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- Mom and Dad came back from family counselling last night. I'm letting them think before I talk to them this weekend, but it seems that it went well.
- I'm accepting the Wilfrid Laurier offer. I'm Canadian/comparative literature, but knowledge of the genre and gender that WLU concentrates on is cool and a nice secondary specialization.
Feb. 26th, 2003
Jackson: A Postmodern Icon
Feb. 26th, 2003 05:58 pmCTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 26, NOS 1-2
Article 122 03/02/26 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
Posterchild for the Future: Living with Michael Jackson
~Are Flagan~
Throughout February 2003, the tabloids dug even deeper into their font suitcases to extra extra bold the recurring headline "Wacko Jacko." After a global screening of the doubly famous and infamous documentary Living with Michael Jackson, which was put together by the Brit Martin Bashir, the unanimous media verdict could not possibly be snappier than the larger-than-life Jacko being cut down to size with the rhyming echo of Wacko. Upright commentators and moral agents of all denominations joined the wailing chorus to secure the King of Pop's self-inflicted fall from grace, while devoted fans and sympathetic supporters lashed out at the prejudices and lies allegedly edited in and out by the royal dramatist Bashir, who once had a sniveling tete-a-tete with Princess Diana. Some voices even went as far as classifying the 90-minute kitsch fest, done with the full and knowing collaboration of Jackson, an elaborate suicide note from an unaware victim. Perhaps it was only appropriate, then, that legions of experts, in the form of psychologists and voice analysts, were unleashed upon the footage to extract an opinion on the truth. Quite predictably the mental trade labeled him a casebook case for arrested development, and an Australian outfit, using a method akin to a lie detector, revealed the recorded speech patterns to show stress levels indicative of deception in his voice; the meaning of pivotal words was "scientifically" turned around to nail high-pitched frequencies already subject to suspicion. [1] While cable and network programming was humming with that unmistakable freak show buzz, pressure was put on the proper authorities in Santa Barbara County, where Jackson lives, to take penal action against him for televised breaches of propriety. Doubting the criminality of his admissions, however, officials declined the public demand to make a case out of an example, due to a lack of evidence. Meanwhile in Britain, the frothing frenzy made it into the House of Commons, where Labor MP Helen Clark and Tory David Amess made a strong bipartisan stand on what they saw as unsuitable for broadcasting. Airing such views and practices as those of Mr. Jackson was, in their allotted stance of the most honorable proclamation, a dangerous endorsement that certainly merited condemnation from the highest body of public policy. [2] The King of Pop was by now a moral pauper, his rule a disgraced ruin of dubious glory. That Wacko Jacko decided to strike back and turn the postmodern tables with his own documentary on Bashir, flogged to the networks by a gay porn pundit to maintain the tabloid-friendly tenor of terror, will not concern us here. Nor will we dwell on the astounding figures that initially glued 15 million Brits (more than half the entire TV audience) and 27 million Americans to the screens for the first airing, saw millions of dollars change hands in return for rights, and subsequently demanded
more than 20 hours of primetime over a period of two weeks following February 6. [3] This postscript must rather address what exactly prompted this outrage and suspension of belief that preoccupied the global attention and exponentially multiplied search strings in Google almost instantly. Something fundamentally disturbing and collectively stirring was no doubt filtered through the airwaves to reverberate in the public domain.
( Read more... )
To view CTHEORY online please visit:
http://www.ctheory.net/
To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
Article 122 03/02/26 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
Posterchild for the Future: Living with Michael Jackson
~Are Flagan~
Throughout February 2003, the tabloids dug even deeper into their font suitcases to extra extra bold the recurring headline "Wacko Jacko." After a global screening of the doubly famous and infamous documentary Living with Michael Jackson, which was put together by the Brit Martin Bashir, the unanimous media verdict could not possibly be snappier than the larger-than-life Jacko being cut down to size with the rhyming echo of Wacko. Upright commentators and moral agents of all denominations joined the wailing chorus to secure the King of Pop's self-inflicted fall from grace, while devoted fans and sympathetic supporters lashed out at the prejudices and lies allegedly edited in and out by the royal dramatist Bashir, who once had a sniveling tete-a-tete with Princess Diana. Some voices even went as far as classifying the 90-minute kitsch fest, done with the full and knowing collaboration of Jackson, an elaborate suicide note from an unaware victim. Perhaps it was only appropriate, then, that legions of experts, in the form of psychologists and voice analysts, were unleashed upon the footage to extract an opinion on the truth. Quite predictably the mental trade labeled him a casebook case for arrested development, and an Australian outfit, using a method akin to a lie detector, revealed the recorded speech patterns to show stress levels indicative of deception in his voice; the meaning of pivotal words was "scientifically" turned around to nail high-pitched frequencies already subject to suspicion. [1] While cable and network programming was humming with that unmistakable freak show buzz, pressure was put on the proper authorities in Santa Barbara County, where Jackson lives, to take penal action against him for televised breaches of propriety. Doubting the criminality of his admissions, however, officials declined the public demand to make a case out of an example, due to a lack of evidence. Meanwhile in Britain, the frothing frenzy made it into the House of Commons, where Labor MP Helen Clark and Tory David Amess made a strong bipartisan stand on what they saw as unsuitable for broadcasting. Airing such views and practices as those of Mr. Jackson was, in their allotted stance of the most honorable proclamation, a dangerous endorsement that certainly merited condemnation from the highest body of public policy. [2] The King of Pop was by now a moral pauper, his rule a disgraced ruin of dubious glory. That Wacko Jacko decided to strike back and turn the postmodern tables with his own documentary on Bashir, flogged to the networks by a gay porn pundit to maintain the tabloid-friendly tenor of terror, will not concern us here. Nor will we dwell on the astounding figures that initially glued 15 million Brits (more than half the entire TV audience) and 27 million Americans to the screens for the first airing, saw millions of dollars change hands in return for rights, and subsequently demanded
more than 20 hours of primetime over a period of two weeks following February 6. [3] This postscript must rather address what exactly prompted this outrage and suspension of belief that preoccupied the global attention and exponentially multiplied search strings in Google almost instantly. Something fundamentally disturbing and collectively stirring was no doubt filtered through the airwaves to reverberate in the public domain.
( Read more... )
To view CTHEORY online please visit:
http://www.ctheory.net/
To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
Signing the Papers
Feb. 26th, 2003 07:33 pmI've signed the three papers to attend Wilfrid Laurier University in September 2003: one teaching assistant contract; one graduate scholarship contract; and, one consent form for the program. They don't have to be submitted until the 7th of March, so I'll send them Friday.
I'm on my way.
As some good friends of mine would say,
L'chaim!
(And now, to do the assorted schoolwork for the next morn. Damn, I feel happy!)
I'm on my way.
As some good friends of mine would say,
L'chaim!
(And now, to do the assorted schoolwork for the next morn. Damn, I feel happy!)
And now, the trip
Feb. 26th, 2003 07:43 pmI'm going to see Wilfrid Laurier University and Toronto: That's not open to question.
The precise date of my visit depends upon my final examination schedule, but provisionally I'd like to visit WLU, Kitchener-Waterloo, and friends in greater Toronto in the interval between the end of exams and convocation. Convocation, in the calendar, is scheduled for the 10th of May; my exams could conceivably last up to the 23rd of April. (I'll have to find out what my professors have planned.)
Some questions to those in the know, and reply via livejournal and my E-mail (available via my profile:
The precise date of my visit depends upon my final examination schedule, but provisionally I'd like to visit WLU, Kitchener-Waterloo, and friends in greater Toronto in the interval between the end of exams and convocation. Convocation, in the calendar, is scheduled for the 10th of May; my exams could conceivably last up to the 23rd of April. (I'll have to find out what my professors have planned.)
Some questions to those in the know, and reply via livejournal and my E-mail (available via my profile:
- How long should I spend visiting the campus?
- Who can I expect to meet in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, and convenient points in between?
- Is there anything I must see while I'm in the area and relatively free? (I bought the latest Frommer's guide to Toronto; the Art Gallery of Ontario stands out in Toronto. Niagara Falls?)
- Does anyone have any hints, or links, regarding accomodations and public transit?
