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    Category: Film, TV, other media

    • Relativisim, Revolutionary Fictionalism, Moral Facts and #TheDress

      By: Leigh M. Johnson If you haven't already, you should read yesterday's Stone article in the NYT by Justin McBrayer entitled "Why Our Children Don't Believe There Are Moral Facts." There, McBrayer bemoans the ubiquity of a certain configuration of the difference between "fact" and "opinion" assumed in most pre-college educational instruction (and, not insignificantly, endorsed…

    • Movies About Philosophers: Rare, Hard To Make, Desirable

      By: Samir Chopra After viewing the rather disappointing Chopin: Desire for Love  a couple of years ago, I was struck again by how difficult it seems to be to make movies about artists, writers, or perhaps creators of all kinds. My viewing also served to remind me that movies about philosophers' lives are exceedingly rare, and the few…

    • Taylor Swift’s Platonism

      By Gordon Hull Over on Cyborgology, my colleague Robin James has a post up about Taylor Swift’s promotion of her new album.  James focuses on two moments in that promotion: on the one hand, Swift has removed her music from the free streaming part of Spotify, on the grounds that it insufficiently compensates her (and…

    • Paul Morel and Travis Bickle: The World-Dissolving Melancholic Gaze

      By: Samir Chopra In Sons and Lovers (1913), D. H. Lawrence directs many glances at the Derbyshire landscape, often through his characters' distinctive visions. Here is one, this time through Paul Morel: He was brooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene; all that remained was a…

    • Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return

      By: Samir Chopra Matt Osterman's Ghost from the Machine (2010)–originally titled and known internationally as Phasma Ex Machina–is touted by its marketing material as a 'supernatural thriller'. A low-budget indie, it uses a cast made up of genuine amateurs who sometimes look distinctly uncomfortable and self-conscious on camera, and wears its modest production values on its sleeve. The story sounds…

    • Aereo, Cable TV, and the Privatization of the Public Sphere

      In the most anticipated Copyright decision this term, the Supreme Court today ruled, 6-3 (opinion by Breyer, dissent Scalia) that Aereo’s service for watching broadcast TV online violates the Copyright Act.  Briefly:  Aero operates a large number of tiny antennas.  Subscribers pick a program they want to watch, and get exclusive access to an antenna. …

    • My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection

      There's an interesting debate at slate about whether Sara O Holla's tumblr "MyHusband's Stupid Record Collection" is inadvertently sexist because it confirms the stereotype of only men being music nerds.* In our culture we do tend to associate men with the nerdly characteristic of getting overly enthusiastic about some narrow area and then trying to…

    • Plus ça change, masculinity anxiety edition

      This Salon piece looks at some recent movies through the lens of masculinity anxiety:  A friend of a friend of mine has big plans: quit his prestigious editorial job in New York, grow his beard a bit further out, and start working on the docks. In 2014, the sentiments behind such a decision aren’t anything…

    • Waves of Mind-Wandering in Live Performances

      I’m thinking (again) about beeping people during aesthetic experiences. The idea is this. Someone is reading a story, or watching a play, or listening to music. She has been told in advance that a beep will sound at some unexpected time, and when the beep sounds, she is to immediately stop attending to the book,…

    • Lowlights of 2013: un-blurring the lines

      Exactly one year ago I finished off my blogging year with a post on gendered atrocities, focusing in particular on the Newtown shooting and the widely discussed gang rape in India. At that point, the hope was that these two events would at least not have been in vain, and that they would stir changes…