Glee
I accidentally watched Glee last night, and yes, I do in fact regret it.
I am SO over the manipulative women in this show! I count FIVE in this episode alone! That's almost all the women with speaking parts! We still have the Hysterical Pregnancy Wife, also her conniving pregnancy coach/doula, we have Rachel threatening to quit if she doesn't get the lead (again), we've got Sue the cheerleading coach who uses images of the principal wearing compression hose (nevermind that it's for an airline commercial and not a sexual context at all) to blackmail him, and we have the pregnant Celibacy Club cheerleader, who tells her nice boyfriend it's his (even though they've never had sex) because he'd be a better father than his best friend, the ACTUAL father. UUUUUUUUUGH. These are horrible portrayals of all kinds of women--popular girls, competitive women, and hysterical wives. The redeeming moments were barely that, though I'll admit to liking Kurt's coming out scene and, well, pretty much all of his and Kim's scenes ever. That wasn't enough to make up for how disgusted I felt by the end of it. Also, not NEARLY enough Mercedes.
STILL not watching you, show.
I also read Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, and have some things to say about it. I enjoyed it but have some serious reservations about how it doesn't incorporate gender or (especially) race or class into its analysis, and it definitely felt in a lot of places like a how-to-market-to-the-new-online-audiences-for-giant-corporations, which...um. I also think he wasn't thorough in his exploration of examples, and I felt like the examples he uses were chosen because they highlight his agenda, and he doesn't explore them on their own terms. This was most obvious to me with how he used Harry Potter fanfiction to highlight how children are learning new media literacy skills through play... but there's a lot more to fannish culture than just kids getting educated, and I think his analysis fell down right there.
But! Having read this book gave me great background for two recent things I've read and recommend to you now, including several essays in Cinema Journal devoted to vidding and fandom. It's not yet available online, but check your local academic library. Kristina Busse's introduction is fantastic. There are great articles in there about particular vids (Francesca Coppa takes on A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness and Alexis Lothian discusses
Alien Nation
I watched Alien Nation a couple of days ago (the one with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin from 1988--I've never seen any of the show or movies before). I was surprised at how it was actually pretty good, despite being cheesy with gaping plot holes.
What I appreciated best were the lost little moments that highlight a racist society--the erasure of minority names, replacing them with 'human' ones that are mocking (Francisco's first name is "Sam"--he tells Sykes his given Newcomer name but Sykes immediately dubs him "George", again, "human" privilege in what is and isn't acceptable naming).
I liked the internal conflict between members of the Newcomer race, conflict that drives the plot and that asks serious questions about assimilation (which, in the end, the film portrays as positive), traitorousness, opportunism. The scene where they get drunk together (and how much do I love the sour milk business! These aliens are, like, alien!), and Sykes can't explain why a joke is funny, because humor is so contextually rooted and the Newcomer doesn't have the cultural frame of reference to participate. I loved the extreme deliberation of Francisco, I loved how he tried to act as a bridge and almost fell in the water (metaphorically, but also almost literally!) when he tried to straddle the divide between allegiance to his species and allegiance to safety and justice.
It is by no means a perfect film, and in a lot of ways it's seriously dated and could have benefited by a lot less of James Caan playing James Caan. There were some problematic issues about homosexuality, but this film was not sophisticated enough to do more than take a few potshots. But I'd be interested in the show and will probably give it a try.