“My Car is My Lover”, part of the BBC documentary series Strange Love (the same series responsible for the objectum sexuality documentary, “Married to the Eiffel Tower”), takes a look at “mechaphilia.” The film describes mechaphiles as people who are sexually and romantically attracted to vehicles, not exclusive to cars (references to trucks, planes, and helicopters). The […]
While I do not aim to discourage, or diminish, the possibilities of Bell Hook’s proposition of “Living By a Love Ethic,” the distance and removal from reality that a theoretical perspective affords. The only issue I take with the argument is the relative impossibility of its success in actual society. Rhetorically, the “love ethic” resembles […]
The 2014 TVC Thai Life Insurance commercial, “Unsung Hero,” which the top YouTube comment summarizes in the sentence, “Who’s cutting onions?! :”)” follows a nameless, everyman (in that the ad wants the viewer to see themselves in him) as he spends his days helping elderly women, a homeless mother and daughter, a dog, and a […]
Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies (at the University of Maryland, College Park), Alexis Lothian’s recent talk at the University of Michigan, “Queer Geek Methodologies: Social Justice Fandom as a Transformative Digital Humanities,” highlights several aspects of the non-normative modes of discourse found in internet fandom, such as the mixture of creative, artistic expression with legitimate television theory, that […]
In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak considers the issues of navigating the representation of marginalized identities within mainstream media when the marginalized individuals lack a platform to voice their own opinions. Although these representations in film and media often come from a desire to help, or understand, they ultimately act to speak over the voices of the actual […]
In Sandoval’s chapter on Semiotics, they aim to focus on a deconstruction of language and how things are presented in order to see and understand all elements of some form of conveying a message. In Semiotics, a sign is broken down often in to two main parts. The signifier and the signified. The signifier represents […]
Recently, there was a movement at Rutgers University where several women created a video in which they wore hijabs for a day (they do not normally where hijabs) and recounted their experiences. The goal of the video was to shed light on what hijabis go through and face in terms of disadvantages and harassment on a […]
The vagueness or malleability of the word love is both its strength and weakness as a political term for social progress. In Bell Hooks’ piece “Living by a Love Ethic” she argues for an interpretation of the word love that forgets associations with traditional dominant ideology notions of love in the family or between husband […]
Back in 2014, this commercial was aired in lieu of Mother’s Day. The concept for the ad was to hold fake interviews for participants, asking them if they were capable of completing certain tasks that were seemingly impossible, ie having 24 hour work days with no breaks, and then eventually revealing to them that they […]
Dancing with the Stars is a popular reality dance competition television series on ABC that consists of a celebrity paired with a professional dancer. In Season 13, Chaz Bono was featured on the show. Chaz is the son of American entertainers Sonny Bono and Cher, and came out as a transgender man on his own […]
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