One way to ‘read’ Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master is as an enormously ambitious, technically brilliant cinematic riff on Ron Hubbard and Scientology, on a time fertile for cults and messianic healing: post-WWII America, when broken men–post-traumatic stress disorder is as old as war–drifted back home, and were, just as many other Americans, looking forContinue reading “‘The Master’: Coming Undone And Putting It Back Together”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Respecting the President and ‘The Ideology of Kingship’
In reporting on the second presidential debate, Charles Blow writes: There is a fine line between feistiness and testiness. Romney has never negotiated that line well in debates and last night he fell over it again. At one point he scolded the president — the president of the United States! — “you’ll get your chance in aContinue reading “Respecting the President and ‘The Ideology of Kingship’”
A Nerdy Break-Up: Leaving the Academic Life
In the past few weeks I have had several conversations–electronic and face-to-face–with folks–friends and acquaintances–that have walked away from academic careers. Though I do not have numbers to back this up, it seems such departures have become increasingly common in the modern academy. The reasons have been varied: bad job markets (some things never change; inContinue reading “A Nerdy Break-Up: Leaving the Academic Life”
Bridging Partisan Divides with Patriotism? No Thanks.
Have you, dear reader, seen the latest cinematic masterpiece making the rounds of YouTube channels, ‘Americans, Fuck Yeah‘? (I lie ever so slightly; the actual title is just ‘Americans’.) Directed by James Stafford and starring musical maestro Kid Rock and actor and director Sean Penn, it aims to bring Americans together, to bridge partisan divides,Continue reading “Bridging Partisan Divides with Patriotism? No Thanks.”
The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning
This morning Jason Read of the University of Southern Maine posted the following photograph on his Facebook page (due to Tom McGlynn, to whom I owe thanks for letting me reproduce it here). Jason added: Just looking at it makes me want to write a bad science fiction novel about the unglamorous, dangerous, and low-payingContinue reading “The Extravagant, Space-Time Distorting Business of Time Cleaning”
Mary McCarthy on Madame Bovary as Neurotic
Among the most famous descriptions of Emma Bovary are Mary McCarthy‘s cutting lines: [She] is a very ordinary middle-class woman, with banal expectations of life and an urge to dominate her surroundings. Her character is remarkable only for an unusual deficiency of natural feeling. Ouch. But what follows these lines is a perhaps more interestingContinue reading “Mary McCarthy on Madame Bovary as Neurotic”
The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM
Justin Hollander’s defense of the traditional paper book (‘Long Live Paper’, New York Times, 10 October 2012) is well-meant but given the severity of the challenge it faces from e-books, it is a relatively milquetoast argument. It gets to the nitty-gritty late, and as such is unlikely to convince those enamored of their convenient, pocket-stuffing e-readers.Continue reading “The ‘Long Live the Paper Book’ Argument Needs To Mention DRM”
Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru
Yesterday, while writing on the corporate deadliness of The Wire‘s Stringer Bell, I noted in passing, some structural resemblances between that character and Breaking Bad‘s Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring. But, in many ways, Gus goes well beyond Stringer in bringing the corporate to the corner. In particular, in his channeling indiscriminate violence into murderously well-directed andContinue reading “Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru”
Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade
In New Zealand, you can get GPS-guided tours of locales used for Lord of the Rings action; tourists snap them up by the dozen. In Baltimore, the city of The Wire, you can get walking and driving tours that take you to Wire locales (like Season 2’s union-run shipping docks, for instance). It’s a pity theyContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade”
Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination
I was born on the 156th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s expulsion–on grounds of atheism–from Oxford. (Thomas Jefferson Hogg, his collaborator on The Necessity of Atheism, was expelled with him; the two were accused of ‘contumacy in refusing certain answers put to them’ by the master and fellows of University College.) My birthday is also, remarkably enough:Continue reading “Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination”
Samir Chopra 