American Pop Culture Research Institute

Video Games

2007-03-09T00:23:00.000-08:00

A video game (or videogame) is a game that typically involves user/player interaction with a controller interface to generate visual feedback on a video screen. It also generally has some system of reward presented to the user in return for meeting certain accomplishments within the framework of a given ruleset. The various types of electronic devices that video games are played on are known as platforms and examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. Video games also exist across a full range of technology ranging from large computers such as mainframes down to smaller hand-held devices (like cell phones and PDAs). There are very specialized video games such as Arcade games, which while extremely common at one point have seen their use decline over the years. Many players identify their platform of choice as a distinct form of video gaming apart from the rest. The main separations between the many platforms within a generation are interface options, and level of social interaction inherent to the majority of games found them. The quantitative value of these separations has shifted over the years, though.

Video games are generally manipulated by a control interface of some sort, and these vary across all platforms. For instance, a dedicated console controller might consist of only a button and a joystick or feature upwards of a dozen buttons and one or more joysticks all on the same controller. Early computer based games historically relied on the availability of a keyboard for gameplay, or more commonly expected the user to purchase a separate joystick with at least one button to play. Many modern PC games allow the player to use a keyboard and mouse simultaneously.

Beyond the common element of video based feedback, video games have also utilized many other systems to provide interaction and information to a player. Chief examples of these include various audio playback devices (speakers) and an array of haptic interactive peripherals (i.e., vibration or force feedback).

Origins
The history of video games traces to 1948, where the idea of a video game was conceived and patented by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. In 1958, the first video game was introduced to the public, William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two. Later in 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was released, the first consumer-available video game console.

Platforms
In common usage a "PC game" refers to a game that is played on a personal computer connected to a high-resolution video monitor. A "console game" historically has referred to a specialized single purpose electronic device that connects to a standard television set or composite video monitor. A "hand-held" game is a self contained electronic device or miniature computer and monitor combination that is portable and can be held in a user's hands. "Arcade game" generally refers to an even more specialized type of electronic device that is typically designed to play only one game and is encased in a special cabinet. These distinctions are not always clear and there may be games that bridge one or more platform. There are also platforms that have non video game variations such as in the case of electro-mechanically based arcade games.

There are also devices with screens which have the ability to play games but are not dedicated video game machines. Examples are mobile phones, PDAs, graphing calculators, and watches.

In general practice, a platform is a distinct class of interfaces and expected experiences combined to provide a consistent experience to the user/player.

Genres
Due to many reasons, be it loose definition standards both among the fans, the journalistic community at large, or even the constant simplification of language when communicating, many users frequently misapply genres as platforms. A video game, like most other forms of media may be categorized into genres based on many factors such as method of game play, types of goals, and more.

Games have often been easier to classify by genre due to the technical constraints of various platforms, and commercial pressures like one would experience in any hit driven, entertainment market. As the production values of video games have increased over the years both in visual appearance and depth of story telling, the demand for more creative talent has driven game companies to bring in artists from outside of what one would traditionally call the video game industry.

The reuse of genres is most clearly seen in the trend by publishers to establish "franchises", which often recycle the characters, situations, conflicts, gameplay mechanics, and/or themes over the course of any number of sequels.

Therefore, although many games may combine genres, very few exist outside the paradigms of previously established genres with notable exceptions, which when successful, generally define a new genre through subsequent imitation by competition. A game that launches a genre may also not be the first game of its kind. It may just be the first that was significantly commercially successful enough to drive other companies to try and replicate its success. Examples of this would be Super Mario 64 which launched the 3-D Platform genre for console gaming, and Doom which launched the First-person shooter genre for PC gaming.

There are many genres of video gaming and each appears across nearly all platforms, a sampling of common genres include:

Action
Stealth-based
Adventure
Graphical
Text-based
Casual
Fighting
Platform
Puzzle
Racing
Role-playing (RPG)
Simulation
Sports
Strategy game
Real-time (RTS)
Turn-based
Shooters
First Person (FPS)
Scrolling Shooter
Shooting (SHMUPS)
Multiplayer
Online
There are also even combinations of these genres such as with Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)

It is also common to see higher level genre terms that are collective in nature across all other genres such as with Christian or Horror themed

Social aspects
Multiplayer video games
Video gaming has traditionally been a social experience. From its early beginnings, video games have commonly been playable by more than a single player. Multiplayer video games are those that can be played either competitively or cooperatively by using either multiple input devices, or by hotseating. Tennis for Two, arguably the first video game, was a two-player game as was its successor, PONG. The first commercially available console game system to support multiple games (the Magnavox Odyssey), had two controller inputs.

Since that time, most console systems have been shipped with two or four controller inputs. Some have had the ability to expand to four, eight or as many as twelve inputs with additional adapters, such as the Multitap. In the early days, multi-player Coin-op games commonly featured hotseat play for at least two players. In later years it was more common to feature two-player simultaneous competitive play. Public business establishments which feature predominantly coin-op video games are generally referred to as arcades, and were widely popular during the golden age of arcade games.

Many early computer games for non IBM PC descendant based platforms featured multiplayer support. Personal computer systems from Atari and Commodore both regularly featured at least two game ports. Network games for these early personal computers were generally limited to only text based adventures or MUDs that were played remotely on a dedicated server. This was due both to the slow speed of modems (300-1200bps), and the prohibitive cost involved with putting a computer online in such a way where multiple visitors could make use of it.

IBM PC (PC for short) based Computer games started out with a lower availability of multiplayer options, largely due to many games being dependent on keyboard or mouse based interactions, a single gaming port (if any) available, and network options that were limited. However, with the advent of widespread local area networking technologies and Internet based online capabilities, the number of players in modern games can be 32 or higher, sometimes featuring integrated text and/or voice chat.

MMOs can offer extremely high numbers of simultaneous players; EVE Online set a record with just under 36,000 players on a single server in 2006.

Benefits of video gaming
Perhaps the most visible benefit of video gaming are its artistic and entertainment contributions. As a form of multimedia entertainment, modern video games contain a highly unique fusion of 3D art, CG effects, architecture, artificial intelligence, sound effects, dramatic performances, music, storytelling, and, most importantly, interactivity. This interactivity enables the player to explore environments that range from simulated reality to stylized, artistic expressions (something no other form of entertainment can allow) were the actions of the player operating as a single, irreducible variable. In this respect, every game scenario will play out a slightly different way every time. Even if the game is highly scripted, this can still feel like a large amount of freedom to the person who is playing the game.

A related property is that of emergent behavior. While many games including card games and sports rely on emergent principles, video games commonly present simulated story worlds where emergent behavior occurs within the context if the game. This is something that some gamers find appealing as it introduces a certain level of randomness to a game. In discussing the issue, game designer Warren Spector has used the term "emergent narrative" to describe how, in a simulated environment, storyline can be created simply by "what happens to the player." Emergent behavior in video games date back to the earliest games though. Generally any place where you have event driven instructions for AI in a game, you will inevitably see this. For instance, take a racing game where cars are programmed to avoid crashing and they encounter an obstacle in the track, the cars might then maneuver to avoid the obstacle causing the cars behind them to slow and/or maneuver to accommodate the cars in front of them and the obstacle. The programmer never wrote code to specifically create a traffic jam, yet one now exists in the game.

In Steven Johnson's book, "Everything Bad Is Good For You," he argues that video games in fact demand far more from a player than traditional games like Monopoly. To experience the game, the player must first determine the objectives, as well as how to complete them. They must then learn the game controls and how the human-machine interface works, including menus and HUDs. Beyond such skills, which after some time become quite fundamental and are taken for granted by many gamers, video games are based upon the player navigating (and eventually mastering) a highly complex system with many variables. This requires a strong analytical ability, as well as flexibility and adaptability. To emphasize the point, Johnson notes that the strategy guide for Grand Theft Auto III is 53,000 words long. He argues that the process of learning the boundaries, goals, and controls of a given game is often a highly demanding one that calls on many different areas of cognitive function. Indeed, most games require a great deal of patience and focus from the player, and, contrary to the popular perception that games provide instant gratification, games actually delay gratification far longer than other forms of entertainment such as film or even many books. Some research suggests video games may even increase player's attention capacities.

Multiplayer games, which take advantage of the fact that computer games can use the internet, provide players with the opportunity to compete with other players from across the globe, something that is also unique to electronic gaming. MMORPG's take the concept much further with the establishment of vast, online communities existing in persistent, virtual worlds. Millions of players around the globe are attracted to video gaming simply because it offers such unprecedented ability to interact with large numbers of people engaged simultaneously in a structured environment where they are all involved in the same activity (playing the game).

Even simple games offer potential benefits to the player. Games like Tetris and Pac-man are well-designed games that are easy to pick up but difficult to master, much like chess or even poker. Despite their simplicity, simple games may also feature online capabilities or powerful AI. Depending on the game, players can develop and test their techniques against an advanced computer player or online against other human players.

More obvious benefits to the player can come in the form education on the game's subject matter. For example, a RTS set during the American Civil War may feature the use of period armies engaging in historical battles, and outwitting an opponent such as Robert E. Lee.

Controversy
Like related forms of media, computer and video games have been the subject of frequent controversy and censorship, due to the depiction of graphic violence, sexual themes, Advergaming (a form of advertising in games), consumption of illegal drugs, consumption of alcohol or tobacco, propaganda, or profanity in some games. Among others, critics of video games sometimes include parents' groups, politicians, organized religion groups, and other special interest groups, even though all of these can be found in all forms of entertainment and media. Various games have been accused of causing addiction and even violent behavior.

Video game censorship is defined as the use of state or group power to control the playing, distribution, purchase, or sale of video games or computer games. Video game controversy comes in many forms, and censorship is a controversial subject, as well as a popular topic of debate. Proponents and opponents of censorship are often very passionate about their individual views.

Historically, this type of controversy and criticism is not unique to video games. The same situation has been applied to Comic books, motion pictures and to some extent music. Moreover, it appears to be a question of age. Since these art forms have been around longer, the backlash against them occurred farther in the past, beyond the remembrance of today's youth. In both cases, the attempts at censorship in the United States were struck down as a violation of First Amendment rights, and they have gone on to become fully integrated facets of society.

Games that have sparked notable national controversy in the United States include Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, Doom, the Grand Theft Auto series and, most notably, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' infamous Hot Coffee mod fiasco which boosted the game's ESRB rating from M (Mature) to AO (Adults Only).

Demographics
The November 2005 Nielsen Active Gamer study, taking a survey of 2,000 regular gamers, found that the U.S. games market is diversifying. The age group among male players is expanding significantly into the 25-40 age group. For casual online puzzle-style and simple mobile cell phone games, the gender divide is more or less equal between males and females. Females are being significantly attracted to playing certain online multi-user video games that offer a more communal experience, and a small hardcore group of young females are playing aggressive games that are usually thought of as being 'traditionally male' games. The most loyal fan-base is reported to be for large role-playing games.[citation needed]

According to the Entertainment Ratings Software Board (ESRB) almost 40% of video and PC gamers are women. Increasingly, women are some of the "best gamers out there".

Development
Video games are made by developers, who used to do this as individuals or small teams in the 80's. Now, development commonly requires a large team consisting of designers, graphic designers and other artists, programmers, sound designers, musicians, and other technicians; all of which are managed by producers. The visionary for any game may come from any of the roles outlined. Development by committee rarely works.

Video games are developing fast in all areas, but the problem is of cost, and how developers intend to keep the costs low enough to attract publisher investment. Most video game console development teams number anywhere from 20 to 50 people, with some teams exceeding 100. The average team size as well as the average development time of a game have grown along with the size of the industry and the technology involved in creating games. This has led to regular occurrences of missed deadlines and unfinished products; Duke Nukem Forever is the quintessential example of these problems.

Game modifications
Games running on a PC are often designed with end-user modifications in mind, and this consequently allows modern computer games to be modified by gamers without much difficulty. These mods can add an extra dimension of replayability and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games. Developers such as id, Valve, Crytek, Epic and especially Blizzard Entertainment ship their games with the very development tools used to make the game in the first place, along with documentation to assist mod developers, which allows for the kind of success seen by popular mods such as Counter-Strike.

Cheats
Cheating in computer games may involve cheat codes implemented by the game developers for playtesting, modification of game code by third parties (by either cheat cartridge hardware or a software trainer), or players exploiting a software glitch.

Cheats usually make the game easier by providing an unlimited amount of some resource (lives, health or ammunition for example) but might provide an unusual or amusing feature, like reversed colors in a game.

Glitches
Software errors not detected by software testers during development can find their way into released versions of computer and video games. This may happen because the glitch only occurs under unusual circumstances in the game, was deemed too minor to correct, or because the game development was hurried to meet a publication deadline.

Glitches can range from minor graphical errors to serious bugs that can delete save data or cause the game to malfunction.

Glitches in games for home computers, and now in consoles like the Xbox 360,PS3 and the Wii, may be later corrected if the developers' release a patch.

Sales
The three largest markets for computer and video games are the United States (largest), Japan (2nd largest) and the United Kingdom (3rd) also in that order as the largest producers of video games. Other significant markets include Australia, Canada, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Mexico, France and Italy. Both India and the China are considered emerging markets in the video game industry and sales are expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

Sales of different types of games vary widely between these markets due to local preferences. Japanese consumers avoid computer games and instead buy console games, with a strong preference for games catering to local tastes. In South Korea, computer games are preferred, especially MMORPG games and real-time strategy games; there are over 20,000 PC bang Internet cafes where computer games can be played for an hourly charge.

The NPD Group tracks computer and video game sales in the United States. It reported that as of 2004:

Console and portable software sales: $6.2 billion, up 8% from 2003[5]
Console and portable hardware and accessory sales: $3.7 billion, down 35% from 2003
PC game sales: $1.1 billion, down 15% from 2006
These figures are sales in dollars, not units; unit shipments for each category were higher than the dollar sales numbers indicate, as more software and hardware was sold at reduced prices compared to 2003.

The game and film industries are also becoming increasingly intertwined, with companies like Sony having significant stakes in both. A large number of summer blockbuster films spawn a companion game, often launching at the same time to share the marketing costs.

Naming
Non-gamers use several umbrella terms for console, PC, arcade, handheld, and similar games since they do not agree on the best name. For many, either "computer game" or "video game" describes these games as a whole. Other commonly used terms include "entertainment software," "interactive entertainment media," "electronic interactive entertainment," "electronic game," "software game," and "videogame" (as one word). Gamers are quite happy to use the vague term "games", or "videogame/video game" to distinguish them from board games and card games when necessary. In the past, it was common for parents and/or elderly people, who were unfamiliar with video games, to refer to all of them as "Nintendo games" due to Nintendo's overwhelming popularity in the late 80s and 90s (this is an example of a genericized trademark). Computer and video games are a subset of interactive media, which includes virtual reality, flight and engineering simulation, multimedia and the World Wide Web.

Media Studies

2007-03-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

Media studies concerns the study of media content, institutions, and its role in society. A cross-disciplinary field, media studies uses techniques and theorists from sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, art theory, information theory, and economics.

In the United States, Media Studies is a term used by some universities and scholars for diverse studies of media and communications.

Key themes in media studies
In addition to the interdisciplinary nature of the academic field, popular understandings of media studies encompass:

media production
audience studies, media influence and media effects
mass communication
journalism
political economy
interpersonal communication
Although most production and journalism courses incorporate media studies for contextual purposes (see Fourth estate), the terms are not interchangeable.

Separate strands are being identified within media studies, such as audience studies, producer studies, television studies and radio studies. Film studies is often considered a separate discipline, though television and video games studies grew out of it, as made evident by the application of basic critical theories such as psychoanalysis, feminism and Marxism.

Critical media theory looks at how the corporate ownership of media production and distribution affects society, and provides a common ground to social conservatives (concerned by the effects of media on the traditional family) and liberals and socialists (concerned by the corporatization of social discourse). The study of the effects and techniques of advertising forms a cornerstone of media studies.

Contemporary media studies includes the analysis of new media with emphasis on the internet, video games, mobile devices, interactive television, and other forms of mass media which developed from the 1990s. Because these new technologies allow instant communication across the world (chat rooms and instant messaging, online video games, video conferencing), interpersonal communication is an important element in new media studies. Another factor influencing contemporary media studies is globalization: the debate of globalization as a historical event or as a social construction rages on (see Held & McGrew, 2000). Tom McPhail's theory of electronic colonialism has gained some international recognition.

It has been argued that media studies has not fully acknowledged the changes which the internet and digital interactive media have brought about, seeing these as an 'add-on'. David Gauntlett has argued for a 'Media Studies 2.0' which fully recognises the ways in which media has changed, and that traditional boundaries between 'audiences' and 'producers' has collapsed.

Political communication and political economy
From the beginning, media studies are closely related to politics and wars (Guo & Wu, 2005, p. 276) such as campaign research and war propaganda. Political communication mainly studies the connections among politicians, voters and media. It focused on the media effects. There are four main media effects theories: magic bullet, two-step flow of communications (Lazarsfeld, 1948), limited effects (Lang & Lang, 1953), and the spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984). Also, many scholars studied the technique of political communication such as rhetoric, symbolism and etc.

In the last quarter century, political economy has played a major part in media studies literature. The theory gained notoriety in media studies particularly with the publication of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, published in 1988. In the book, the authors discuss a theory of how the United States’ media industry operates, which they term a “propaganda model.” The model describes a “decentralized and non-conspiratorial market system of control and processing, although at times the government or one or more private actors may take initiatives and mobilize co-ordinated elite handling of an issue."

Media Studies in the UK
In the UK, media studies developed in the 1960s from the academic study of English, and from literary criticism more broadly. The key date, according to Andrew Crisell, is 1959:

when Joseph Trenaman left the BBC's Further Education Unit to become the first holder of the Granada Research Fellowship in Television at Leeds University. Soon after, the Centre for Mass Communication Research was founded at Leicester University, and degree programmes in media studies began to sprout at polytechnics and other universities during the 1970s and 1980s.

Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was founded by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall at the University of Birmingham in 1964. As the appeal of Marxism waned in the 1960s, the CCCS took critical theory in new directions, raising questions about media and power. There was the shift of paradigm from ethnography to Hall's semiology. The CCCS was pivotal in developing the field, producing a number of key researchers. Under the directorship of Stuart Hall, who wrote the seminal Encoding/Decoding model, the centre produced key empirical research about the relationship between texts and audiences. Amongst these was The Nationwide Audience by David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon. Cultural studies revamped the definition of culture. The definition of culture changed from culture being viewed as good/bad to an overall view of social interests and relations.

Popular misconceptions and derogatory attitudes
In the UK, Media Studies is regularly the victim of jokes and cynical attitudes, often being labelled as a Mickey Mouse subject. It receives many of the criticisms directed at sociology scholars during the 70s and 80s.

In 2000, England's Chief Schools Inspector, Chris Woodhead suggested that media studies is a "one way ticket to the dole queue." There is, he says, a "profound scepticism as to whether these courses teach students the skills and understanding they want".

David Marsland, professor of health at Brunel University, said about the subject: "There's a lot of nonsense in it. It's not because it's vocational, it's because it's new, it has not really got a literature. It has not got established principles and it's taught variably."

However, Paul Smith, professor of media and culture at the University of Sussex says that the rising number of media studies programmes is not "dumbing down", but reflects changes in the real world. "In the current cultural, social and political circumstances that we live in, the media is so pre-eminent, that some way of understanding it is fairly crucial for an informed citizenship. We are trying to understand how [the media] operates, what kind of structures it has and the cultural impact it has."

Its relation to polytechnics, and subsequently the post-1992 New Universities, are also a target for ridicule. The now annual moral panic in the UK every August when GCSE and A-level results are released normally focuses upon Media Studies as an example of the alleged dumbing down of education.

External links
Theory.org.uk: media studies website by David Gauntlett
Mediaedu.co.uk A new Media Studies website offering blogging, podcasts, interactive forums, online quizzes, photo resources, writing frames, competitions, useful links and managed content. This is a collaborative site aimed at supporting the needs of staff and students working in KS4 and KS5 Media Studies.
MANA - the Media Alliance for New Activism
LanguageMonitor: Media Metrics and Analysis
MediaStudies.com Links to a variety of news and other media sites.

High & Low Culture

2007-03-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

Low culture
Low culture is a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture. The term is often encountered in discourses on the nature of culture. Its opposite is high culture. It has been said by culture theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures.

Kitsch, bro, slapstick, camp, escapist fiction, popular music, comic books, tattoo art and exploitation films are examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in postmodern times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred. See the 1990s artwork of Jeff Koons for example of appropriation of low art tropes.

Romanticism was one of the first artistic movements to reappraise "low culture", when previously maligned medieval romances started to influence literature and Susan Sontag was one of the first essayists to write about the intersection of high and low art in her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'".

External links
Dumbing Down and Low Culture

High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the Arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture.

Concept
Although it has a longer history in Continental Europe, the term was introduced into English largely with the publication in 1869 of Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, although he most often uses just "culture". Arnold defined culture as "the disinterested endeavour after man`s perfection" (Preface) and most famously wrote that having culture meant to "know the best that has been said and thought in the world" - a specifically literary definition, also embracing Philosophy, which is now rather less likely to be considered an essential component of High Culture, at least in the English-speaking cultures. Arnold saw high culture as a force for moral and political good, and in various forms this view remains widespread, though far from uncontested. The term is contrasted with Popular culture or Mass culture and also with Traditional cultures, but by no means implies hostility to these.

T.S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) was an influential work which saw high culture and popular culture as necessary parts of a complete culture. The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart (1957) was an influential work along somewhat the same lines, concerned with the cultural experience of those, like himself, who had come from a working-class background before university. In America, Harold Bloom has taken a more exclusive line in a number of works, as did F.R. Leavis earlier - both, like Arnold, being mainly concerned with literature, and unafraid to champion vociferously the literature of the Western canon.

High Art
Much of High Culture consists of the appreciation of what is sometimes called High Art. This term is rather broader than Arnold's definition and besides Literature includes Music, Visual arts, especially Painting, and traditional forms of the Performing arts, now including some Cinema. The Decorative arts would not generally be considered High art.

The cultural products most regarded as forming part of High culture are most likely to have been produced during periods of High civilization, for which a large, sophisticated and wealthy urban-based society which provides a coherent & conscious aesthetic framework, and a large-scale milieu of training, and, for the visual arts, sourcing materials and financing work. All this is so that the artist is able, as near as possible, to realize his creative potential with as few as possible practical and technical constraints. Although the Western concept of High Culture naturally concentrates on the Graeco-Roman tradition, and its resumption from the Renaissance onwards, it would normally be recognised that such conditions existed in other places at other times. A tentative list of High Cultures, or cultures producing High art, might therefore be:

Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece from c650BC
Ancient Rome from c200BC to c200AD
China nearly continuously from c200BC
India nearly continuously from c400BC
Byzantium
Islamic Persia
The Arab world
Japan from about 1,000AD
Europe from the 14th century on

Promotion of High Culture

The term has always been susceptible to attack for elitism, and in response many proponents of the concept devoted great efforts to promoting High Culture among a wider public than the highly-educated bourgeoisie whose natural territory it was supposed to be. There was a drive, beginning in the 19th century, to open museums and concert halls to give the general public access to high culture. Figures such as John Ruskin and Lord Reith of the BBC in Britain, Leon Trotsky and others in Communist Russia, and many others in America and throughout the western world have worked to widen the appeal of elements of High Culture such as Classical music, Art by Old masters and the literary classics.

With the widening of access to university education, the effort spread there, and all aspects of High culture became the objects of academic study, which with the exception of the classics had not often been the case until the late 19th century. University Liberal arts courses still play an important role in the promotion of the concept of High culture, though often now avoiding the term itself.

Especially in Europe, governments have been prepared to subsidize High culture through the funding of Museums, Opera and Ballet companies, Orchestras, Cinema, public broadcasting stations such as BBC Radio 3, and in other ways. Organisations such as the Arts Council in Britain, and, in most European countries, whole Ministries administer these programmes. This includes the subsidy of new works by composers, writers and artists. There are also many private philanthropic sources of funding, which are especially important in the US.

Theoreticians
High culture and its relation to Mass culture, have been, in different ways, a central concern of much theoretical work in Cultural studies, Critical theory, Media studies and Sociology, as well as Postmodernism and many strands of Marxist thought. It was especially central to the concerns of Walter Benjamin, whose 1935-6 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction has been highly influential, as has the work of Theodor Adorno.

High culture has also been an important concept in political theory on Nationalism for writers such as Ernest Renan and Ernest Gellner, who saw it as an necessary component of a healthy national identity. Gellner's concept of a high culture was much broader than just the arts; he defined it in Nations and Nationalism (1983) as: "...a literate codified culture which permits context-free communication". This is a distinction between different cultures, rather than within a culture, contrasting high with simpler, agrarian low cultures.

Pierre Bourdieu's book: La Distinction (English translation: Distinction - A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste) (1979) is a study influential in Sociology of a another much broader, class based, definition of high culture, or "taste", which includes etiquette, appreciation of fine food and wine, and even military service. This partly reflects a French, or Mediterranean, conception of the term which is different from the more serious-minded Anglo-German concept of Arnold, Benjamin, Leavis or Bloom.

External links
Full text of Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy online
Memory and modernity:reflections on Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism - Lecture text by Anthony D Smith

Peter S. Beagle

2007-03-05T23:49:00.000-08:00

Peter Soyer Beagle (born in 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He is also a talented guitarist and folk singer. He wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, when he was only 19 years old. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn, which routinely polls as one of the top ten fantasy novels of all time, and at least two of his other books (A Fine and Private Place and I See By My Outfit) are considered modern classics.

He wrote the teleplay for episode 71 of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, titled "Sarek." He also wrote the screenplay for the 1978 Ralph Bakshi-animated version of The Lord of the Rings, the film which first inspired a teenaged Peter Jackson to read J.R.R. Tolkien's original trilogy.

His work as a screenwriter interrupted his early career direction as a novelist, magazine nonfiction author, and short-story writer. But in the mid-'90s he returned to prose fiction of all lengths, and has produced new works at a steady pace since.

In addition to his own body of work, he is sole heir to the literary estates of science fiction author Edgar Pangborn, Edgar's sister and sometime collaborator Mary, and their mother Georgia Wood Pangborn. Since 2003 he has been working to bring the best of these three authors' fiction back into print.

In 2005 he finally published a coda to The Last Unicorn, a novelette entitled "Two Hearts," and began work on a full-novel sequel. In 2006, "Two Hearts" won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novelette and was nominated as a short fiction finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In 2007 it was nominated for the Nebula Award.

Peter S. Beagle now lives in Oakland, California.

Dispute with Granada Media
Peter S. Beagle's book The Last Unicorn was made into an animated film in 1982, based on a screenplay written by Beagle himself. Since 1999 this film has been controlled by a British company, Granada Media International (a subsidiary of ITV plc). Peter S. Beagle is now involved in a financial dispute with Granada Media over nonpayment of contractually-due profit and merchandising shares. The total amount due might total as much as several hundred thousand dollars.

Books
A Fine and Private Place, 1960 (novel)
I See By My Outfit: Cross-Country by Scooter, an Adventure, 1965 (nonfiction)
The Last Unicorn, 1968 (novel)
The California Feeling, 1969 (with photographer Michael Bry, nonfiction)
Lila the Werewolf, 1974 (chapbook edition of previously-published novelette)
American Denim, 1975 (nonfiction art book)
The Lady and Her Tiger, 1976 (with Pat Derby, nonfiction)
The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, 1978 (omnibus collection including A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn, "Come Lady Death," and "Lila the Werewolf")
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1982 (nonfiction art book)
The Folk of the Air, 1986 (novel, currently being rewritten and expanded for new release)
The Innkeeper's Song, 1993 (novel)
In the Presence of the Elephants, 1995 (nonfiction photo book)
Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn, 1995 (co-editor, original story anthology)
Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn 2, 1995 (co-editor, original story anthology)
The Unicorn Sonata, 1996 (young adult novel, currently being rewritten and expanded into a 4-book series)
Giant Bones, 1997 (collection of original stories set in the world of The Innkeeper's Song)
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances, 1997 (collection of fiction and nonfiction essays)
The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories, 1999 (foreign edition title for Giant Bones collection)
Tamsin, 1999 (novel)
A Dance for Emilia, 2000 (hardcover giftbook edition of novella)
The Line Between, 2006 (story collection)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician: Songs and Early Poems, 2006 (limited edition chapbook collection of song lyrics and poetry)
The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, 2007 (1000-copy limited collector's edition for Subterranean Press)

Audiobooks
The Last Unicorn, 1990 (severely abridged, cassette only, read by Peter)
A Fine and Private Place, 2002 (unabridged CD & cassette, read by Peter)
Giant Bones, 2002 (unabridged CD & cassette, read by Peter)
Tamsin, 2002 (unabridged CD & cassette, read by Peter)
The Last Unicorn, 2005 (unabridged CD & download, read by Peter, with original music by Jeff Slingluff)

Produced screenplays
The Dove, 1974
The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened, 1977
The Lord of the Rings, 1978
The Last Unicorn, 1982
"Sarek" (for Star Trek: The Next Generation), 1990
A Whale of a Tale (pilot episode for TV series version of The Little Mermaid), 1992
Camelot, 1996
The Story of Moses, 1996

Upcoming books
Two Hearts, 2007 (limited chapbook edition of novelette sequel to The Last Unicorn)
Writing Sarek, 2007 (Star Trek nonfiction with annotated "Sarek" teleplay)[2]
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, 2007 (YA novel for Firebird Books)
Smeagol, Deagol, and Beagle: Essays From the Headwaters of My Voice, 2007 (nonfiction essay collection)
Strange Roads, 2007 (2-story chapbook collaboration with Lisa Snellings-Clark for Dreamhaven Books)
Summerlong, 2007 (novel)
The First Last Unicorn and Other Beginnings, 2007 (story collection with additional essay material)
Three Faces of The Lady, 2007 (collection centered on "Come Lady Death")
Sweet Lightning, 2008 (1950s baseball fantasy novel for Tachyon Publications)

References
Cochran, Connor (July 2006). A Call to Action in Support of Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn. Conlan Press.
Hennessey-DeRose, Cristopher. Peter S. Beagle goes back to his fine and private place to continue the saga of The Last Unicorn. Science Fiction Weekly.

External links
Official Peter Beagle website
Unofficially Peter S. Beagle - to be superseded by the site above when that is fully ready
Peter S. Beagle's fans speak out in support of his legal fight
Conlan Press, Peter's affiliated American publisher for books, audiobooks, and signed editions
Conlan Press champions Beagle's fight for his royalties
Green Man Review Special Peter S. Beagle issue - massive review of all Peter's works, plus articles, audio, insider info, and poetry
Peter S. Beagle - a critical discussion of some of his fantasy works
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_S._Beagle"

Folk Dance

2007-03-03T23:35:00.000-08:00

Folk dance is a term used to describe a large number of dances, mostly of European origin, that tend to share the following attributes:

They were originally danced in about the 19th century or earlier (or are, in any case, not currently copyrighted);
Their performance is dominated by an inherited tradition rather than by innovation;
They were danced by common people and not exclusively by aristocracy;
They have been developed spontaneously and there is no governing body that has final say over what "the dance" is or who is authorized to teach it. This also means that no one has the final say over the definition of folk dance or the minimum age for such dances.

Folk dances are traditionally performed during social events by people with little or no professional training. New dancers often learn informally by observing others and/or receiving help from others. Folk dancing is viewed as more of a social activity rather than competitive, although there are professional and semi-professional folk dance groups, and occasional folk dance competitions

Terminology

The term "folk dance" is sometimes applied to dances of historical European culture, typically originated before 20th century. For other cultures the terms ethnic dance or traditional dance are sometimes used, although the latter terms may encompass ceremonial dances.

There are a number of modern dances such as hip hop that evolve spontaneously, but the term "folk dances" is generally not applied to them, and the terms "street dance" or "vernacular dance" are used instead. The term "folk dances" is reserved for dances which are to a significant degree bound by European tradition and originated in the times when the distinction existed between the dances of "common folk" and the dances of the "high society".
A number of modern ballroom dances originated from folk ones.

The terms ethnic and traditional are used when it is required to emphasize the cultural roots of the dance. It this sense, nearly all folk dances are ethnic ones. If some dances, such as polka, cross ethnic boundaries (and even cross the boundary between Folk and Ballroom dance), ethnic differences are often considerable enough to speak of, e.g., "Czech Polka" vs. "German Polka".
However, not all ethnic dances are folk ones. The simplest example of these are ritual dances or dances of ritual origin.

Types of folk dance

Types of folk dance include clogging, contra dance, English country dance, international folk dance, Irish dance, Maypole dance, Morris dance, Scottish country dance, Ball de bastons, square dance, and sword dance. Some choreographed dances such as Israeli folk dance are called folk dances, though this is not true in the strictest sense. Country dance overlaps with contemporary folk dance and ballroom dance. Most country dances and ballroom dances originated from folk dances, with gradual refinement over the years.

Folk dances are part of the overall culture of the country, and often have common features. People familiar with folk dancing can often determine what country a dance is from even if they have not seen that particular dance before. Some countries' dances have features that are unique to that country, although neighboring countries sometimes have similar features. For example, the German and Austrian schuhplattling dance consists of slapping the body and shoes in a fixed pattern, a feature that few other countries' dances have. Folk dances sometimes evolved long before current political boundaries, so that certain dances are shared by several countries. For example, some Serbian, Bulgarian, and Croatian dances share the same or similar dances, and sometimes even use the same name and music for those dances.
Although folk dancing was historically done by the common people of the local culture, international folk dance has received some popularity on college campuses and community centers within the United States and other countries.

Mexican Folkloric dance developed over five centuries from the pre-Columbian, the Spanish conquest, the French Intervention which included an Austrian influence, the Porfiriato, and the 1910 Revolution to the modern. The fusion of all these influences with the indigenous created over 300 dance styles, within the thirty-two Mexican states, that are now just "Mexican" and unique. (From The Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago, www.mexfoldanco.org).

Folk dancing in the media
Richard Thompson wrote a song folk dancers titled Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands, a reference to Scottish musician Jimmy Shand that produced bagpipe music. In the 1960's this movement was supported by record labels such as Folk Dancer by Michael and Maryann Herman, and the Folkways Records label by Moses Asch which is currently under the Smithsonian Institute.

External links
Folk festivals around the world
Folk Dancing at the Open Directory Project (suggest site)
Additional folk dance information
Folk Dance Association (US and Canada)
International folk dance articles

Star Wars

2007-03-01T23:47:00.000-08:00

Star Wars is a science fantasy saga and fictional galaxy created by writer/producer/director George Lucas during the 1970s. This epic trilogy began with the film Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which was released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox. The film became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning five more feature films developed by George Lucas and an Expanded Universe of his films, which includes three spin-off films, five television series and an extensive collection of licensed books, comics, video games, action figures, trading cards, card games, backpacks, Lego sets and other products, all of which are set within a fictional "galaxy far, far away."

Setting
The events of Star Wars take place in the fictional Star Wars galaxy. Each Star Wars film begins with an "opening crawl" of text that provides specific context for the events of the film. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." is the line that appears first in the opening crawl for each film and alludes to the classic fairy tale opening of, "Once upon a time, in a faraway land..." The opening crawl is the only instance that the Star Wars galaxy has been defined in relation to our real world.

Many of the characters in the film are essentially identical to humans. The characters commonly interact with fantastic creatures of many different types from numerous planetary systems within the Star Wars galaxy. Star Wars uses supernatural elements such as magic, Jedi knights, witches, and princesses that are related to characters found in fairy tales and other epic stories.

The film series spans the events of two generations. The Star Wars "Expanded Universe" is comprised of stories that are set in the Star Wars universe that have not appeared in the original film series. The "Expanded Universe" covers events that span millennia. Novels from a series called New Jedi Order later extended the Star Wars setting to different galaxies with the introduction of alien beings named Yuuzhan Vong. Most aliens prior to the New Jedi Order series came from the same galaxy in which the films are set.

The Star Wars world, unlike the traditional science-fiction and fantasy films that featured sleek and futuristic settings, was initially portrayed as dirty and grimy. It is notable that the setting does not portray technological evolution, despite stories that span millenia, the technology is relatively the same throughout. In interviews, Lucas tells of rubbing new props with dirt to give them a weather-worn appearance. He has referred to this as "a used or ancient future", a concept further popularized in the film Alien.[citation needed] Earlier films by director Sergio Leone utilized a similar process for films of the Western genre. Director Akira Kurosawa had previously used this method to give his settings a more authentic appearance.

Plot
Episodes I, II, and III chronicle the downfall of the Old Republic and the rise of the Galactic Empire. It is also the story of Anakin Skywalker, the "Chosen One", rising as a gifted young Jedi and eventually transforming into Darth Vader via the Dark Side of the Force. The story begins as Darth Sidious manipulates the Trade Federation into invading and occupying the planet Naboo. Sidious concurrently maintains his public identity as Palpatine, who represents the world of Naboo as a Senator in the Galactic Republic. Palpatine uses the crisis to convince the Senate to elect him as Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. He further manipulates the Senate into granting him emergency powers and orchestrates the Clone Wars, a conflict between the Republic (which he controls as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine) and a Separatist movement (which he controls as Darth Sidious).

A young boy named Anakin Skywalker, incredibly strong with the Force, is discovered by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi. Qui-Gon believes Anakin is the Chosen One, prophesied to bring balance to the Force. After Qui-Gon is killed by Darth Maul, Obi-Wan defeats the Sith apprentice and then, over the strong objections of Master Yoda, obeys his master's final wish to train the boy. Anakin grows powerful with the Force, and his skill causes him to become arrogant and chafe against Obi-Wan's training, which he feels is restrictive. Against the strictest rules of the Jedi Order, Anakin falls in love with Padmé Amidala, first Queen and later Senator of Naboo. The two wed in secret, an act forbidden for Jedi due to the inherent emotional vulnerability.

The Clone Wars begin to rage through every part of the known galaxy, and the Jedi fight tirelessly to bring peace back to the Republic. Anakin and Padmé continue to keep their marriage a secret, but soon Padmé becomes pregnant. Although thrilled by the news, Anakin begins to have visions of Padmé's death. The secretive nature of their relationship forces him to seek help outside of the Jedi order, and he desperately asks aid of Chancellor Palpatine, now as dangerously powerful in public as well as in secret.

Palpatine, as Darth Sidious, seizes this opportunity to tempt Anakin to the Dark Side, promising that Padmé can be saved if Anakin joins the Sith. His guile succeeds, convincing Anakin to abandon the Jedi. Anakin's turning point comes when he intervenes in a lightsaber duel between Jedi Master Mace Windu and Palpatine, cutting off Mace Windu's hand before Palpatine kills the Jedi Master. Palpatine declares Anakin a Sith Lord and gives him the name Darth Vader, then orders him to hunt down and destroy all the remaining Jedi in the galaxy (see Order 66 for more on the demise of the Jedi). Anakin starts learning the Dark Side of the Force from Palpatine, and starts a duel with his own master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin loses the duel and becomes terribly disfigured. He wears a black armor and mask and came to be known as Darth Vader. Tragically, Anakin is still unable to save Padmé, and becomes directly responsible for causing her death.

Padmé dies giving birth to twins, whom she names Luke and Leia. The twins are given to two separate willing parties for safety: Luke to Anakin's step-brother Owen Lars and his wife Beru on Tatooine; Leia to Senator Bail Organa and his wife on the planet Alderaan. Obi Wan-Kenobi and Yoda, the last remaining Jedi, exile themselves. Obi-Wan becomes a hermit on Tatooine, where he assumes the responsibility of watching over Luke from afar. Yoda similarly becomes a hermit on the bog-like world of Dagobah. Sidious (as Palpatine) reorganizes the Galactic Republic into the First Galactic Empire, and declares himself its Emperor.

Episodes IV, V, and VI pick up approximately 30 years after the events of Episode III, during the Galactic Civil War, a lengthy conflict in which the Galactic Empire falls at the hands of the Rebel Alliance. These films follow the story of Luke Skywalker, the son of Anakin Skywalker (now the black-clad Darth Vader), and his rise in the rebellion against the Empire. The tale ends with the redemption of Anakin Skywalker at Luke's hands, and the reconciliation of the galaxy by the ultimate destruction of the Sith and the Empire.

Leia, Princess and Imperial Senator for Alderaan, is a secret member of the Rebel Alliance. While she carries home the plans for the Empire's battle station, the Death Star, her ship is intercepted by Darth Vader. She sends a message for help to Obi-Wan Kenobi by means of R2-D2. Darth Vader takes Leia to the sinister Grand Moff Tarkin. Luke inadvertently intercepts the message and meets Kenobi. Leia is forced to witness the destruction of her home-world by the dreaded Death Star. After the murder of his aunt and uncle by Imperial Stormtroopers looking for the droids, Luke joins the ragtag Rebel Alliance — traveling with Kenobi, his (then unrecognized) sister Leia Organa, smuggler Han Solo, Solo's Wookiee companion Chewbacca, and the droids C-3PO and R2-D2. The Rebel Alliance eventually destroys the Death Star and Tarkin.

Prior to the destruction of the Death Star, Luke trains with Kenobi. After Kenobi's death at the hands of Vader, Luke finds the exiled Yoda to continue his Jedi training. Luke believes that his father was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader, having been told as much by Kenobi at their first meeting. When Luke learns the truth — that his father and Vader are one and the same — he is profoundly shaken. Despite this, Luke successfully resists the efforts of Vader and Palpatine to turn him to the Dark Side. Instead, in a reunion aboard a new and improved Death Star, Luke succeeds in turning his father back to the Light Side of the Force. Vader throws Emperor Palpatine into the Death star's reactor to save his son from Palpatine's murderous rage, but is mortally wounded in the process. In killing Palpatine and returning to the light, Anakin/Vader fulfills the Prophecy of the Force, proving that he was the Chosen One who would bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith.

Meanwhile, Leia and Han, who were pursued by Vader in an effort to find and turn Luke, develop a romantic relationship, and Leia finally learns of her Jedi heritage just before their strike team disables the second Death Star's defenses. The Rebel fleet, led in part by Solo's friend Lando Calrissian, then scores a decisive victory against the Empire by destroying the second Death Star.

Postscript: The Rebel Alliance's victory eventually leads to the end of the Galactic Civil War and the downfall of the Empire, restoring the Galactic Republic as the New Republic.

Themes
George Lucas embraces a style of epic storytelling that uses motifs, common themes and concepts which he alters slightly each time they occur. The concept is lifted from Romantic (early 19th century) music, but Lucas applies it both visually and as an integral part of his storytelling.

On a larger scale, there are many parallels between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy; the stories of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker echo and reflect each other in a myriad of ways.

The Force is one of the most recognizable elements of the Star Wars series. It is described by Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars film as, "An energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together."

Those who can use the Force, such as the Jedi, can perform feats of telepathy, psychokinesis, prescience, clairvoyance, and mental control. Two aspects of the Force are emphasized: the light side and the dark side. The light side of the Force is the facet aligned with good, benevolence, and healing. The dark side of the Force is aligned with fear, hatred, aggression, and malevolence. Jedi, followers of the Light, believe that knowledge serves as a guide and path to power, whereas the Sith rely on the Dark Side in the belief that power brings knowledge and understanding. The dark side seems more powerful, especially to those who use it, because it is driven by rage and hatred — its effects are more direct and easier and faster to achieve. In reality, neither the light nor the dark side of the Force is stronger than the other, each possessing its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, the dark side conveys an inherent disadvantage to its users, which is arrogance and overconfidence in their own abilities. However, this aggression allows its acolytes to become more formidable warriors — illustrated when Luke is able to finally overcome his father in battle because of his anger at the thought of his sister turning to the dark side. On the other hand, Jedi can occasionally become crippled by their compassion and suffer defeat at the hands of a ruthless opponent. This is balanced by an ability to remain calm even in extreme circumstances, and to intelligently reason their way through complex and precarious situations.

Influences
Many different influences have been suggested for the Star Wars films by fans and critics. George Lucas himself has cited some quite surprising inspirations for his films, for example the novel Watership Down. Lucas acknowledges that the plot and characters in the 1958 Japanese film The Hidden Fortress, directed by Akira Kurosawa, were a major inspiration. Lucas has said in an interview, which is included on the DVD edition of The Hidden Fortress, that the film influenced him to tell the story of Star Wars from the viewpoint of the humble droids, rather than a major player. It also played a role in the conception of Darth Vader, whose trademark black helmet intentionally resembles the black kabuto of the arch-villain in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

Prior to writing the script for Star Wars, George Lucas originally wanted to make a film of Flash Gordon. The rights for Flash Gordon, however, were held by Dino De Laurentiis, and Lucas decided to work on his own science fiction project instead.

Another influence in Lucas's creation of Star Wars was the writings of Joseph Campbell. Campbell's work explored the supposed common meanings, structures, and purposes of the world's mythologies. Lucas has stated that his intention was to create in Star Wars a "modern mythology" based on Campbell's work. The original Star Wars film, episode IV, for example, closely followed the archetypal "hero's journey", as described in Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This influence was discussed by Bill Moyers and Campbell in the PBS mini-series, The Power of Myth and by Lucas and Moyers in the 1999 program, Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers. In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films. A companion guide of the same name was published in 1997.

It is thought that the setting for the Star Wars universe came from Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, published in the early 1950s. This saga also involves a galaxy teeming with inhabited worlds held together by a collapsing galactic empire using hyperdrives (for long-distance transportation). It also features the planet Trantor, which is entirely covered by the galaxy's capital, similar to Coruscant, and the protagonist of Foundation and Empire is Lathan Devers, a character resembling Han Solo. Even lightsabers have precursors in the The Foundation Trilogy as force field penknives. The planet Korrell is thought to be the basis of the planet Corellia.

It is often argued that Star Wars was influenced by Frank Herbert's classic science fiction book Dune. Many elements of Star Wars are also evident in Dune. There are so many similarities, in fact, some Dune devotees consider Star Wars little more than a campy film adaptation of Herbert's work. While this is certainly an exaggeration, many of the similarities are striking. For example, both Dune and Star Wars are set on desert planets. Both stories feature a mystical knighthood of sorts - the Jedi in Star Wars and the Fremen of Dune. In both stories the hero is a messiah-like character, uses mystical powers, exhibits mind control (Jedi mind trick/the Voice), and duels opponents with sword-like weapons. Finally, both stories describe a corrupt empire and the hero's efforts to overcome it.

Some comic book fans have drawn parallels between Star Wars and Jack Kirby’s epic Fourth World series, published by DC Comics. The cosmos-spanning series of titles was never completed because DC canceled it, citing low sales. At the heart of the series was the battle between Orion of the New Gods and his villainous father, Darkseid (pronounced “dark side.”) Orion called upon the mystical force known as "the source" to aid him in this struggle. The Death Star is somewhat reminiscent of Apokolips, Darkseid’s home planet. Likewise, Darkseid's headpiece is similar in structure to Vader's.

Furthermore, Orion, like Luke Skywalker, was separated from his evil father at birth, growing up ignorant of his true parentage. Also like Skywalker, Orion was mentored by an old man who carried a staff and was far more powerful than his appearance suggested; the Highfather. Finally, both Orion and Skywalker are forced to struggle not only against their biological father's dreams of universal conquest but also against their own inner darkness.

The Star Wars saga has also been influenced by historical events; Lucas claims to have drawn on ancient Rome (the Republic becomes an Empire), World War II and the Vietnam War for inspiration. The reference to the historical past can be seen with Lucas's use of 'stormtroopers', commonly associated with the stormtroopers of World War I Germany and Nazi Germany, and also associated with the SS under Hitler in World War II. These troopers acted as the Nazi party’s military force, under Hitler’s direct control. Similarly, the stormtroopers of Star Wars acted as the Empire’s military force, under Palpatine’s direct control. Lucas also based the space battles in A New Hope on World War II-era aerial dogfights. The rise of Palpatine mirrors Hitler in that a democracy becomes an empire.

Even Star Trek is said to have had a limited influence on Star Wars. Gene Roddenberry's intergalactic vision among humans has long been a staple for these concepts. A reference to ST is used in Episode V when an Empire commander mentions a cloaking device, a device used by Romulans and later Klingons, to describe the disappearance of the Millennium Falcon. It has been mentioned that Lucas wanted to label the Falcon's light speed capabilities as "warp drive" but was advised against it because at the time Roddenberry was looking into doing the Star Trek Phase II TV show and Lucas did not want to start a conflict.

Scripts
The Star Wars saga began with a 14-page treatment for a space adventure film that Lucas drafted in 1973, inspired by multiple myths and classical narratives. According to one source, Lucas initially wrote summaries for fifteen stories that would make up the Star Wars saga. Out of these fifteen stories, Lucas originally planned to film only one of them as a feature film. Then, in 1978, following the success of the first released Star Wars film, he publicly announced that he would create a total of twelve films to chronicle the adventures of Luke Skywalker (in the original scripts, the character’s name was Luke Starkiller). In 1979, Lucas retracted his former statement, saying that he would instead make nine films. Four years later, having completed Return of the Jedi, Lucas announced that he was putting Star Wars on indefinite hold until special-effects technology had improved to his satisfaction. Finally, in 1994, (after seeing the effects results of ILM's work on Jurassic Park) Lucas decided that he would produce the trilogy of prequels (Episodes I, II, and III), for a total of six films. He also claimed at the time that he had always envisioned "the whole thing as a series of six films".

Other sources, including publicly available draft scripts of Star Wars, show that Lucas had an incomplete and quickly-changing conception of the Star Wars story up until the release of the first film in 1977. Story elements such as the Kaiburr crystal present in early scripts are missing entirely in the films, while names were freely exchanged between different planets and characters — "Organa Major" being the original name for Alderaan, for instance (Organa later became Princess Leia's surname). Even as late as the production of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, there were significant differences from the films which emerged — for example, Lando Calrissian being a clone from the Clone Wars and the climactic battle of Return of the Jedi taking place against two Death Stars orbiting the Imperial capital planet, then known as Had Abbadon. Another version of the Return of the Jedi script had Luke turning to the dark side after killing Darth Vader. Leia would then become the next Jedi to fight the dark side. This did not happen, however, because Lucas felt that the ending would be too dark, especially for children, who were a major target audience. Also, George Lucas had the script of The Empire Strikes Back saying that "Obi-Wan killed your father," all the while having the "I am your father" line in mind. Since Darth Vader's voice was overdubbed by James Earl Jones, the true line was revealed in post-production. In addition, the story released as the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye was intended as a possible direction for a low-budget Star Wars sequel - however, the success of A New Hope allowed Lucas to pursue the more ambitious The Empire Strikes Back instead.

For his part, Lucas claimed in a segment filmed for the THX-remastered VHS release of the original trilogy that the original Star Wars story was intended as a single film but was later split into three because the story was too long to be told in a single film. In the DVD commentaries for the original trilogy, Lucas claims that many story elements were changed within the production of the films — for instance, the attack on the Death Star in A New Hope was moved from the end of the trilogy in order to strengthen A New Hope on its own merits, while the character of Chewbacca established the Wookiees as a technologically advanced race, necessitating their replacement with Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Other changes, including the death of Obi-Wan in A New Hope, were made during the filming. Lucas also stated in the commentaries that the prequel stories existed only as "notes" explaining the backstories of characters such as Obi-Wan. In an interview with Wired prior to the release of The Phantom Menace, Lucas remarked that he had allowed the publication of novels written as sequels to the films (see Expanded Universe) because he would never make the sequels himself.

Lucas's history of different statements regarding his future and past plans for the Star Wars saga have caused a great deal of popular confusion, while drawing criticism from some. For example, some still believe that Lucas's original plan was for a "trilogy of trilogies," based on early statements made by Lucasfilm regarding sequels. For more information on the supposed sequel trilogy, see Sequel trilogy (Star Wars).

It has been reported that Lucas's original script was almost 500 pages long. The title, originally The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, was changed several times before becoming Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Expanded Universe
The term "Expanded Universe" has come into existence as an umbrella term for all of the officially licensed Star Wars material outside of the six feature films. This includes television productions, books, comics, games, and other forms of media. The material expands and continues the stories told in the films, taking place anywhere from 25,000 years before The Phantom Menace to 140 years after Return of the Jedi. The first Expanded Universe story appeared in Marvel Comics' Star Wars #7 in January 1978 (the first six issues of the series having been an adaptation of the film), followed quickly by Alan Dean Foster's novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye the following month.

George Lucas retains ultimate creative control over the Star Wars universe. For example, the death of central characters and similar changes in the status quo must first pass his screening before authors are given the go-ahead. In addition, Lucasfilm Licensing devotes considerable effort to ensure continuity between the works of various authors across multiple companies.

Some purists reject the Expanded Universe as "Apocrypha", believing that only the events in the film series are part of the "real" Star Wars universe. However, elements of the Expanded Universe have been adopted by Lucas for use in the films. These included the name of the Republic/Empire capital planet, Coruscant, which first appeared in Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire before being used in The Phantom Menace, while a character introduced in Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars series, a blue Jedi Knight named Aayla Secura, was liked enough by Lucas to be included as a character in Attack of the Clones (and is seen meeting her demise in Revenge of the Sith in an ambush on the jungle planet Felucia).

Books
Star Wars-based fiction predates the release of the first film, with the 1976 novelization of Star Wars (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster and credited to George Lucas). Foster's 1978 novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, was the first Expanded Universe work to be released. In addition to filling in the time between the films, this additional content greatly expanded the Star Wars timeline before and after the film series.

Star Wars fiction flourished during the time of the original series (1977-1983) but slowed to a trickle afterwards. In 1991, however, Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy debuted, sparking a new interest in the Star Wars universe. Since then, several hundred tie-in novels have been published by Bantam and Del Rey. A similar resurgence in the Expanded Universe occurred in 1996 with the Steve Perry novel Shadows of the Empire, set between Episodes V and VI, and accompanying video game and comic book series.

LucasBooks radically changed the face of the Star Wars universe with the introduction of the New Jedi Order series, which takes place some 20 years after Return of the Jedi and stars a host of new characters alongside series originals. However, several significant events which occur during the course of this series (such as the death of a major film character) have sparked much fan criticism.

Comics
Marvel Comics published Star Wars comic book series and adaptations from 1977 to 1986. A wide variety of creators worked on this series, including Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, Howard Chaykin, Al Williamson, Carmine Infantino, Gene Day, Walt Simonson, Michael Golden, Chris Claremont, Whilce Portacio, Jo Duffy, and Ron Frenz. In the late 1980s, Marvel announced it would publish a new Star Wars comic by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. However, in December 1991, Dark Horse Comics acquired the Star Wars license and used it to launch a number of ambitious sequels to the original trilogy instead, including the very popular Dark Empire stories. They have since gone on to publish a large number of original adventures set in the Star Wars universe.

Games
Since 1982, over 120 video games have been published bearing the Star Wars name, beginning with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back published for the Atari 2600 by Parker Brothers. Since then, Star Wars has opened the way to a myriad of space-flight simulation games, first-person shooter games, roleplaying games, RTS games, and others.

Two different official tabletop role-playing games have been developed for the Star Wars universe: a version by West End Games in the 1980s and 1990s, and one by Wizards of the Coast in the 2000s.

In the video game Star Wars: Battlefront you can choose to be either the rebel allience, the empire, the seperatist droids, or the clones. You travel across many different exotic worlds in the battle of good and evil, whether being soldiers from the New or Old Republic. Within the many different modes of play, there is one named "Galactic Conquest" in which you struggle against the opposing side of the one you chose at the start of the game, for total control of the galaxy. It also has online play for those competitive players who want to go beyond the computerized characters you usually battle agianst.

In the Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy the films are played in a different way. In Star Wars: Empire at War, players can take control of either the Empire or the Rebellion and fight for control of the galaxy.

Also, SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) has developed a MMORPG called Star Wars Galaxies. In this game, which requires a monthly subsription fee, you choose a class, (Jedi, commando, smuggler, etc.) and fight for control of the galaxy by choosing the Empire or the Rebel Alliance.

LucasArts is also currently developing a next-gen Star Wars game for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The game, entitled The Force Unleashed, takes place in the largely unexplored time period between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and casts players as Darth Vader's "secret apprentice" hunting down the remaining Jedi. The game is set for a November 2007 release date.

Trading cards
Star Wars trading cards have been published since the first 'blue' series, by Topps, in 1977. Dozens of series have been produced, with Topps being the licensed creator in the United States. Some of the card series are of film stills, while others are original art. Many of the cards have become highly collectible with some very rare 'promos', such as the 1993 Galaxy Series II 'floating Yoda' P3 card often commanding US$1000 or more. While most 'base' or 'common card' sets are plentiful, many 'insert' or 'chase cards' are very rare. Star Wars card game cards are different from the trading cards. A thriving market for both types exists on eBay.

Fan works
The Star Wars saga has inspired many fans, called "Warsies", to create their own stories set in the Star Wars galaxy. In recent years, this has ranged from writing fan-fiction to creating fan films.

In 2002, Lucasfilm sponsored the first annual Official Star Wars Fan Films Awards, officially recognizing filmmakers and the genre. Because of concerns over potential copyright and trademark issues, however, the contest remains open only to parodies, mockumentaries, and documentaries. Fan-fiction films set in the Star Wars universe are ineligible. Initially this limitation caused an outcry for those interested in creating serious fan-fiction for a competition.[citation needed]

While many of the serious fan films have used elements from the licensed Expanded Universe to tell their story, they are obviously not considered an official part of the Star Wars canon. Lucasfilm, for the most part, has allowed but not endorsed the creation of these derivative fan-fiction works, so long as no such work attempts to make a profit from or tarnish the Star Wars franchise in any way.

Lucasfilm's open support and sanction of fan creations is a marked contrast to the attitudes of many other copyright holders. Some owners, such as Paramount Pictures with the Star Trek properties, have been known to actively discourage the creation of such works by fans.

Cultural impact
The Star Wars saga has had a significant impact on modern global pop culture. Science fiction since Star Wars, particularly in film, has often been influenced by and compared to Star Wars. References to the main characters and themes of Star Wars are casually made in Western society with the well-qualified assumption that others will understand the reference. George Lucas is also famous for using the best possible cameras and technology (see also Industrial Light and Magic) in his films. Many say that the visual and virtual effects that take over today's films would have never been created if not for Lucas's revolutionizing of the film industry with Star Wars.

Parodies
Both the film and characters have been parodied or spoofed in popular films and television. Notable film parodies of Star Wars include: Hardware Wars, a 13 minute spoof which George Lucas has called his favorite Star Wars parody; Spaceballs, a feature film by Mel Brooks, and Troops, a COPS-style documentary.

There have been numerous parodic references to Star Wars in films such as Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and most of the films of Kevin Smith. In 1997, the first film's twentieth anniversary, Saturday Night Live featured a pair of skits that parodied the film's screen tests, which included Kevin Spacey playing Christopher Walken auditioning for Han Solo. Walken was originally considered for the role before Harrison Ford was chosen. Star Wars Kid swung a golf ball retriever pretending to be Darth Maul. Star Wars toys is a parody that uses Star Wars Toys and Stop Motion Animation.

Songs
There have been many songs based around the Star Wars universe, the most notable of which are "Weird Al" Yankovic's Yoda, (a parody of The Kinks' "Lola"), which describes Luke's training with the "wrinkled and green" Jedi master, and The Saga Begins, (a parody of Don McLean's "American Pie"), which chronicles the events of Episode I. The latter of these is particularly reveled, as it was released one week before the film. On Blink-182's album "Dude Ranch", the track "A New Hope" discusses the bassist Mark Hoppus' obsession with Princess Leia.

In late 1977, at the height of the original Star Wars craze, comedian Bill Murray portrayed Lounge Lizard Nick Winters on Saturday Night Live and sang a swanky version of the Star Wars theme, complete with inane improvised lyrics.[12] Carrie Fisher reprised her role as Princess Leia on SNL in a parady of Star Wars and the old beach party movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello with Fisher as Annette singing about Obi Wan Kenobi

In 1977 an album called Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk was released by Meco which featured disco remixes of Star Wars music.

Other songs based on the Star Wars saga include The Star Wars Gangsta Rap and Star Wars Cantina.

Northern Ireland band Ash released an album called 1977, named in honor of the year Star Wars was released, on which "Lose Control" used sound bytes of a TIE Fighter, and a song entitled "Darkside Lightside" is an obvious reference to the mythology created by the films.

Other references
Film director Kevin Smith has frequently used the Star Wars movies as points of humor in a number of his films. His first was in a scene from Smith's 1993 independent film Clerks, main characters Dante and Randall have a lengthy discussion about the parallels between the endings of Episode IV: A New Hope, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and independent contractors being victims of war related casualties. Other examples include lightsaber battles in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and another discussion in his recent Clerks II where Randall tries to defend his Star Wars fandom against fans of the Lord of the Rings movies. Another, in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), references the famous Han shot first, saying, "This may be the worst idea since Greedo shooting first, but a Jay and Silent Bob movie?".

Star Trek

2007-03-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

Star Trek is an epic American science fiction franchise. The Star Trek fictional universe created by Gene Roddenberry is the setting of six television programs including the original 1966 Star Trek, in addition to ten feature films, dozens of computer and video games, hundreds of novels and other fan stories, as well as a themed attraction in Las Vegas.

In Star Trek's fictional universe, humans developed faster-than-light space travel after barely surviving a twenty-first century World War III. Later, humans united with other sentient species of the galaxy to form the United Federation of Planets. As a result of alien intervention and science, humanity has largely overcome many Earth-bound frailties and vices by the twenty-third century. Star Trek stories usually depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in the Federation Starfleet.

The protagonists are essentially altruistic whose ideals are sometimes only imperfectly applied to the dilemmas presented in the series. The conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek form allegories for contemporary cultural realities; The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as more recent spin-offs reflect more modern topics. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, racism, human rights, sexism, and the role of technology.

Television series
Star Trek originated as a television series in 1966, although it had been in the planning stages for at least six years prior to that.[1] Although The Original Series was cancelled in its third season due to low ratings, it served as the foundation for five additional Star Trek television series.[2] Altogether, the six series comprise a total of 726 episodes across twenty-two different television seasons (twenty-nine, if one separately counts seasons running concurrently), making it the second most prolific science-fiction franchise in history after Doctor Who. See Lengths of science fiction film and television series for more on comparative series lengths.

Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969)

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)Main article: Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek debuted in the United States on NBC on September 8, 1966. The show, starring William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk (originally James R. Kirk), told the tale of the crew of the starship Enterprise and that crew's five-year mission "to boldly go where no man has gone before." In its first two seasons it was nominated for Emmy Awards as Best Dramatic Series. After only three seasons, the show was cancelled and the last episode aired on June 3, 1969. The series subsequently became popular in reruns, and a cult following developed, complete with fan conventions. Originally aired as simply Star Trek, it has in recent years become known as Star Trek: The Original Series or as "Classic Trek" – retronyms that distinguish it from its sequels and the franchise as a whole. All subsequent films and television series, except the animated series of the 1970s, have had secondary titles included as part of their official names. The series was re-released in September 2006 with CGI enhancements as a high-definition "Re-mastered" edition. The first season of Star Trek also is available for download from Apple's iTunes Store. Most of the episodes offered by iTunes are in their original forms. However, a handful are the recently remastered versions, except for City on the Edge of Forever and Where No Man Has Gone Before, despite having been remastered and aired. Currently airs on TV Land, BBC2 and The Sci-Fi channel in the UK.

[edit] Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973–1974)

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) in animated formMain article: Star Trek: The Animated Series
Star Trek: The Animated Series was produced by Filmation and ran for two seasons. Most of the original cast performed the voices of their characters from The Original Series (the character of Chekov did not appear) as well as many of the original series' writers like DC Fontana. Larger and more exotic alien landscapes and lifeforms were featured, however animation and soundtrack quality, with the liberal re-use of shots and musical cues as well as occasional animation errors, has detracted from the reputation of the series.[7] Although originally sanctioned by Paramount (who became the owners of the Star Trek franchise following its acquisition of Desilu in 1967), the series is not considered to be canon (see Star Trek canon). Even so, elements of the animated series have been used by writers in later live-action series and movies (e.g. Kirk's middle name, Tiberius, made official in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), and elements thus incorporated are canon. TAS came back to television in the mid 1980s on the children's cable network Nickelodeon, and in the early 1990s on cable network Sci-Fi Channel and was released to DVD in 2006.[8]

[edit] Star Trek: Phase II

Model built for Phase IIMain article: Star Trek: Phase II
Star Trek: Phase II was set to air in 1978 as the flagship series of a proposed Paramount television network, and 12 episode scripts were written before production was due to begin.[9] The series would have put most of the original crew back aboard the Enterprise for a second five-year mission, except for Leonard Nimoy as Spock, who did not agree to return. A younger, full-blooded Vulcan named Xon was planned as a replacement, although it was still hoped that Nimoy would make guest appearances.[9] Sets were constructed and several minutes of test footage were filmed. However, the risks of launching a fourth network and the popularity of the then-recently released film Star Wars led Paramount to make a Star Trek film instead of a weekly television series. The first script of this aborted series formed the basis of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,[10] while two others were eventually adapted as episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.[11]

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994)

Star Trek: The Next Generation is set nearly a century after The Original Series and features a new starship, the Enterprise-D, and a new crew led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart. The show premiered on September 28, 1987 and ran for seven seasons, ending on May 23, 1994. The Next Generation had the highest ratings of all the Star Trek series and was the #1 syndicated show during the last few years of its original run. It was nominated for an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series during its final season in 1994. It also received a Peabody Award for Outstanding Television Programming. The series currently airs on TV6 in Sweden, Sky One and BBC Two in the UK, Foxtel channel Sci Fi in Australia, Space: The Imagination Station in Canada, as well as G4 and Spike TV in the United States.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999)

Space station Deep Space NineMain article: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is set during the same timeframe as The Next Generation and ran for seven seasons, debuting in 1993. It is the only Star Trek series to take place primarily on a space station, rather than aboard a starship. The show chronicles the events of the station's crew, led by Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, living on the Cardassian-built Bajoran spacestation Deep Space Nine, which initially orbited the planet Bajor but was moved to a nearby, newly-discovered, uniquely stable wormhole that provides immediate access to the distant Gamma Quadrant.[19] Recurring plots include the repercussions of the lengthy and brutal occupation of the nearby planet Bajor by the Cardassians, Sisko's unique spiritual role for the Bajorans as the Emissary of the Prophets, and a major war with the Dominion of the Gamma Quadrant. Deep Space Nine stands apart from other Trek series for its lengthy serialized storytelling and conflict within the crew – things that Roddenberry had forbidden in earlier Trek series. Currently airs on Spike TV.

Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

Star Trek: Voyager was produced for seven seasons from 1995 to 2001 and is the only Star Trek series to feature a woman as the commanding officer: Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Voyager takes place at about the same time as Deep Space Nine. The series' pilot shows the USS Voyager and its crew stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light years from Earth. Given a 70-year voyage back to Earth, the crew must avoid conflict and defeat challenges on its long and perilous journey home. Voyager was originally isolated from many of the familiar aspects and races of the Star Trek franchise (with the exception of the individual races amongst the crew). This allowed for the creation of new races and original plotlines within the series; however, later seasons saw an influx of characters and races from prior shows, such as the Borg, Q, the Ferengi, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, and even multiple instances where members of the Next Generation crew appear in the series. In one episode, a group of supposed "aliens", The Voth, are determined to be descended from dinosaurs. The series is currently airing on Spike TV in the United States, and Sky One in the United Kingdom.

Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005)

The Enterprise (NX-01)Star Trek: Enterprise (originally aired as "Enterprise"), produced from 2001-2005, is a prequel to the other Star Trek series. The pilot episode takes place ten years before the founding of the Federation, about halfway between the events shown in the film Star Trek: First Contact and the original Star Trek series. The series depicts the exploration of space by the crew of the Earth starship Enterprise. Commanded by Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), Enterprise is able to go farther and faster than any human vessel had previously gone. Enterprise showed the origins of several features that would become common in the sequel series, such as the inventing of new technologies, primarily the static warp bubble, and first contact with new species, such as the Woldering. For the first two seasons Enterprise was episodic, like the original series and The Next Generation. During the third and fourth seasons, the series used long story arcs spanning several episodes at a time. Ratings for Enterprise started strong, but declined rapidly. The show continued to lose ratings during the third season, and Paramount cancelled the show in early 2005. It is currently airing on HDNet and The Sci-Fi Channel.

Feature films
Paramount Pictures has produced ten Star Trek feature films:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Star Trek XI (working title) (2008)
The first six continue the adventures of the The Original Series cast, while the next four feature The Next Generation's cast. Although North American and UK releases of the films were no longer numbered following the sixth film, European releases continued numbering the films.

A common sentiment among fans is that the even-numbered Star Trek films are superior to the odd-numbered Star Trek films; the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth films are considered fan favorites, whereas the first and fifth are often called the worst films.

An eleventh (as-yet-untitled) Star Trek film has been announced for release in December 2008, to be written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and produced and directed by Lost creator J.J. Abrams.

Cultural impact
The Star Trek franchise is a multi-billion dollar industry, currently owned by CBS. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek to NBC as a classic adventure drama; he pitched the show as "Wagon Train to the stars" and as Horatio Hornblower in space. Though set on a fictional starship, Roddenberry wanted to tell more sophisticated stories using futuristic situations as analogies to current problems on Earth and rectifying them through humanism and optimism. The opening line, "to boldly go where no man has gone before", was taken almost verbatim from a US White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957. The central trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was modeled on classical mythological storytelling. Harking of human diversity and contemporaneous political circumstances, Roddenberry included a multi-ethnic crew.

Star Trek and its spin-offs have proved highly popular in television repeats, and are currently shown on TV stations worldwide. The show’s cultural impact goes far beyond its longevity and profitability. Star Trek conventions have become popular, though now are often merged with conventions of other genres and series, and fans have coined the term "Trekkies" (or "Trekkers") to describe themselves. An entire subculture has grown up around the show.

The Star Trek franchise is believed to have motivated the design of many current technologies, including the Tablet PC, the PDA, and mobile phones. It has also brought to popular attention the concept of teleportation with its classic depiction of "matter-energy transport". Phrases such as "Beam me up, Scotty" have entered the public vernacular. In 1976, following a letter-writing campaign, NASA named one of its space shuttles Enterprise, after the fictional starship.

The city of Garland, Texas has the only known official place name of the TV series: Star Trek Lane, located off of Apollo Road and east of North Jupiter Road.

Parodies of Star Trek include the internet-based cartoon series Stone Trek and the song "Star Trekkin'".

References
Bibliography
Major reference works related to the production and influence of the franchise include:

Whitfield, Stephen PE; Roddenberry, Gene (1970). The Making of Star Trek. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345216210.
Gerrold, David (1973). The Trouble with Tribbles. New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0345234022.
Gerrold, David [1973] (1984). The World of Star Trek - Revised Edition, Bluejay Books, Ballantine Books. ASIN: B000JWHTXU.
Lichtenberg, Jacqueline; Marshak, Sondra; Winston, Joan (1975). Star Trek Lives!. Toronto: Bantam Books. ISBN 0552099147.
Winston, Joan (1977). The Making of the Trek Conventions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Books/Playboy Press. ISBN 0385131127.
Turnbull, Gerry (1979). A Star Trek Catalog. Grosset & Dunlap. ISBN 0441784771.
Trimble, Bjo (1983). On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek. Donning Starblaze. ISBN 0898652537.
Shatner, William; Kreski, Chris (1993). Star Trek Memories. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060177349.
Shatner, William; Kreski, Chris (1994). Star Trek Movie Memories. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060176172.
Nichols, Nichelle (1994). Beyond Uhura. Putnam. ISBN 0679435093.
Krauss, Lawrence M (1995). The Physics of Star Trek. Basic Books. ISBN 0465005594.
Ellison, Harlan (1996). City on the Edge of Forever. Borderlands Press. ISBN 1880325020.
Edited By (1996). in Harrison, Taylor; Projansky, Sarah; Ono, Kent A.; Helford, Elyce Rae: Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 0813328993.
Solow, Herbert F.; Justman, Robert H. (1996). Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0671896288.
Greenwald, Jeff (1998). Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth. Viking Press. ISBN 0670873993.
Shatner, William; Kreski, Chris (1999). Get a Life!. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0671021311.
Barad, Ph. D., Judith; Robertson, Ed (2000). The Ethics of Star Trek. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060195304.
Shatner, William; Walter, Chip (2002). I'm Working on That: A Trek from Science Fiction to Science Fact. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 067104737X.
Sackett, Susan (2002). Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry. Hawk Publishing Group. ISBN 1930709420.
Lake, M.N. (2005). Picard: The Academy Years. Dragon Publishing.

James Bond

2007-02-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

James Bond 007 is a fictional British agent [1] created in 1952 by writer Ian Fleming, featured in several novels and short stories. After Fleming's death in 1964, subsequent James Bond novels were written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Pearson, John Gardner, Raymond Benson and Charlie Higson. Moreover, Christopher Wood novelised two screenplays, while other writers have authored unofficial versions of the secret agent character.

Initially famed through the novels, James Bond is best known from the Eon Productions film series, twenty-one of which have been made as of 2007. He is well-known for his intellect and ability to seduce women. In addition there are two independent productions and one Fleming-licenced American television adaptation of the first novel. The Eon Productions films are generally described as the "official" films and, although its origin is unclear, this term is used throughout this article. Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman co-produced the official films until 1975, when Broccoli remained the sole producer. Since 1995, Broccoli's daughter Barbara and stepson Michael G. Wilson have co-produced them.

From 1962 through 2007, six actors have portrayed James Bond in "official" films:

Sir Sean Connery (1962–1967; 1971)
George Lazenby (1969)
Sir Roger Moore (1973–1985)
Timothy Dalton (1987–1989)
Pierce Brosnan (1995–2002)
Daniel Craig (2006–present)

The "unofficial" (that is non-Eon) versions were subject to separate licensing from Fleming. In the first version, Barry Nelson straight-forwardly portrayed James Bond in an Americanised 1954 television episode adaptation of Casino Royale. In the second unofficial version, David Niven was James Bond in the Columbia Pictures spy spoof Casino Royale, in 1967. Moreover, Sean Connery reprised James Bond in the non-Eon film Never Say Never Again (1983), an updating of his own, fourth series film, Thunderball (1965).

The twenty-first official film, Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig as James Bond, premiered on 14 November 2006,[2] with the film going on general release in Asia and the Middle East the following day.[3] Notably it is the first Bond film to be released in China.

Broccoli's and Saltzman's family company, Danjaq, LLC has held ownership of the James Bond film series (through Eon), and maintained co-ownership with United Artists Corporation since the mid-1970s, when Saltzman sold his share of Danjaq to United Artists. As of 2007, Columbia Pictures and MGM/United Artists co-distribute the franchise.

In addition to the novels and films, James Bond is a prominent character in many computer and video games, comic strips and comic books, and has been subjected to many parodies.

Ian Fleming's creation and inspiration
Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (more commonly, MI6). He was created in February 1952, by British journalist Ian Fleming while on holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye. The hero, 'James Bond', was named after an American ornithologist, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide book Birds of the West Indies; keen birdwatcher Fleming had a copy of Bond's field guide at Goldeneye. Of the name, Fleming once said,in a Readers Digest interview "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure – an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department."[4]

Nevertheless, news sources speculated about real spies or other covert agents after whom James Bond might have been named. Although they are similar to Bond, Fleming confirmed none as the source figure, nor did Ian Fleming Publications nor any of Fleming's biographers, such as John Pearson or Andrew Lycett.

It has also been suggested that the name 'James Bond' originated in Toronto, Ontario, when British Naval Intelligence Commander Ian Fleming was invited by Sir William Stephenson (codename 'Intrepid'), to participate in the SOE subversive warfare training Syllabus at STS-103. Fleming had a private residence in Avenue Road, Toronto, Canada, because the training camp barracks was full. On Avenue Road, there was the St. James-Bond Church (Toronto), its address was 1066 Avenue Road, and the military building address was 1107 Avenue Road (Double ones 0 and 7, thus number 007). The building does not exist, but in its place is Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School — erected by Bondfield Construction in 2001.

James Bond's parents are Andrew Bond, a Scotsman and Monique Delacroix, from Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. Their nationalities were established in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Fleming emphasised Bond's Scottish heritage in admiration of Sean Connery's cinematic portrayal, whereas Bond's mother is named after a Swiss fiancée of Fleming's; a planned, but unwritten, novel would have portrayed Bond's mother as a Scot. Ian Fleming was a member of a prominent Scottish banking family. [5] In his fictional biography of secret agent 007, John Pearson gave Bond's birthdate as 11 November (Armistice Day) 1920; however, there is no evidence of it in Fleming's novels. Fleming was inspired by the playboy and real secret agent Dušan Popov, a Serb double agent for the British and the Germans.

After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming allowed his friend, the poet William Plomer (later his editor), to read it, who liked it and submitted it to Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer.[citation needed]

Most researchers agree that the James Bond is a romanticised version of Ian Fleming, himself a jet-setting womaniser. Both Fleming and Bond attended the same schools, preferred the same foods (scrambled eggs, pork[citation needed]), maintained the same habits (drinking, smoking, wearing short-sleeve shirts), shared the same notions of the perfect woman (in terms of looks and style), and had similar naval career paths (both rising to the rank of naval Commander). They also shared similar height, hairstyle and eye colour. Bond's suave and sophisticated persona is based on that of a young Hoagy Carmichael. In Casino Royale, the anti-heroine Vesper Lynd remarks, "[Bond] reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless". Fleming did admit to being partly inspired by his service in the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, most notably an incident depicted in Casino Royale, when Fleming and Naval Intelligence Director Admiral Godfrey went on a mission to Lisbon en route to the United States during World War II. At the Estoril Casino (which harboured spies of warring regimes due to Portugal's neutrality), Fleming was 'cleaned out' by a "chief German agent" in a game of Chemin de Fer. Admiral Godfrey's account differs in that Fleming played Portuguese businessmen, whom Ian fantasised as German agents he defeated at cards. Moreover, references to 'Red Indians' in Casino Royale, (four times, twice in the final page) are to his own 30 Assault Unit.

Novels
In February 1952, Ian Fleming began writing his first James Bond novel. At the time, Fleming was the foreign manager for Kemsley Newspapers, owners of The Sunday Times in London. Upon accepting the job, Fleming asked for two months yearly vacation in his contract; time spent writing in Jamaica. Between 1953 and his death in 1964, Fleming published twelve novels and one short-story collection (a second collection was published posthumously). Later, continuation novels were written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Gardner, and Raymond Benson, the last published in 2002. The Young Bond series of novels was begun in 2005, they are written by Charlie Higson.

Films
In the late 1950's, Eon Productions guaranteed the film adaptation rights for every 007 novel except for Casino Royale (those rights were recovered in the 1990's [6]) So in 1962, the first adaptation was made in Dr. No, that starred Sean Connery as 007. Connery starred in 5 more films, and after his initial portrayal, he was followed by George Lazenby (1 film), Roger Moore (7 films), Timothy Dalton (2 films), Pierce Brosnan (4 films) and Daniel Craig (currently 1 film). There have been currently 21 films, the latest one with a reboot in the series. The 22nd film is currently in production.

The twenty-one Bond films have grossed over $4 billion worldwide, being the second most succesful film series ever (behind Star Wars).

James Bond's influence on movies and television
James Bond has long been a household name and remains a huge influence within the spy genre. The Austin Powers series by writer and actor Mike Myers and other parodies such as Johnny English (2003), OK Connery, the "Flint" series starring James Coburn as Derek Flint, the "Matt Helm" movies starring Dean Martin, and Casino Royale (1967) are testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture.

1960s TV imitations of James Bond such as I Spy, Get Smart, The Wild Wild West, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. went on to become popular successes in their own right, the latter having enjoyed contributions by Fleming towards its creation: the show's lead character, "Napoleon Solo," was named after a character in Fleming's novel Goldfinger; Fleming also suggested the character name April Dancer, which was later used in the spin-off series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. A reunion television movie, The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1983), is notable for featuring a cameo by George Lazenby as James Bond in tribute to Fleming (for legal reasons, the character was credited as "JB").

The animated series US Acres (which aired with the Garfield cartoons) featured a "secret agent" episode with many Bond references. For instance, the one-letter names used to apply to the high-ranking MI6 individuals were parodied.

The Nickelodeon animated series Doug had a secret agent character named Smash Adams, who was obviously inspired by Bond. The character's theme music even resembled Monty Norman's classic 007 theme.

Nickelodeon's sketch comedy series All That once did a James Bond parody called Jimmy Bond.

In The Avengers, some time after the departure of the character Cathy Gale (played by actress Honor Blackman), the character of John Steed (played by Patrick Macnee) receives a Christmas card from her. He comments, "It's from Mrs Gale! I wonder what she's doing in Fort Knox?" – the intended destination for Honor Blackman's Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. In further coincidence, this comment is made to Emma Peel – played by Diana Rigg who would later appear as Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Macnee himself, a friend of Roger Moore, would later appear as Sir Godfrey Tibbett in A View to a Kill. Joanna Lumley (Purdey in the late Avengers serie) can also be seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service in a little role with only one or two words.

A story line in The Beverly Hillbillies has Jethro (Max Baer, Jr.) forsaking his lifelong ambition to become a brain surgeon in favour of "double-naught spy." He outfits the Clampetts' truck with various Q-inspired gadgetry, none of which work according to plan.

In an apparent homage to the 'James Bond will return in...' credits, each of the season-ending episodes to date in the new (2005-present) series of Doctor Who has featured the ending credit, 'Doctor Who will return in...' followed by the title of the next episode (in each case, a Christmas special).[citation needed]

Similarly, four episodes of the TV series Arrested Development (For British Eyes Only, Forget-Me-Now, Notapusy and Mr. F) referenced the James Bond films. The spoofing of the Bond films is evident in the episode titles, vocal and instrumental music cues, and the gun barrel shot at the end of the episode accompanied by the subtitle "Michael Bluth will return in..."

George Lucas has said on various occasions that Sean Connery's portrayal of Bond was one of the primary inspirations for the Indiana Jones character, a reason Connery was chosen for the role of Indiana's father in the third film of that series.

In the episode "A Head in the Polls" of the animated television show Futurama, the robot Bender asks for a martini from a bartender, who pours the ingredients directly into a hole in the top of Bender's head. Bender then says, "Shaken, not stirred."

More of an imitation or homage (or possibly an unintentional parody), at the start of the French film "Taxi 3", after a Bond-style opening stunt sequence that end when a spy (played by Sylvester Stallone) is taken away by helicopter, a Bond-style theme music / opening credits sequence is performed before the main story proceeds.

On the popular Internet series, Red vs Blue, the character Donut is sent on a spy mission in the season 2 episode "Nut. Doonut.," and for around a quarter of the episode he makes references to James Bond and parodies some of the movie titles. The episode also has alternative titles based on Bond film titles.

Folk Medicine

2007-02-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

Folk medicine refers generally to healing practices traditionally used for alleviating illness and injury, or to aid in childbirth. It is a category of informal knowledge distinct from "scientific medicine", as well as more formal and systematic, but unscientific, medical practices such as Ayurveda. However, it may coexist with these in the same culture or society.

Folk medicine is usually unwritten and transmitted orally until someone "collects" it. Within a given culture, elements of folk medicine knowledge may be diffusely known by many adults, or may be gathered and applied by those in a specific role of healer, shaman, midwife, witch, or dealer in herbs. Elements in a specific culture are not necessarily integrated into a coherent system, and may be contradictory.

Folk medicine is sometimes associated with quackery when practiced as theatrics or otherwise practiced fraudulently, and sometimes with witchcraft and often with shamanism, yet it may also preserve important knowledge and cultural tradition from the past.

Herbal Medicine
Herbal medicine is an aspect of folk medicine - the use of gathered plant parts to make teas, poultices, or powders that purportedly effect cures. Many effective treatments adopted by physicians over the centuries were derived from plants (salicylate, digitalis, quinine), and botany was an important part of the materia medica of professional medical training before the 20th century. In the last century, modern medicine has continued to seek effective botanical treatments among exotic places and peoples but tended to regard herbal medicine of Western societies negatively. Recently, controlled studies of some of the herbalists' cures have suggested some are effective.

Increasing attention is being paid to the herbal medicine of indigenous peoples of remote areas of the world in hope of finding new pharmaceuticals. Of special concern is the extinction of many species by the clearing of formerly wild rainforests, that may cause the loss of species of plants that could provide these new aids to modern medicine. Attitudes toward this type of knowledge gathering and plant preservation vary and political conflicts have increasingly arisen over "ownership" of the plants, land, and knowledge in several parts of the world.

One problem in getting the attention of modern medicine is that most research is funded by those who hope to eventually make a profit from such research. For example, honey has been a part of many folk cures, but it is common and cheap (compared to pharmaceuticals), and cannot be patented, therefore it is difficult to fund any research of its effectiveness.

American folk medicine
In the USA, an old folk medicine field called apitherapy, in which bee stings or venom is used to aid victims of autoimmune disorders like arthritis or multiple sclerosis, is receiving renewed interest in recent years.

"Vermont folk medicine" was a supposed local form of folk medicine from which D.C. Jarvis claimed to derive his "cures" during the 1950s. Apple cider vinegar was a major ingredient in the mixtures prescribed by Dr. Jarvis. Jarvis' 1955 book, "Folk Medicine", is widely considered quackery by both allopathic doctors and herbalists alike, and Jarvis was incarcerated for a short time on the suspicion that the book was an illegal form of promotional prop for a product that he was selling. The book also contained dozens of patent untruths, such as the claim that sugar is alkaline.

References
Folk Medicine by D.C. Jarvis, 1955.
Heaven, Ross. 'Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul'. Vermont: Destiny Books, 2006.
(wikipedia)

MMORPG

2007-02-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) is a genre of online computer role-playing games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

MMORPGs are very popular throughout the world, with combined global memberships in subscription and non-subscription games exceeding 15 million as of 2006. Overall, revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005 and are expected to reach over a billion dollars by 2009.

Common features
Though MMORPGs have evolved considerably, many of them share some basic characteristics.

Traditional Dungeons & Dragons style gameplay, including quests, monsters, and loot.
A system for character development, usually involving levels and experience points.
An economy, based on the trade of items such as weapons and armor, and a regular currency.
Guilds or clans, which are organizations of players, whether or not the game actively supports them.
Game Moderators or Game Masters (frequently abbreviated to GM), which are sometimes-compensated individuals who attempt to supervise the world.
A client-server model, in which the "world" software runs continuously on a server, and players connect to it via client software.
Large communities of players, and social networks.

The majority of popular MMORPGs require players to either purchase the client software for a one-time fee or pay a monthly subscription to play. Most major MMORPGs require players to do both. By nature, "massively multiplayer" games are always online, and require some sort of continuous revenue (such as monthly subscriptions and advertisements) for maintenance and development. Games that feature massively-multiplayer functionality, but do not include roleplaying elements, are referred to as MMOGs.

Economics of MMORPGs
Many MMORPGs feature living economies, as virtual items and currency have to be gained through play and have definite value for players. Such a virtual economy can be analyzed (using data logged by the game) and has value in economic research; more significantly, these "virtual" economies can have an impact on the economies of the real world.

One of the early researchers of MMORPG was Edward Castronova, who demonstrated that a supply-and-demand market exists for virtual items and that it crosses over with the real world. This crossover has some requirements of the game:

The ability for players to sell an item to each other for in-game (virtual) currency.
Bartering for items between players for items of similar value.
The purchase of in-game items for real-world currency.
Exchanges of real-world currencies for virtual currencies.

The idea of attaching real-world value to "virtual" items has had a profound effect on players and the game industry, and even the courts. Castronova's first study in 2002 found that a highly liquid (if illegal) currency market existed, with the value of the in-game currency exceeding that of the Japanese yen. Some people even make a living by working these virtual economies; these people are often referred to as gold farmers.

Game publishers usually prohibit the exchange of real-world money for virtual goods. However, a number of products actively promote the idea of linking (and directly profiting from) an exchange. Some players of Second Life have generated revenues in excess of $100,000.
However, in the case of Entropia Universe, the virtual economy and the real-world economy are directly linked. This means that real money can be deposited for game money and vise versa. Real-world items has also been sold for game money in Entropia.

Some of the issues confronting online economies include:

The use of "bots" or automated programs, that assist some players in accumulating in-game wealth to the disadvantage of other players.
The use of unsanctioned auction sites, which has led publishers to seek legal remedies to prevent their use based on intellectual-property claims.
The emergence of virtual crime, which can take the form of both fraud against the player or publisher of an online, and even real-life acts of violence stemming from in-game transactions.

Private servers
One reaction to the virtual economies has been the phenomena of "private servers," which are servers operated by individuals and groups who have reverse-engineered commercial MMORPG products. Anyone who sets up their own private server has complete control over the virtual world existing on that server. Typically, these servers operate in violation of publisher's end-user license agreements. In November 2006, NCSoft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shutdown a prominent private Lineage II server that had claimed 50,000 active users.

Private servers are mostly run by volunteers, and most of them are free. However, some private servers may wish for people to donate money, sometimes in exchange for a bonus in the game. Private servers remain markedly less popular than the official servers, with player numbers usually in the hundreds, though popular private servers may reach up to one or two thousand online players and even up to ten thousand in terms of player registrations. EQEmu is a server emulator for EverQuest; others exist for World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, and many other MMORPGs.

Psychology of MMORPGs
Since the interactions between MMORPG players are real, even if the environments are not, psychologists and sociologists are also able to use MMORPGs as tools for academic research.
Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist, has conducted interviews with computer users including game-players. Turkle found that many people have expanded their emotional range by exploring the many different roles (including gender identities) that MMORPGs allow a person to explore.

Nick Yee, a Ph.D student, has surveyed more than 35,000 MMORPG players over the past few years, focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games. His research can be found at The Daedalus Project. Recent findings included that 15% of players become a guild-leader at one time or another, but most generally find the job tough and thankless; and that players spend a considerable amount of time (often a third of their total time investment) doing things that are directly-related to, but outside of the game itself.

Many players report that the emotions they feel while playing an MMORPG are very strong, to the extent that 8.7% of male and 23.2% of female players in a statistical study had had an online wedding.

Other researchers have found that the enjoyment of a game is directly related to the social organization of a game, ranging from brief encounters between players to highly organized play in structured groups.

Also, Richard Bartle has classified multiplayer RPG-players into four primary psychological groups. His classifications were then expanded upon by Erwin Andreasen, who developed the concept into the thirty-question Bartle Test that helps players determine which category they are associated with. With over 200,000 test responses as of 2006, this is perhaps the largest ongoing survey of multiplayer game players. (Wikipedia)

Folk Art

2007-02-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

Folk Art describes a wide range of objects that reflect the craft traditions, and traditional social values, of various social groups. Folk art is generally produced by people who have little or no academic artistic training and use established techniques and styles of a particular region or culture. Along with painting, sculpture, and other decorative art forms, some also consider utilitarian objects such as tools and costume as folk art. For the most part, "Folk Art" would exclude works executed by professional artists and sold as "high art" (or "fine art") to the society's aristocratic elite.

The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico has the largest collection of international folk art in the world. The collection, on permanent exhibit in the Museum's Girard Wing, was donated by Alexander Girard.

There has been an increase in work by self taught folk artists over the past 15 years, possibly because of the growing number of retired people with time to spend on new ventures. This 'Grassroots Art' movement is most visible in the states of Kansas and Wisconsin. The movement has been popularized on public television by the show Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations produced by KCPT in Kansas City, Missouri. A category of art that overlaps with Folk Art is Naïve art.

External links

Folk art
Bob Justin Website of noted Folk Artist
The Folk Art Society of America
American Folk Art Museum New York museum specializing in American Folk Art
Museum of International Folk Art Santa Fe, New Mexico museum with a large collection of folk art from around the world.
Folk Art Canada Images, biographies and forums devoted to Canadian folk art.
Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations
The Rochester Folk Art Guild The website for a residential craft community located in upstate New York, specializing in folk art.
Artcyclopedia information.
Folk Art of India
Folkvine: Florida's Art and Artists Online An interactive exploration of folk arts in Florida.
Folk Figures: A Survey of Norwegian and Norwegian-American Artifacts
Contemporary Folk Artists from the Southern United States An adjudicated listing of artists (basketmakers, potters, quilters, storytellers, blues and bluegrass artists) compiled by Southern Arts Federation
(Wikipedia)

Cultural Studies

2007-02-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

Cultural studies is an academic discipline popular among a diverse group of Anglo-American scholars. It combines political economy, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender. The term was coined by Stuart Hall and Dick Hebdige in 1964 when they founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. In any given practice, people use various objects (such as iPods or handguns). Hence, this field studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Recently, as capitalism has spread throughout the world (a process called globalization), cultural studies has begun to critique local and global forms of resistance to Western hegemony.

In a loosely related but separate usage, the phrase cultural studies sometimes serves as a rough synonym for area studies, as a general term referring to the academic study of particular cultures in departments and programs such as Islamic studies, Asian studies, African American studies, African studies, German studies, et al.. Some researchers have traced the origins of cultural studies in universities to earlier anthropological work such as the Folk Schools of Denmark in the 1920s, the Highlander School in North America's Appalachia in the 1930s, and the Kamiriithu project in Kenya in the 1970s. However, strictly speaking, cultural studies programs (such as the PhD program at George Mason University) are not concerned with specific areas of the world so much as specific cultural practices.

In his book Introducing Cultural Studies, Ziauddin Sardar lists the following five main characteristics of cultural studies:

Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. For example, a study of a subculture (such as white working class youth in London) would consider the social practices of the youth as they relate to the dominant classes.
It has the objective of understanding culture in all its complex forms and of analyzing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself.
It is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. For example, not only would a cultural studies scholar study an object, but she would connect this study to a larger, progressive political project.
It attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (cultural knowledge) and objective (universal) forms of knowledge.
It has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action.

Approaches

Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field's inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies was developed in the 1960s mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis and Paul Gilroy.

In contrast, the American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. For example, see the writings of critics such as John Guillory or Constance Penley. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded.

Some scholars, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking comes predominantly from the Frankfurt School. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, those who control the means of production (the economic base) essentially control a culture.

Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view is best exemplified by the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Case of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them.

Ultimately, this perspective criticizes the traditional view assuming a passive consumer. Other views challenge this, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive, and interpret cultural texts. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively reject, or challenge the meaning of a product. These different approaches have shifted the focus away from the production of items. Instead, they argue that consumption plays an equally important role, since the way consumers consume a product gives meaning to an item. Some closely link the act of consuming with cultural identity. Stuart Hall has become influential in these developments. Some commentators have described the shift towards meaning as the cultural turn.
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of "culture". "Culture" for a cultural studies researcher not only includes traditional high culture and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the discipline of comparative literature and cultural studies.

Critical views
Cultural studies is not a unified theory but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods, and academic perspectives; as in any academic discipline, cultural studies academics frequently debate among themselves. However, some academics from other fields have criticised the discipline as a whole. It has been popular to dismiss cultural studies as an academic fad. Yale literature professor Harold Bloom has been an outspoken critic of the cultural studies model of literary studies. Critics such as Bloom see cultural studies as it applies to literary scholarship as a vehicle of careerism by academics, instead promoting essentialist theories of culture, mobilising arguments that scholars should promote the public interest by studying what makes beautiful literary works beautiful.

Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN's "Booknotes":

"[...T]here are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One [...is...] the lunatic destruction of literary studies [...] and its replacement by what is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is.

I mean, the [...] now-weary phrase 'political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in the English-speaking world, who really do represent a treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'." [1]

Literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies theory like Bloom, but has criticised certain aspects of it, highlighting what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about the "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential.

One of the most damning critiques of cultural studies came from physicist Alan Sokal, who submitted an article to a cultural studies journal, Social Text. This article was a parody of what Sokal perceived to be the logical reasoning of humanists working in cultural studies. After it was accepted and published, Sokal revealed the hoax. His explanation for doing this was:

"Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful -- not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many ``progressive or ``leftist academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about ``the social construction of reality won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity."

Conversely, cultural studies scholars have criticized more traditional academic disciplines such as literary criticism, science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and art history.

Referencess

Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies : The Story of the Sony Walkman. Culture, Media and Identities. London ; Thousand Oaks Calif.: Sage in association with The Open University, 1997.

During, Simon. The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd ed. London ; New York: Routledge, 2003.

Hall, Stuart. Culture, Media, Language : Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79.

London Birmingham, West Midlands: Hutchinson ; Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies University of Birmingham, 1992.

Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms." Media, Culture, and Society 2.1 (1980).

Hall, Stuart. "Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies." Rethinking Marxism 5.1 (1992): 10-18.

Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Johnson, Richard. "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text 16 (1986-87): 38-80.

Johnson, Richard. "Multiplying Methods: From Pluralism to Combination." Practice of Cultural Studies. Ed. Richard Johnson. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004. 26-43.

Smith, Paul. Questioning Cultural Studies: An Interview with Paul Smith. 1994. MLG Institute for Culture and Society at Trinity College. Available: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~psmith5/interview1.html. 31 Aug 2005.

Smith, Paul. "Looking Backwards and Forwards at Cultural Studies." Companion to Cultural Studies. Ed. Toby Miller. Oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001. 331-40.

Smith, Paul. "A Course In "Cultural Studies"." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 24.1, Cultural Studies and New Historicism (1991): 39-49.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords : A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. New York,: Harper & Row, 1966.

External links

Anime

2007-02-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

Anime is an abbreviation of the word "animation". Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation originating in Japan. To the West, not all animation is considered anime; and anime is considered a subset of animation.

While some anime is hand drawn, computer assisted animation techniques have become quite common in recent years. Like any entertainment medium, the story lines represent most major genres of fiction. Anime is broadcast on television, distributed on media such as DVD and VHS, and included in computer and video games. Additionally, some are produced as full length motion pictures. Anime often draws influence from Japanese manga and light novels. Some anime storylines have been adapted into live action films and television series.

History
The history of anime begins at the start of the 20th century, when Yamamoto experimented with the animation techniques that were being explored in France, Germany, United States and Russia.

Animation became popular in Japan as it provided an alternative format of storytelling compared to the underdeveloped live-action industry in Japan. Unlike America, where live-action shows and movies have generous budgets, the live-action industry in Japan is a small market and suffered from budgeting, location, and casting restrictions. The lack of Western-looking actors, for example, made it next to impossible to shoot films set in Europe, America, or fantasy worlds that do not naturally involve Asians. The varied use of animation allowed artists to create characters and settings that did not look Japanese at all.

During the 1970s, there was a surge of growth in the popularity of manga comics — which were often later animated — especially those of Osamu Tezuka, who has been called a "legend" and the "god of manga".[3][4] As a result of his work and that of other pioneers in the field, anime developed characteristics and genres that are fundamental elements of the art today. The giant robot genre (known as "mecha" outside Japan), for instance, took shape under Tezuka, developed under Go Nagai and others, and was revolutionized at the end of the decade by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Robot anime like Gundam and Macross became instant classics in the 80s, and the robot genre of anime is still one of the most popular in Japan and worldwide today. In the 1980s, anime was accepted in the mainstream in Japan, and experienced a boom in production (It should be noticed that, Manga has significantly more mainstream exposure than anime in Japan). The mid-to-late '90s, on into the 2000s, saw an increased acceptance of anime in overseas markets.

Genres
Anime has many genres typically found in any mass media form. Such genres include action, adventure, children's stories, comedy, drama, erotica (hentai), medieval fantasy, occult/horror, romance, and science fiction.

Most anime includes content from several different genres, as well as a variety of thematic elements. This can make it difficult to categorize some titles by genres. A show may have a seemingly simple surface plot, but at the same time may feature a far more complex, deeper storyline and character development. It is not uncommon for an action themed anime to also involve humor, romance, and even social commentary. The same can be applied to a romance themed anime in that it may involve an action element, or in some cases brutal violence.

The following is a list of the major genres and designations that are specific to anime and manga.

Bishōjo: Japanese for 'beautiful girl', blanket term that can be used to describe any anime that features pretty girl characters, for example Magic Knight Rayearth.
Bishōnen: Japanese for 'beautiful boy' blanket term that can be used to describe any anime that features "pretty" and elegant boys and men, for example Fushigi Yūgi and most CLAMP shows.
Ecchi: Derived from the pronunciation of the letter 'H,'the first letter of the word 'Hentai'. Japanese for 'indecent sexuality'. Contains mild sexual humor, and some fan service, for example Love Hina and He Is My Master.
Hentai: Japanese for 'abnormal' or 'perverted', and used by Western Audiences to refer to pornographic anime or erotica. However, in Japan the term used to refer to the same material is typically Poruno or Ero. Example: La Blue Girl, MeruPuri.
Josei: Japanese for 'young woman', this is anime or manga that is aimed at young women, and is one of the rarest forms. Example: NANA.
Kodomo: Japanese for 'child', this is anime or manga that is aimed at young children, for example Doraemon. Hello Kitty, Keropi and Panda-Z are other examples.
Robot/Mecha: Anime or manga featuring super robots, examples: Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Moé: Anime or manga featuring characters that are extremely perky or cute, for example A Little Snow Fairy Sugar and Akazukin Chacha.
Progressive: "Art films" or extremely stylized anime, for example Voices of a Distant Star or Byōsoku 5 Centimetre.
Seinen: Anime or manga targeted at teenage or young male adults, for example Oh My Goddess!, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop.
Sentai/Super Sentai: Literally "fighting team" in Japanese, refers to any show that involves a superhero team, for example Cyborg 009.
Shōjo: Japanese for 'young lady' or 'little girl', refers to anime or manga targeted at girls, for example Fruits Basket, "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch"
Mahō shōjo: Subgenre of shōjo known for 'Magical Girl' stories, for example Sailor Moon.
Shōnen: Japanese for 'boys', Shōnen is like Seinen, but refers to anime or manga targeted at younger boys, for example Dragon Ball Z or Naruto .
Mahō shōnen: Male equivalent of Mahō Shōjo, for example DNAngel.
Shōjo-ai/yuri: Japanese for 'girl-love', refers to anime or manga that focus on love and romance between female characters, for example Revolutionary Girl Utena and Kannazuki no Miko. It is often being replaced by the term "Girls Love" (GL).
Shōnen-ai/Yaoi: Japanese for 'boy-love', refers to anime or manga that focus on love and romance between male characters. The term "Shōnen-ai" is being phased out in Japan due to its other meaning of pederasty, and is being replaced by the term "Boys Love" (BL). An example of this style is Loveless.

Star Wars and Lightsabers Duels

2007-02-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

With the Star Wars movies finishing up a few years ago. Portions of society has been making their own lightsaber spoofs.

Lightsaber combat describes the fictional fighting styles employed by Jedi and Sith characters in the Star Wars multi-media franchise. The details of the lightsaber styles are never mentioned directly in the released Star Wars films, but they are explored in novelizations as well as Expanded Universe sources such as magazines, comic books, the Star Wars Role-playing Game and "Visual Dictionaries." According to Nick Gillard, the various styles were devised for the prequels and intended to further characterize their practitioners. The duels were even choreographed to be miniature "stories."

The stage combat used in the films are a combination of Kendo, Iaido, and various western sword styles including traditional fencing. Many of the names resemble the Japanese language to reflect this.

Star Wars is a science fantasy saga and fictional galaxy created by writer/producer/director George Lucas during the 1970s. This epic trilogy began with the film Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which was released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox. The film became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning five more feature films, three spin-off films, five television series and an extensive collection of licensed books, comics, video games, action figures, trading cards, card games, backpacks, and other products, all of which are set within a fictional "galaxy far, far away."

An example of the space opera genre, the Star Wars story employs archetypal motifs common to both science fiction and mythology, as well as the romantic music motifs now often associated with those genres.

Below are two well done societal renditions of the their ideas of Star Wars and Lightsaber duels:

Fairy Tales

2007-02-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

A fairy tale is a story featuring folkloric characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, talking animals and others. These stories often involve royalty, and modern versions usually have a happy ending. In cultures where demons and witches are perceived as real, fairy tales may merge into legendary narratives, where the context is perceived by teller and hearers as having historical actuality. However, unlike legends and epics they usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and actual places, persons, and events although these allusions are often critical in understanding the origins of these fanciful stories.
Fairy tales are found in oral folktales and in literary form. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace, because only the literary forms can survive. Still, the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognized as a genre; the name "fairy tale" was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy. Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today.
The older fairy tales were intended for an audience of adults as well as children, but they were associated with children as early as the writings of the précieuses, the Brothers Grimm titled their collection Children's and Household Tale, and the link with children has only grown stronger with time.
Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways. Among the most notable are the Aarne-Thompson classification, and the morphological analysis of Vladimir Propp. Other folklorists have interpreted the tales' significance, but no school has been definitively established for the meaning of the tales.

Defining marks

Although the fairy tale is a clearly distinct genre, the definition that marks a work out as a fairy tale is considerably more disputed. Vladimir Propp, in his Morphology of the Folktale, criticized the common distinction between "fairy tales" and "animal tales" on the grounds that many tales contained both fantastic elements and animals. However, to select works for his analysis, he used all Russian folktales classified as Aarne-Thompson 300-749 -- in a cataloging system that made such a distinction -- to gain a clear set of tales. His own analysis identified fairy tales by their plot elements, but that in itself has been criticized, as the analysis does not lend itself easily to tales such as Rapunzel, which do not involve a quest, and furthermore, the same plot elements are found in non-fairy tale works.

The Russian tale Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf features no fairies, but a talking wolf. One universally agreed-on definition is that the nature of a tale does not depend on whether fairies appear in it. Many people, including Angela Carter in her introduction to the Virago Book of Fairy Tales have noted that a great deal of so-called fairy tales do not feature fairies at all. This is partly because of the history of the English term "fairy tale" which derives from the French phrase contes de fée which was first used in the collection of Madame D'Aulnoy in 1697. As Stith Thompson and Carter herself point out, talking animals and the presence of magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", agreed with the exclusion of "fairies" from the definition, and defined fairy tales as stories about the adventures of men in Faërie, the land of fairies, dwarves, elves, and not only other magical species but many other marvels. However, in the same essay, by that very definition, he excludes tales that are often considered fairy tales, such as The Monkey's Heart, which Andrew Lang included in The Lilac Fairy Book.

Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen to refer to fairy tales, a practice given weight by the definition of Stith Thompson in his 1977 edition of The Folktale: "a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures and is filled with the marvelous. In this never-never land humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses." The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls; youngest sons and gallant princes; ogres, giants, dragons, and trolls; wicked stepmothers and false heroes; fairy godmothers and other magical helpers, often talking horses, or foxes, or birds; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions. Italo Calvino cited the fairy tale as a prime example of "quickness" in literature, because of the economy and concision of the tales.

History of the genre
Originally, stories we would now call fairy tales were merely a kind of tale, not marked out as a separate genre. The term "Märchen" means, literally, "tale" rather than a specific type. The genre itself was first marked out by writers of the Renaissance, who began to define a genre of tales, and became stabilized through the works of many writers, becoming an unquestioned genre in the works of the Brothers Grimm. In this evolution, the name was coined when the précieuses took up writing literary stories; Madame d'Aulnoy invented the term contes de fée, or fairy tale.

Prior to the definition of the genre of fantasy, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", such as Tolkien's The Hobbit or George Orwell's Animal Farm, or L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Indeed, Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories includes discussions of world-building considered a vital part of fantasy criticism. Although fantasy, particularly in the sub-genre fairytale fantasy, draws heavily on fairy tale motifs, the genres are now regarded as distinct.

Folk and literary
A picture of Mother Goose by Gustave Doré: reading written (literary) fairy tales
The fairy tale, as orally told, is a sub-class of the folktale. From this form, many writers have written down forms of fairy tales, often with considerable modification. These are the literary fairy tales, or Kunstmärchen. The oldest forms, from Panchatantra to the Pentamerone, show stylistic evidence of considerable reworking from the oral form. The Brothers Grimm were among the first to try to preserve the features of oral tales, and even so, they considerably reworked the fairy tales to fit the written form.

Literary fairy tales and oral fairy tales freely exchanged plots, motifs, and elements with each other and with the tales of foreign lands. Various folklorists of the eighteenth century attempted to recover the "pure" folktale, uncontaminated by literary versions, but while oral fairy tales likely existed for thousands of years prior to their literary forms, no such pure folktales exist -- nor do pure literary fairy tales, not drawing on the folk tradition, exist.

History
The fairy tale was part of an oral tradition; tales were told, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure. Illiterate peoples, in particular, may have long told tales without there being any records of them. The oldest known written fairy tales stem from ancient Egypt, and fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literate cultures, as in the Panchatantra or The Golden Ass, but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literary forms. What they do show is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the Arabian Nights collection of magical tales, such as the Panchatantra, The Golden Ass (which includes Cupid and Psyche), Vikram and the Vampire, and Bel and the Dragon.

Fairy tales allusions appear plentifully in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and the plays of William Shakespeare; King Lear can be considered a literary variant of fairy tales such as Water and Salt and Cap O' Rushes. The tale itself resurfaced in Western literature in the 17th century, with The Facetious Nights of Straparola by Giovanni Francesco Straparola, which contains many fairy tales in its inset tales, and the Neapolitan tales of Giambattista Basile, which are all fairy tales. Carlo Gozzi made use of many fairy tale motifs among his Commedia dell'Arte scenarios, including among them one based on The Love For Three Oranges. The fairy tale itself became popular among the précieuses of upper-class France, and among the tales told in that time were the Contes of Charles Perrault, who fixed the forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Although Straparola's, Basile's and Perrault's collections contain the oldest known forms of various fairy tales, on the stylistic evidence, all the writers rewrote the tales for literary effect.
The first collectors to attempt to preserve not only the plot and characters of the tale, but the style in which they were preserved were the Brothers Grimm; ironically enough, this meant although their first edition remains a treasure for folklorists, they rewrote the tales in later editions to make them more acceptable, which ensured their sales and the later popularity of their work.

Such literary forms did not merely draw from the folktale, but fed back into it. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told orally to them, because the tales derived from Perrault; an oral version of Bluebeard was thus rejected, and the tale of Briar Rose was included only because Jacob Grimm convinced his brother that the figure of Brynhild proved that the sleeping princess was authentically German folklore.

This consideration of whether to keep Sleeping Beauty reflected a belief common among folklorists of the nineteenth century: that the folk tradition preserved fairy tales in forms from pre-history except when "contaminated" by such literary forms, leading people to tell inauthentic tales. However, further research has concluded that fairy tales never had a fixed form, and regardless of literary influence, the tellers constantly altered them for their own purposes.

The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representive of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the English Joseph Jacobs, and Jeremiah Curtin, a American who collected Irish tales.

Cross-cultural transmission
Fairy tales with very similar plots, characters, and motifs are found spread across many different cultures. This is generally held to be caused by the spread of such tales, as people repeat tales they have heard in foreign lands, although the oral nature makes it impossible to trace the route except by inference. Folklorists have attempted to determine the origin by internal evidence, which can not always be clear; Joseph Jacobs, comparing the Scottish tale The Ridere of Riddles with the version collected by the Brothers Grimm, The Riddle, noted that in The Ridere of Riddles one hero ends up polygamously married, which might point to an ancient custom, but in The Riddle, the simpler riddle might argue greater antiquity.

Folklorists, of the "Finnish" (or historical-geographical) school, attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with less than conclusive results. Sometimes influence, especially within a limited area and time, is clearer, as when considering the influence of Perrault's tales on those collected by the Brothers Grimm. Little Briar-Rose appears to stem from Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, as the Grimms' tale appears to be the only independant German variant. Similarly, the close agreement between the opening of Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood and Perrault's tale points to an influence -- although Grimms' version adds a different ending (perhaps derived from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids).

Fairy tales also tend to take on the color of their location, through the choice of motifs, the style in which they are told, and the depiction of character and local color.

External links

Folk Music

2007-02-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and for the common people. Folk music arose, and best survives, in societies not yet affected by mass communication and the commercialization of culture.

It normally was shared by the entire community (and its performance not strictly limited to a special class of expert performers), and was transmitted by word of mouth. During the 20th and 21st centuries, folk music took on a second meaning: it describes a particular kind of popular music which is culturally descended from or otherwise influenced by traditional folk music.

Like other popular music, this kind of folk music is most often performed by experts and is transmitted in organized performances and commercially distributed recordings. However, popular music has filled some of the roles and purposes of the folk music it has replaced. Folk music is somewhat synonymous with traditional music. Both terms are used semi-interchangeably amongst the general population; however, some musical communities that actively play living folkloric musics (see Irish traditional music and Traditional Filipino music for specific examples), have adopted the term traditional music as a means of distinguishing their music from the popular music called "folk music," especially the post-1960s "singer-songwriter" genre.

Defining Folk Music
"Folk song is usually seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now, past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). Unfortunately, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no unanimity on what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) 'is'" (Middleton 1990, p.127). Gene Shay, co-founder and host of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, defined folk music in an April 2003 interview by saying: "In the strictest sense, it's music that is rarely written for profit.

It's music that has endured and been passed down by oral tradition. [...] And folk music is participatory—you don't have to be a great musician to be a folk singer. [...] And finally, it brings a sense of community. It's the people's music." The English term folk, which gained usage in the 19th century (during the Romantic period) to refer to peasants or non-literate peoples, is related to the German word Volk (meaning people or nation). The term is used to emphasize that folk music emerges spontaneously from communities of ordinary people. "

As the complexity of social stratification and interaction became clearer and increased, various conditioning criteria, such as 'continuity', 'tradition', 'oral transmission', 'anonymity' and uncommercial origins, became more important than simple social categories themselves." Charles Seeger (1980) describes three contemporary defining criteria of folk music (Middleton 1990, p.127-8):

A "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'. Usually...folk music is associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." Cecil Sharp (1907)?, A.L. Lloyd (1972).
"Cultural processes rather than abstract musical types...continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'." Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965).
Less prominent, "a rejection of rigid boundaries, preferring a conception, simply of varying practice within one field, that of 'music'."

David Harker (1985) argues that "folk music" is, in Peter van der Merwe's words, "a meaningless term invented by 'bourgeois' commentators". Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and blues musician Big Bill Broonzy have both been attributed the remark "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."

Subjects of Folk Music

Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of folk music, especially dance music traditions, much folk music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most folk music has meaningful lyrics. Narrative verse looms large in the folk music of many cultures.

This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many folk traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of folk songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some folk song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths.

Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Folk songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form. Other sorts of folk songs are less exalted. Work songs are composed; they frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. In the American armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls ("Duckworth chants") are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of folk songs.

Variation of Folk Music

Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional folk singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn.

Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naïve to believe that there is such a thing as the single "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen (song)." Field researchers in folk song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional folksinging community and not the work of an outside editor.

Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a folk song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each folksong to become esthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community.

On the other hand, there is also evidence to support the view that transmission of folk songs can be rather sloppy. Occasionally, collected folk song versions include material or verses incorporated from different songs that makes little sense in its context.

Regional variation

The loss of folk music is occurring at different rates in different regions of the world. Naturally, where industrialization and commercialization of culture are most advanced, so tends to be the loss of folk music. Yet in nations or regions where folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of folk music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Bangladesh, Hungary, India, Ireland, Turkey, Brittany, Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree, in some such areas the decline of folk music and loss of traditions has been reversed such as Cornwall.

References

Harker, David (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day. Cited in van der Merwe (1989).

Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9. Seeger, Charles (1980). Cited in Middleton (2002) van der Merwe, Peter (1989).

Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Further reading

English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press. Carson, Ciaran (1997). Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. North Point Press. Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Sharp, Cecil. Folk Song: Some Conclusions. 1907. Charles River Books

American Comic Book

2007-01-28T22:19:00.000-08:00

An American comic book is a small magazine originating in the United States containing a narrative in the comics form. Standard size is 6 5/8" x 10 1/4." Since the invention of the comic book format in the 1930s, the United States has been the leading producer with only the British comic books (during the inter-war period and up until the 1970s) and the Japanese manga as close competitors in terms of quantity.
Comic book sales declined with the spread of television and mass market paperback books after World War II, but regained popularity in the late 1950s and the 1960s as comic books' audience expanded to include college students who favored the naturalistic, "superheroes in the real world" trend initiated by Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. As well, the 1960s saw the advent of the underground comics. Later, the influence of Japanese manga and the recognition of the comic medium among academics, literary critics and art museums helped solidify comics as a serious artform with established traditions, stylistic conventions, and artistic evolution.

History
Proto-comic books
The creation of the modern American comic book came in stages. Comic strips had been collected in hardcover book form as early as 1930 in Europe, when the Belgian comic strip Tintin was first collected in an "album" titled "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets". A year earlier, however, Dell Publishing, founded by George T. Delacorte Jr. in 1921, published The Funnies, described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert". (This is not to be confused with Dell's later same-name comic book, which began publication in 1936.) Historian Ron Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color periodical "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book. But it did offer all original material and was sold on newsstands". It ran 36 issues, published Saturdays through Oct. 16, 1930.
In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines and sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg, and owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut company Eastern Color Printing — which among other thing printed Sunday-paper comic strip sections — produced Funnies on Parade. Like The Funnies but only eight pages this was a newsprint magazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several comic strips licenced from the McNaught and McClure Syndicate. These included such highly popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's Mutt and Jeff, Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka, and Percy Crosby's Skippy. This periodical, however, was neither sold nor available on newsstands, but rather sent free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Proctor & Gamble soap and toiletries products. Ten-thousand copies were made. The promotion proved a success, and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for Canada Dry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs of from 100,000 to 250,000.

Famous Funnies and New Fun Comics

That same year, however, Gaines and Wildenberg collaborated with Dell to publish the 36-page Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, considered by historians the first true American comic book; Goulart, for example, calls it "the cornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishng". It was distributed through the Woolworth's department store chain, though it is unclear whether it was sold or given away; the cover (see above) displays no price, but Goulart refers, either metaphorically or literally, to "sticking a ten-cent pricetag [sic] on the comic books".
When Delacorte declined to continue with Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, Eastern Color on its own published Famous Funnies #1 (cover-dated July 1934), a 68-page giant selling for 10¢. Distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American News Company, it proved a hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression, selling 90 percent of its 200,000 print though ironically running Eastern Color more than $4,000 in the red. That quickly changed, with the book turning a $30,000 profit each issue starting with #12. Famous Funnies would eventually run 218 issues, inspire imitators, and largely launch a new mass medium.
When the supply of available existing comic strips began to dwindle, early comic books began to include a small amount of new, original material in comic-strip format. Inevitably, a comic book of all-original material, with no comic-strip reprints, debuted. Fledgling publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's founded National Allied Publications — which would evolve into DC Comics — to release Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (Feb. 1935). Colloquially called New Fun (the name it would adopt with issue #2; the first has "New" on the cover only as a bannered blurb), this was a tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch, 36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover. An anthology, it mixed humor features such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger" with such dramatic fare as the Western strip "Jack Woods" and the "yellow peril" adventure "Barry O'Neill", featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow. Issue #6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman, who began their careers with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" (doing the first two installments before turning it over to others) and, under the pseudonyms "Leger and Reuths", the supernatural-crimefighter adventure "Dr. Occult."

Superman and superheroes
In 1938, after Wheeler-Nicholson had been ousted by partner Harry Donenfeld, National Allied editor Vin Sullivan pulled a Siegel & Shuster creation from the slush pile and used it as the cover feature of Action Comics #1 (March 1938). The duo's alien hero, Superman, dressed in colorful tights and a cape, evoking costumed circus daredevil performers, became the archetype of the "superheroes" that would follow. Action Comics would become the second-longest-running American comic book, next to Dell Comics' Four Color, with over 850 issues published as of 2006.
Siegel & Shuster's creation, influenced by the pulp fiction stories and by the legend of the Golem of Prague, Superman had superhuman strength, speed and other abilities, and lived day-to-day in his secret identity as a mild-mannered reporter, Clark Kent. Within two years, most comic-book companies were publishing large lines of superhero titles, and Superman has gone on to become one of the world's most recognizable characters.
The period from 1930 through roughly the end of the 1940s is known as the Golden Age of comic books. It is characterized by extremely large print runs (comic books being very popular as cheap entertainment during World War II); erratic quality of stories, art and print quality; and by being a rare industry that provided jobs to an ethnic cross-section of Americans, albeit often at low wages and in sweatshop working conditions. However, since comic books were primarily aimed at children, many adults remember the era fondly and uncritically, a hallmark of a golden age.
Following the war, new genres were added and old ones expanded upon. Teen humor (epitomized by Archie Comics), funny animal comics (such as those published featuring Walt Disney's characters), science fiction, western, romance, and satiric humor comics all found comfortable niches. Except for three enduring originals, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, superheroes were all but wiped out by 1952.

The Comics Code
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, horror and true crime comics flourished, with EC Comics the most successful, artistically creative, and infamous publisher of such comics, many containing violence and gore. Targeting these and other comics, politicians and moral crusaders (without any basis of evidence) blamed comic books as a cause of crime, juvenile delinquency, drug use, and poor grades. The psychiatrist Frederic Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent, concerned with what he perceived to be sadistic and homosexual undertones in horror and in superhero comics, respsectively, raised anxieties about comics. This led the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to take an interest in comic books. As a result of these concerns, schools and parent groups held public comic-book burnings, and some cities banned comic books. Industry circulation declined drastically.
In the wake of these events, many comics publishers, most notably National and Archie, founded the Comics Code Authority in 1954 and drafted the Comics Code, intended as "the most stringent code in existence for any communications media." A Comic Code Seal of Approval soon appeared on virtually every comic book carried on newsstands. EC, after experimenting with less controversial comic books, dropped its comics line to focus on the satiric Mad — a comic book it changed to magazine format in order to circumvent the Code.

Silver Age of Comic Books
In the mid-1950s, following the popularity of TV series The Adventures of Superman, publishers experimented with the superhero once more. Showcase #4 (National, 1956) introduced the rebooted hero The Flash, which began a second wave of superhero popularity known as the Silver Age of comic books. National expanded its line of superheroes over the next six years, introducing new versions of Green Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman and others.
In 1961 writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four for Marvel Comics. In a landmark that changed the industry, The Fantastic Four #1 initiated a naturalistic style of superheroes with human failings, fears, and inner demons, who squabbled and worried about the likes of rent money.
In contrast to the super heroic do-gooder archetypes of established superheroes at the time, this ushered a revolution. With dynamic artwork by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and others complementing Lee's colorful, catchy prose, the new style found an audience among children (who loved the superheroes) and college students (who were entertained by the deeper themes). Marvel was initially restricted in the number of titles it could produce in that its books were distributed by rival National, a situation not alleviated until the late 1960s. This inhibited the introduction of a Lee/Ditko character, first to surpass Superman in sales since writer Bill Parker and artist Clarence "C.C." Beck's original Captain Marvel, Spider-Man.
National (colloquially called DC Comics by this time), Marvel, and Archie were the major players in the 1960s. Other notable companies included the American Comics Group (ACG), the low-budget Charlton, where many professionals such as Dick Giordano got their start; Dell; Gold Key; Harvey Comics, home of the Harvey cartoon characters (Casper the Friendly Ghost) and non-animated others (Richie Rich); and Tower, best-known for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.

Underground comics
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a surge of underground comics occurred. These comics were published independently of the established comic book publishers and most reflected the youth counterculture and drug culture of the time. Many were notable for their uninhibited, irreverent style, which hadn't been seen in comics before. The movement is often considered to have been started by R. Crumb's publication of Zap Comix #1 in 1968, though there were antecedents such as pornographic "Tijuana bibles", dating to the 1920s, and Frank Stack's The Adventures of Jesus, published in 1962.
Although many of the underground artists continued to produce work, the underground comix movement is considered by most historians to have ended by 1980, to be replaced by a rise in independent, non-Comics Code compliant publishing companies in the 1980s and the resulting increase in acceptance of adult-oriented comic books (see "alternative comics").

Bronze Age of Comic Books
Historians and fans use the term Bronze Age to describe the period of American mainstream comics history that begins with a period of concentrated changes to comic books circa 1970. Unlike the Golden/Silver Age transition, the Silver/Bronze transition involved many continually published books, making the transition less sharp; not every book can be said to have entered the Bronze Age at the same time.
Changes commonly considered to mark the transition between Silver and Bronze ages include:

A reshuffling of popular creators, including the retirement of Mort Weisinger, editor of the Superman books, and the movement of Jack Kirby to DC.
A boom in non-superhero and borderline superhero comics such as Conan the Barbarian, Tomb of Dracula, Kamandi, Swamp Thing, Ghost Rider, and the revived Doctor Strange.
"Relevant" comics which attempted to address serious social issues, such as the Spider-Man drug abuse issues and the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series.
The Comics Code Authority's first update, in 1971.
Revamping of several popular characters, including a "darker" Batman closer to the original 1930s conception, several changes to Superman such as the disappearance of Kryptonite, and a temporary non-powered era for Wonder Woman.
The death of major characters such as Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, the Doom Patrol, and several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Modern Age
The development of a non-returnable "direct market" distribution system in the 1970s coincided with the appearance of comic book specialty stores across North America. These specialty stores were a haven for more distinct voices and stories, but they also marginalized comics in the public eye. Serialized comic stories became longer and more complex, requiring readers to buy more issues to finish a story. Between 1970 and 1990, comic book prices rose sharply because of a combination of factors: a nationwide paper shortage, increasing production values, and the minimal profit incentive for stores to stock comic books (due to the small unit price of an individual comic book relative to a magazine). These factors are often pointed to when considering the decline in comic book popularity in America.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, two comic book series published by DC Comics (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen) had a profound impact upon the American comic book industry. The phenomenal popularity of these series led both of the major publishers (DC and Marvel) to change the content of their titles to a more realistic, "darker" tone, often derisively termed "grim-and-gritty". This change was underscored by the growing popularity of anti-heroes such as the Punisher, Wolverine, and Spawn, as well as the darker tone of some independent publishers such as First Comics and Dark Horse Comics. For a period of several years the pages of mainstream comics were filled with brooding mutants and "dark avengers". This tendency towards darkness and nihilism was also manifested in DC's production of heavily promoted comic book stories such as "A Death in the Family" in the Batman series (in which Batman's sidekick Robin was brutally murdered by The Joker), while at Marvel, the continuing popularity of the various X-Men books led to storylines such as "Mutant Massacre" and "Acts of Vengeance."

Though a speculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased specialty store sales—collectors "invested" in multiple copies of a single comic to sell at a profit later—these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and comic sales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of many hundreds of stores. Today fewer comics sell in North America than at any time in their publishing history. Though the large superhero-oriented publishers like Marvel and DC are still often referred to as the "mainstream" of comics, they are no longer a mass medium in the same sense as in previous decades.

Prestige format
Prestige format comic books are typically longer than standard comic books, typically being of between 48 and 72 pages, and printed on glossy paper with a spine and card stock cover. The format was first used by DC on Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The success of this work led to the establishment of the format, and it is now used generally to showcase works by big name creators or to spotlight significant storylines. These storylines can be serialised over a limited number of issues, or can be standalone. Standalone works published in the form, such as Batman: The Killing Joke, are sometimes referred to either as graphic novels or novellas.

Independent and alternative comics
Comic specialty stores did help encourage several waves of independent-produced comics, beginning in the late 1970s. The first of these was generally referred to as "independent" or "alternative comics"; some of these continued somewhat in the tradition of underground comics, while others resembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but were published by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist, and a few (notably RAW) were experimental attempts to bring comics closer to the world of fine art.
The "small press" scene continued to grow and diversify, with a number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of their books to more closely resemble non-comics publishing. The "minicomics" form, an extremely informal version of self-publishing, arose in the 1980s and became increasingly popular among artists in the 1990s, despite reaching an even more limited audience than the small press. "Art comics" has sometimes been used as a general term for alternative, small-press, or minicomic artists working outside of mainstream traditions. Publishers and artists working in all of these forms stated a desire to refine comics further as an art form.

Artist recognition
Some comic books have gained recognition and earned their creators awards from outside the genre, such as Art Spiegelman's Maus (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (an issue of which won the World Fantasy Award for "Best Short Story"). Though not a comic book itself, Michael Chabon's comic-book themed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Popular interest in superheroes increased with the success of feature films such as X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002). To capitalize on this interest, comics publishers launched concerted promotional efforts such as Free Comic Book Day (first held on May 5, 2002). In addition, the filmed adaptation of non-superhero comic books like Ghost World, Road to Perdition, and American Splendor raised hopes that the medium's image can be changed for the better.

Production
Comic books are a collaborative medium Generally, some kind of writer/scripter/plotter will outline the whole story and is a core of the story telling process. The penciller is the first step in rendering the story in visual form and may require several steps of feedback with the writer. These artists are concerned with layout (positions and vantages on scenes) to showcase steps in the plot. In earlier generations it was more common for artists to use a loose pencilling approach, in which the penciller does not take much care to reduce the vagaries of the pencil art, leaving it to the inker to interpret the penciller's intent and render the art in a more finished state. Today many pencillers prefer to create very meticulously detailed pages, where every nuance that they expect to see in the inked art is indicated in pencil. This is known as tight pencilling. Because the inking and the pencilling are so closely aligned there are strong cross influences - inked lines emphasize aspects of the scene, but is this particular emphasis the intention of the penciller or is the penciller's preference off-base compared to the point of the story? Then the colorist comes into the picture and is responsible for adding color to the black and white (possibly shaded) line art. Almost all comic books are rendered in color and have been for much of the history of comic books. Sometimes color is not added for specific effect or when production resources don't allow for a colorist. A colorist also can add to or shift the emphasis of a page of comic art - the penciller laid out the basic scene - the inker emphasizes the depth and drama of the edges of things and their weight on the page, and the colorist can futher emphasize what draws the eye and adds or subtracts to the realism of the scene. Finally the letterer renders what needs to be said on a page of art for the story - which could be dialogue or the content of signs or print if shown. This may seem like an easy job, but the right use of fonts, letter size, and layout of the words inside the balloon all contribute to the impact of the art. A good letterer is a good calligrapher, and a great letterer has as much to do with the quality of the comic as the writer, penciler, inker, or colorist.
Aside from differences in regional styles of comics books the disciplines of writer, penciler, inker, colorist and letterer are under pressures of production efficiencies as well - and computers are mixing things up too. Different parts of the creative process are generally being done by fewer people but which mixing of responsabilies happens varies. But there are few that do all the steps in comic production.

The superhero
Superhero dramatic-adventure and [science-fiction]] stories have dominated American comic books for most of the medium's history. Before the 1960s, comics were published in many genres, including humor, Westerns, romance, horror, military fiction, crime fiction, biography, and adaptations of classic literature. Non-superhero comics have continued to exist as niche publishing, with humor titles, such as those from Archie Comics and Bongo Comics, the most visible alternatives.

Popular Culture

2007-01-27T16:13:00.000-08:00

Popular culture, or pop culture, (literally: "the culture of the people") consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. Such elements are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or an established lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. (Compare meme.) Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture."
Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sport and film. The world of pop culture had a particular influence on art from the early 1960s, through Pop Art.

Popular culture in the 20th and early 21st centuries
Popular culture can describe even contemporary popular culture as just the aggregate product of industrial developments; instead, contemporary Western popular culture results from a continuing interaction between those industries and those who consume their products(Bennett 1980, p.153-218). distinguishes between 'primary' and 'secondary' popular culture, defining primary popular culture as mass product and secondary popular culture as local re-production.
Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, in the sense that a small group of people will have a strong interest in an area of which the mainstream popular culture has only partial awareness; thus, for example, the electro-pop group Kraftwerk has "impinged on mainstream popular culture to the extent that they have been referenced in The Simpsons and Father Ted."

Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Some argue that broad-appeal items dominate popular culture because profit-making companies that produce and sell items of popular culture attempt to maximize their profits by emphasizing broadly appealing items (culture industry). But that may over-simplify the issue. To take the example of popular music: the music industry can impose any product they wish. In fact, highly popular types of music have often first evolved in small, counter-cultural circles (punk rock and rap provide two examples).

Since World War II a significant shift in pop culture has taken place: from the production of culture to the consumption of culture. Commentators have noted that those in power exploit consumers to do more of the work themselves (for example, do-it-yourself checkout lines), and advertising on television, movies, radio, and in other places helps those in power to guide consumers towards what those in power consider needed or important.

Popular culture has multiple origins. In conditions of modernity the set of industries that make profit by inventing and promulgating cultural material have become a principal source. These industries include those of:

film
television
radio
video games
book publishing
internet
comics

Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

A different source of popular culture lies in the set of professional communities that provide the public with facts about the world, frequently accompanied by interpretation, usually as vulgarisation, i.e. adapted for consumption by the public at large (which may lack the training to appreciate academic language). Such communities include the news media, and scientific and scholarly communities. The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing "factoids" that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not.

Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods. At this point, they become known as urban legends. Other urban myths may have no factual basis at all, having simply originated as jokes.

Criticisms of popular culture

Popular culture has attracted much criticism. Some attribute this criticism to the sheer breadth of its availability, others posit that the very notion of "pop culture" is merely an arbitrary construct used to perpetuate elitism.

Some charge that popular culture tends to endorse a limited understanding and experience of life through common, unsophisticated feelings and attitudes and its emphasis on the banal, the superficial, the capricious and the disposable. Critics may also claim that popular culture stems more from sensationalism and narcissistic wish-fulfillment fantasies than from soberly considered reality and mature personal and spiritual development. Cultural items that require extensive experience, education, training, taste, insight or reflection for their fuller appreciation seldom become items of popular culture.

Corporations and advertisers are commonly accused of engaging in campaigns (as by attempting to generate pseudo-popular discussion, controversy, or memes), to generate increased purchasing of their products and services. Some Marxists claim that popular culture — and its implied insistence on a necessary causal relationship between consumption and self-actualization — perpetuates pernicious, deep-seated social and economic divisions which alienate the working class from the ruling professional and leisure classes and result in general discontent and a diminished quality and enjoyment of life for all (compare situationism).

References

Asa Berger, Arthur (1990). Agit-Pop: Political Culture and Communication Theory. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0887383157.

Folklore

2007-01-26T23:53:00.000-08:00

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, material culture, and so forth, common to a particular population, comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.

History

The concept of folklore developed as part of the 19th century ideology of romantic nationalism, leading to the reshaping of oral traditions to serve modern ideological goals; only in the 20th century did ethnographers begin to attempt to record folklore without overt political goals. The Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, collected orally transmitted German tales and published the first series as Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales") in 1812.

The term was coined in 1846 by an Englishman, William Thoms, who wanted to use an Anglo-Saxon term for what was then called "popular antiquities." Johann Gottfried von Herder first advocated the deliberate recording and preservation of folklore to document the authentic spirit, tradition, and identity of the German people; the belief that there can be such authenticity is one of the tenets of the romantic nationalism which Herder developed. The definition most widely accepted by current scholars of the field is "artistic communication in small groups," coined by Dan Ben-Amos a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and the term, and the associated field of study, now include non-verbal art forms and customary practices.

While folklore can contain religious or mythic elements, it equally concerns itself with the sometimes mundane traditions of everyday life. Folklore frequently ties the practical and the esoteric into one narrative package. It has often been conflated with mythology, and vice versa, because it has been assumed that any figurative story that does not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same status as those dominant beliefs. Thus, Roman religion is called "myth" by Christians. In that way, both myth and folklore have become catch-all terms for all figurative narratives which do not correspond with the dominant belief structure. Sometimes "folklore" is religious in nature, like the tales of the Welsh Mabinogion or those found in Icelandic skaldic poetry. Many of the tales in the Golden Legend of Jacob de Voragine also embody folklore elements in a Christian context: examples of such Christian mythology are the themes woven round Saint George or Saint Christopher. In this case, the term "folklore" is being used in a pejorative sense. That is, while the tales of Odin the Wanderer have a religious value to the Norse who composed the stories, because it does not fit into a Christian configuration it is not considered "religious" by Christians who may instead refer to it as "folklore."

Folk tales are general term for different varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to basic and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales take are certainly similar from culture to culture, and comparative studies of themes and narrative ways have been successful in showing these relationships. Also it is considered to be an oral tale to be told for everybody.

On the other hand, folklore can be used to accurately describe a figurative narrative, which has no sacred or religious content. In the Jungian view, which is but one method of analysis, it may instead pertain to unconscious psychological patterns, instincts or archetypes of the mind. This lore may or may not have components of the fantastic (such as magic, ethereal beings or the personification of inanimate objects). These folktales may or may not emerge from a religious tradition, but nevertheless speak to deep psychological issues. The familiar folklore, "Hansel and Gretel," is an example of this fine line. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of famine to large families, but its latent meaning may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely understood themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and “Atonement with the Father.” There can be both a moral and psychological scope to the work, as well as entertainment value, depending upon the nature of the teller, the style of the telling, the ages of the audience members, and the overall context of the performance. Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work or bias of the writer or editor.

Contemporary narratives common in the Western world include the urban legend. There are many forms of folklore that are so common, however, that most people do not realize they are folklore, such as riddles, children's rhymes and ghost stories, rumors (including conspiracy theories), gossip, ethnic stereotypes, and holiday customs and life-cycle rituals. UFO abduction narratives can be seen, in some sense, to refigure the tales of pre-Christian Europe, or even such tales in the Bible as the Ascent of Elijah to heaven. Adrienne Mayor, in introducing a bibliography on the topic, noted that most modern folklorists are largely unaware of classical parallels and precedents, in materials that are only partly represented by the familiar designation Aesopica: "Ancient Greek and Roman literature contains rich troves of folklore and popular beliefs, many of which have counterparts in modern contemporary legends" (Mayor, 2000).

Categories of folklore
Genres

Ballad
Blason Populaire
Counting rhymes
Costumbrista
Craft
Custom
Folk play
Epic poetry
Festival
Folk speech
Folk art
Folk belief
Folk magic
Folk metaphor
Folk poetry and rhyme
Folk simile
Folk song
Folk tale
Animal tale
Fairy tale
Jocular tale
Games
Holiday lore and customs
Joke
Legend
Urban (or Contemporary) legend
Material culture
Medical folklore
Memorate
Myth
Proverb
Riddle
Superstition and popular belief
Taunts
Weather lore
Xerox lore

National or ethnic (see romantic nationalism)

Arab folklore
Alpine(Austrian and Swiss) folklore
American folklore
Australian folklore
Brazilian folklore
Caribbean folklore
Chinese folklore
English folklore
Estonian folklore
Dutch folklore
Finnish folklore
French folklore
Germanic folklore
German folklore
Indian folklore
Iranian folklore
Irish folklore
Italian folklore
Jewish folklore, which incorporates the Aggadah
Japanese folklore
Korean folklore
Kosovar folklore
Latin American folklore
Laz folklore
Norse folklore
Olrig folklore
Pakistani folklore
Philippine folklore
Portuguese folklore
Russian folklore
Scandinavian folklore
Scottish folklore
South American folklore
Slavic folklore
Swiss folklore
Turkish folklore
Venezuelan folklore
Welsh folklore

LINKS:

North America
American Folklore Society
American Folklife Center
Western States Folklore Society
Folklore Studies Association of Canada
Indiana University's Folklore Program
The Ohio State University Center for Folklore Studies
Folklore Program at the University of California at Berkeley
Memorial University of Newfoundland's Folklore Program
Folklore Program at Western Kentucky University
Folklore Program at Utah State University
University of Oregon's Folklore Program
Folklore Program at the University of North Carolina
World Arts and Cultures Program of the University of California at Los Angeles
Folkstreams.net-video streaming films on American traditional culture and folklife
Ukrainian Folklore Centre, University of Alberta
Ukrainian Traditional Folklore, University of Alberta
Slavic and East European Folklore Association
The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri
Oral Tradition Journal

United Kingdom
The Folklore Society, founded 1878 - very extensive links list among much else

Readings:

Adrienne Mayor, "Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient Greece and Rome", from Folklore (April 2000)
Colossal Humanities Library on DVD on offer from Bulk Ebooks
Ghostsandstories.com Classic and contemporary stories about ghosts and hauntings.

Popular culture studies

2007-01-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studying popular culture. It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies. Academic discussions on popular culture started as soon as contemporary mass society formed itself and the views on popular culture that were developed then still influence contemporary popular culture studies.

Following the social upheavals of the 1960s, popular culture has come to be taken more seriously as a terrain of academic enquiry and has also helped to change the outlooks of more established disciplines. Conceptual barriers between so-called high and low culture have broken down, accompanying an explosion in scholarly interest in popular culture, which encompasses such diverse mediums as comic books, television and the Internet. Reevaluation of mass culture in the 1970s and 1980s has revealed significant problems with the traditional view of mass culture as degraded and elite culture as uplifting. Divisions between high and low culture have been increasingly seen as political distinctions rather than defensible aesthetic or intellectual ones (Mukerji & Schudson 1991:1-2).

Traditional theories of popular culture

The theory of mass society

Mass society formed itself during the 19th-century industrialization process through the division of labor, the large-scale industrial organization, the concentration of urban populations, the growing centralization of decision making, the development of a complex and international communication system and the growth of mass political movements. The term "mass society", therefore, was introduced by anticapitalist, aristocratic ideologists and used against the values and practices of industrialized society.

As Alan Swingewood points out in The Myth of Mass Culture (1977:5-8), the aristocratic theory of mass society is to be linked to the moral crisis caused by the weakening of traditional centers of authority such as family and religion. The society predicted by José Ortega y Gasset, T.S. Eliot and others would be dominated by philistine masses, without centers or hierarchies of moral or cultural authority. In such a society, art can only survive by cutting its links with the masses, by withdrawing as an asylum for threatened values. Throughout the 20th century, this type of theory has modulated on the opposition between disinterested, pure autonomous art and commercialized mass culture.

The theory of culture industry

Diametrically opposed to the aristocratic view would be the theory of culture industry developed by Frankfurt School theoreticians such as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. In their view, the masses are precisely dominated by an all-encompassing culture industry obeying only to the logic of consumer capitalism. Gramsci's concept of hegemony (cultural hegemony), that is, the domination of society by a specific group which stays in power by partially taking care of and partially repressing the claims of other groups, does not work here anymore. The principle of hegemony as a goal to achieve for an oppressed social class loses its meaning. The system has taken over; only the state apparatus dominates.

The theory of progressive evolution

A third view on popular culture, which fits in the liberal-pluralist ideology and is often called "progressive evolutionism", is overtly optimistic. It sees capitalist economy as creating opportunities for every individual to participate in a culture which is fully democratized through mass education, expansion of leisure time and cheap records and paperbacks. As Swingewood points out (1977:22), there is no question of domination here anymore. In this view, popular culture does not threaten high culture, but is an authentic expression of the needs of the people.

Contemporary popular culture studies

If we forget precursors such as Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes for a moment, popular culture studies as we know them today were developed in the late seventies and the eighties. The first influential works were generally politically left-wing and rejected the "aristocratic" view. However, they also criticized the pessimism of the Frankfurt School: contemporary studies on mass culture accept that, apparently, popular culture forms do respond to widespread needs of the public. They also emphasized the capacity of the consumers to resist indoctrination and passive reception. Finally, they avoided any monolithic concept of mass culture. Instead they tried to describe culture as a whole as a complex formation of discourses which indeed correspond to particular interests, and which indeed can be dominated by specific groups, but which also always are dialectically related to their producers and consumers.

A nice example of this tendency is Andrew Ross's No Respect. Intellectuals and Popular Culture (1989). His chapter on the history of jazz, blues and rock does not present a linear narrative opposing the authentic popular music to the commercial record industry, but shows how popular music in the U.S., from the twenties until today, evolved out of complex interactions between popular, avant-garde and commercial circuits, between lower- and middle-class kids, between blacks and whites.

Traces of the theory of culture industry

Still the traditional views have a long life (overview based on Clem Robyns, 1991). The theory which has been abandoned most massively is the monolithic, pessimistic view on the culture industry of the Frankfurt School. However, it is still hotly debated. The criticism raised can be summarized in three main arguments. First of all, the culture industry theory has completely abandoned the Marxist dialectic conception of society. Every impulse, according to this view, comes from above. Resistance and contradiction are impossible, and the audience is manipulated into passivity. Alan Swingewood and others emphasize that the Frankfurt theory has to be seen in the light of left-wing frustrations about the failure of proletarian revolutions early this century, and the easy submission of the European nations to fascism.

A second reproach is that this view may be as elitist as its aristocratic counterpart. Both establish the lonely, autonomous, avant-garde intellectual as the only light in a zombie society. Thus the former Marxists arrive at an uncritical praise of the elitist and antirevolutionary upper-class culture. This brings us to a third argument, already made in the sixties by Umberto Eco (1988). In a state-dominated mass society, the lonely, lucid, intellectual Übermensch can only retreat in his ivory tower. The historicity of the contemporary situation is not taken into account, so its internal contradictions are ignored, and thus revolution can only be seen as purely utopian. The culture industry theory, therefore, would lead to passivity and thereby becomes an objective ally of the system it pretends to criticize.

It is of course mainly the influence exercised by the Frankfurt School which matters here: not all of their texts present the same rigid view. In Das Schema der Massenkultur (1973-86:331), for instance, Adorno discusses a "nucleus of individuality" that the culture industry cannot manipulate, and which forces her to continuously repeat her manipulation.

However questioned this view on popular culture may be, it still leaves some traces, for instance, in theories depicting narrative as necessarily ideologically conservative, like Charles Grivel's Production de l'intérêt romanesque (1973). Such theories see dominant ideology as purely a matter of messages, propagated in this case through the forms of narrative fiction. Thus they easily arrive at an exaltation of experimental literature as necessarily revolutionary. However, they may neglect the fact that the ideology is never simply in the message, but in the position of the message in the general social discourse, and in the position of its producers in the social formation.

Other theories easily yielding to monolithic thought stem from the emancipation movements of oppressed groups. Early feminist theory, for instance, often described society as universally and transhistorically dominated by patriarchy in every aspect of life, thereby presenting a pejorative view of the women they claim to defend. As Andrew Ross (1989) argues, the same remark goes for the widely accepted account of rock history as a continuous appropriation of black music by a white music industry. Only studies analyzing the cultural oppression of homosexuality seem to take a less deterministic position.

Contemporary liberal pluralism

In liberal-pluralist accounts of popular culture, the theorizing on its supposedly liberating, democratizing function is nowadays most often pushed to the background. This type of criticism, often produced by people who are also active in popular literary writing themselves, often amounts to paraphrase and suffers from an uncritical identification with the study object. One of the main aims of this type of criticism is the establishment of ahistorical canons of and within popular genres in the image of legitimized culture. This approach, however, has been accused of elitism as well.

To put it simply: the intellectual, in this view, can fully enjoy junk culture because of his or her high culture background, but the average reader can never raise to the learned intellectual discourse of which he or she is the object. An example of this form of appropriation is Thomas Roberts's An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (1990). Though Roberts claims to take a distance from studies of canonical fiction, he justifies his (implicit) decision to impose canonical models on popular fiction as follows: "If people who read Goethe and Alessandro Manzoni and Pushkin with pleasure are also reading detective fiction with pleasure, there is more in the detective story than its critics have recognized, perhaps more than even its writers and readers have recognized" (1989:5). This illustrates a frequent strategy: the legitimation of popular fiction on the basis of its use of canonized literary fiction, and of the legitimized public's response to it.

Contemporary apocalyptic thought

Equally alive is the aristocratic apocalyptic view on mass culture as the destruction of genuine art. As Andrew Ross (1989:5) writes, a history of popular culture is also a history of intellectuals, of cultural experts whose self-assigned task it is to define the borders between the popular and the legitimate. But in contemporary society the dispersed authority is ever more exercised by "technical" intellectuals working for specific purposes and not for mankind. And in the academic world, growing attention for popular and marginal cultures threatens the absolute values on which intellectuals have built their autonomy.

In the sixties, Marshall McLuhan caused wide irritation with his statement that the traditional, book-oriented intellectuals had become irrelevant for the formulation of cultural rules in the electronic age. This is not to say that they lost any real political power, which humanist intellectuals as such hardly ever had. It does mean, however, that they are losing control of their own field, the field of art, of restricted symbolical production (Pierre Bourdieu). While in the 19th century, intellectuals managed to construct art as a proper, closed domain in which only the in-crowd was allowed to judge, they have seen this autonomy become ever more threatened by 20th-century mass society. The main factor here was not the quantitative expansion of consumption culture, nor the intrusion of commerce into the field of art through the appearance of paperbacks and book clubs. After all, protecting art from simplicity and commerce was precisely the task intellectuals set for themselves.

More important is the disappearance of what has been called the "grand narratives" during this century, the questioning of all-encompassing world views offering coherent interpretations of the world and unequivocal guides for action. As Jim Collins argues in Uncommon Cultures (1989:2), there is no master's voice anymore, but only a decentralized assemblage of conflicting voices and institutions. The growing awareness of the historical and cultural variability of moral categories had to be a problem for an intellectual class which had based its position on the defense of secular but transhistorical values.

This brings us to a second problem humanist intellectuals face, that is, the fragmentation of the public. 19th-century intellectuals could still tell themselves that they were either writing for their colleagues, or teaching the undifferentiated masses. 20th-century intellectuals face a heterogeneous whole of groups and mediums producing their own discourses according to their own logic and interests. Thus they cannot control the reception of their own messages anymore, and thereby see their influence on the structuring of culture threatened. Many neo-apocalyptic intellectuals, such as Alain Finkielkraut and George Steiner, emphasize their concern about the growing "illiteracy" of the masses. In practice they seem to be mainly concerned with high culture illiteracy, the inability to appreciate difficult art and literary classics.

The neo-aristocratic defense of so-called transhistorical and universal human values may also often be linked to a conservative political project. A return to universal values implies the delegitimation of any group which does not conform to those values. It is no coincidence, therefore, that attempts in the United States to define a common "American cultural legacy" tend to neglect the cultures of ethnic minority groups. Or that the fight against franglais (French "contaminated" by American English) in France was mainly fought by intellectuals seeing their traditional position in French society threatened by the import of American cultural products, as Clem Robyns (1995) describes.

Recurring issues in popular culture studies
The interactions between popular and legitimized culture

The blurring of the boundaries between high and low culture is one of the main complaints made by traditional intellectuals about contemporary mass society. It is hardly surprising then that a lot of studies deal with this topic. There are, for instance, a number of sociological studies on literary institutions which are held responsible for this mix. Among the first were the commercial book clubs, such as the Book-of-the-Month-Club, appearing from the twenties on. The aggressive reactions they provoked are described by Janice Radway (1989) in "The Scandal of the Middlebrow". According to Radway, the book clubs were perceived as scandalous because they blurred some basic distinctions of cultural discourse. In a society haunted by the spectre of cultural standardization and leveling towards below, they dared to put "serious" fiction on the same level as detective, adventure stories, biographies and popular nonfiction. Book clubs were scandalous because they created a space where high and low could meet.

Soon, the term "middlebrow" was introduced to qualify this phenomenon, and to dismiss it as threatening the authenticity of both high and popular culture. A bit after the book clubs came the paperbacks, and their influence was even more wide-ranging. More about this can be found in Thomas Bonn's book (1989) on New American Library. It shows through what elaborate strategies the respectable hardcover editors had to go in order to hide the fact that, from the sixties on, paperback publishers had taken over the control on the production of serious literature.

The possibility of a "subversive" popular culture

The question whether popular culture or mass culture is inherently conservative, or whether it can be used in a subversive strategy as well, is equally hotly debated. It seems widely accepted that popular culture forms can function at any moment as anti-cultures. "Bad taste" products such as pornography and horror fiction, says for instance Andrew Ross (1989:231), draw their popular appeal precisely from their expressions of disrespect for the imposed lessons of educated taste. They are expressions of social resentment on the part of groups which have been subordinated and excluded by today's "civilized society".

The question whether popular culture can actually resist dominant ideology, or even contribute to social change, is much more difficult to answer. Many critics easily read popular fiction and film as "attacks against the system", neglecting both the exact ways in which the so-called revolutionary message is enacted, and the capacities of dominant doctrines to recuperate critical messages. Tania Modleski in "The Terror of Pleasure" (1986:159), for instance, presents exploitation horror films as attacks on the basic aspects of bourgeois culture. Thus a loving father cannibalizes his child, and priests turn into servants of the devil. Other scholars (e.g. Clem Robyns, 1991) claim that, by presenting their perversion as supernatural, or at least pathological, horror films precisely contribute to perpetuating those institutions.

Similarly, many critics exalt stories which feature a lone hero fighting for his ideals against an inert and amoral system. Thus Jim Collins in Uncommon Cultures (1989:30-31) sees crime fiction opposing a smart private detective and an inefficient police force as a critique of state justice. On the other hand, Thomas Roberts demonstrates in An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (1990:173-174), a study of the historical background of the private detective model, how the detective story came into existence in the middle of the 19th century, at the time the institution of state police was developed. This force consisted mainly of lower-class people, but nevertheless disposed of a certain authority over the upper class. The fears among the upper classes for this uncontrolled force were eased by domesticating the police in stories explicitly devoted to them. Their inability to pass on correct judgment was amply demonstrated, and forced them to bow for the individual intellect of the detective, who always belonged to the threatened upper class.

Finally, Umberto Eco's studies on Superman and James Bond (1988:211-256, 315-362) as myths of a static good-and-evil world view should be mentioned as very early and lucid examples of a combination of semiotic and political analysis.

Still, there may be ways to wage revolt in an age of mass media. One way could be to introduce small gradual changes in products otherwise conforming to the requirements of a dominant ideology. The problem here, of course, is that isolated messages get drowned in the discourse as a whole, and that they can be used to avoid real changes. Some scholars, however, describe how opposition forces use the logic of the media to subvert them. In No Respect (1989: 123), Andrew Ross mentions the late sixties Yippie movement. Yippies would stage media events, such as the public burning of dollar bills in Wall Street, thereby drawing heavy media coverage. This politics of the spectacle brought the counterculture right into the conservative media and filled their forms with subversive content.

Whether this strategy is effective or not, it points to an important fact: the mass media are not above, but dependent on the public. As Alan Swingewood states in The Myth of Mass Culture (1977:84), the ideological messages the mass media receive are already mediated by a complex network of institutions and discourses. The media, themselves divided over innumerable specific discourses, transform them again. And finally the public meaningfully relates those messages to individual existences through the mediation of social groups, family networks, etc., which they belong to. (Wikipedia)

Links
Theory.org.uk - "Social theory for fans of popular culture. Popular culture for fans of social theory."
Communications studies resources - University of Iowa
Cultural Studies Central

References
Theodor W. Adorno, 1973-1986: Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Houston Baker, 1989: "Handling Crisis", paper read at the Symposium Cultural Literacy in the Media Age: The Clash of Values, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, August 1989.
Roland Barthes, 1957: Mythologies, Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Thomas L. Bonn, 1989: Heavy Traffic and High Culture. New American Library as Literary Gatekeeper in the Paperback Revolution, Carbondale/Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Pierre Bourdieu 1971: "Le marché des biens symboliques", in L'année sociologique 22:49-126.
Pierre Bourdieu: Ce que parler veut dire. L'économie des échanges linguistiques, Paris: Fayard.
Jim Collins, 1989: Uncommon Cultures. Popular Culture and Post-Modernism, Mew York/London: Routledge.
Umberto Eco, 1986: Travels in Hyperreality, New York: Harcourt.
Umberto Eco, 1988 (1964, 1978): The Structure of Bad Taste, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Alain Finkielkraut, 1987: La défaite de la pensée, Paris: Gallimard.
Charles Grivel, 1973: Production de l'intérêt romanesque, The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
Jürgen Habermas, 1981: Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Tania Modleski, 1986: "The Terror of Pleasure. The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory", in Tania Modleski (ed.), Studies in Entertainment. Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 155-167.
Chandra Mukerji & Michael Schudson, 1991 (eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture, University of California Press
Thomas J. Roberts, 1990: An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction, Athens (Georgia)/London: University of Georgia Press.
Clem Robyns, 1991: "Beyond the first dimension: recent tendencies in popular culture studies", in Joris Vlasselaers (Ed.) The Prince and the Frog, Leuven: ALW.
Clem Robyns, 1995: "Defending the National Identity", In Andreas Poltermann (Ed.) Literaturkanon, Medienereignis, Kultureller Text. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.
Andrew Ross, 1989: No Respect. Intellectuals and Popular Culture, New York/London: Routledge.
Barbara Smith, 1988: Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory, Cambridge (Mass.)/London: Harvard University Press.
Alan Swingewood, 1977: The Myth of Mass Culture, London: Macmillan.
(Wikipedia)

2007 Academy Awards

2007-01-23T23:17:00.000-08:00

Best Picture
"Babel"
"The Departed"
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
"Little Miss Sunshine"
"The Queen"

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Leonardo DiCaprio for "Blood Diamond"
Ryan Gosling for "Half Nelson"
Peter O'Toole for "Venus"
Will Smith for "The Pursuit Of Happyness"
Forest Whitaker for "The Last King Of Scotland"

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Penélope Cruz for "Volver"
Judi Dench for "Notes On A Scandal"
Helen Mirren for "The Queen"
Meryl Streep for "The Devil Wears Prada"
Kate Winslet for " Little Children"

Best Director
Clint Eastwood for "Letters From Iwo Jima"
Stephen Frears for "The Queen"
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu for "Babel"
Paul Greengrass for "United 93"
Martin Scorsese for "The Departed"

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Arkin for "Little Miss Sunshine"
Jackie Earle Haley for "Little Children"
Djimon Hounsou for "Blood Diamond"
Eddie Murphy for "Dreamgirls"
Mark Wahlberg for "The Departed"

Best Supporting Actress
Adriana Barraza for "Babel"
Cate Blanchett for "Notes On A Scandal"
Abigail Breslin for "Little Miss Sunshine"
Jennifer Hudson for "Dreamgirls"
Rinko Kikuchi for "Babel"

Best Animated Feature Film
"Cars""Happy Feet"
"Monster House"

Best Foreign Film
"After the Wedding " (Denmark)
"Days of Glory" (Algeria)
"The Lives Of Others" (Germany)
"Pan's Labyrinth" (Mexico)
"Water" (Canada)

Best Screenplay - Adapted
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer for "Borat"
Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton for "Children of Men"
William Monahan for "The Departed"
Todd Field & Tom Perrotta for "Little Children"
Patrick Marber for "Notes On A Scandal"

Best Screenplay - Original
Guillermo Arriaga for "Babel"
Iris Yamashita for "Letters from Iwo Jima"
Michael Arndt for "Little Miss Sunshine"
Guillermo Del Toro for "Pan's Labyrinth"
Peter Morgan for "The Queen"

Best Art Direction
"Dreamgirls"
"The Good Shepherd"
"Pan's Labyrinth"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
"The Prestige"

Best Cinematography
"The Black Dahlia"
"Children of Men"
"The Illusionist"
"Pan's Labyrinth"
"The Prestige"

Best Costume Design
"Curse of the Golden Flower"
"The Devil Wears Prada"
"Dreamgirls"
"Marie Antoinette"
"The Queen"

Best Documentary Feature
"Deliver us from Evil"
"An Inconvenient Truth"
"Iraq in Fragments"
"Jesus Camp"
"My Country, My Country"

Best Documentary Short
"The Blood of the Yingzhou District"
"Recycled Life"
"Rehearsing a Dream"
"Two Hands"

Best Film Editing
"Babel"
"Blood Diamond"
"Children of Men"
"The Departed"
"United 93"

Best Make-Up
"Apocalypto"
"Click"
"Pan's Labyrinth"

Best Musical Score
"Babel"
"The Good German"
"Notes on a Scandal"
"Pan's Labyrinth"
"The Queen"

Best Original Song
"I Need to Wake Up" -- An Inconvenient Truth
"Listen" -- Dreamgirls
"Love You I Do" -- Dreamgirls
"Our Town " -- Cars
"Patience" -- Dreamgirls

Best Short Film (Animated)
"The Danish Poet"
"Lifted"
"The Little Matchgirl"
"Maestro"
"No Time For Nuts"

Best Short Film (Live-Action)
"Binta and the Great Idea"
"Helmer & Son"
"One Too Many"
"The Saviour"
"West Bank Story"

Best Sound Editing
"Apocalypto"
"Blood Diamond"
"Flags of our Fathers"
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

Best Sound Mixing
"Apocalypto"
"Blood Diamond"
"Dreamgirls"
"Flags of our Fathers"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

Best Visual Effects
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
"Poseidon"
"Superman Returns"

Gorillaz

2007-01-20T23:27:00.000-08:00

The "Stargate" DVD Movie Plots

2007-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) announced today the extension of the hit "Stargate SG-1" franchise with two movies based on the popular series. Titled "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" and "Stargate: Continuum", the movies will both be made available to the television universe and home entertainment marketplace by MGM. The announcement was made by Charles Cohen, Senior Executive Vice President, MGM.

"'Stargate SG-1' is to MGM Television what the 'James Bond,' 'Pink Panther' and the 'Rocky' franchises are to our feature film unit," said Cohen. "We are committed to continuing to release new SG-1 content and its 'Stargate Atlantis' spin-off, and we're also steadfast in our dedication to extending the franchise. 'Stargate' is an indelible brand for MGM and we will support it well into the future.

"With its high quality production values, long-term stability in the show's leadership and strong chemistry between the lead actors in the series, all of whom have big audience appeal, "Stargate SG-1" is the longest-running science-fiction series in U.S. TV history. The series has a strong worldwide fan base and can be seen in over 120 countries. "Stargate SG-1" cast members Ben Browder, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, Claudia Black and Michael Shanks are confirmed to star in both movies. Written and produced by Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, the new movies will feature the latest visual and sound effects, providing viewers with a theatrical movie-going experience.

In the first movie, "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" will bring a conclusion to the primary storyline of the past two seasons of the SG-1 television series. More thrills and action-packed scenes are planned for this special event movie, which will be directed by Cooper. The suspense will end as fans will see the conclusion of the epic Ori saga.In the second movie, "Stargate: Continuum" the SG-1 team is now free to embark on new and exciting adventures throughout the endless Stargate universe. Below are the synopses for the new "Stargate" movies:

"Stargate: The Ark of Truth"
As SG-1 searches for an Ancient artifact which they hope can defeat the armies of the Ori, they learn more Ori ships are about to be sent through the supergate to launch a final assault on Earth. Daniel discovers that the artifact, the Ark of Truth, may be in the Ori home galaxy, and SG-1 embarks aboard the Odyssey to find it, and pre-empt the attack. The IOA has a plan of their own and SG-1 ends up in a distant galaxy fighting two powerful enemies.

"Stargate: Continuum"
While SG-1 attends the execution of Ba'al, the last of the goa'uld system lords, Teal'c and Vala inexplicably disappear into thin air. Carter, Daniel and Mitchell race back to a world where history has been changed: the Stargate program has been erased from the timeline. As they try to convince the authorities what's happened, a fleet of goa'uld motherships arrives in orbit, led by Ba'al, his queen, Katesh, (Vala) and his first prime, Teal'c. SG-1 must find the Stargate and set things right before the world is enslaved by the goa'uld.
(Slashdot)

More "Hobbit" Info

2007-01-12T00:17:00.000-08:00

"While Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner may have been unceremoniously dumped from Sumner Redstone's Paramount Pictures, and while there end of their 14-year relationship left behind a little bit of bad blood, that's nothing compared to the feud going down between New Line Cinema and Lord of the Rings mastermind Peter Jackson. While there's no denying the success of Jackson's trilogy, there seems to be some unresolved accounting issues that have led to Peter Jackson's detachment from any film adaptation of The Hobbit, the prequel story to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

The controversy began long after all three Lord of the Rings films, starring Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett, had been released both in theatres and on DVD. According to Monsters and Critics, Peter Jackson feels short-changed in his salary, after what Jackson called, "improper accounting procedures" were discovered. While New Line Cinema claims Jackson was paid in full, Peter Jackson feels like he's being shortchanged, and he has initiated a lawsuit to see he gets the money he feels he is owed. But while the legal battle between New Line and Peter Jackson percolates, New Line Cinema, who holds the rights to The Hobbit for a limited amount of time, feels they must begin production of the prequel before they lose their rights to do so. MGM currently holds distribution rights on any The Hobbit film.

New Line has claimed they need to proceed with the production of The Hobbit shortly, and while they are engaged in a legal battle with Peter Jackson, the man who directed the massively popular Lord of the Rings series will not be in the director's chair for the prequel film. While MGM released a statement that said, "The matter of Peter Jackson directing The Hobbit is far from closed," the war of words has reached a fever pitch, almost ensuring Jackson will have nothing to do with any future New Line project. Robert Shaye, the co-chairman of New Line, gave interviews to online media outlets where he stated his case in a firm and blunt manner. Shaye told the Sci-Fi Channel, "I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me. So the answer is that he will never make any movies with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working for the company. I don't care about Peter Jackson anymore. He wants to have another $100m or $50m or whatever he's suing us for. He doesn't want to sit down and talk about it. He thinks we owe him something after we've paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars ... Cheers, Peter."

In an interview with IGN, Shaye re-iterated his firm stance against Peter Jackson. "He got a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right, and this guy, who already has received a quarter of a billion dollars, turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refuses to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan. I don't want to work with that guy anymore. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working for the company."
Peter Jackson has now issued a statement via his Wingnut Films on Ain't It Cool News, where the embattled director had his own chance to speak out. Jackson pled his own case around his lawsuit against New Line Cinema, stating that, "Our issue with New Line Cinema has only ever been about their refusal to account for financial anomalies that surfaced from a partial audit of The Fellowship of the Ring." The statement continues with Jackson saying, "Contrary to recent comments made by Bob Shaye, we attempted to discuss the issues raised by the Fellowship audit with New Line for over a year but the studio was and continues to be completely uncooperative. This has compelled us to file a lawsuit to pursue our contractual rights under the law. Nobody likes taking legal action, but the studio left us with no alternative." The statement concludes by saying, "It is regrettable that Bob has chosen to make it personal. I have always had the highest respect and affection for Bob and other senior management at New Line and continue to do so."

While the New Zealand director has been black-listed by New Line Cinema, who seems to believe Jackson is simply after millions more dollars, the embattled director's only chance to direct The Hobbit will be if New Line Cinema lets their rights to the J.R.R. Tolkien epic lapse, which given the amount of money the trilogy made, seems highly unlikely."
(by Actress Archives)

Star Wars

2007-01-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

"It's being widely reported that Harrison Ford turned down a £20 million deal to play Han Solo once again in a George Lucas spin off of Star Wars. The source of this information seems to be a tabloid called bangshowbiz. Harrison was approached by Lucas with two roles but instead opted for the same amount to play Indiana Jones for the fourth time. Could the spin off centered on the rugged Han Solo save the Star Wars franchise from its prequels or would it have been another mediocre release disappointing demanding fans?" (Slashdot)

Patton - Into Speech

2007-01-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

"Galactica" Gets A DTV Movie

2007-01-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

Despite declining ratings over on The SciFi Channel, universal critical acclaim and robust DVD sales have led Universal Home Video to apparently consider greenlighting a Battlestar Galactica direct-to-video telefilm.According to a report at Geek Monthly, if it goes forward the two hour telefilm will shoot in March during the series hiatus and prior to the commencement of production on the series fourth season in June.While there is no story for the telefilm at present, plans are afoot to come up with a screenplay that doesn't step on existing continuity for the series, but utilizes most of its existing sets. There is also speculation the telefilm will somehow tie into the mythology for the Galactica spin-off series, Caprica, which has not been officially greenlit by SciFi Channel.The move would mark another sci-fi series making the leap to direct-to-DVD movie projects following on the heels of recently announced similar projects for "Babylon 5" and "Stargate SG-1".

(Dark Horizens)

Stargate SG-1 Films Given Shooting Dates

2006-12-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

Before the last episode of the final season of Stargate SG-1 airs on the SCI FI Channel, the famous cast of the history-making television series will have already begun the production shoot for the highly anticipated new films in the franchise.

As we have reported in the past, Stargate SG-1 may be leaving television, but MGM is far from letting the successful franchise languish or die out. Fans were very upset with the SCI FI Channel’s decision to stop making new episodes after the landmark 10th straight season of the show wrapped this year. It is also nice to know that fans weren’t the only one’s upset over the announcement of the cancellation. Michael Shanks and the entire cast and crew were also a tad miffed, especially concerning the network’s timing, and the fact that they knew Sony had worked out a deal with the network in advance for a possible 11th season. The Happy 10th Anniversary cake had barely been cut and the 200th episode in the can when the word came down that the show would not have an 11th season. Shanks’ feeling on network empathy, “Yeah, there is such a thing as timing isn’t there?” was shared by us all.

As a result of the public outcry, franchise owner MGM stepped up to the plate and decided to continue the gate action with straight to DVD movies with filming on the first two (and hopefully many more) set to begin on April 15, 2007.

In an interview with IGN.com, Michael Shanks, who has played Dr. Daniel Jackson for the full 10-years of the series (with one short hiatus), talked about some of the things fans can expect from the two upcoming films.

I don’t believe we are telling any tales-out-of-school when we talk about the contents of the first movie as we and many others have already reported on what its main theme would entail. That being said, Shanks revealed that the whole cast from the original series are all signed-on for both movies. Executive producer Robert C. Cooper will write and direct the first movie that “has to do with wrapping up the Ori storyline, which is the storyline that has taken prominence for the last two years of the show,” Shanks revealed. “I don’t know if [Cooper] is going to wrap it up completely or bring it to some conclusion for the sake of the fans and the franchise, to bring that epic struggle to a close.”

As far as the close of Stargate SG-1’s final season on television as a series, Michael did confirm that Amanda Tapping’s character, Col. Samantha Carter, will be crossing over to the Pegasys Galaxy, spending more time at Atlantis. Concerning Daniel Jackson, he would only say that, “something happens to Daniel that sends him on a strange journey,” Shanks said. “So that was kind of fun to play. You get to see the darker side of Daniel and play with that portion of the latter half of the season … he comes back and is kind of a villain….There is obviously more Ori and stand alone stuff,” Shanks continued. “And, at the very end of the season you kind of expect some sort of finale episode, but we did an episode that is more like a ‘bottle show’ and it has nothing to really do with the tying up of any loose ends and is actually one of these strange episodes were you get to see these characters and how they might age and grow in the future and whether or not that is how they stay is the big question mark.”

Will we ever get to see Daniel Jackson make a return visit to Atlantis?

“I think I got my tribute paid in the Pegasus project when Daniel actually got to Atlantis and ended up in a broom closet talking to a hologram, but hey, things happen…..I haven’t been spoken to about anything to do with Atlantis, so I guess Daniel will have to wait,” Shanks said laughing.

For the discussion Shanks had about movie number two, there are some spoilers given in his comments so the spoiler alert is now active. Continue reading at your own risk.

The second movie will begin its full production on June 1st of next year. Executive producer Brad Wright will scribe this one and SG-1/Atlantis director alum Martin Wood is set to helm. The storyline for this one will deal with time travel, sending the SG-1 Team to sometime in the past. “[It] has something to do with our main mustache twiddling villain Baal [Cliff Simon] doing something in the past,” Shanks said. “He basically finds a way to lift the Stargate from Earth so the Stargate Program never happens, and I imagine the characters will have to go through some process to reset the clock and fix everything.”

Michael’s complete IGN.com interview, with some spoilers, can be found HERE.

Animation Giant Barbera Dead at 95

2006-12-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

"Tom was a cat. Jerry was a mouse. Joseph Barbera was the man who helped bring them together.

Barbera, the animation giant who, with partner William Hanna, set Tom chasing after Jerry, Scooby-Doo scurrying after ghosts, and Fred Flintstone peddling after brontosaurus burgers, died Monday at his California home. He was 95.

Barbera, who dreamed up new cartoon ideas into his 90s, had been the surviving half of the legendary Hanna-Barbera tandem, a team so synonymous with Saturday morning TV of the 1960s-80s. Hanna died in 2001.

Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Smurfs and Josie and the Pussycats were among the pair's best-known series. There were dozens upon dozens more, many of them variations, spinoffs and/or outer-space riffs on their signature shows. By one popular estimate, Hanna-Barbera produced more than 3,000 half-hours of animated entertainment to eat your Sugar Smacks by.

Barbera, credited with often working out the stories for his and Hanna's creations, never stopped thinking about the next project.

"Joe Barbera was here at the studio until about three weeks ago," Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation said Monday. "He usually came in after lunch. Most days, I greeted him. He pitched me a couple of shows."

And Schwartz bought some ideas, too, including one that became the 2005 direct-to-video movie Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry. (Barbera might have been unusually hip for a nonagenarian, but the Fast and the Furious reference was courtesy Warners, the current studio home of what once was Hanna-Barbera Productions.)

Schwartz admired Barbera's energy, attitude--and legacy.

"Joe really set the standard for television animation," Schwartz said, "and pretty much single-handedly with...Hanna invented television animation."

Through it all, according to Michael Mallory, author of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, there was one unmistakable trait in their work: "Everything they did had heart."

"That's kind of an old-fashioned, but it's true," Mallory said Monday. "The characters generally had relationships with each other."

This was the case, Mallory said, even of the most famously at-odds Hanna-Barbera duo: Tom and Jerry.

Tom may have wanted to eat Jerry, as Mallory put it, but Tom always felt bad if he believed he'd actually killed his diminutive opponent.

"These characters really had a tie to each other," Mallory said.

And Tom and Jerry really had a tie to Hanna and Barbera. The characters were the duo's first notable creations, debuting in 1940's "Puss Gets the Boot."

The Oscar-nominated short wasn't billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and the characters weren't referred to as Tom and Jerry, but the sparring was vintage Tom and Jerry."
http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=df2b6fe0-d704-490a-9c2e-279d3ca9c274

"Justice League" Live-Action Series?

2006-12-10T00:48:00.000-08:00

The success of "Smallville" may have paved the way for a spin-off featuring fellow DC Comics mainstays "Justice League".

It was announced a while back that several guest star heroes (the Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, the Green Arrow) will all be appearing in an upcoming episode of "Smallville" this season.

Now, Comics Continuum reports that the group will also be appearing in a second episode later in the season and insists that episode will "act as a launching pad for a possible series".

Smallville producer Al Gough has denied that any League spin-off is in the works though, who can blame him after the disastrous "Aquaman" pilot got shelved even before airing.

Maguire Not Keen On "Spider-Man 4"

2006-12-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

If Sony had their way, the "Spider-Man" sequels won't stop til sometime in the 22nd century. In life though there are other factors to consider, one of them being your cast members.Now, Tobey Maguire has said in recent comments to Starpulse News that he may have had enough of Peter Parker, though isn't entirely ruling out a fourth go at it.Maguire says "This might be a good place to stop - I am not tied contractually to any more Spider-Man movies. I am not completely closed to the idea of another one if it made sense but I would say the odds were in favor of this being the last one". Both Maguire and Dunst, who have three film contracts, have expressed mixed desire to return to the franchise now that they've finished working on the three films.Of course, a huge paycheck always helps quell doubt.

Zaentz Wants Jackson For "Hobbit"

2006-11-27T22:25:00.000-08:00

In all the feuding over "The Hobbit", the one wild card has now spoken out about the issue. Saul Zaentz, the millionaire "Amadeus" and "The English Patient" producer who owns the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's works, has gone on the record with enthusiastic support of director Peter Jackson."It will definitely be shot by Peter Jackson. ... Next year The Hobbit rights will fall back to my company. I suppose that Peter will wait because he knows that he will make the best deal with us" said Zaentz to German site Elbenwald.de via Showbiz Data.

The whole quarrel right now is over outstanding money owed to Jackson by New Line for his work on the first film of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Jackson wants to direct at least one of the two prequel "Hobbit" films planned, but won't do it until the issue is resolved. Both a large cadre of fans and MGM, the studio who owns the distribution rights to "The Hobbit", also want him to do it.Only New Line, who holds the production rights at present, isn't keen on the idea because it would require them settling their lawsuit quite soon - a movie that would put them millions out of pocket. The studio is opting to go with a new director and production team as they have to get into production on the film by next year or the rights will revert back to Zaentz.

Zaentz is perfectly happy with that idea it seems, it would allow him and Jackson to proceed without any studio interference - "He [Jackson] is fed up with the studios: to get his profit share on the Rings Trilogy he had to sue New Line. With us, in contrast, he knows that he will be paid fairly and artistically supported without reservation".Right now though how this plays out is fascinating to watch. All sides are using media outlets to their advantage in this fight, and both the newly-reformed MGM and Zaentz have proven they're not afraid to go at it tooth and claw. Yet right now the ball is in New Line's court, whatever they do next will determine the outcome.

McKellen Talks "Hobbit" Controversy

2006-11-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

Gandalf himself, Sir Ian McKellen, revealed on Wednesday he is upset over recent talk that director Peter Jackson may not make a film based on author J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit"."On my own account, I am very sad as I should have relished re-visiting Middle Earth with Peter again as team-leader. It's hard to imagine any other director matching his achievement in Tolkien country" he said in a posting on his official site.

Despite this week's letter from Jackson, many industry insiders still expect him to be involved on the project and that this public spectacle is merely childish negotiating tactics from both parties over both the deal and the outstanding "Fellowship" lawsuit." We will have to await developments but being an optimist I am hoping that New Line, MGM and Wingnut can settle outstanding problems so that the long expected 'Hobbit' is filmed sooner rather than later," McKellen added in his post.For now though speculation continues with some wild talk at The One Ring that "Spider-Man" helmer Sam Raimi has been contacted about potentially helming.

Jackson Says No To Doing "The Hobbit"

2006-11-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get much more official than this folks. In a lengthy letter to The One Ring.Net, "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy helmer Peter Jackson confirmed will not be involved in the making of the series 'prequel' "The Hobbit".

For sometime a cloud over Jackson's involvement has been swirling due to an unresolved lawsuit between Jackson and New Line over incomes on "The Fellowship of the Ring". Until the issue was settled there wasn't expected to be any involvement on Jackson's part.

Now, producer Mark Ordesky called Jackson's manager and "told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on the Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects".

The reason for this? According to the letter "Ordesky said that New Line has a limited time option on the film rights they have obtained from Saul Zaentz, and because we won't discuss making the movies until the lawsuit is resolved, the studio is going to have to hire another director".

(Dark Horizons)

Game Consules?

2006-11-18T01:07:00.000-08:00

With X-Box 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii battling out with each other, I wounder is it really worth it? What is true the hold game consules have upon the populace and society?
I understand some aspects - like FPS, RTS, MMOs, and a way to live a life of an avatar. Something to escape reality. But for some, they can't tell the difference from reality and games. All they see is one "game."

I don't think they show be band, but parents and people should use common sense in this. That would be the best without enacting stupid state or federal laws where, in most cases, parents participation would be the best. Where Parents take a active role in their children's life.

Sloan Talks "Hobbit", "Panther" Plans

2006-11-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

At the European Media Leaders Summit in London, MGM chief Harry Sloan confirmed that the studio plans to focus on its five core franchises - James Bond, "The Pink Panther," "Thomas Crown," "Rocky" and "The Hobbit". The aim is to release two or three tentpoles per year reports Variety. Steve Martin recently delivered a script for the latest "Pink Panther," where his Inspector Clouseau teams up with equally bumbling detectives from other European countries to defeat a continent-wide crime wave.

Shooting is expected to start in February.The next "Thomas Crown Affair" starring Pierce Brosnan is scheduled for March, with a likely budget around $100 million. Daniel Craig will return in the sequel to "Casino Royale" which is up for release in late 2008.Sloan said "Rocky Balboa," which is set for release next year, will probably be the last installment in that franchise, because Sylvester Stallone's title character will be too old for the ring.Finally, Sloan confirmed MGM was in talks with Peter Jackson to make two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Hobbit" though that is contingent on negotiations with New Line, which owns the right to produce "The Hobbit".

The first "Hobbit" will be a direct adaptation of "The Hobbit," and the second would be drawn from footnotes and source material connecting "The Hobbit" with "The Lord of the Rings".

UK Critics Loving New James Bond

2006-11-04T22:39:00.000-08:00

The first reviews of the new James Bond flick "Casino Royale" have started popping up in the British press, the film's harshest critics so far.The good news is most are unabashedly praising the film and Craig's performance in particular as the best since Connery, and the best Bond film in general since 1995's acclaimed "Goldeneye".The Times, The Mirror, The Sun, and The Telegraph and The Daily Mail all posted gushing reviews of the film.The sole voice of dissension at present is The Guardian who posted a mixed take due to not liking the more realistic and darker take on the series, citing it doesn't explore "real current fears", and not a fan of the score.

(Dark Horizons)

Up and coming Videos

2006-10-30T22:13:00.000-08:00

Fourth "Spider-Man 3" Villian Details?

The appearance of Bruce Campbell as Quentin Beck [aka Mysterio] in "Spider-Man 3" is to play out something a like this reports Filmick:"Peter Parker finds out about a Spider-Man movie being made and goes to the set to check it out. Avi Arad and Sam Raimi have cameos as the producer and director. Quentin Beck is the movie's special FX guy.The fact that Peter and MJ are both in the public eye - though one can never reveal that he is - is milked for a little bit of fun too.This brief cameo appearance by Beck is just about the full the breadth and depth of the "4th villain" mystery".

"Street Fighter" Gets To Battle Again.

Hyde Park Entertainment and Capcom Ltd. are trying again at doing a film version of the popular video game franchise "Street Fighter" reports Variety.Scribe Justin Marks ("Voltran") has been picked to pen the script for the film which is aiming for a 2008 release.The date will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the game franchise which has sold over 25 million console games and 500,000 arcade units.The new film will focus on the game's most popular female fighter, Chun Li, but the exact storyline is being kept under wraps.Universal previously released a critically panned $35 million film based on the games back in 1994 starring the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Ming-Na, Wes Studi, and Kylie Minogue.

(from Dark Horizons)

Whose Line Is It?

2006-10-29T23:35:00.000-08:00

This stand up improve comedy show is a good example of comedy and pop culture mixed together. The show is taped in LA, lasting 45 minutes but showed on ABC Family in a 30 minute time slot.

The audience and the comedians interact each other and pump each other up. There are four comedians that appear on the show and at times a known comedian comes on. For example, Robin Williams. It is well worth it.

Sands Talks "Hobbit" & "Terminator"

2006-10-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

MGM chief operating officer Rick Sands talked about "Terminator 4" and "The Hobbit" while at ShowEast this week reports Slashfilm.Sands says that T4 will have a new title and not a number, going with the recent poll which confirms moviegoers prefer new titles over numbers. As for someone else taking over for Arnie - "It's like the 'Batman' or 'Superman' franchise in that it lends itself to having different actors in the roles".Sands also confirmed that talks are underway with New Line Cinema to obtain the rights to produce TWO prequel films to "The Lord of the Rings", based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit".
(Dark Horizons)

I do hope it does go off with The Hobbit. It would be interesting to see how that is pulled of. With T4 Arnie will never act in it as long as he is the Governer of California.

"Stargate: SG-1" Gets Two DVD Movies

2006-10-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

MGM has granted a green light -- and enough money -- to produce two "Stargate: SG-1" movies, most likely for DVD, executive producer Brad Wright tells TV Guide.The first flick will tie up most of the finale's loose threads -- "It's the climax of the Ori story line" -- and will be written-directed by exec producer Robert Cooper. The second film, penned by Wright, will involve time travel, and both projects should debut in the fall of 2007.Though no deals are signed, SG-1's stars are said to be "very eager" to continue. "They're not big-budget [films] by any definition, but for us it's pretty good. As we've proven over the years, just give us little more money and we can make pretty good television, or DVDs" says Wright.

(Dark Horizens)

Stephen King Explores Joy in Marriage, Grief in Loss

2006-10-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

(NYTimes, By Motoko Rich)

Stephen King clearly has little trouble invoking his muse: with more than 40 books to his credit, he appears to have no problem churning out the words, despite having famously said four years ago that he planned to retire.

But Mr. King, 59, best known for gripping horror fests like “Carrie,” “The Shining” and “The Stand,” says that writing a book is different from writing a truly good book. And that is what Mr. King believes he has done with “Lisey’s Story,” a novel that is being published by Scribner on Oct. 24.

“It’s like surfers and the seventh wave,” he said in an August interview a day after playing host for a charity reading with the authors J. K. Rowling and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York. “You ride six waves that are O.K., and then the seventh one is really great.” But with every seventh wave, you mess up the ride, “so really it’s only every 49th wave that’s really a great, great wave, and I felt that way with ‘Lisey.’ ”

This time out, Mr. King, one of the few true rock stars of the book world, has written a novel that like “Bag of Bones,” from 1998, or the novellas of “Different Seasons,” published in 1982, does not entirely forgo horrific elements, but certainly transcends them. At its heart, “Lisey’s Story” is a book about a marriage and the journey through grief that a widow — the title’s Lisey — makes after the death of her husband, Scott Landon, also a rock star of the book world.
Told from her point of view, the novel is a vibrant celebration of language, particularly the shared patois of marriage. The book is peppered with vivid words like “Incunks” (the couple’s name for the professors who study Scott’s work, and then, after his death, pressure Lisey to donate his papers) or “bad-gunky” (Scott’s reference to the madness that sometimes overtakes him and other members of his family).

And those horrific elements? Scott, and later Lisey, travel back and forth to an alternate world, both beautiful and monstrous, known as “Boo’ya Moon.” Mr. King’s name on the spine of a book generally guarantees a best seller. But in what has become a long-running theme for him, Mr. King wants readers, and critics, to recognize that he isn’t a hack.

“You get a reputation as a best seller, and you immediately get hung with a label” that you must write for the lowest common denominator, he said, sitting easily in a chair in his Upper East Side hotel suite, wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans and a pair of Merrill suede moccasins. “All I’ve tried to do is to work hard and get better.”

With “Lisey’s Story,” he added, “I’m not saying that it’s deathless prose, or it’s a classic, but I’m saying that I’m surprised I had this book in me. It’s a lucky book.”

While his publisher is planning an initial print run of about 1.1 million copies, it has pushed the novel almost as if it were written by an up-and-coming author on the verge of a breakout book.
Early in the spring, Scribner sent out 7,000 galleys to booksellers and people in the press, the most it has distributed since “Bag of Bones.” In fact, the publisher did not send out any advance reading copies of Mr. King’s “Cell” when it was published earlier this year because it figured most of them would end up on eBay before the book went on sale in stores; Scribner has already asked eBay to remove at least a dozen copies of “Lisey’s Story” from the site.

Susan Moldow, Scribner’s publisher, said the company courted independent booksellers, some of whom tend to ignore Mr. King’s books because they assume that the discount chains will sell most of them. “We wanted to convince them, both because of the content of the book and because Stephen King’s readers are all over, that they should highlight it and take their own market share,” Ms. Moldow said.

The sales push intrigued Margaret Maupin, a buyer at the Tattered Cover, an independent bookstore in Denver. The store ordered about one-third more copies than it usually does for one of Mr. King’s novels, Ms. Maupin said, hoping to attract new readers. In what sounds like a pitch for a challenging novel in translation, Ms. Maupin said she wanted to sell “Lisey’s Story” to people who had previously spurned Mr. King’s work. “We’re saying, ‘Stretch yourself a little bit,’ ” she said.

Mr. King started writing “Lisey” three years ago, while recovering from a severe bout of pneumonia that landed him in the hospital for nearly a month, his second brush with mortality after being hit by a van in Maine in 1999. The seed of the novel, he said, came after he had returned from the hospital and his wife, Tabitha, had started renovating his office. When he walked into the room, in a converted barn, the rugs were gone, and most of his books and papers were boxed up.

“I went in there, and I could barely walk, and I could barely breathe,” he recalled. “I thought, this is what places look like when somebody’s died. I thought to myself, this is what it is like to be a ghost.”

But what he really wanted to do, he said, was “write a book about a woman who was the actual driving force of a marriage to a famous man.” Although his own wife is an obvious role model, Mr. King is quick to point out the differences: Tabitha King is a novelist in her own right, while Lisey doesn’t work. The Kings have three children, and the Landons have none. Still, he said, “Lisey’s supposed to be about finding somebody who understands what it’s like to live that life of the imagination.”

He added, “Not everybody is comfortable with that, and when you find somebody who is — in that sense Tabby is like Lisey.” Because he was writing in a woman’s voice, Mr. King asked Nan Graham, the editor in chief at Scribner, to edit the book instead of Chuck Verrill, Mr. King’s longstanding personal editor. Ms. Graham said she helped with pacing and honing the title character. “Lisey became a little more complex and compelling,” she said.

In the novel Scott Landon is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award who writes blockbuster best sellers. Mr. King has never won either prize, although he was awarded, somewhat controversially, a medal for distinguished contribution to American letters by the National Book Foundation in 2003.

“It’s a way of saying to the reader, ‘Don’t start out with the idea that Scott Landon is Stephen King,’ ” he said, “because that’s not the case.” Nevertheless, such details can make a reader wonder if he might, just a little bit, be writing an insouciant kiss-off to the literary establishment. Mr. King insisted that wasn’t his plan, but then proceeded to rant about critics who, he said, had “made their ignorance of their own popular culture a virtue.”

He said he was more concerned about underrated authors he has championed than for himself. “For myself, I’m read, I’m feeding my family, so I feel pretty good,” he said. “In the end, it doesn’t matter, because either the books survive, or they don’t. I’m going to be dead, and God, I hope that they will survive, but it’s out of my hands.”
The intense focus on language in “Lisey” comes as something of a shift for him. In his early days Mr. King confessed that a story’s concept superseded the language. In an interview in The New York Times Magazine, Mr. King once said: “Love of the word wasn’t first. It was second.” Now, he said, language is “more important than it used to be.”
Part of that change, he said, was that he was reading more poetry. Among his favorites are D. H. Lawrence, Richard Wilbur and James Dickey.
“You get older, you find out time is shorter, and you read stuff that you’ve missed before,” he said. “You say, ‘I can’t wait forever anymore to read Eudora Welty.’ I finally got to Eudora Welty, so maybe I’m just meeting a better class of literary person.”
Mr. King spooked fans with his threat of retirement a few years ago. “I didn’t feel good,” he said. “I was in a lot of pain from the accident.”
But somehow, he couldn’t stop writing. “When I started to feel better, I felt like I wanted to work,” he said. “What else am I going to do? I don’t parasail.”

Is Th-Th-That All, Folks?

2006-10-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

(NYTimes, By Laura M. Holson)

HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 2 — Mike Hernandez has had it with the new offerings of animated movies.
Other than “Cars,” the summer hit from Pixar Animation Studios, he would rather watch the re-released animated classic “The Little Mermaid” with his 4-year-old daughter, Alicea.
“They had a good message,” Mr. Hernandez said of “Cars” and “The Little Mermaid” after attending a recent matinee of “The Little Mermaid” at the El Capitan movie theater here. Of other, newer films, he said, “I don’t pay too much attention.”
With more than a dozen computer-animated movies being readied for release by next summer, Hollywood is facing viewer fatigue worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Analysts and industry executives have long warned of a coming glut of computer-animated movies. That time has come.
Now, with so many movies for audiences to choose from, some are failing to meet expectations or are flopping outright.
This summer’s “The Wild,” from the Walt Disney Company, proved anything but for moviegoers, bringing in only $37 million at the domestic box office. The bigger disappointment was “The Ant Bully,” produced by the actor Tom Hanks and distributed by Warner Brothers Entertainment. That movie’s powerful ant wizard could muster only enough magic to garner $27 million.
By contrast, the debut of “Open Season,” the tale of a defiant grizzly bear and feisty mule deer who battle hunters, brought in $23 million over the weekend for Sony Pictures Entertainment, putting it in first place. But only the coming weeks will tell whether it will be widely embraced by moviegoers.
Over the last five years, almost every major film studio has sought to make or acquire the type of movies pioneered by Pixar, which was recently acquired by Disney. At the same time, independently financed animators have ratcheted up production.
But while animation continues to be popular with families, audiences complain it is suffering from too much sameness, with movie plots and characters looking increasingly alike.
Computer animation is not the novelty it was when introduced a decade ago. Now even actors are animation-savvy. Aside from Mr. Hanks, the popular actor Will Smith has plans to produce an animated film in India. With all the choices, moviegoers are being forced to sift through an increasingly crowded marketplace where quality and brand-name recognition will ultimately reign supreme.
“I think audiences are saying, ‘I’ve seen a lot of computer animation and it’s not so special anymore,’ ” said Julia Pistor, an executive producer of the recent “Barnyard,” which was a modest performer, bringing in $69 million domestically. “In that case it’s a lot harder for a movie to break through.”
Both Pixar and its main rival, DreamWorks Animation, continue to dominate the animation genre because their brands are widely known and highly regarded. But even those studios are feeling the pinch.
Though “Cars,” from Pixar, was a hit last summer, bringing in $243 million domestically, it failed to live up to prerelease expectations. The stock price of DreamWorks Animation is down about 40 percent since it traded near a high of $42 in November 2004, as analysts and investors remain concerned about unpredictable movie profits. Shares closed at $24.57 yesterday.
Box-office figures show how central Disney and DreamWorks are to the animation business. (Executives there declined to comment for this article.) Nielsen EDI, a box-office tracking service, said that 2004 was a banner year for animation, with domestic box-office receipts of $1.2 billion. That success was largely a result of the release of “Shrek 2” and “Shark Tale,” both from DreamWorks, as well as “The Incredibles” from Pixar.
In 2005, the domestic box office fell by half, to $640 million. Then Pixar did not release a feature film that year, and DreamWorks’ “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” was a flop.
Through mid-September 2006, the domestic box office for animated films was $928 million. But there also has been a rise in the number of films — filmmakers plan to release 17 animated movies in 2006, compared with 11 in 2005.
If there is a shakeout and fewer animated movies are made, animators without a brand name or those who do not produce high-quality movies will probably be hurt most.
“There are a lot of movies out there,” said John H. Williams, a producer of “Shrek” and chief executive of Vanguard Animation. “The question is, ‘Who are the people who are going to be getting the funding?’ ”
The main criticism of animated movies within the industry and among consumers is that they are beginning to look alike. And the recent crop looks a lot like a zoo.
Natalie Ward, 13, who was out shopping with her grandmother, Bonnie Ward, in Hollywood recently, was unimpressed with the latest offerings. “There are so many movies with animals,” she said, pursing lips tinged blue by the icy neon drink in her hand. “The ones about cows are too, like, I don’t know — boring.”
Next month, Warner Brothers will distribute “Happy Feet,” featuring tap-dancing penguins. Rats are a favorite, too. Coming from DreamWorks is “Flushed Away,” the story of a high-class rat flushed down a toilet into London’s sewers, while “Ratatouille” from Pixar features a rat living in a fancy French restaurant.
These movies come on the heels of a menagerie of talking animal films, including “Over the Hedge” (raccoon, turtle, skunk), “Barnyard” (cows, mule, hen) and “The Wild” (lion, wildebeest, koala bear). Even “The Ant Bully” looked like a reworking of previous insect-themed movies like “A Bug’s Life” and “Antz,” both released in 1998.
“I think we need to branch out and find a wider breadth of stories to tell,” said Gary Ross, the director of “Pleasantville” and “Seabiscuit,” who is producing the animated film “The Tale of Despereaux,” based on a best-selling book that features a rat, a servant girl and a mouse who cross paths. “We just have to find a diversity of narratives.”
Still, it is no wonder that Hollywood is flush with fuzzy creatures. A few years ago “animated films were the most profitable,” said Mr. Williams. That was particularly true because they were nearly guaranteed to be best sellers on DVD. But making animated movies is expensive — some cost upward of $150 million — and that makes it especially risky to bore consumers.
John Davis, the writer and director of “The Ant Bully” did not return calls seeking comment. But studio executives have said that even with its reasonable budget of about $45 million, it is questionable whether “The Ant Bully” will make a profit. That sent shivers through the animation industry, whose members wondered how a film backed by Mr. Hanks and starring Julia Roberts could have performed so poorly.
Many here suggest that animation will go the way of independent film companies, many of which were either acquired by major studios or have been forced to hawk their films project by project. Already several animation companies are shopping new movies, but studio executives are being cautious. “There are all these people saying we are going to be the next Pixar,” said Ms. Pistor. “We say, ‘Who is your John Lasseter?’ ”
By all accounts, DreamWorks and Pixar should be in a good spot to weather the uncertainty. Pixar is now part of Disney, having been acquired earlier this year for $7.4 billion. The timing of that sale looks especially smart for Pixar, given the recent jitters about the genre.
DreamWorks, meanwhile, is still publicly traded and is unlikely to be sold anytime soon, analysts say. In a recent interview, Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, said he was not interested in acquiring DreamWorks Animation, which is run by Jeffrey Katzenberg. (Mr. Katzenberg co-founded DreamWorks SKG, the company from which the animation unit was spun off, with the director Steven Spielberg and the billionaire David Geffen.)
DreamWorks recently had a creative tussle with a partner, Aardman Animation, the British producer of two movies released by DreamWorks, “Wallace and Gromit” and the coming “Flushed Away.” While “Wallace and Gromit” was critically acclaimed, American audiences did not like it and the movie brought in only $56 million at the domestic box office.
Aardman executives chafed at the creative control DreamWorks tried to exert, particularly with “Flushed Away,” according to people apprised of the situation who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the relationship.
As a result, the two companies have decided to split and Aardman is expected to begin looking for a new distributor in the United States, said the people. Aardman executives did not return phone calls seeking comment. A DreamWorks spokesman said the studio had no immediate plans to make movies with Aardman after “Flushed Away.”
But in addition to getting along with its partners, DreamWorks must also manage Wall Street. One reason DreamWorks’ stock is trading at a low price is that analysts are concerned that a DreamWorks investor, Paul G. Allen, will activate his option to sell shares to the public. Such a move, which many analysts say could be announced before the end of the year, could further drive down the stock price. An alternative for DreamWorks is to sell a stake to another investor to pay off Mr. Allen, said analysts.
Asked by analysts last month if Mr. Allen had activated that option, DreamWorks’ newly appointed president, Lewis Coleman, said DreamWorks did not have to disclose that information, but had 90 days to respond to Mr. Allen.
“In our view, these comments are vague and cryptic enough to suggest that certainly the answer could be yes,” a Prudential Equity Group analyst, Katherine Styponias, wrote in a report last month.
DreamWorks’ financial machinations mean little to Bonnie Ward, Natalie Ward’s grandmother — unless the studio stops making interesting movies. She said she enjoyed “Over the Hedge,” even if the movie’s humor was sometimes a little grown-up.
“They aren’t all perfect,” she said of the new fare. “But it is something for me to do with my little grandchildren.”

World of Warcraft Comes to South Park

2006-10-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

"The first episode of South Park Season 10 is this Wednesday, October 4, at 10:00 PM Eastern/Pacific Time on Comedy Central. It will be called "Make Love, Not Warcraft". A sneak peek in Quicktime and DivX is available." Flash version of the blurb courtesy of Kotaku.

New Tolkien Story To be Published

2006-09-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

"CNN reports that Christopher Tolkien has edited and will release a new book by his father. From the article: 'Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarfs of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.'"
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5358880.stm)

Son completes unfinished Tolkien
An unfinished book by JRR Tolkien has been edited into a completed work by his son for publication next year. Christopher Tolkien has spent 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, which The Lord of the Rings author started in 1918 and later abandoned.
Extracts from The Children of Hurin have been published before.
JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy has sold more than 50 million copies and was adapted into three hugely successful films.
"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of The Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers," Christopher Tolkien said in a statement.
The story involves the elves and dwarves that feature in much of Tolkien's work.
He died in September 1973, aged 81.

MGM to Produce "The Hobbit"

2006-09-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

"According to two sources, MGM and New Line are partnering to produce 'The Hobbit' as part of MGM's new plans to create blockbuster movies again. From theonering.net: 'Over the next few years, MGM is planning to release half a dozen films, some in the $150 million to $200 million-plus range. Studio is ready to unveil such high-profile projects as "Terminator 4"; one or two installments of "The Hobbit," which Sloan hopes will be directed by Peter Jackson; and a sequel to "The Thomas Crown Affair" with Pierce Brosnan.'" With or without Tom singing, is what I want to know.

Pirates 3 & Trek 11 Updates

2006-09-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

Screenwriter Terry Rossio has confirmed to Word Prayer at that Disney is going with "Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End" (with no apostrophe after World) as the full title for the anticipated third installment. The film opens in theaters on May 25th 2007.In news of another franchise, Leonard Nimoy has mentioned to Jam Movies that he and William Shatner might get to be involved with J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek XI" at Paramount.He says "The head of production at Paramount called my agency to tell them about this project and they are aware of Bill's and my contribution to the franchise, and they'd like us to know they might want some involvement. It was all very, very general. They might possibly want Bill and I to set up the story as a flashback. But that's just conjecture on my part".

"The Hobbit" Film In The Works?

2006-09-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

A One Ring.Net spy who was recently in the New York offices of New Line Cinema has reported that they clearly saw "The Hobbit" on the film schedule for 2007:

"I was in New Line's NY offices to discuss upcoming projects when I clearly saw something very intriguing on a year planner. 'The Hobbit' was clearly marked on what looked like July 2007.

I couldn't exactly take a moment to investigate the calendar with my audience in the room, but it definitely said 'The Hobbit'. Lets hope this is a Peter Jackson project!".The rumour sounds far-fetched, not so much for the project but rather the date. A July 2007 start of production date however, sounds like a possibility and New Line is definitely interested in doing the "Lord of the Rings" prequel.

Sgt Pepper tops all-time album chart! Yes the Beatles!

2006-08-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was today voted the nation’s favourite Number One album.The smash hit only just pushed Michael Jackson’s Thriller album into second place by 201 votes in the BBC’s Radio 2 Music Club Top 100 Albums chart.The nationwide survey saw more than 220,000 people select their favourite artists and was designed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the official UK album charts.A full run-down of the top 100 was broadcast on Radio 2 by DJ Simon Mayo today.U2’s Joshua Tree came in third, with Rumours by Fleetwood Mac taking fourth place.The Fab Four scooped five spots in the album top 11, with Revolver taking sixth place, Abbey Road in eighth, the White Album at 10 and Rubber Soul taking 11th place.Colossal Mike Oldfield hit Tubular Bells, which stayed in the charts for five years, also featured, taking the number 18 slot.

Of the classic albums that failed to reach the number one position, Britons voted Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon as their favourite with The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, by David Bowie, as number two.The Official Album Chart started in 1956 and since then there have been 787 number one albums.Presenter Simon Mayo said: “It is a very impressive list and no surprise at all that Sgt Pepper is at the top.“It revolutionised music and what we expect from an album. A fine choice indeed.”Misspellings by voters keen to take part in the poll also saw votes go to “The Dark Side of the Room” by “Pink Flid” and “Achtung Bono” by U2.Other blunders included fans voting for “Codplay” and “Oink Floyd”.

The BBC Radio 2 Music Club Top 100 Albums list in full:

1 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Beatles
2 Thriller – Michael Jackson
3 The Joshua Tree – U2
4 Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
5 Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
6 Revolver – Beatles
7 Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon & Garfunkel
8 Abbey Road – Beatles
9 A Night At The Opera – Queen
10 The Beatles (The White Album) – Beatles
11 Rubber Soul – Beatles
12 Brothers In Arms – Dire Straits
13 (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? – Oasis
14 Automatic For The People – REM
15 Led Zeppelin IV (Four Symbols) – Led Zeppelin
16 Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette
17 Parallel Lines – Blondie
18 Tubular Bells – Mike Oldfield
19 Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin
20 Band On The Run – Paul McCartney & Wings
21 Hounds Of Love – Kate Bush
22 Definitely Maybe – Oasis
23 Graceland – Paul Simon
24 Ray Of Light – Madonna
25 Who’s Next – Who
26 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John
27 OK Computer – Radiohead
28 Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols – Sex Pistols
29 Aladdin Sane – David Bowie
30 Out Of Time – REM
31 A Rush Of Blood To The Head – Coldplay
32 Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
33 X & Y – Coldplay
34 Born In The USA – Bruce Springsteen
35 Like A Prayer – Madonna
36 A Hard Day’s Night – Beatles
37 Confessions On A Dancefloor – Madonna
38 Parachutes – Coldplay
39 Harvest – Neil Young
40 Bad – Michael Jackson
41 American Idiot – Green Day
42 A Kind Of Magic – Queen
43 Faith – George Michael
44 Fever – Kylie Minogue
45 Back In Black – AC/DC
46 Let It Be – Beatles
47 Like A Virgin – Madonna
48 The Unforgettable Fire – U2
49 Imagine – John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band With The Flux Fiddlers
50 Help! – Beatles
51 Arrival – Abba
52 Led Zeppelin 3 – Led Zeppelin
53 Urban Hymns – Verve
54 Spice – Spice Girls
55 Sing When You’re Winning – Robbie Williams
56 Let’s Dance – David Bowie
57 Hopes And Fears – Keane
58 Diamond Dogs – David Bowie
59 Escapology – Robbie Williams
60 Parklife – Blur
61 Rattle And Hum – U2
62 Hot Fuss – The Killers
63 How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb – U2
64 True Blue – Madonna
65 Sticky Fingers – Rolling
Music – Madonna
67 A Day At The Races – Queen
=68 War – U2
=68 Life Thru A Lens – Robbie Williams
70 No Angel – Dido
71 Physical Graffiti – Led Zeppelin
72 Swing When You’re Winning – Robbie Williams
=73 Super Trouper – Abba
=73 Let It Bleed – Rolling Stones
75 All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
76 Spiceworld – Spice Girls
77 Dare! – Human League
78 Different Class – Pulp
79 Please Please Me – Beatles
80 Back To Bedlam – James Blunt
81 So – Peter Gabriel
82 All That You Can’t Leave Behind – U2
83 Diva – Annie Lennox
84 Paranoid – Black Sabbath
85 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan
86 Songs About Jane – Maroon 5
87 By The Way – Red Hot Chili Peppers
=88 The Division Bell – Pink Floyd
=88 Scary Monsters And Super Creeps – David Bowie
90 Play – Moby
91 Listen Without Prejudice Volume 1 – George Michael
92 Dangerous – Michael Jackson
93 Voulez-Vous – Abba
94 Innuendo – Queen
95 Demon Days – Gorillaz
96 Love Over Gold – Dire Straits
=97 The Album – Abba
=97 Come On Over – Shania Twain9
9 I’ve Been Expecting You – Robbie Williams
100 Welcome To The Pleasuredome – Frankie Goes To Hollywood

2006 Emmys Winners!

2006-08-28T01:26:00.000-07:00

DRAMA SERIES "24",
FOX COMEDY SERIES "The Office",
NBC MINI SERIES "Elizabeth I",
HBO MADE FOR TELEVISION MOVIE "The Girl In The Café",
HBO REALITY "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition",
ABC REALITY COMPETITION PROGRAM "The Amazing Race",
CBS ACTOR IN A COMEDY Tony Shalhoub, "Monk"
ACTOR IN A DRAMA Kiefer Sutherland, "24"
ACTOR IN A MINISERIES OR MOVIE Andre Braugher, "Thief"
ACTRESS IN A COMEDY Julia Louis-Dreyfus, "The New Adventures Of Old Christine"
ACTRESS IN A DRAMA Mariska Hargitay, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"
ACTRESS IN A MINISERIES OR MOVIE Helen Mirren, "Elizabeth I"
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY Jeremy Piven, "Entourage"
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA Alan Alda, "The West Wing"
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MINISERIES OR MOVIE Jeremy Irons, "Elizabeth I" SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY Megan Mullally, "Will & Grace"
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA Blythe Danner, "Huff"
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MINISERIES OR MOVIE Kelly Macdonald, "The Girl In The Café"
GUEST ACTOR IN A .. Jordan, "Will & Grace"
GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA Christian Clemenson, "Boston Legal"
GUEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY Cloris Leachman, "Malcolm In The Middle"
GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA Patricia Clarkson, "Six Feet Under"
INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE IN A VARIETY OR MUSIC PROGRAM Barry Manilow, "Barry Manilow: Music And Passion"
ANIMATED PROGRAM (less than one hour) "The Simpsons"
VARIETY, MUSIC OR COMEDY SERIES "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"
VARIETY, MUSIC OR COMEDY SPECIAL "The XX Olympic Winter Games - Opening
Ceremony"

"Stargate: SG-1" May Continue

2006-08-28T01:23:00.000-07:00

Though SCI-FI Channel has cancelled the long-running series "Stargae: SG-1", the show's producers are hard at work looking for a new outlet for the story to continue says GateWorld."

As far as the future I can't comment yet because nothing has been confirmed. What we want to emphasize is that the franchise is not dying. SG-1 will go on in some way. We're just not ready to announce how" says executive producer Robert C. Cooper.

Cooper also emphasizes that "What's most important is that fans don't take out their frustration with Sci-Fi by not watching. In fact, what they need to do is watch both SG-1 and Atlantis LIVE and make sure the ratings stay strong. That helps prove to other outlets that might be interested in SG-1 that the show is still as strong as we think it is".A formal announcement from the studio and the network is expected next week.

Saturday Night Live!

2006-08-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Since SNL has been around for many years, it has been a part of American Culture in many aspects. Since many of the shows veterans are movie/Hollywood Stars. Here is a news article that does affect people's look at SNL and how SNL will affect the culture of America.
(http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-channel23aug23,0,7973211.story?coll=cl-tvent)

Shuffling the cast at 'Saturday Night': The NBC comedy institution may be losing veterans Parnell, Sanz and Thompson on top of other defections.
By Scott Collins, Times Staff Writer

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" will return for its 32nd season next month minus several familiar faces. Longtime cast members Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Kenan Thompson will likely exit the late-night comedy staple, according to a source close to the show. Still inconclusive are talks to bring back Darrell Hammond, famed for his impersonations of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and other celebrities. Hammond joined the cast in 1995 and has had the longest tenure of any performer in the show's history.

Meanwhile, "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels is expected to hand the reins of the signature fake-news segment "Weekend Update" — recently co-hosted by writer-performer Tina Fey and Amy Poehler — to a newer cast member, Jason Sudeikis.An NBC spokesman declined to comment Tuesday.

The cast shuffle comes in the wake of some previously announced departures. Fey is leaving along with cast member Rachel Dratch; the pair will work on Fey's NBC comedy "30 Rock," a parody of an "SNL"-style show.

"SNL" could be headed for one of its biggest makeovers in years — and not by choice. During a press conference last month in Pasadena, Michaels told reporters that the late-night fixture is facing massive budget cuts from NBC. Cast members are typically signed to multiyear deals that pay about $8,000 per episode, agents say. Many former cast members, such as Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell, have gone on to movie stardom.

I watched the show off and on since the 1990s. There have been good and funny people and episodes of it. I do wish them well. 32 years! Dang! Hope all goes well for them in the future.

"Stargate: SG-1" Gets Cancelled

2006-08-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

The SCI FI Channel has confirmed that it will not renew its record-breaking original series Stargate SG-1 for another season, but will pick up its spinoff series "Stargate: Atlantis" for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on August 18th, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television.

SCI FI issued the following statement on Aug. 21: "SCI FI Channel is proud to be the network that brought Stargate SG-1 to its record-breaking 10th season. Ten seasons and 215 episodes is an astounding, Guinness World Record-setting accomplishment. Stargate is a worldwide phenomenon. Having achieved so much over the course of the past 10 years, SCI FI believes that the time is right to make this season their last on the channel. SCI FI is honored to have been part of the Stargate legacy for five years, and we look forward to continuing to explore the Stargate universe with our partners at MGM through a new season of Stargate Atlantis."

Stargate SG-1, developed for television by executive producers Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, is based on the 1994 feature film Stargate. SG-1, which originally starred Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge, began on Showtime, then moved to SCI FI after five seasons. The current cast includes Tapping, Shanks and Judge and newcomers Ben Browder, Claudia Black and Beau Bridges. It airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Heroes in a half-shell.

2006-08-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

These four members of a heroes crime fighting team, with the names of: Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo. Being trained my Splinter.

Based on a comic book of the same name and members. It lead to two television cartoon shows, three movies, and multiple games.

I really liked them and still do. This show is much better than what is on lately. It gives a good message and its family oriented. True it may not be "mature," but who cares in my view. It's still good to watch without any thinking and I don't have to think twice letting young children watch it.

.Hack Series

2006-08-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

I have wathed the Anime, read the several manga series, and played the PS2 games.

I have really enjoyed them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hack
http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/.hack//Wiki
http://www.hack.channel.or.jp/
Here are severl sights that help explian it better.

I have enjoyed it, since it takes into account several modern popular culture aspects. This is RPG, MMOS, computer games, and the likes. The music is descent. The PS2 games simulates a MMO while your playing a video game. I enjoy it as I said. Its different from other anime, but that is why I enjoy it so much.

Popular Culture! What is it?

2006-08-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

So what is popular culture? Is it the culture of the people. Since we are talking about America, the Culture of the American People. The culture of the masses, groups, and the mixing of the two.

Is has been a blur, but everyone can see different aspects, within society and themselves, even when they take it for granted. Everyone has come to understand these aspects which helps to define themselves and everyone around them. The following links is an example:

Everyone has gone through a fad at least once in there life. They have participated in the popular culture. These culture aspects helps to define the society, region, group, and person.

Where the Sidewalk Ends!

2006-08-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

What a collection of poems aimed at children. This book and his other books: "The Giving Tree," "A Light in the Attic," "Falling Up," and "The Missing Piece" are ones I really remember as a kid.

Poetry that I seen other parents read to their children and grand kids. Even today I look over these books and remember the child like imagination kids have. Where taken out the trash was horrible or a tree house can transport one away to another time and land.

Pinky & the Brain

2006-08-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Pinky and the Brain
They're Pinky and the Brain
Yes, Pinky and the Brain
One is a genius, the other's insane
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain

Before each night is done
Their plan will be unfurled
By the dawning of the sun
They'll take over the world

They're Pinky and the Brain
Yes, Pinky and the Brain
Their twilight campaign
Is easy to explain
To prove their mousey worth
They'll overthrow the Earth They're dinky.
They're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain,Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, NARF!

Most remember this theme song from the 1990s shoe "Pinky & the Brain!" I enjoyed it so much and remember it fondly that I bought the DVD Vol. 1 when it came out a few weeks ago. Oh, the memories. I still have my Brain doll that I used to hang on my rear view mirror.

Watching each episode of the two trying to take over the world, but never succeeding. The Brain always asking Pinky same old question, "Are your poundering what I am poundering?" And then Pinky's silly replies.

How Lucas got his ideas for Star Wars!

2006-08-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

Caught to catch them all!

2006-08-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

(http://www.pokemon.com/flash.asp)

Yes or no! I don't know what one. Pokemon is celebrating its 10 year anniversary in the states. Yes, that is ten (10) whole years.

With several sessions, movies(around 6), game and especially the trade card game. The card game where multiple people "battle" each other with different Pokemon picture on them to win the "battle."

By the looks of it it is still going strong with people here in America. With over 400 different Pokemon in the episodes to see, catch, name, and battle.

I remember hearing about this when it first came out, but thinking it wouldn't last lone. Man, I was wrong. I should have bought stock in this company, I would had made a lot like the makers.
It did produce several want to be Pokemon competitors, but none lasted like this did.

Can you name and catch them all?

Does Anyone Really Care?

2006-08-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton-the Pop Diva?

This week's issue concerns everyone's favorite brain-dead, Billionairess-apparent Paris Hilton. On August 22nd she plans to release her new album, creatively titled Paris. Ms. Hilton is making quite a name for herself these days, and has a rather impressive resume. If I were a hiring manager and saw this hypothetical resume, I wonder if it would look something like this:

Work Experience

Uh, like, daddy gives me money an stuff!

I'm, like, a TV star. What? You haven't seen The Simple Life?

I wash cars

I make movies--just search the internet!

I totally sing!

After reviewing the resume, would I take it seriously? If I were the average American, I probably would-- and millions of those average Americans do. The question I pose to you, my vast audience of readers, does anyone really care? This girl has no talent, and fewer brain cells (though the opportunists that swarm around her like flies on dung seem to have something going for them). In case people have failed to notice, she already has billions of dollars within her grasp--do we need to give her more? Though, without her daddy's little hotel chain, she would be but another unknown high school prom queen who gets tricked into taking nudie videos by an old boyfriend. Oh, I guess that happened anyway.

Does anyone really care about Paris Hilton? In a world that values the superficiality that Hilton offers, I suppose that not only the Stars Are Blind.

Nintendo

2006-08-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

(found out on slashdot)
Posted by Zonk on Saturday August 05, @01:57PMfrom the shamed-and-amused-at-the-same-time dept.

If you grew up in the 80s, chances were you'd at least heard of the Nintendo Entertainment System. For those of us that read Nintendo Power, ate Nintendo cereal, and (ahem) for a brief time even wore a Nintendo hat, the NES experience was fairly powerful. As such, reading about Nintendo games is a perfectly logical step. 1up has a long piece looking at the World of Power book series, a series of novelizations of some of the most popular NES titles of the day. Castlvania, Master Blaster, and Metal Gear all received the literary treatment ... with varying degrees of success. From the article: "This trend toward whitewashing death and violence also extended the books' text. In Blaster Master, all the defeated 'underboss' characters that look like mutated animals turn out to be holographic projections placed over formless blobs. In Metal Gear, Solid Snake is described as a 'walking arsenal,' yet he only uses his various weapons to shoot locks off doors. In Ninja Gaiden, Ryu's father is shown losing a duel to the death in the game's prologue, and is said to have passed away in the book's early chapters. Yet he turns up at the very end of the book, very much alive. In Infiltrator, a double agent that is ordered to be sent away to be 'voided' has his fate described as either having his memory wiped, being exiled, or getting demoted." So, how many folks (besides me) actually read these thing?

More then meets the eyes! Transformers.

2006-08-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

Now what kid had not heard of these toys, cartoons, or comics either today or growing up.
Especially since the movie is coming out in 2007. (http://www.transformersmovie.com/)

I remember playing with the toys, watching the series (about 6-8 series), and reading the comics (then and now).

I don't remember my favorite one, but I did enjoy the big ones and the ones that combined.

Star Trek!

2006-08-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Star Trek memorabilia up for sale!

"Star Trek" memorabilia spanning four decades -- including Vulcan jewelry and Starfleet mini-dresses -- went on display Wednesday in London in preparation for the first official auction of studio items from the sci-fi phenomenon.

The collection of more than 1,000 items is being sold CBS Paramount Television to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first "Star Trek" TV episode, said Helen Bailey, head of entertainment collections at Christie's auction house. The show ran from 1966 to 1969, but spawned five spinoff series and 10 films.

Weapons and models of the Starship Enterprise from the original series to the 2002 movie "Star Trek: Nemesis" remain on display at Christie's in central London until Tuesday, before going to four U.S. cities en route to Christie's in New York City for the three-day sale beginning Oct. 5.
Highlights include a replica of Capt. James T. Kirk's chair from the original series -- made for a 1996 episode of spinoff "Deep Space Nine" -- with an estimated value of 6,400 pounds (US$12,000).

Costumes, including a gray uniform and boots worn by star William Shatner, are expected to fetch up to 3,200 pounds (US$6,000) each. "Star Trek has been a cornerstone of American popular culture for 40 years," said Cathy Elkies, director of special collections at Christie's.
The collection is valued at over 1 million pounds (US$1.8 million).

(AP, http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/08/02/startrek.auction.ap/)

Comic Book Guy

2006-08-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Occupation: Owner and operator of the Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop, where he sells comic books, trading cards and other collectibles found at Sci Fi conventions.

Education: According to "Three Men and a Comic Book," he has a master's degree in folklore and mythology.

Wears: T-shirts that are too tight and prescription pants.

A Quote: "I do not have a receipt, I won it as a door prize at the "Star Trek" convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical as the average Trekker has no use for a medium-sized belt."

We all have meet and seen someone like this guy that owns a comic book shop.

GIJOE! Yo Joe!

2006-08-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Now here was a cartoon that most if not all can related to in one form or another. Either playing with the toys, watching the toons, reading the comics, or wanting to be one.

The Joes really haven't truly died, but has kept a leg up in one form or another.

I remember playing with the toy Joes and having a lot of them to play with. Use to play toy solider with them in the backyard. Cobra at one end and the Joes at the other. Both sides battling it out. Oh the memories. Only if I kept them in the original package, I could have made a fortune.

The 80s show I have on DVD. OK I am a dork about that. Some episodes where cheese and the phrase "Knowing is half the battle."

'I'll miss Harry' says JK Rowling

2006-08-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

(BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5237846.stm)
Harry Potter author JK Rowling says she will miss writing the series when she finishes work on the final novel.

"I will go through a mourning period, then I will have to think of something else to write," the 41-year-old author told an audience in New York. However, she said writing the final book was "fun in a way it hasn't been before" because "the pressure is off".

Rowling read extracts from the most recent Potter novel at a charity event organised by author Stephen King. The benefit performance, which also featured World According To Garp novelist John Irving, was held at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Money was being raised for Doctors Without Borders and The Haven Foundation, which helps artists who are unable to support themselves after falling ill.

It was Rowling's first US appearance for six years. The author told the audience she had been unwilling to take long flights with two young children. 'Fingers crossed' King said he was looking forward to reading the next Potter novel, while Irving added: "I have my fingers crossed for Harry." "I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls," said King - referring to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's attempt to kill off Sherlock Holmes in the novel The Final Problem.

Sir Arthur later resurrected the character after being deluged with letters of protest from fans.
Rowling has said two characters will perish in the final Harry Potter novel, but told her New York audience she was not looking forward to writing their deaths. "I didn't enjoy killing the character at the end of book six," she said, "but I had been planning that for years, so it wasn't quite as poignant as you'd imagine. "I'd already done my grieving when I actually came to write it."

Film role As Rowling completes the last Harry Potter book, filming has begun on the fifth instalment of the movie franchise. Helena Bonham Carter has been announced as the latest addition to the all-star cast for Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix. The actress, who last appeared in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, will play the evil Bellatrix Lestrange in the film, which is due out next year. Film studio Warner Brothers has already announced that Imelda Staunton will play dark arts teacher Dolores Umbridge in the film.

Tales from Earth Sea by Studio Ghibli

2006-08-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is one of the trailers from the 2006 movie and the poster is above. I own and have watched many times Studio Ghibli's movies. "Spirted Away," "Princess Mononoke," "Howl's Moving Castle," and "Grave of the Fireflies" are some of his movies that have been shown in the USA and are known from the studio.

They are all so good to watch.

Bat Boy!

2006-08-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

Bat Boy. I remember reading about him years ago in the "National Enquirer" in the grocery store waiting to pay for the items in my bag.

Not much time later, I hear that there is "Bat Boy: The Musical" and book. Good greaf.

Here is a guy which the picture says it all. Looks like married. There may be some hope for the rest of us.

Pageant of the Masters!

2006-08-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's a yearly event in Laguna Beach, Orange County, California.

It is where people get painted, dessed up, and stand still for 90 seconds to reproduce, live, various painter's paintings. For example, Da Vinci "Last Supper."

There is about 60-80 old shows that are sold out to about 3000 person crowd. It takes place during Summer-Fall.

I have seen some of these live paintings and I am really impressed. I don't think I could stay still for 90 seconds dressed up in a painting. One example is the picture above.

This is grwoing trend in my mind. There are rumors to francise this out, while those in Laguna Beach do not want to do that.

What makes something like this enjoyable? To have repeat customers, have a great word of mouth, and going on year after year? Instead of going to Art Museums, people can go see live paintings.

He-Man and She-Ra

2006-08-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Who remembers this cartoon from the 1980s? The reason I bring it up is this. One of my roommates, along with tho others, watched an episode yesterday when I walked in.

Afterwards they began to talk about both series and started to sing the theme song.

I remember these cartoons, but not as fondly as these people remembered it. I remember seeing He-Man making a come back on Saturday, with a new cartoon series, and in the comic seen. These two newer editions I thought were ok, but both didn't last long. Oh well.

Voltron

2006-07-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

Who remembers Voltron, both Car and Lions, in the 1980s and remake in the 1990s?

I remember watching them as a kid and playing with both toys. They were fun to play with. As a toy I enjoyed the car more. Since you can play with it as a giant robot, sperately, or in a group of 3 (Land, Air, Sea).

I thought the Princess of the Lion Group was cute.

I also remember reading the comics. Those did bring back memories as a kid watching the cartoon in front of the TV each day it was on. If I couldn't, I would have the parents tape it.

Ghost in the Shell

2006-07-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ghost in the Shell, coming to America via Japan, takes place in a science fiction cyberpunkish futre set in Japan. It takes some elements from Arthur Koestler's work "The Ghost in the Machine."

The Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2: Man/Machine Interface Manga is written by Masamune Shirow and the 2 movies (Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) and 2 television series (Ghost in the Shell S.A.G. & Ghost in the Shell S.A.G.: 2nd GIG) the director is Mamoru Oshii.

The shows iteselt deals with what it is to have a soul, to be human, losing a soul, and man and machines. The artistry is well done and so is the dialog. The music fits what is happening on screen. I do enjoy it very much.

Star Wars info from Slashdot

2006-07-31T14:51:00.000-07:00

"According to an article from the Edmonton Sun, director Mark Twitchell from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology has begun filming Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion, a non-profit venture expected to be released in 2008. From the article: "The 27-year-old Edmonton director begins shooting a feature-length independent Star Wars spin-off film at NAIT Saturday, and has amassed $60,000 to bring his dream to life. "I'm the only guy crazy enough to do this, because I'm not allowed to turn a profit. The film is for hardcore fans who miss the character development of the original trilogy.""

Robotech

2006-07-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Robotech (http://robotech.com/) a anime TV series of the 1980s. The series consisted of 3 parts (Robotech:Macross, Southern Cross, and New Generation) and a all new 4th part (The Shawdow Chronicles) that is due out shortly. There was a shorter filler between the 1st and 2nd part that only aired 4 of the episodes.

Comics, video games, CDs, and games also where produced for the series.

This series is one that I really remember watching while growing up as a kid at home after school. When the games and DVDs came out I had to pick them up, since of the found memories I had of Robotech as a child.

Its a series that may not be great as others may think, but for me they were enjoyable. From time to time I do watch the episodes. True the drwaings and script may not be up todate, but it was still descent and good to watch.

Cowboy Bebop

2006-07-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest anime that I have seen. It take place in a cyberpunk future. The style, music, dialog, and the likes is really done well. Of course there are a few episodes as well as the movie that sticks out well. The episodes and movie is on DVDs and on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.
I would recommend this to anyone.
The episodes revolve around a group of bounty hunters, who go after bounties on others head and their adventures doing so. There is Spike, Jet, Faye (solo picture above), and Edward & Ein.
(Spike, Faye, and Jet are inthe picture upper left).

50th Anniversary of the First Hard Drive

2006-07-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

The Hard Disk That Changed the World
IBM delivered the first disk drive 50 years ago. It was about the size of two refrigerators and weighed a ton.
By Steven Levy
Newsweek
August 7, 2006 issue - If there's a bottle of vintage champagne you've been saving, next month is the time to pop it open: it's the 50th anniversary of hard-disk storage. Don't laugh. On Sept. 13, 1956, IBM shipped the first unit of the RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) and set in motion a process that would change the way we live.
The RAMAC, designed in Big Blue's San Jose, Calif., research center, is the ultimate ancestor of that 1.8-inch drive that holds 7,500 songs inside your pocket-size $299 iPod. Of course, the RAMAC would have made a lousy music player. The drive weighed a full ton, and to lease it you'd pay about $250,000 a year in today's dollars. Since it required a separate air compressor to protect the two moving "heads" that read and wrote information, it was noisy. The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks—each of them a pizza-size 24 inches—was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."
Yet those who beheld the RAMAC were astonished. "It was about the size of two large refrigerators, about as tall as a person stands, and though it used vacuum tubes, it was always running," recalls Jim Porter, who worked at Crown Zellerbach in San Francisco in the mid-'50s and would proudly take people to the basement to see what he claims was the very first unit delivered by IBM. "It really turned the tide [in the Information Age]," he says. "It was the first to offer random access, whereas before you would have to wind a tape from one end to the other to access data."
That feature, and the fact that every year scientists have managed to compress more and more information on hard drives for less and less cost, has led to a revolution just as dramatic as the one triggered by the much more celebrated microprocessor. Massive storage has allowed huge businesses to thrive. Without astronomically capacious random-access hard disks, you couldn't imagine the likes of Google, eBay or Amazon. Yet the wizards in the storage field, who constantly fight the boundaries of physics to eke out more density on increasingly tiny disks, don't get respect. "Instead of Silicon Valley, they should call it Ferris Oxide Valley," says Mark Kryder, chief technical officer of Seagate. "It wasn't the microprocessor that enabled the personal video recorder, it was storage. It's enabling new industries."
Experts agree that the amazing gains in storage density at low cost will continue for at least the next couple of decades, allowing cheap peta-bytes (millions of gigabytes) of storage to corporations and terabytes (thousands of gigs) to the home. Meanwhile, drives with mere hundreds of gigabytes will be small enough to wear as jewelry. "You'll have with you every album and tune you've ever bought, every picture you've ever taken, every tax record," says Bill Healy, an executive at Hitachi, which acquired IBM's storage business in 2003.
Unfortunately, all this digital baggage comes with some baggage of its own. Already we are waist-deep in concerns about piracy (because our disks can store thousands of songs) and privacy (because their disks can store so much information about us). When it costs almost nothing to store almost everything, what happens next? Kryder of Seagate and Healy of Hitachi assure us that new disk-drive features like built-in encryption will protect copyright holders and our own personal records. Can we believe them? Better drink that champagne.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14096484/site/newsweek/

Hello

2006-07-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

This is the start of the American Pop Culutre Research Institute's Blog.