Beginning with George Plimpton's Intellivision gaming system ads and Orson Welles' wine ads put Foreman's problem into sharp relief: in order to add genuine credibility to a product, doesn't the celebrity endorser have to have, you know, credibility? And so a measure of public trust headed drainwise over the next three decades. "If it's good enuf for Snooki, it's good enuf for me," indicts me, not Snooki. But to cope, we still pass the Paul Masson. |
Rafael's video montage juxtaposing people on talk shows with pop music videos and person-on-the-street footage was considerably better than the paper itself and proved the godfather of talk show's basic premise: God is not in his heaven and all is not right with the world. But we all had the chance to shame the panel during the back half of the presentation: order restored. |
Much more optimistic than Rafael, Rivera contends that the talk show provides catharsis for the struggling closeted stock-broker/cross-dresser/relative-marrier/lying ho in all of us. The need to celebritize our inner ick for 15 minutes of splenetic venting seems reasonable but for the tendency of TV to normalize behavior. The advantage of Oedipus is that it's clearly a tragedy. |
Looking past the wild-caught, bow-dropped venison and the samples of locally grown eggplant dip, O'Pollan's idea that the rebellious nature of rock 'n' roll pushed us toward rejecting the corporate Foodocracy is a bit tenuous. "Out here in these fields, we plow for our meals" just doesn't have the same ring to it. |
There's something Foucaultian about tracking back the bureaucratic functions of quality control to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but the differences between aristocracy and corporatocracy aren't all that great after all. Having to go through an inspection in order to get out of the conference room was a compelling conclusion: I still have the little chit that says I passed. |
Part football rally, part fashion show, Ferguson's presentation decentered our notions of headgear to the point that we could see the semiotics of it from all the way out the sheepcote. |
Or the social butterfly effect? Hayes' special effects mashing up storm footage with paparazzitization was dramatic if, in the end, unconvincing: you don't need the sun to know which way the stink flows. But the celebs who manage to weather the press storms best are the ones whose personal atmospheres always appear fair: like Will and Kate, they know when to head underground. |
George
Plimpt'em: the Decline and Fall of the Highbrow Huckster, or
We Only Sold Wine Before This Time
Donahuman:
Talkshow Identity and the Creation of the Collective Self
Donahuge:
How Talkshow Culture Satisfied Our Desire for Fame and Fulfilled
Warhol's Prophecy, a Promulgation in Three Oprahs
Baba
GaNuge: Omnivores, Locovores and the Power of Rock
Acceptable
Curt(sies): QC, QE, and the Tyranny of Protocol: an Evaluation
in Inspectionville
Princess
Beatrix Hat Trick: Milliner with the Floss, a Deconstruction
in Postmodern Haberdashery
Fair
to Middleton: Meteoric Fame, Meteorology, and the Atmospherics
of Attitudes, a Forecast in Two Vows