Tedlog: Culture, Politics and Technology

Fall Classes

Here are links to the syllabi for my two fall classes, Comparative Studies in Emerging Media and Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Vertigo

Here's my final Flow column. It's about Buddhism, Jung, and critical theory.

Myth, the Numinous, and Cultural Studies

Here's my latest FLow column.

Turtles at Pine Lake, GA [Flickr]

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Turtle at Pine Lake, GA [Flickr]

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Idaho Potato Museum [Flickr]

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Buffalo [Flickr]

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Buffalo [Flickr]

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Bald Eagles [Flickr]

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Buffalo 5 feet away [Flickr]

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Fluffy Roy [Flickr]

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Potted Noisy [Flickr]

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Brownie [Flickr]

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Mohawk [Flickr]

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Noisy and Fluffy [Flickr]

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Twitter and Iran

Here's my latest Flow column, "Tweeting the Dialectic of Technological Determinism."

Manifesto for Centaurs

My new essay, "The Politics of Magic: Fantasy Media, Technology and Nature in the 21st Century," is now online at Scope.

Jung and Lost

I know the blog's been silent for a while, but I have been writing a column for Flow, an online media studies journal. The latest is "Jung and Lost", on the value of Carl Jung's ideas for understanding contemporary popular culture. You can also check out "Strat-O-Matic and the Baseball Tarot: Sense and Synchronicity in Sports and Games" and "The Play Paradigm: What Media Studies Can Learn from Game Studies."

Gooden and Strawberry Update

According to Bob Klapisch, Daryl Strawberry has found peace and contentment as a Mets hitting instructor and advocate for autistic children. Doc Gooden, on the other hand, is apparently still struggling with his demons.

I can still remember watching Strawberry during batting practice at Shea shortly after his rookie callup, in 1983. Only 21 years old, he had a dazed look in his eyes, as if he wasn't exactly sure how he'd ended up in New York City. That expression went from vulnerable to hangdog over the years, as the fans turned on him, mockingly chanting "Darrr-ylll" in a Nelson Muntz singsong. Like Michael Jackson, Linsey Lohan, or Britney Spears, he grew up in public. When it falls apart for somebody like that, I find it hard not to, well, blame the public, myself included - hey, I may not read Perez Hilton, but I do watch Best Week Ever, which launders celebrity rumors just as newscasts launder Matt Drudge's political snark.

In the classic Simpsons baseball episode, the opposing fans go into the "Darrr-ylll" chant when Strawberry steps to the plate. A teammate comments that Strawberry's a professional, so it'll roll right off him - then we cut to Strawberry, a single tear trickling down his face. I always thought that joke held more truth than we fans would like to admit. (Actually, that whole episode is worth rewatching - remember Ken Griffey's "grotesquely swollen head"? In the show, it's caused by drinking too much of a Springfield patent medicine, but after all we've learned about the changes in Barry Bonds's hat size, it comes off a lot differently today.)

Some people just aren't built for the media glare. From George Foster to Ed Whitson to Chuck Knoblauch to Roberto Alamar to Jeff Weaver, many established vetrans come to New York and wilt. I guess that means they "don't have what it takes," compared to the heroes with icewater in their veins, like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. But every player - every person - is a bundle of strengths and limitations. Jeter doesn't have great range at short. Mo can't get through a season any more without a few trips to the DL. And some players just don't click with the hyperactive media culture of New York City. (I guess I can relate - I lived in NYC for one year after college, then hightailed it to grad school in North Carolina.) Those players probably just shouldn't play in markets where dozens of reporters hound you after every game when you're just trying to clean up and go home - just as righthanded pull hitters like Don Baylor probably shouldn't play in a ballpark that's 430' to left center. Paul O'Neil, a lefty who thrives under pressure, was a much better fit.

Savvy management maximizes its players' strengths and minimizes their weaknesses, while keeping its eye on the long term. But Strawberry and Gooden were just squeezed for everything they had, future be damned - Doc's arm was never the same after he'd pitched a boggling 35 complete games by the age of 21.

Stawberry told Klapisch that he helps autistic children because they "have that pain in their eyes that I can relate to." I think that's the look I saw in Strawberry's eyes back in 1983. I'm so glad to hear that after years of injury, addiction, and a battle with cancer, he's finally in such a good place. And when I hear about Gooden, I feel sorry - and guilty.

Peter Gammons Leans to Obama

From Gammons's ESPN Insider blog:

"The Angels know who they got in Torii Hunter -- a man who drips energy and preaches hope and potential. There are numbers that will quantify what Hunter is or isn't worth, just as there are politicians who try to tell us that "experience" is far more important than the foundation of hope and potential. Those numbers don't matter as much as Hunter's ability to energize and inspire his teammates, with character that cannot be quantified."

As an Obama fan, I'm tickled, but I'm perturbed to see him equated with an aging, overpriced outfielder, however much of a mensch Hunter is. Who does that make Hillary - maybe an uninspiring sabermetric fave like Jack Cust?

New Spin on Apple's Classic "1984" Ad

This amateur Obama ad isn't really fair to Clinton, but it's pretty funny if you know the original.

You can read my essay on the original "1984" ad here.

Pop Culture 2.0?

It's the end of an era. Two of the most influential figures in American pop culture were fired this week: Tom Freston and Robert Christgau. Freston, who was head of Viacom's cable networks, was one of the key executives behind the rise of MTV. Christgau is the self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics," the writer who redefined the rock canon away from the populism of the mainstream music press, and toward what he sometimes called "semipopular music."

Freston got canned after the MTV Music Video Awards continued their ratings freefall this year, while MTV's web offerrings got their clocks cleaned by "Web 2.0" social networking juggernauts MySpace and YouTube. Christgau got axed after the Village Voice was sold to an alternaweekly chain desperately trying to compete with craigslist's free classified ads.

The old frameworks for making sense of pop culture are starting to collapse. Pop's presumed market of scarcity - only a handful of songs can make it to heavy rotation, only a handful of artists can become stars - is being overwhelmed by an information explosion. On MySpace, thousands of local band listings sit side by side with Paris Hilton promotions - and Paris needs the locals more than they need her. No one indie band has the reach of a pop star, but it's the community they've built that brings eyeballs to Paris's page. Meanwhile, viewers are tuning out TV channels and becoming their own programmers on YouTube.

The demassification of American popular culture continues. Every year, the big networks lose ground to cable, while the big cable channels lose ground to the profusion of newer digital channels. The big record labels' sales shrink, while the global jukebox becomes available on all-you-can-download subscription services like Rhapsody. Radio listeners abandon terrestrial's shrunken playlists for Sirius and XM. "The Long Tail" grows ever longer.

Which explains not only Freston's departure, but perhaps Christgau's, too. When the mainstream dissolves, how do we define the margins? If there's no longer such a thing as pop, how can there still be punk?

Christgau himself was never an indie snob - he's always had the open-earedness to praise a big star like Garth Brooks if he thought the music earned it. And I'm sure he'll land on his feet - some smart publication should grab him for some instant hipster credibility. Freston, I'm not so sure about, although I'm confident his parachute was much more golden than Christgau's. But the real question is what comes next.

Pop Culture 2.0 no longer needs a lowest common denominator. Traditional media companies are always out to score a blockbuster, because it's so much more efficient to sell one product to one million customers, rather than a thousnd products to a thousand customers each. But to MySpace, it's all the same. They make their money off ads, and a million pageviews is a million pageviews, no matter how they're sliced up. In fact, better they be a thousand different pages with a thousand viewers each - all the more room for growth. Finally, the economics are on the side of cultural diversity.

That doesn't mean they'll stay that way. I'm sure that Fox, which bought MySpace, would love to see it simply replace MTV as pop's top tastemaker. But I doubt we'll ever again see the kind of teen monoculture I lived through in the 1980s. There's just too much cool stuff out there to listen to. Christgau's the one who taught me that. And now everybody's figuring it out.

Moby Upside-down

Moby Upside-down, originally uploaded by tedfriedman.

Hot Kitty Action at the Desert Museum

The above scene went down at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is an amazing zoo/arboretum/natural history museum outside of Tucson, Arizona. It has a spectacular selection of plants, animals, and artifacts, all displayed in their natural habitats under minimum confinement.

We watched the staring contest for a good ten minutes, but it was likely to keep going all day, until more substantial bobcat-food arrived and the squirrel could make a clean getaway. The focus of the standing bobcat was just incredible - that little squirrel was clearly the most interesting thing he'd seen in a long time. If you can't make out the second bobcat, check out the larger version of the photo here.

I've posted more photos from the desert museum on my main Flickr page, including some shots of an Ocelot guarding his water bowl in a manner familiar anyone who lives with felines.

Almost Stepped on a Gila Monster Last Night . . .

. . . on a hotel nature path outside of Tuscon, Arizona. He just kept on waddling across the path and up a hill. I didn't have a camera, but check out this photo on Flickr to see what one of his close relatives looks like.

Sedona

KT and I encountered this guy in the middle of "Cowpies," one of the many stunnning trails among the spectacular red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. We're in the middle of a two-week jaunt through the west, with stops in Las Vegas, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Phoenix and Tuscon. I've put up many more travel photos on Flickr.

Sedona's an amazing place, where the desert meets the mountains. In one hike, you can walk from lizards and cacti to alpine forests - all under the shadows of those luminous red rocks.

There's definitely a special kind of energy in Sedona. Our hotel was nestled among the rocks, and on the last morning I woke up at 6:30 so brimming with vitality I ended up taking a two-hour pre-breakfast hike through the canyon. Those of you who know me know how out of character it is for me to even get out of bed before noon.

Sedonans have concluded that the place is full of what they call "vortexes" - sites where the earth's energy is especially concentrated. The purported precise locations of the vortexes were first mapped out by a local psychic in 1980. Surprisingly, they're all conveniently located within short walks of trailhead parking lots - which may say more about her lack of interest in hiking than in the dynamics of local energy flows.

We had a fantastic tour gide in Sednoa, Dennis Andres, also known in town as "Mr. Sedona." In his invaluable, BS-free guide, What Is a Vortex?, Dennis concludes it may make more sense to consider the entire city one giant vortex, rather than splitting hairs over which spots count as vortex sites. A globetrotting hiker, he compares the energy in Sedona to Peru's Macchu Picchu, California's Mount Shasta, and Mount Everest.

Not surprisingly, Sedona's become a New Age magnet in recent years, leading to traffic, inflation, and a truly boggling number of crystal stores. Land is being gobbled up by rich vacationers, yuppie dropouts, and speculators, As Dennis explains, the top four professions in Sedona today are psychic, jeep tour driver, realtor, and psychic jeep-tour-driving realtor. Out of a population of 10,000, there are 400 reiki healers.

Not to knock Sednoa reiki healers - I had a session the night I got into town that blew my mind. That Sedona energy is powerful stuff, however fuzzy the rhetoric and kitschy the marketing. After three days, I was ready to take a vacation from my vacation, and bring my chi back to more familiar levels. But I'll be back.

Container Garden, 2006 version, Day 0

Container Garden, 2006 version, Day 0, originally uploaded by tedfriedman.