AMPAS: An Irrelevant Legacy

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu accepts the Best Picture trophy for Birdman.

I love the Oscars, America’s night of royal pageantry.  On that night, the Academy reminds us that film occupies a sweet spot at the crossroads of commerce and art.  That the moving image is society’s chief means of ideological exchange.  That the best movies are not merely good and important stories, they are the nexus of every other art form.

But the Oscars suffer a crisis of decreasing relevance.  Yes, the nominees are too white and too male; that’s symptom, not disease.  The New York Times called this year’s show an elitist echo chamber, citing the drop in TV viewership (the lowest-rated Oscarcast since 2009) as well the gap between award-winning but little-seen prestige pictures and box office winners.  Consider American Sniper’s $320 million lifetime gross.  Now total the box office returns for all seven of the remaining best pic nominees: $298 million.  

Shades of Je Suis Charlie

The outrage du jour in a free, capitalistic, pluralism.

Our Dodge Polara – more tank than station wagon – slowed as it passed the Biltmore Twin Theatres.  Maybe Mom was trying to read the picket signs.  Marchers and their placards asserted hate for Hollywood, love for God and country.  Oddly enough, I don’t remember which movie was on the marquee.  Last Tango in Paris, The Exorcist, Life of Brian, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Last Temptation of Christ – for all I know, the same protest signs were reused from one film to the next.

The objections were always to depictions of blasphemy or (even consensual) sex.  Why never violence?  Why never the unflattering depiction of women or minorities?  Why never the censorious overreach of governments?  Unevenly indignant, I suppose the protesters nevertheless intended to stand for something noble.

Ferguson By The Numbers

Is Michael Brown a statistical anomaly?  Frankly, there's no way to know...

Many of my media theorist friends are wondering how to include coverage of Ferguson and Staten Island tragedies in courses next semester.  Perhaps they'll be aided by some of my recent digging.

THE LIKELY VICTIMS
Searching the CDC's Fatal Injury Database for deaths attributed to "legal intervention with a firearm," Bill O'Reilly claims that police in this country are killing far more whites than blacks.  "In 2012," O'Reilly says, "123 African-Americans were shot dead by police.... Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets."

But a ProPublica report sees it differently.  Three of its reporters suggest that young black males (age 15-19) are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts.  From 2010 to 2012, teenage white men were killed at the rate of 1.5 in 1 million.  Compare that to 31 in 1 million for teenage black men.

Why Colleges Can't Stop Rape

The law of unintended consequences:  Is Jeanne Clery the reason university presidents
can't stop rape?

MILESTONES IN CAMPUS RAPE  (The sad story so far…)

• 1957. American Sociological Review publishes Clifford Kirkpatrick and Eugene Kanin’s “Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus.”  Their article claims/predicts that college men use secrecy and stigma to pressure women in sexual situations. 
• 1986.  Jeanne Clery is raped and murdered in her dorm room.  She is a freshman at Lehigh University, an idyllic campus she and her parents had fallen in love with.  Though  Jeanne is initially interested in Tulane, she settles on the Pennsylvania school because it “feels safer.”

The Servile Arts

Serfing the internet.

Once upon a time, the world of education was divided into three spheres:  Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, and Servile Arts.  Fine (or “Beaux”) Arts means today pretty much what it meant when the phrase was coined.  Think of bohemians in berets on the southern bank of the Seine.  Painters, sculptors, poets, all making beautiful things.

Liberal and Servile Arts perhaps require a bit more historical context.  Imagine a bunch of rich lads in Genoa, drinking wine as they plot to spend their fathers’ fortunes.  Theirs is a gentrified world not unlike Downton Abbey (though predating it by at least six centuries).  Lots of leisure time for the upper classes, but with less indoor plumbing and more church attendance.  The fellows decide – more or less as a hobby – they’d like to know something about mathematics.  They pool a few ducats and pay some monk to teach them a little algebra.  Voila!  The University is born.

The Cosby Conundrum

Teachers of media history routinely screen episodes of The Cosby Show for their students.  We cite it as a turning point in the cultural depiction of African Americans.  A colleague of mine now wonders if he should be troubled by rape accusations surfacing against the series’ eponymous star.

Of course he should be troubled.  We should all be troubled by accusations of sexual misconduct.  Will Cosby’s personal life color his contribution to media history (and vice versa)?  Yes.  Does that complicate our appraisal of the Huxtables?  Does it add to the meta-conversations about black celebrity presented in Black Dynamite?  Yes, yes, and again… yes.

Preferring the Copies

The cast of Spamalot.

The block of Fulton Street surrounding the subway station was a mess of shredded gray cobblestone. Hardhats bobbed in trenches below me. I picked my way through bootlegged copies of recent films, Gucci handbags, and designer perfumes. “One dolla! One dolla! One dolla!” mumbled a man with a scarred ice chest of bottled water. “One dolla today, three dolla tomorrow… maybe five. Get it today.”

Beyond the fare card turnstile, the subway platform was a stifling pit (maybe I should have bought the water). The northbound Number Two was a blessed respite from the triple-digit sauna. The air-conditioned express train whooshed through destinations made famous by decades of movies and television. “The people ride in a hole in the ground,” I thought, recalling lyrics from Gene Kelly’s film, New York, New York.