Tag Archives: television

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association 2013

Home again after the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, which was a 4 day whirlwind. Think I’m kidding about the whirlwind part? Here’s the pdf of the schedule – it’s 501 pages long.

(The conference is actually going on until 9:45 tonight but we attended 3 panels between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and then our brains melted. Well, I can’t speak for Husband, but I can assure you mine did. While I’m writing this, I’m watching Project Runway and I’m having trouble following the plot. Yikes).

My conference paper on the TV show Supernatural was well-received and everyone else on the panel was fascinating so I was in great company:

horror (text, media, culture): television and New Media horror

“Translating tradition: domesticating seasonal horror through television.”
Derek Johnston (panel chair)

“Beyond salt and fire: the agency of human remains in the Supernatural Universe.”
Rebecca Stone Gordon

“Control is Being taken away from You”, Marble hornets and transmedia horror.
Ralph Beliveau and Amanda Kehrberg

I should probably edit the draft of my first TED DeExtinction post so I can get that online tomorrow. I intended to post about that last week and so it concludes with the delusional statement that I’d blog from the PCAACA conference. We can see how well that worked out.

Downton Abbey + new ways to terrorize Guam

The drafts keep piling up, as every post I’ve written lately has tried to turn itself into a manifesto and I keep running out of time, patience, and/or energy.

To tide you over, I’ll actually finish the post about Downton Abbey.

I don’t get it. I absolutely do not get the appeal of this show. I’ve tried to get it. I’ve tried so hard I’ve seen the 1st season twice and I’m almost done with the 2nd season. I don’t fucking get it…BUT I CAN’T STOP WATCHING IT.

Perhaps the Dowager Countess really is a witch.

That would explain a lot of things.

I wasn’t sure where to take that joke, but then this Diagon Abbey twitter account came along and gave me the perfect thing to insert into this section. I guess that’s something watching Downton has going for it – if you haven’t watched it, the jokes won’t land and you’ll just be wasting your time reading those tweets.

Because if you get the jokes you aren’t wasting your time reading those tweets? Sure. That’s it.

Not to spoil it for you, but here’s the plot of pretty much every episode:
Someone: “The times are changing.”
Someone else: “Indeed they are, indeed they are.”
Someone: “Winter is coming.”

No, wait, that’s the plot of almost every episode of Game of Thrones.

Let’s try again.

Someone: “There was the incident with the gentleman from Turkey….”
Someone else: “Did he take my dragons? Do you know where my dragons are?”

That may not be right, either.

To be honest, I haven’t started watching season 3 yet, but my Tivo, Overlord II has been sucking them up for me. I already know what happens, because of course the show airs in the UK before it airs here and so there aren’t many surprises left by the time I get around to seeing it.

Why is a show about nobility and their servants so wildly popular in the United States? And why can’t I stop watching? Why? Why? Why?

As soon as we catch up on Homeland, Husband can start watching Downton. Yes. Yes he can. Maybe he can explain why I can’t stop watching while we wait for the next season of Homeland.

I guess an advantage to watching is that Sesame Street’s Upside Downton Abbey is much funnier if you know what they’re spoofing:

Why is a show that only began in 2010 a “Masterpiece Classic” on PBS?

Futilely pondering Downton‘s popularity is still less disturbing to think about than the fact that the U.S. Government is going to try to solve the Guam snake problem by airdropping dead poison-laced mice.

I can’t even begin to think about the intended consequences of dropping poisoned food into a rainforest.

Laura Jung on Doctor Who at the Learned Fangirl

Worst. Post title. Ever. Sorry, been sick for the last week and am sorely off my game. While I dust the place off, here’s a link to classmate Laura Jung’s first piece at The Learned Fangirl.

“Trust me, I’m Your Daddy, er….The Doctor: Gender Norms and Patriarchy in Doctor Who: The Aztecs”

I think Laura and Batgrl would be a delightfully deadly combination, and I of course mean that in the best possible way!

Mockingbird Lane


[embedded video: Addams Family]

Look, I’m an Addams Family girl. Always have been, always will be. This means that I have, since my earliest memories, resented the Munsters. Despised them, even.

I thought the Addams clan was charming and funny and their house was fabulous.

The Munsters? Lowbrow and tedious, with very uneven direction and too much mixed-monster mythology. Even a kid could see that.

I was going to embed the The Munsters theme but I’m only allowed to link to it. So here you go.

Additionally, since we only had a black and white TV when I was a wee child, I failed to understand that these shows were in reruns and the Munsters were not, even as I watched, actively conspiring to destroy my beloved Addams Family.

When I got older and co-curated an exhibit on horror movies and television, I learned that the networks really had waged this battle. And the Munsters lost. It was only in syndication that the Munsters seemed to have primacy, and only then because their reruns were obviously cheaper than the Addams Family. As a kid, I didn’t understand that “back to back” episodes really meant, “We got this crap super-cheap.”

Despite all this pop-cultural monster baggage, I tivo’d the pilot episode of Mockingbird Lane so that we could watch it and give it a fair shot. It’s from Bryans Singer and Fuller, so at the very least I figured it would be more visually interesting than the original.

The show was MUCH MUCH MUCH better than the original and, most importantly, I want every single item that Lily (Portia de Rossi) wore. Even the spider dress. Okay, maybe just the dress, you can keep the spiders (although that kind of instant tailoring would be very handy…)

Grimm

I recently made the acquaintance of the TV show Grimm (now in it’s 2nd season). Last year, it was on against Fringe and Supernatural. Having only a dual-tuner Tivo and already loving Fringe & Supernatural, I decided I’d watch Grimm online because I was intrigued by the premise. That didn’t really work out. I caught the first few episodes, then I fell behind. My low tolerance for Hulu’s ad-model further conspired against me & Grimm hooking up, but I finally netflixed the discs at the end of the summer and now we’re all caught up on the new season.

Both witches and werewolfish creatures figure into this modern-day fairytale show, so it’s perfect for this month’s theme.

When I woke up this morning, I decided to dump this month’s theme and go with “I want my mummy” but after my 1st cup of coffee I decided to save that one. Mid-way through my second cup I wavered after noticing Overlord II recorded Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy for me. Later I again decided to save mummies for another time and forge ahead as planned.

Back to Grimm.

David Greenwalt is one of the creators of Grimm. As he was an executive producer for Buffy and Angel, I doubt it’s coincidence that the revamped title sequence for season 2 seems to be a blatant parody of the hokey Buffy opener. I think it’s a hilarious homage.

In a nutshell, Grimm is about a detective in Portland, Oregon who discovers it’s his destiny to stand against the forces of darkness. Actually, it’s not clear yet what he’s supposed to do or why or what his powers are yet, which is (so far) part of the show’s charm. Detective Nick Burkhardt is living a somewhat charmed life with his adorable veterinarian girlfriend. He has a racially diverse wisecracking partner and his Captain, who is of course secretly part of some sort of sinister cabal, supports his unorthodox methods. Then, one day, out of the blue, he starts seeing people for the otherworldly creatures they actually are. Said creatures all have hilarious made-up Germanic species names.

I really like the show, although it’s sometimes so viscerally gross it makes even me squeamish. (The guy force-feeding the bird lady with a tube? Yikes).

It’s set in Portland, Oregon, so it makes a great companion show to Portlandia. If a Portlandia skit starts to show it’s SNL roots by lagging, or worse, lapping it’s own punchline, you can distract yourself by contemplating what kind of mysterious Old World fairy tale beast the characters actually are.

Well, I can, anyway. I think some of you are suffering from a failure of imagination.

Just try it.

This Portlandia skit in the coffee shop stopped being funny 6 minutes ago. Wait, what’s that? They can’t stop obsessing over their failed lives because they’re all secretly Hexen Beasts? That’s hilarious!

Yes, fine, you’re right. Not hilarious.

Back to Grimm….

Armed with an inherited trailer full ancestral Grimm journals, Nick battles the forces of evil or whatever it is Grimms do while angsting about destiny and his dead parents. His sidekick is a reformed Blutbad (a Big Bag Wolf) who helps him in his secret mission to battle the forces of evil or whatever it is that Grimms do.

Okay. Look. I was going to write a silly review making reference to ancestral journals (Charmed, Buffy, Supernatural) and mentor-moms who aren’t really dead but are actually super-powerful underworld figures (Alias, Chuck) and conspiracies (X-Files et al) reformed monsters with hearts of gold (Angel, Vampire Diaries) perfectly multi-racial police departments (every cop show since the 80s) and Portlandia and, well, you get the idea. But the fact is, I like the show and I think it’s silly and it’s fun and it doesn’t take it’s self too seriously. And I’m lazy. That’s good enough for me.

Plus, witches and werewolves.