Reflections on a Thunder Emperor
Customized Lady Gaga Barbie dolls, designed by a 29-year-old Beijinger I’ve made no secret of my hatred for Graydon Carter’s society rag Vanity Fair, so guess what happened when I opened its September 2010 issue? I sliced my finger open on a subscription card; not off to a good start. I was only interested in this issue because of the feature story devoted to Lady Gaga, who you may know as an artist of particular interest to me. Vanity... Read More
Burying the Lead
In a lecture he gave to a group of journalism students last month, a top official at Xinhua, the state news agency, said that the [Shenzhou 5] mission was not so picture-perfect. The official, Xia Lin, described how a design flaw had exposed the astronaut to excessive G-force pressure during re-entry, splitting his lip and drenching his face in blood. Startled but undaunted by Mr. Yang’s appearance, the workers quickly mopped up the blood,... Read More
Friends Like These
Kim Jong-il’s unprefaced, unofficial visit to China two weeks ago was the diplomatic equivalent of a drunk dial, with both parties behaving awkwardly, saying things they don’t really mean, and then pretending to forget the incident, or, in the case of North Korea, deliberately misremembering events. Strangely, the the story of Kim’s visit was only reported ex post facto, perhaps at the behest of the hermit kingdom’s king hermit... Read More
REPOST: Mad Women
In honor of Kathryn Bigelow’s historic achievement in being the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, this is a repost of my article about women in Hollywood, originally posted in August of 2009. An article in the Wall Street Journal profiled the women writers behind the hit AMC drama Mad Men, where they make up the majority of the staff. Such a writers’ room is a rarity; more often seen is a writers’ room composed... Read More
Powering the Future
The Obama Administration and Congress must work together to establish a five-year “Bucks for Belchers” Program modeled on “Cash for Clunkers.” Half of our electricity and a third of our carbon dioxide emissions come from coal-fired power plants. “These coal fire plants are going to continue to operate for decades, even as our industry turns to carbon-free electric power generating technologies,” wrote Entergy Corporation... Read More
Year-end Check Up
Karl Marx famously postulated that capitalism was a step on the road to socialism, but looking at the world today, one gets the impression that the road goes both ways. In America, a country that ostensibly sees life as an unalienable right, the battle over universal health care rages on, framed correctly but maliciously as a step toward socialism. But China, the only major “socialist” power left in the world, has seen the crumbling... Read More
Gossip Girl 3.12 “The Debarted” (aka Patrimony)
The time of Gossip Girl‘s pilot may seem like so long ago that it is easy to forget that it actually had a relatively sophisticated narrative structure, the highlight being the use of a fourth-wall breaking flashback to link two interconnected scenes that were separated by space but not by theme. This episode, written by Executive Producer Stephanie Savage, recalls some of that style — it features less naturalistic tricks such as starting... Read More
Gossip Girl 3.11 “The Treasure of Serena Madre” (aka Detournement)
Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers... Read More
Obama’s Trip to China
President Barack Obama recently completed a three-day tour of China as part of his week-long Asia trip. He held a town hall meeting with students in Shanghai and visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City between meetings with Chinese leadership in Beijing. What can we glean about the future of these two countries based on his visit? — J.R. Siegel Every time an American President meets with a Chinese leader, there is an expectation that,... Read More
Gossip Girl 3.10 “The Last Days of Disco Stick” (aka The Gagaesque Modality)
Two of my recent focuses in media analysis have been Gossip Girl and Lady Gaga; the show played a large number of her tracks last season, so perhaps it was inevitable they would eventually collide. Nevertheless, it’s kind of like the Beagle landing at the Galapagos for me. While my 7200-word feature article on Lady Gaga’s videography awaits editorial approval, consider this a preface to that piece. Oh yeah, I guess other stuff happened... Read More
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