on a "heel" character named JBK whose schtick is that he acts like JR Ewing (again, Wrestlemania demonstrating it's 20 years behind the times). Cena won the belt after a surprisingly uneventful match. McMahon is producing a movie starring Ceda that comes out this summer, so the victory is part of the plan to build Cena into the next Rock, only this time, with McMahon retaining control of his star's Hollywood career. But is doesn't appear Cena actually has the wrestling, rapping, or acting skills to be the triple threat Vince imagines him to be.
In the other main event, a huge, clumsy challenger named Batista beat a huge, clumsy vet, Triple H. Shane and Bryce warn me that Triple H won't be on the outs for long - he's married to Vince's daughter, and helps run the company. As a result, apparently he's given a much more prominent role than would be best for the business. He certainly didn't show much tonight - the only big moment of the match was when he started bleeding profusely from his forehead, which Shane and Bryce concluded was the result not of contact, but of a hidden razor blade.
I don't know if I'll keep watching wrestling after this indoctrination, but I have had a lot more fun this weekend than I ever expected. When I was growing up, the fakeness of wrestling offended me. I also didn't enjoy the level of violence and aggression. I associated wrestling, along with The Three Stooges, with the bullies who beat me up in elementary school. This was the media that pumped them up, right before they'd go out and pound me. The Stooges, wrestling, the Mets and Woody Woodpecker were all on New York's WOR, channel 9. I watched channel 11 instead, the home of Abbott and Costello, the Yankees, and, if memory serves, the Superfriends. In my childhood imagination, Channel 9 was the indimidating world of brute aggression, hypermasculinity, and the drabness of Shea Stadium, where overhead airplanes landing at LaGuardia would drown out the sounds of the Mets losing again. Channel 11 was the refined universe of witty banter, selfless heroism, bloodless conflict, and the world champion Yankees in tidy pinstripes.
But I haven't been physically assaulted in well over twenty years. I can afford to take a walk on the wide side of channel 9 culture. The heroes of channel 11 were probably better role models. But I probably lost touch with a part of myself when I repressed the pleasures of channel 9. It's worth getting in touch with that shadow self once in a while - my inner bully, or maybe just my inner brawler. And in any case, at this point, the violence of pro wrestling seems charmingly playful in the context of 50 Cent, Grand Theft Auto, and the rest of today's humorlessly self-important "thug" culture. If I'm going explore the world of fantasy violence, I'd just as soon everybody involved not pretend they're "keepin' it real."
Update: for some smart commentary on Wrestlemania 21 from savvy wrestling fans, check out this thread on The Wrestling Blog.
Posted by tedf at 02:06 AM | Comments (1)
April 01, 2005
Where Have You Gone, Sidd Finch?
Al Schwarz, an old friend from high school, has a great piece in today's New York Times about the 20th anniversary of Sports Illustrated's publication of "The Mysterious Case of Sidd Finch," one of the great hoaxes in the history of sports. For April Fool's Day, Plimpton invented a pitcher who learned to throw the ball 168 miles an hour while living in a Tibetan monestary. The best part is, 20 years later, the guy who played Sidd Finch in the photos accompanying the article still gets stopped and asked for his autograph.
Posted by tedf at 02:17 AM | Comments (1)
Tedlog Stats for March 2005
Today is the one-month anniversary of Tedlog. Some quick stats:
- Posts: 45
- Comments: 35
- Unique visitors: 3,260
- Pages viewed: 16,384
- Number of people who clicked on the "tedhair.jpg" image to get a larger view: 100
- Number of people who downloaded the movie I made in grad school about Star Trek: 41
- Strangest search string which led visitors to the site: "a man tries to overnight himself as a package." It led to my essay on Cast Away, although the searcher was more likely looking for info on the Velvet Underground's "The Gift."
Overall, I'm thrilled and a little boggled by the numbers, given that I'm just starting this thing. I'm particularly encouraged by the upward trend. At the beginning of the month, I was averaging 135-150 unique visitors a day. By the end of the month, I was up to over 200 unique visitors each day.
By far the biggest boost was the "Pick Ted's Hair Contest," which produced an immediate uptick in visitors. I may have to start thinking about other aspects of my persona which could be made over by blog vote. Any suggestions? (I guess the next contest could be, "Pick Ted's Next Contest.")
The content of the blog has been even more all over the place than I expected. I started out with the goal of making the blog an extension of my academic work - sort of a cultural studies version of how economist J. Bradford Delong writes about the economic aspects of breaking political news. There's been a fair bit of that, but I keep finding myself getting sidetracked by cats, baseball, gardening, Buddhism, and all my other random obsessions and fleeting enthusiasms. The result is probably a more accurate map of my scattered mind, but perhaps less useful than a more targeted resource. That's unlikely to change, though, because expounding on all this stuff has turned out to be more fun and rewarding than I could have imagined. And in the long run, I guess I do still hope that I can build a grand unified theory of cats, baseball, gardening, Buddhism, and post-Marxist critical theory.
I do hope to keep building up a readership, because part of the fun of this is feeling like it's not simply spinning into the void. I started out my writing career as a freelance critic at magazines like Spin and Details, because I wanted to find an outlet where my voice could be heard. I switched over to academia, because I wanted the freedom to write more than 200-word record reviews. Blogging may offer the best of all worlds.
Thanks for listening!
Posted by tedf at 01:28 AM | Comments (4)
More Friday Catblogging
Here's The Dude in his tux, posing for his prom night photo. He's loosened the bow tie a little - he's really a casual guy at heart.
Posted by tedf at 12:37 AM | Comments (1)