Airplanes,. Foucault, and WALL-E

I just did a paper on WALL-E, and just flew from Paris to HK (which was about 24 hours of traveling in all). Doesn't the airplane setting remind you of something Foucaultian? I mean, honestly, in the style of Ellen Degeneres and her hilarious stand-up skit that I can no longer find, if my seat back isn't in it's full upright position when we land, and we crash, will I DIE?

The wonders and stupiding-down of technology

Have you noticed we don't worry about being late anymore when meeting people because we have cell phones? We become more lax in planning get-togethers, dinners, rendez-vous, etc because we just assume we can call when we get there. Plan last minute. And it's even worse because I have an iPhone. I hardly even look at directions before I head off, often pellmell, to a new location, trusting my GPS to get me there safely, if not on time. And if I'm not on time, no problem. I just call.

Even in Paris this summer, I went a bit technology-whore-ish by obsessing over what cell phone to get (I wanted a cheapo crap flip phone so I could pretend to be cool like Jack Bauer - he always seems to have flip phones that can set off nuclear devices at the push of a button) because I just couldn't do a whole month without a cell phone. It turned out that having a cell phone was a very good idea indeed, as a few of us got separated from our professors and group at the Louvre, and thanks to cell phones (but no thanks to intermittent reception within the Louvre), we were reunited with very little psychological trauma.

That's the thing though. Does technology make us less reliable, less responsible? I think it does. And yet, I still buy into the madness.

And, in response to Al's last post, here's a cool article that talks about technology:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i21/21b00601.htm

Does the Internet foster loneliness? Why does being disconnected from the web feel like a disconnection from being? Or does it? Food for thought.

Unexplained absence

Unfortunately, I have had a technological difficulty. And I need to admit something.

I am an internet service squatter. Someone in my apartment building recently wised-up and put a password on their wireless and I no longer get internet at home. BOO! That means I need to plan out my internet time, which I am not used to doing. And which I did a poor job of here because I only have 5 minutes before I am supposed to be somewhere else and thus I only have time for a notice and not an actual blog. BOO!

Ok, so now I have 3 minutes to be where I am supposed to be so I must go.

Southerners as the Other

Is it possible? Am I really going to be criticizing Joss Whedon for something? Let the disclaimer show that I still think he's the god of all things narrative and TV, but this minor thing struck me while watching Angel today.

The character of Winifred Burkle (or Fred, as she's called) is introduced to us late in Season 2 when Angel & Co rescue her from the demon dimension of Pylea. She comes off as shy and nerdy, a clear misfit (of course, in a dimension of demons and very few humans, of course she's a misfit). We don't learn until later that she's from Texas, in the episode, "Fredless." In the ep, her parents come to take LA to find her and take her home. And like all Southern characters portrayed in our lovely entertainment world, they speak with that heavy, hick-like Southern accent. An indication of their Otherness, since they don't speak perfect LA English (or, in Wesley's case, perfect British English). Secrets like the existence of demons and vampires are kept from them. They are clearly not a part of the in-crowd, and the audience is clearly supposed to laugh when Fred's mother, when talking about doing "rounds" refers to bus driving rather than medical doctoring. The stereotype of the low-class, blue-collar hick family raises its familiar head.

The ending, in true Whedon-like fashion, of course, turns our assumptions and stereotypes on its head, when Fred's parents are inevitably sucked into battle with a giant mommy bug-like demon looking for her little lost baby bugs. Fred's mother, using her bus-driving skills, squashes the bug monster with her truck. Additionally, Fred herself is a highly intelligent physicist, which shatters the Southern "dumb" stereotype.

Interestingly enough, and paradoxically, given the shattering of stereotypes that Joss Whedon is so famous for, Fred's acceptance into the in-crowd of Angel Investigations coincides neatly, and almost immediately, with the loss of her Southern accent. In the following episode, "Billy", she all but speaks like she was born and raised in Los Angeles, with nary a trace of her accent. The question is, why was that decision made for her to lose the accent? After all, Alexis Denisof, who plays the British character Wesley, is American, but maintains a British accent throughout the series. Why can't we have a character from the South with a genuine Southern accent in a setting that is not in the South (and not made fun of like in "Drop Dead Gorgeous" or "Sweet Home Alabama", where having a Southern accent marks you as white trash)? Is it because audiences feel like they can't relate to a character who is Southern, yet displays high intellect and is an important leading character of a mainstream TV show, because that's not what they're familiar with? Because someone who has a Southern accent is inherently the Other in our upper-middle class, urban/suburban, Hollywood-constructed America?

Wordsmithing

Ways I have made up words in my papers this semester:

celebrification - the making of a celebrity

panoptical, panoptic, panopticonal, panopticonic - academic ways of making "Panopticon" into an adjective

panopticony - Joss Whedon's way of making "Panopticon" into an adjective

Othering - making the Other in to a verb. To make into an Other.

Self-Othering - what these Othered groups do

Othered - making the Other into an adjective

You know...

You know you're in the coolest program in the world when you exchange South Park episodes with your professor...for academic purposes.