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Rupaul's Drag Race
Bradford Nordeen
02.05.10
The growth of positive depictions of gay chracters and themes on television likely has as much to do with advertising demographics as recent shifts in public opinion and, true to form, Rupaul's Drag Race is packed with as many product placements as the other reality TV shows it mirrors. Bradford Nordeen, author of Fever Pitch, highlights the pleasures and frustrations that the show has to offer as well as how it literalizes Warhol's maxim about fifteen minutes seconds of fame.
The Chase is Always Better Than the Kill
Michael Louie
12.19.09
Michael Louie spent five weeks deep in the trenches during the first annual Brooklyn Fishing Derby, which happened to start the first day of mandatory fishing licenses for all New York saltwater anglers. He seeks out the secret and hidden fishing spots amongst the new development and regimented city property and finds that maybe he's not quite the terrible fisherman he thought he was.
The New Era of Blackface
Louis Chude-Sokei
12.17.09
Around Halloween the question was asked is "blackface Hitler" a culturally acceptable costume? Would it be viewed as an example of, as Louis Chude-Sokei says, "meta-anti-racism" or a bad joke in the worst kind of taste? Both? Chude-Sokei is the author of The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, a finalist for the 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. With a perspective rooted in African diaspora, here he paints a sharp contrast between recent incidents of blackface in American pop culture, such as this season's premiere of Madmen and Robert Downery Jr. in Tropic Thunder, and blackface traditions outside the U.S. in Mexico, Turkey and West Africa. As in his recent talk on murdered African reggae star Lucky Dube, Chude-Sokei offers a unique perspective on the communication between cultures.
'and so his noise was ours too for those times' - On Ronald Tavel (1936 - 2009)
Jennifer Krasinski
04.24.09
So the story goes that Andy Warhol needed a narrator's voice when he made the move from silent pictures to "talkies." And Ronald Tavel had just the voice, i.e. the serpent in the garden he sought after. But Tavel turned out to be an artist far greater than Andy originally bargained for. He built his name with Warhol sure, as his narrator and screenwriter, but Tavel's own projects of poetry, fiction, and especially the theatrical arts are in a class all their own, as he took his audience from the tame waters of the "absurd" out into the utter "ridiculous." Jennifer Krasinski gives Tavel, who died earlier this month, a proper sendoff. Illustrations by Danny Jock.
Five Hundred Eighty-Six Days, Fourteen Hours, Forty-Six Minutes, Eleven Seconds
Michael Louie
09.05.08
Quitting an addiction, any addiction, is no easy matter. Whether it's crack, meth, heroin, or an MMO, the longer one pursues a dragon (or maybe an Orc in this case), the harder it is to give up the chase. But Michael Louie's on the wagon now, from a video game. And after his time given over to a Final Fantasy (FFXI to be precise), Louie looks back at his lost weekend that turned into, added up to, well...the game runs the numbers for you.