I often aspire to help my students realize the difference between flawed characters and flawed scripts, but recently realized I had sometimes neglected to apply this notion to my own cultural criticism. My thoughts about How To Get Away With Murder help illustrate. Basically every character in How To Get Away With Murder is deeplyContinue reading “Notes on Flawed Characters vs. Flawed Scripts”
Tag Archives: thoughts
Alex Trebek. Aunt Becky. Not Your Friends.
Parasocial relationships form easily. Carefully-scripted and highly-rehearsed, people see fictional characters people on their screens from the comfort of their homes and almost naturally come to believe they really know and very much like them. People are not able to internalize that this relationship is one-sided and is with a fictional character. Sometime during the past week,Continue reading “Alex Trebek. Aunt Becky. Not Your Friends.”
How To Get Away With Murder as Propaganda
I have previously written about ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder here and here. With the current season, I am growing more and more frustrated because of the constant twists (within twists, within twists, within yet more twists), the very slow pace, and the barrage of “bad” people. All of the characters actively and deliberatelyContinue reading “How To Get Away With Murder as Propaganda”
Black Men Driving: Race, Gender, and the Rhetoric of Announcing Presence
I have had regular hour-plus commutes for over a decade now. During this time I have consistently noticed an interesting correlation: Drivers who drive with the driver-side window down and with their arm/hand on the edge or slightly outside of the car are often (80-90 percent of the time) Black men. Said driver is alsoContinue reading “Black Men Driving: Race, Gender, and the Rhetoric of Announcing Presence”
Notes on: What is Religion?
Often, people don’t recognize how multifaceted the answers are to “what is religion?,” “what are the sources of theologies,” “what are the components of theologies?” Talking about Christianity, the Bible is often seen as the theological source. By recognizing how the associated histories and theologies, as well as how the Bible is far from the onlyContinue reading “Notes on: What is Religion?”
Funerals, Rhetorics, and Constructions of History
Clichés about “funerals being for the living” abound. Funerals assist with grieving and with accepting one’s own mortality, popular mores say. Funerals can also hinder this grieving process: Without realizing it, people sometimes talk about the deceased in ways that can be inaccurate and uncomfortable for others. Sometimes intentions might be more malicious and consciouslyContinue reading “Funerals, Rhetorics, and Constructions of History”
Thanksgiving Day teaches submissiveness.
On this Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2018: Please try to remember those who might not have anything to be “thankful” for, where thankful means “conscious of benefit received” and “expressing gratitude and relief.” Saying everyone has “something” to be grateful for vocalizes, likely unconsciously, positionalities of comfort and privilege. Thousands, if not millions, of people areContinue reading “Thanksgiving Day teaches submissiveness.”
Women, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Rhetoric of Implied Exclusion
According to written artifacts, Baptist women faced degrees of formal silence for the first time in 2000. Church leaders decreed: While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. This new rule points to “texts of terror” (see Phyllis Trible, forContinue reading “Women, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Rhetoric of Implied Exclusion”
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda 